Chapter Thirty-Seven: Hitting the Fan

Doctor Parvolog took the whole vampire thing pretty well. If anything, she was fascinated by it, by the way Vera's wounds slowly sealed up the instant the silver was out of them, how her pulse plodded along at an even 10 bpm the whole time. And, of course, how Vera had nearly obliterated a whole squad of experienced vampire hunters.

"I'd like to study you some time," she said.

"Me, too," Vera replied. "That's part of why I wanted to be a doctor…"

"Wanted?"

"Want. I still want to be a doctor - I hope you're not mad, Dr. Parvolog… I really messed up the MRI suite and there's a dead guy still in there…"

She nodded seriously. "Five men with heavy weaponry stormed our little imaging facility looking for you, threatened the staff, and attacked one of my employees. You ruined some equipment in self-defense, yes, but none of our staff or patients were badly hurt and all of our equipment is insured. Who knows what they would've done to us if they hadn't found you? So… Vera, look… my hands are still shaking, and my instincts are wavering between scientific curiosity, running in terror, and begging for mercy, because I don't think the human psyche is equipped to deal with this sort of thing. So please be honest with me: did you know this was going to happen?"

Vera shook her head. "I'm not going to lie - what's happening is a really, really long story. But I've been trying to fight my vampire instincts for a while now and I'm getting better about it. I don't want to hurt anybody, and if I could stop myself from draining every last one of those guys, then I'm not a threat to anybody. At least not if they aren't a threat to me. I didn't have a clue that anybody was after me, let alone that they'd attack here. I wouldn't have come in if I thought that. But there's probably more danger headed my way, so I think I'd better stay out of Imaging East until this all blows over."

"Then you'd better get out of here quickly - the police are in the front of the building already."

"I know - I can hear them. Thanks, Dr. P!"

+++++

While Vera had been beating up vampire hunters at Imaging East, things had been busy in the rest of the city. If she'd wanted to start a violent blood feud between the Charleston and Palmetto City covens, she'd certainly succeeded. She didn't yet know any of this, though, as she boarded the bus to return to Maxie's, carefully checking up and down the street to make sure no more tactical squads of vampire hunters were homing in on her location.

Sitting on the N2 northbound bus, Vera could almost ignore that she'd just been seriously injured in a deadly encounter with familiars from a rival coven. After all, they were almost on the same side, and she wasn't seriously injured anymore. A peek under her fresh scrubs revealed a shoulder barely marred by the bullet she'd taken an hour before - when Vera was blood-sated, her vampire healing was serious business. She turned to her phone, messaging her father and Pastor Mooney to arrange a meeting toward family healing.

V: <Today and tomorrow might not be so hot - serious business happening at work.
V: <I'll message in two days to schedule meeting time, ok?

Vera wasn’t sure she could ever have a normal relationship with her father, not after her whole vampire transformation. But she might be able to have a family again, which made her happy. She must have looked happy, because somebody on the bus recognized her from her last public breakdown.

"Did you get your work situation straightened out, honey?" an older woman asked.

"What?" Vera had almost forgotten about telling everybody on the bus a much-edited version of her time at Erasmus Moody's creepy-ass plantation. "Oh! Right… no, it's still ongoing. I'm filing a thing against my boss, but I'm getting a little blowback from it. Fingers crossed."

"I'll be praying for you, Vera!"

"Um… thanks," Vera said. And, she reflected, she should probably be more discreet about what she revealed to the public. A few dozen random strangers on the bus now knew her name. In a world with vampire hunters who wanted to kill you just for being yourself, giving away too much personal information was a liability.

The woman chatted with Vera until her stop along the Old Cleves Highway two stops from Vera's stop at the outskirts of Maxie's strange little enclave. Vera checked her sunscreen, checked her wounds, and left the bus, wanting very much to hunker down at Maxie's for her two day break from work and hope that the 'vampire vendetta' thing blew over. Of course, the major problem in that was that she still didn't know where Lisa was, beyond that she was with Salvador. If it came to it, Vera would travel right into Abbadon's lair to get Lisa back and safe, though she very much hoped it wouldn't come to that. She was just about to wander onto the side road when a shiny black Rolls Royce pulled up to Vera.

"Get in, Vera," Erasmus Moody said. No 'please'… no 'Miss Verne'. The master vampire was not amused.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea…"

"Get in," he repeated. "I know you've got friends in the area, and I'll burn down every cotton-pickin' shanty if that's what it takes to find them. Or you could just get in the car and we'll talk like civilized folk."

