2013.08.10 - The Box Pt. 2

The warehouses down by the docks have not been a happy place to be of late. Workers have been going missing for a couple weeks now. Other people all over Gotham have turned up dead, with a pair of puncture wounds in their throats and all the blood drained from their bodies. One woman actually was delivered to a Gotham hospital alive after being attacked.
She's not there anymore.
And now, after painstakingly tracking the activity of this 'Vampire' killer, his lair has been located. Here at the docks, in a warehouse. Why did he choose this place? That's unclear. But his insane howls as a wolf, or a bat monster, or in his more human form have been heard night after night, and it doesn't take the world's greatest detective to put two and two together.
It's dusk, not quite the point where the sunlight has gone completely and thus not quite the time that a vampire would be able to roam about freely without protection. And unlike certain members of the Tonetti family, this vampire has no such protection.
Attention, it's not what those who live in the shadows want. No, they want silence and secrecy, to work behind the scenes so that the people they use as a food source won't wisen up to the fact that they ARE a food source. And some naughty boy had been causing a LOT of attention ever since he'd escaped his imprisonment in a vault beneath the Tonetti family mansion. The one who'd let him escape had already been punished, now all that was left was to find and end this miserable, feral retch.
It wasn't a job for a few henchmen with silver bullets in their guns.
Tires screech outside and cardoors slam. Footsteps, several of them, and then the sound of locked chains breaking. Fading sunlight pours into the warehouse as a large sliding door is open. And there stand a quartet of men, and one woman, in black leather suits covering their bodies, hoods pulled up, masks over their faces. White ghost masks, looking like those little demon faces samurai used to wear.
They were the strongest arm of the Sanguine Syndicate: the Ghost-Face Killers. No one knew their real identity, save the Tonetti family who ran the Syndicate. And thus only the Tonetti family knew that they were made UP of the Tonetti family. Elite assassins whome some thought were mere myth. And leading them was Lord Oscurita himself, the seldom-seen head of the Syndicate and patriarch of the Tonetti family.
His face covered by a black mask whereas the others were white, Oscurita is the first to enter. He's a slight man, smaller and slimmer than even the lone woman amongst the group. "Come out, come out wherever you are..." A mechanically-distorted voice comes from the small man. "It's time we end this game, Edward. Is this really how you wish to live? Like a rat, a starving animal?"
The four enforcers are armed to the teeth, with swords and long knives made of silver, semi-automatic pistols and fully-auto machineguns. Five more men enter the warehouse, these men dressed in suits, some of the more trusted amongst the Syndicate, all of whom knew the type of people, or rather creatures, who ran it. They too had silver bullets, though even they didn't know the real identities of these people in their strange outfits.
Only that you didn't fuck with them.
Those who live in the shadows are not the only ones in the shadows. There are also watchful eyes, sensitive instruments, and cunning, tireless, calculating minds who observed and searched and inspected the world of darkness -- and of light. While scientific technology may not be their forte, there are those amongst them clever enough to use the media of human beings to keep apprised of the activities of the living. And thus, when activity that suggests a vampire is found by one such clever and observant individual, a bit of invstigation is deemed appropriate. This is his job, after all.
Nothing seems amiss at the moment, but as the darkness continues to deepen, some of the shadows here down by the docks begin to become a bit more... 'Vigorous' than they should be if they were but normal shadows. They stretch thin and slithering to connect to other shadows, and gradually a 'mass' of pure darkness builds as a network of shadows feed into each other, accumulating into a collection of forms that stop only to scan each warehouse, and then add themselves to other, identical forms.
Gradually, these shadowy bodies are reducing themselves in number but swelling in size. Gradually... They are closing in on the warehouse where all this activity is taking place. Almost there, but not quite.
Edward was already mostly insane at the point he escaped. If not for holding out the barest shred of capacity for thought beyond the instinctive need to feed, he likely would have been caught very quickly even after using his hypnosis to touch the feeble, shattered mind of that human woman. He would have drained her dry and been done with it. And then, without the cognitive ability to navigate the halls that once were familiar but now simply a maze-like warren of walls, he would have been caught by the sleepless guardian and disposed of. But she was somewhere else, doing something else, and did not make it to him in time. Because he had that itsy bitsy piece of his will and mind still intact, and he fought the urge to kill his mind-slave. He was still SO HUNGRY for her blood, but he left her with enough that she could carry out a single order. 'Get me out.'
