Chapter Twenty-Nine: Circling the Wagons

By most accounts, vampires had superpowers beyond the ken of regular mortals. They had some serious weaknesses, too, but most of those were apparently negotiable. Vera very much doubted that she was among the more powerful vampires, but she still had a trump card: through some strange confluence of factors, her vampire weaknesses were less pronounced than a normal young vampire's. Lisa's were less pronounced, for that matter, and she was a weaker overall vampire, on account of having been turned by Vera, but the power difference between the two of them was pretty modest. However, on top of that, Lisa was partly in the sway of Abaddon, which had minor but myriad consequences, such as a greater aversion to 'holy' power.

Vera wondered whether it had affected Lisa's personality, too - once one of the warmest and most empathetic people that Verne knew, Lisa had been studying counseling psychology at the University of Tennessee. She was still affectionate to Vera, and she had moments of genuine compassion, but that warmth came in flashes, and almost always when Lisa was blood-sated. But, Vera supposed, it was hypocritical to ignore that the same thing might have happened to herself. Had she been a regular person, she'd have been scared shitless by Vampire Vera. After all, she'd killed people. She'd hurt them accidentally. And she'd attacked Pastor Mooney and manipulated him into becoming her familiar… and now, after her third meeting with the pastor, she could feel her influence  over the man growing to the point of outright control.

"That was a pretty good idea, claiming the pastor," Lisa said. She sat on the pastor's desk, lithe legs dangling over the edge, kicking her clunky wedge heels in little circles. "It's okay that I'm here?"

Vera shrugged. "I invited you in. I'm still technically a congregant in the church. And the pastor is my thrall… or will be soon, I hope."

Lisa rephrased: "He won't freak out that I'm here?"

Vera pursed her lips. "Good point. He doesn't remember what I did, so he won't freak out immediately… but you should probably make yourself scarce when he comes in just to be safe."

It wasn't quite true that Pastor Mooney didn't remember - the flash of recognition played across his face each time he spotted Vera, even for a moment. But whenever he tried to remember, specifically, what he was reacting to, he recalled a boring phone conversation with Felicity Mooney in his office. A false memory implanted by Vera. In a few short sessions, she'd figured out pretty well what levers to pull and push thanks to information in the Ghastly Spires – A Game of Vampyres, Their Minions, and Their Enemies 'rulebook'. To wit:

Familiars are the loyal minions of vampyres, often but not necessarily recruited willingly, the familiar is created with one or more Small Bites of crimson venom. During intoxication with the venom, the potential familiar is highly suggestible for 30-80 minutes (1d6x10 + 20). During this time, the vampyre may issue commands that have the power of Hypnotic Suggestion (Willpower reduced to 0). While suggestions have the power of compulsion (see Section 23), they cannot produce loyal minions. To convert an unwilling familiar, the familiar must fail a regular Willpower check with a +6 bonus, minus one for each subsequent attempt at recruitment.

In other words, Vera could effectively hypnotize the pastor when she bit him with crimson venom, and eventually he'd be compelled to do whatever she asked of him, even when not under the influence of the venom. He still wasn't there yet, but Vera thought it might happen soon. In the meanwhile, she'd compelled him not to discourage their parents from seeing them and to urge reconciliation (though it had taken until the most recent attempt to make him follow through with that command when the venom wore off). Vera was absolutely certain that what she was doing was immoral (or at least unvirtuous), but Mooney had been warping her father and dozens of other congregation members for the better part of a decade. Surely, that was worse. Surely, this was richly-deserved comeuppance. She heard the pastor's distinctive gait down the hallway - a sure, steady stride, the clink of about fifteen keys in his left pocket, footfalls a bit heavier on the right foot. She gestured and Lisa made herself scarce. The pastor walked into his office, freezing in his place as the flash of recognition flickered.

"Vera?" he said. "Are… what are you doing… you've been here before?"

He'd remembered, but trying to recall any specifics would just get him confused, memories of a conversation with Felicity regarding a plumber's bill popping into his awareness. He took another step forward, frowning again when he spotted Lisa behind his desk.