Vera wasn't willing to call Erasmus on his bluff, so she slid in. Inside the car were Erasmus Moody and Carrie, who was decked out in full sun protection attire - full body covering except for her hands and face, dark sunglasses, and chalky face paint thick enough not to allow any light through. They both stared at Vera as the car pulled away and made a u-turn on the highway.

"Some vampire hunters attacked me while I was at work…" Vera said.

"Who the fuck are you, bitch?" Carrie spat. "Walking around in daylight like a master vampire… you're not a youngblood."

"Ah, but she is," Erasmus said. He reached forward and swabbed Vera's cheek with his finger. "SPF-100 if I'm not mistaken. I use the stuff myself, as do most vampires who have a few centuries of resistance baked into their skin. It would seem that Vera's unique provenance, including the venom from Lady Clandest and all three master vampires of the coven, has given her quite a boost in the power department. She has the talents of a vampire several centuries her senior… unfortunately, she's chosen to use them very foolishly."

"I don't know what you're talking about…"

Moody unzipped the bowling ball bag set beside him on the seat and pulled out… a severed human head. Salvador's severed human head. Vera retched, but nothing came out - her stomach had already churned through all of the blood she'd guzzled back at Imaging East.

Vera glowered at Moody. "Where's Lisa?"

"Safe for now," Moody said. "And if you do exactly as I say, your pretty petunia can stay that way."

"W-what do you want?" she asked.

He smiled, his fangs slightly extended. "What I want, my dear, is to rip your heart out and feast upon it. And don't play coy for a minute…" he patted Salvador's severed head. "Poor Mister Salvador said plenty before I deprived him of his body. So I know it was you who foist this plan upon us. I cannot imagine how you accomplished it, but the evidence is clear as day. I'll see you pay, but it's not my place to mete out this sort of justice. The Lady Clandest will do that and, believe me, Miss Vera, she's a lot less likely to be charitable than I am. You will be dealt with harshly."

"And Lisa?"

"I can scarcely imagine you'll believe me, but I don't give a hoot about what happens to your girl. I'll not harm her, but her safety is nonetheless in grave peril. Traitors to our noble race are dealt with harshly one way or another. Your best bet now is to accept your short and tragic lot in un-life before we have to go threatening the mortals you hold so dear to your heart."

Vera considered her options - there weren't many and all of them seemed bad. She glanced between Carrie, Erasmus, and poor Salvador's severed head and decided that between being escorted to Lady Clandest's sanctum and leaping out of the car and hoping that Erasmus didn't catch her and do something truly nasty, the former was barely preferable.

"If you think Lady Clandest tearing out Tasmin's heart was bad, you're about to get ten times worse," Carrie said, her sneer turning to a smirk, if only for a moment. Vera wondered whether she'd made the right decision in not fleeing when she had the chance.

+++++

The thirty-minute drive went by far too quickly for Vera's tastes. Sophia Clandest's sanctum took up five whole stories atop the Palmetto Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the city. Some of the lower floors were corporate offices for Glossa Combined, the big vampire-run corporation that owned Juvechrome and a dozen smaller companies, some of them still worth a billion dollars or more. Erasmus Moody clamped his hand around Vera's arm and pulled her out of the car a bit too roughly. His grip was immensely powerful, like steel bars pinioned around her. As strong as Vera was, she suspected that Moody was at least as much stronger compared to her as their physiques dictated - a well-muscled man domineering a svelte young woman - and it might well have been more than that.

Everywhere, there were signs of a struggle - security stations smashed, walls and windows cracked, streaks of human and vampire blood alike, and what looked to be a body in the corner of the lobby draped in a white cloth. The Charleston vampires had clearly made a move on Lady Clandest's headquarters though, if Moody was taking Vera to see the Queen of the Coven, that meant their gambit had been unsuccessful. Moody walked right past a quartet of familiars wielding shotguns without bothering to introduce himself and jammed his finger against the elevator button, pulling Vera in when the doors bonged open.

"You'd best wait here, Carrie dear," Moody said. Carrie didn't argue with him. She just sneered at Vera beneath her chalk-white face paint and turned away as the doors slid shut. Then it was just Vera and Erasmus Moody in the elevator as the floors dinged up. "I had such high hopes for you, dear Vera, but instead you've wrought more damage than you can possibly comprehend - decades of work undone by a barely-blooded vampire. Before I send you to your fate, can you at least grant me the peace of mind of telling me why you did it?"

Vera looked him dead in his blood-red eyes. "Because you're evil, manipulative, and enthralled to a demon."

"Touché. But, I might add, you made the same oath to our dread lord that the rest of us did. Your own hands and conscience are also bloodied…"

"I never said I was perfect. I just couldn't bear witness to the world you dreamt of bringing into being."