In her weakened state she had still done a sufficiently acceptable job that they had gotten out before the deathless watcher could close upon them. It had been terrifying. Even in his madness he had felt the fear -- the cold greater even than the chill of the grave. The walls that boiled with squirming larva that were in turn merely manifestations of that awful little ghost. He did not want to be caught, and he didn't think that woman had wanted to be caught either. It was the fear that goaded her to get them both out of there, not his mind-control.
But just as terrifying as that ghost -- at least to Edward -- was the prospect of being recaptured and put back in a box in the ground to be starved. He had barely managed to escape from that torment by a stroke of luck. Even after everyone he had fed upon thus far, he doubted he'd ever reclaim his full sanity. He didn't even understand that he wasn't entirely sane. He didn't understand all of these things he felt intuitively. But he knew he was broken in some fashion, that it hurt to think -- to remember. And remembering those masks, and the Lord Oscurita, shoved spikes of white-hot agony into his mind. His response to the pain was instinctive, and perhaps slightly predictable. A vampire that had been tortured for as long as he had without receiving the proper treatment to put him back together in some form of usefulness will respond as something slightly above a beast -- and also slightly below.
The darkened warehouse with its crates, many of them unused, is his new 'lair'. It is being invaded, and as his reddened eyes watch from the darkness, still groggy from having been sleeping all this time he simply acts as a cornered predator. He lashes out and hurls a tall stack of crates through the air at the intruders.
And then he follows after them, using his supernatural agility instinctively to leap high and far, attempting to land upon the masked man in the lead with claws and fangs exposed, a guttural cry of threat echoing from his red-painted throat. Bloodshot eyes wide, pupils contracted to near pinpoints, features haggard even after all the blood he has consumed, he does not look to possess the handsomeness that vampires are frequently thought to have in human popular culture. A human faced with something this pale and feral-looking leaping at them with clear intent to kill would harbor no delusions about the seductiveness of a vampire, of the fiend having some degree of humanity, of there being any capacity of living in peace with something like this. They would be terrified and they would know they were about to die.
But these elite assassins, and the Lord Oscurita, are not humans. Thus, their reactions and ability to defend themselves against a wild rogue like this are likely to be quite different.
"Ah, now we have something." The mechanical, neutral voice of Oscurita sounds smug, even through the voice filter. The cant of his head, the simple, unconcerned body posture as crates capable of crushing a normal human come flying at the nine people. The five in back respond in appropriate terror for a human, their pulses and the beat of their hearts palpable to all those who hunger for such things as they spike and the mafiosos leap for safety. One of the men simply doesn't quite make it, his leg being crushed with a cry of pain.
But for this tortured monster, this vampire who had once been as they were, little more than an animal, the others of his kind do not flinch. He may have forgotten what they had not: the fighting of the undead was a thing of subtlety and beauty. Tactics over brutality. And they were experienced in hunting monsters of their own kind, and others.
The leader simply vanishes into a seeming puff of smoke along the ground. The one behind him, the woman, steps into his place and draws sword and pistle, slashing at the crate coming for her and allowing it to splinter against her inhumanly strong frame, bracing for the impact of the monster coming behind them.
The other two scatter to the sides, leaping away with inhuman agility and seeking the shadows. The smoke flows along the ground, under the crates as it smashes against the woman who'd taken the blow. She grunts as she takes the weight of the leaping vampire and is born to the ground. The mist reforms behind Edward and his prey, and Lord Oscurita already has the silver gleaming longsword out, shoving it right for her former servant's spine.
"Even a dog can die with some dignity. Don't make this harder."
At the sound of combat, of the cry of a monster, and perhaps at other things that might escape the notice of those not mystically inclined, the various masses of darkness pause. Then they all start rushing and streaming together into a single, lengthy... ...'Thing'. It winds its way up the exterior of the warehouse, slithers through one of the few windows as though no more than the liquid darkness it appears to be, and gathers itself up near the rafters. Then, finally whole and complete, the creature watches what happens below. Eyes hidden in a shroud of shadow peer out with interest and yet an utter absence of passion or evidence of life. There's nothing -- at least at this point -- to indicate there is anything up there. Certainly not some sort of long, flexible, shadowy... What is it anyway? It has protrusions off the sides all along its length...