"I'm… I should tell your parents…" he trailed off.

"You shouldn't," Vera said. "You should sit down right here." She patted the polished wood of his desk with her hand.

"I… I need to think," the pastor said, and he sat on the desk right next to Vera. When she pushed him back, pushed him supine, he didn't resist at all.

"Just relax and go with it, pastor."

She nipped at his wrist, right over the scabbed incision of his old wound, and lapped at the blood before injecting more venom. A moment later, Lisa was at his other side, biting into his wrist and lapping at the little trickle of blood. They  weren't using the pastor to feed - this was just a treat. An aperitif for whatever Lisa had arranged for later.

"Oh… what is that," Lisa asked, smacking her lips. "Something… medicine-y… he's on Oxy?"

"Percocet," Vera said. She could feel its effects too, a slightly pleasant numbness about both her senses and her body. "I'll have to wean him off if he's addicted."

"Can you do that with a command?"

"Probably. Let's give it a shot."

Once the venom had fully set in, Vera ran through her list of about thirty commands she'd come up with to keep the pastor in line and continuing to act on their behalf. She could see the commands sinking in far more easily and suspected that this would be the session that turned the pastor into her fully committed familiar - her first familiar. Hector was sort-of a familiar, but she'd never given him any commands and wasn't going to, which meant his loyalty didn't go beyond the bounds of their normal friendship. But Pastor Mooney sucked Vera's commands up like she sucked his blood: urge reconciliation with their parents, stop preaching intolerance, stop with the Percocet, and so on. He also picked up one or two suggestions from Lisa, which Vera did not appreciate.

"You can't stop thinking about Vera's delicious booty," was one of them.

Vera scowled at her. "Lisa! Gross!"

"If I have to be obsessed with it, then so does he," Lisa said. Which was also a form of self-love, since their butts were almost identical, or so their shared wardrobe indicated.

"You have to be careful with your phrasing. What if my butt became the only thing he can think about. Did you think about that? Pastor Mooney, you aren't obsessed with my butt. My butt is no better and no worse than it should be." Vera nodded, thinking that should do the trick.

When the pastor came to his senses a few minutes later Vera and Lisa were long gone and headed back to the apartment. The only indications of their having been there was the lingering sweetness of their perfume and two new feeding scrapes, one on each wrist. Whatever he made of them, Vera never bothered to ask. That was the least of her worries.

+++++

Vera left work the next day with a skip in her step and a folder of brochures in her hand - brochures for the various pre-med and biomedical programs of the seven four-year universities within easy driving distance of central Palmetto. She'd sat down with Dr. Parvolog for another late afternoon chat, and the doctor already had collated and annotated some of the brochures and provided an additional five or six pages of free-form notes that she'd printed out on Imaging East watermarked paper.

"I like to keep abreast of the different programs, just in case somebody here expresses an interest in further development," the doctor said. Vera got the impression that she'd been waiting a while to give somebody the info, because some of the brochures were two years old.

"This is awesome! Thanks!" she'd said, and then hugged the doctor for the second time in two days.

Vera pored through the folder on the bus back to her apartment, fiddling with the hem of her scrubs and biting at her lip. She hadn't been in school in almost two years, and now she was thinking of going back into a no-shit pre-med program. Would she even remember any of the stuff she'd learned for her imaging tech AA? She snorted - why was she even thinking like that? She did that stuff on a daily basis… she'd probably breeze through it. Right?

"Thinking of going to nursing school?" a man said from over her shoulder.

He'd been eavesreading over her shoulder, albeit not too well. Vera wasn't sure whether it was enhanced vampire senses, being new to the whole womanhood thing, or the way she looked (really cute, but maaaaybe attainable), but it always seemed like there were a few guys scoping her out. Even with Lisa around. Even in her goddamn work scrubs. She could feel their gazes, hear their elevated heartbeats and, in some cases, smell their arousal. She turned slightly to face the mustached older man - he wasn't aroused, but he was super condescending.