Moody allowed a slight smile as the doors slid open. "And, rest assured, you never will. You may have been a flash in the pan, Miss Vera, but what a flash! I don’t imagine I'll forget it in all my long life. Now come along before I have the familiars prod you."

Beyond was a huge dark enclosure taking up two full floors of the building. It was a profane chapel even larger than the coven chapel out in the Palmetto Pine Swamps, black and glossy with the great jagged symbol of Abaddon in its brooding, brassy glory. There were at least a dozen familiars in the place, all of them wearing all black with little armor ornamentations on their shoulders and chests and black masks covering their faces. Vera paced through with Erasmus Moody guiding her by the small of the back, her footsteps clicking in that brooding, silent place, the sense of being watched all around her. Beyond the entryway, at the center of the room and dangling under the great seal of Abaddon was a black altar, glossy like obsidian with dozens of little channels for blood to flow.

A voice resonated out from the darkness. "Is this the youngblood who's threatened our order?"

"She is, my lady," Erasmus said.

"Bring the other one in, as well."

Four burly familiars in dark robes carried in a gagged and bound Lisa, her eyes wide with panic as she struggled against her bindings. Just then Sophia Clandest swept in out of the darkness with her perfect golden complexion and mahogany dark hair looking infinitely more sinister when shrouded in the form-fitting robe of a priestess. She wore the circlet denoting her mastery of the coven, wore a golden necklace adorned with the symbol of Abaddon, and her black robes were lined with complex patterns of a striking violet color. She looked between the two girls, her dark eyes boring into Vera's soul, her will reaching into Vera's blood and setting her glacial heart beat higher, up to something approaching normalcy.

"You feel my will, child, and yet you defy me. Renounce your wicked plans, reveal your conspirators, and I will gift you a fast death. Deny me, and you shall be despoiled…"

Moody butted in: "A despoilation, dear Vera, is where our dark lord, Abaddon, claims your soul for his own and devours it. It is, I'm told, more agonizing than anything you might ever experience, the moments of pain as you're devoured seemingly drawn out to millennia as time is stretched out in that dark plane. I'd spill the beans if I was you."

"I'm not telling you a damn thing," Vera said. She wasn't going to give up Maxie and the others, even if they already had Lisa. And, tearfully, she turned to Lisa. "I'm… I'm sorry, Lisa."

"Bind and gag her until the ritual."

With the help of the familiars, Moody bound Vera in reinforced chains much too strong for my vampiric strength to break, slipping a gag made of some sort of bite-resistant material around her face. It must have had silver in it, because it hurt to bite down on. With unexpected gentleness, Moody lay Vera on the floor, propping her up enough so that she could get a good look at what was happening. Then the familiars ungagged Lisa. She hissed and gnashed her fangs at them but didn't manage to bite anybody. She looked so scared, her big blue eyes surrounded by dark violet tears, her lips quivering, and Vera couldn't stop herself from crying, either, no matter how brave she wanted to look.

"Renounce your master vampire, child, and you will be spared despoilation! Reveal your plan to us and I will bestow mercy upon you…"

"You're still going to kill me," Lisa sniffled.

"I will not. Your master will pay for your sins. But you must say that you renounce her or suffer her fate… and your mortal family will suffer, as well."

Lisa looked Vera in the eyes, both of them weeping vampire tears, their vision tinted pink. Lisa bit her lip and shook her head, but she didn't say anything. She cried out, her tears spattering all over the altar, a ritual in misery. And then she broke Vera's heart.

"I… I renounce Vera," she said. "It was my plan, and hers and Salvador's…"

"Who else?"

"Some witch named Eva. When she killed Carlos and Matt with her magic, we were there. When she tried to kill me, Vera barely saved me, and the witch offered to let us live if we helped her… so we did. She always met with us under a big tree not far off of the Old Cleves Highway… I guess her hideout is somewhere around there. When Suleiman came out to investigate us, he saw us meeting with her and the three of us killed him." She looked Vera in the eye. "I'm… I'm so sorry. We didn't mean for this to happen…"

"And whose idea was it to pit our rival coven against us?"

"Salvador's and Vera's, but I went along with it," Lisa said.

Sophia Clandest held her palm over Lisa's forehead. "I sense the truth in her words. She has surely betrayed us in her weakness, but does not deserve a despoilation… Master Moody, I leave her to your oversight, to punish as you see fit…"

"Yes, my lady," he said, solemnly. "Thank you."

"You must leave us now. None but the priestess and the condemned may be present for the despoilation… otherwise, our great Lord Abaddon is known to grow greedy."

OvidLemma

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