Its outline is like a centipede. Why is there a giant shadow centipede clinging up on the ceiling of a warehouse while a battle between a vampire and vampires-plus-humans is taking place? A number of reasons, but for the time being, at least, it does not deign to reveal itself or its motivations for being here. It--Or rather he, simply observes and waits for the right moment. This is all so very //interesting//, after all.
Edward quickly realizes his mistake even in his addled state, and is halfway to transforming into a wolf atop the woman he landed upon, when the blade is thrust at his spine. It's doubtful his plan of running away faster in wolf form would have worked anyway, given there's still sunlight out, but he couldn't even finish the transformation. He's tired due to it not being night yet, his mind is frazzled and fractured, and he doesn't have the precise control over his shapeshifting a fully-functional vampire would. His change is slow, and he only manages to make himself appear to be a nightmarish mix of wolf and man before he is impaled with the silver sword. It pierces right through his spine and straight on to his heart. His recently consumed blood explodes from his mouth with such violence that it's like he's vomitting out all his innards.
He bends reflexively, letting out awful cries for several seconds before it just shuts down. During the thrashing of his re-death throes, his head bents upwards at an extremely unnatural angle and catches sight of the shadowy thing on the ceiling. But it holds no meaning for him beyond a brief irrational thought that flashes through his head. .oO(Death has come!)
Then he stops moving, and starts withering. Soon he will be but dust.
Ew, blood-vomit. The female vampire on the bottom of this violent little orgy is severly non-plussed by this event, but doesn't speak a word as she wipes the grotesque nastiness off of her mask and shoves the convulsing, dying vampire off of her. The others quickly return from the shadows, and, drawing their weapons, begin to hack the Edward apart with little care or reticence shown. Then, just for good measure, one of them bends down to spinkle flammable powder onto his corpse, using a lighter to ignite it. The four dispassionately watch the remains burn, firelight glinting off of their metallic faceplates.
"As passionate in death as he was in life." The smallest of the quartet speaks. "A shame he had to be put down in the end. I had grown quite fond of him. Another two decades of torture and I might have let him return to my service." The female snorts.
And then a breeze blows through the warehouse. The four turn as one towards the scent of fresh blood, and find the four uninjured thugs in suits they'd brought with them trying to help the one with the torn leg to stand. There's a moment that passes as both groups eyes meet, and instinctively the humans know what's about to happen before their brains even register it.
"...Leave him. Return to the cars and wait." Gulping, the four men look at each other and come to an unspoken agreement that their former comrade isn't worth dying over. The drop the man with a cry of pain and walk out. As the fallen man begs them to stay, to not leave them, reaching out for the door, one of them merely turns around simply to close it behind them, leaving the man in near-darkness with four hungry vampires.
Each of them is smiling as they reach up and remove their masks, none more than Bianca, her eyes glowing a vibrant shade of blue as her fangs become prominent. Now without the mechanical voice-changer, Lord Oscurita's soft, musical voice rings out over the man's terrified panting as he crab-crawls backwards.
"We thank you for your service, Harold. But I'm afraid we have to terminate your contract."
Hmmm... Yes, this was indeed //very// interesting. The shadow centipede, with its human eyes buried deep in the shadow, observes as the masks are removed following the disposal of the rogue. Some inter-group friction. That is something that Marcus Cranston, necromancer and undead monster, can understand and -- better yet -- something he knows how to manipulate. He can turn this to his favor whichever way it goes. Or so his confidence tells him. But for now, he is going to supply a cursory report to his Empress. A group of vampires of unknown size but seemingly considerably well-organized is operating within Gotham. He has seen their faces -- or at least those present, in the event there are more beyond them (and he suspects there may well be, as disposing of or torturing a member of a vampire coven like this when the coven is small is generally not something done in vampire society. Not that there haven't been exceptions, but they tend to try to maintain their strength in small groups until they can afford to do otherwise as larger groups).
Scrying magic may be able to help with the rest. But just to make sure, as he magically retracts his centipede body back through the window, he fires off a few pieces of himself at the cars outside. Fragments of bone that shed their shadow as they reach beyond the confines of their owner's body, and instead simply latch on to the cars and wriggle until they are safely nestled somewhere casual inspection won't find them.
Marcus can find them though. He can always find his own spinal fragments. And later on, he will approach this vampiric leader with an offer she can't refuse. And if she does refuse it, he will seek out any of those displeased with their current leadership and offer THEM 'new employment opportunities'. He will also carefully leave out all mention of potential rogue elements when he makes his report. That information is for HIS use for now...
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