"Oh, I don't know," she said in her breathiest voice. "Do you think I could? I'd looove to marry a doctor!" she rolled her eyes. The man frowned and turned his attention back to the book he'd been reading.

Vera had returned to the brochures and Dr. Parvolog's notes for a few minutes, getting to the Palmetto State programs when her phone buzzed in her backpack. It took Vera a minute to realize it wasn't her regular phone, but her other phone. The one stowed in the little front compartment. The one she hadn't heard a peep on since her (fraudulent) induction into the coven. She pulled the thing out and checked the latest message:

C: <Master Moody requires your presence at the temple. The matter is extremely urgent. -CB
C: <He adds that you're to bring your 'delightful blonde mademoiselle, whoever that is. -CB

Shit. Extremely urgent? What was that about? Vera messaged Lisa immediately, followed by Maxie:

V: <Shit going down at the temple tonight - might have to do with Eva.

Vera and Lisa met up at the apartment, Lisa trundling fifteen minutes after her with a load of boutique shopping bags and smelling of fresh blood. Her nose prickled at the scent, and she felt the slight pressure of her venom glands in her sinuses - the very first pangs of blood lust. She hadn't availed herself of any blood after her last meager sampling from Pastor Mooney. Blood would have to wait.

"Are you ever not shopping? How are you even affording this stuff? We're running out of space in the apartment…"

"Then we'll have to get a bigger apartment." Lisa pecked her on the cheek, the aroma of fresh blood and orange blossom wafting in with her. "So… this message… you think it's a big deal?"

"A message from Erasmus Moody is always a big deal," Vera observed. "I'm surprised the coven hasn't issued you a vampire phone yet."

"They did," Lisa shrugged. "I just don't check it. I think it's back… shit… I think it's buried somewhere under all those bags…" The glacial blue of her eyes flashed with worry. "Should we dress up? If it's for the temple…"

"I'm wearing my sweats. You can wear whatever you like, but we should go, like, soon - one doesn't dilly-dally on extremely urgent."

Lisa pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay. Yeah. I'll just grab a few bags and we can change there if we want to. Salvador is waiting outside."

Vera rolled her eyes. "Of course he is."

Twenty minutes later, they were cruising past Palmetto City's outer suburbs and down Route 17, the mobile parks and pre-fabricated homes with their 'This household doesn't call the police!' signs alternating with increasingly long and dense strips of pine forest. Vera felt a vague sense of dread as they turned off of 17 onto the twisty, gravelly tract of rural route 37. For all she knew, Moody and the rest of the coven already knew what she'd done to Carlos and Matt (well… Matt had been all Eva's doing, but that probably wouldn't afford much leniency) and they were driving to their own gruesome execution in Salvador's slate-gray Lexus.

For that matter, Salvador seemed on-edge about something. At first, Vera assumed it was about the plot she'd hatched to track the familiars using their cell phones and that Lisa had roped him into - not that he had much choice, now being her familiar. But maybe that wasn't it. Whenever he glanced up at Vera, his heart rate ticked up just a bit, and above his blood and sweat, the man smelled… smoky. He had a vaguely pungent smoky smell about him, like he'd been standing by a bonfire some hours previously.

"Why are you nervous?" Vera asked him. "You don't have to go into the temple." She realized too late that she'd just given him an 'out'.

"Um, yeah. That's what I'm worried about. I'd kind of hoped to get registered as Mistress Lisa's familiar…"

Vera elbowed Lisa. "If you make him call you 'mistress', I'm making you call me mistress. You can be friends with your familiar."

Lisa sighed. "It was his idea."

"Anyway," Vera said, "not the best time to worry about paperwork. We'll get it done after this extremely urgent situation is behind us. In fact, after you drop us off, I want you to get the hell away from here and don't come back until one of us tells you it's okay. Promise me you'll get to safety."

Salvador's glance flicked over to Lisa, angling for permission.

"Don't ask her," Vera said. "I'm telling you. You want Lisa to be your mistress? That's fine. I made Lisa a vampire and she made you a familiar. That means when I give you an order, you say, 'yes, Mistress Vera', am I understood?"

"Yes, Mistress Vera," Salvador said quickly. And Vera couldn't help but catch the uptick in his heart rate and the whiff of his arousal. Lisa smelled it, too, and giggled.

The upbeat mood couldn't last for long, though, because they soon came upon the little stretch of very well-tended road in the middle of rural route 37 and its little sign: This stretch of road generously maintained courtesy of the PNS. They ambled down the little paved pathway, with Vera reiterating that Salvador was to get the hell out of Dodge before she and Lisa wended their way back into the pine swamp.

On their way back, Vera noted at least three or four cameras mounted on tree branches or affixed to rocks. No doubt, there were many more that she missed, and the coven probably had others trained on the road. They should have, she realized, gotten a ride from somebody - anybody - other than Salvador, because anybody looking through the footage would be able to confirm that his was the same car that had dropped the two of them off the other night. And the less Erasmus Moody knew about Vera's whereabouts, the better off they were.

The temple doorman recognized them and waved them inside, Vera in her blah gray sweats and Lisa in her flippy patterned dress and matching halter-top, sashaying through the temple vestibule with far more apparent confidence than Vera felt. Of course, Lisa hadn't killed any other vampires and was partly committed to Abaddon, so maybe that made sense. Erasmus Moody was in the chapel with three other vampires - one whom Vera didn't recognize, along with Mistress Xia and Carrie, the leader of the 'Youngbloods'.

"Ah, good, our lovely little doves have returned," Moody said. His face didn't betray any of his usual mirth. "Let's talk, we happy few."

"Charles said it was extremely urgent," Vera said. "We got here as soon as we could… what's going on?"

Xia sidled over to them, sniffing at the air, her movements disconcertingly sinuous. She moved like a serpent, its forked tongue sampling the air for the faintest hint of prey. She certainly smelled the blood on Lisa, because the mistress closed her eyes and took in another breath of it. "It seems that three of our group have gone missing," she said. "I worry for their safety… and the safety of all our number."

"We're only sure about two of them," Carrie said, casting an accusatory glance toward Vera and Lisa. "Matt and Carlos - it's not like them to just drop off the map. Something's happened to them…"

"We aren't sure about any of them," the fourth vampire said, a pleasant and young-looking man who looked to be of Middle-Eastern descent.. "Sometimes people drop out of communication. Unlike this blasted modern era, where everybody has to constantly write back and forth, in the old days, we might go months without speaking with one another. I would go months without speaking to a single soul…"

"Yes… well, at least two of our wayward kin are very much of this modern world," Moody said. "Attached to their bosom best-friend-phones at the hip, so to speak."

Xia picked at the off-white fabric of Vera's athletic tee, seeming to find the garment distasteful. "Master Moody is correct," she stated. "I fear that we're under attack, and you, our newest members, are the most vulnerable of all. I strongly suggest that you come with me to my stronghold while we resolve this situation with appropriate prejudice."

"No need to trouble yourself, Mistress Xia," Moody said. He strolled up to the three of them, stroking his mustache and casting an appreciative eye, especially, in Lisa's direction. "They'll come with me to my chateau - we three have much to discuss…"

"You don't have the authority to countermand me," Xia stated, the gleam of her cold eyes betraying her affable expression.

Erasmus shot her a wounded look stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. "No, I suppose not, mistress. But neither do you outrank me. Plus, my little redoubt is closer, I'm better-suited for discerning guests, and…" he shot Vera a look. "I like to think I've established good rapport with Miss Vera. Wouldn't you say so, Vera dear?"

"We've shared some moments," Vera agreed. "But I'm very fond of Mistress Xia, as well."

"Very diplomatic, to be sure," Erasmus said. "But how about you decide where you'd like to hole up. I'm sure you must have a preference, Miss Vera - just let it be known and it shall be so. I can have your situation seen to tout suite." It didn’t take a genius to deduce that he was threatening to turn in the video of Vera killing Redmond.

"In that case, I suppose I should stay with you."

"I suppose so," Erasmus nodded. He glanced at Carrie and then back to the two of them. "Ladies… shall we?"

OvidLemma

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