January 8, 2010

Practical jokes and prophetic visions

12/06/09

I woke up that night to rather annoying surprise. I didn't wake up with anyone waiting outside my door.. Oh no. Much more obnoxious than that. I went to the door of my room and tried to open it, only to find it stuck. I pushed on the door knob, rattled it, shoved a bit harder thinking it might just be stuck in the frame. Once that proved fruitless, I took a step back to examine the door. I hadn't bothered to turn on the lights, so I only now noticed a few places (mostly at the bottom of the door) where epoxy had leaked through and hardened.

Fucking Italian mad scientist asshole motherfucker epoxied my bedroom door shut! I was more annoyed than pissed. Thoughts of how I could get back at him started immediately. ((players note: none of which I will post here until they happen because I don't want Giovanni's player getting wise to my schemes.)) I checked the side with the hinges, hoping to pop out the screws, but the door opened outward, so I couldn't see them, not to mention he'd epoxied that side as well. I put one hand on the knob and threw my shoulder into the door. The door rattled, but didn't budge. I tried again. Same thing.

Okay, now I was getting a little pissed. Blood started seething a little. I felt my pupil;s expand and the room became much brighter (though less bright then usual, odly).. I felt muscles shift.. I needed somewhere to send the blood that had started to simmer in my justified anger. I wouldn't let myself get fucking stuck in here because of fucking epoxy, especially not for the amusement of that dago asshole. I hit the door with my shoulder twice more before the epoxy actually cracked (don't they use this shit on airplanes? Supernatural strength sure is nice. Or Gio needs to work on his formula.) and the door slammed against the opposite wall.

Most everyone was within line of sight, brought out by the banging I'd been doing. Nadi was leaning over the back of the couch from the living room, everyone else poking heads into the hallway to watch the "entertainment", except Giovanni. He was sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway with his shotgun in his lap, barrel leaned back against his shoulder. At least he was willing to deal with the possible consequences of what he did. Had to give him some props for that one. But I had no intention of letting the beast rage all over him. Shotguns hurt.

Their expressions, though, I did not expect. As angry as I was, I didn't plan on taking it out on Gio...right now. He expected me to come flying from the room and try to throttle him, and I'd be damned if I gave him the satisfaction. But the expression on everyone's face wasn't amusement or even worry, but complete and utter shock and surprise.

Giovanni blinked at me as I stood in the doorway. "Well now.. THAT'S interesting."
Grigori had his mouth hanging open. "Uh.. "
I took a step out into the hallway and realized what they were talking about. I hadn't noticed, because the inside of my room was completely dark. I hadn't ever turned on the light. As I stepped into the hallway, shadows flowed out from around me, the single bulb on the ceiling dimmed substantially. The entire hall had gone from moderately bright, to looking as though it were only illuminated with faint moonlight. I paused and realized I could FEEL the shadows flowing and writhing around me. No.. not just around.. INSIDE. The shadows I was controlling I was also CREATING. I reached out with one hand and grabbed a handful of...darkness. They weren't solid.. still just shadows.. but I could almost manipulate them as though they were. It felt odd, as though part of my self was oozing out of my pores and coalescing as inky blackness. The darkness was like an extension of my being. Later I would consider the implications of that notion.. but for now I reveled in it.

I felt a smirk replace the annoyed frown on my face. I walked towards Gio, letting the shadows whirl around me, dragging them with me.. they didn't seem to mind, they came freely, almost eagerly. A writhing mass of darkness. I stood in front of Gio, who now had a smart ass smirk on his own face, reminiscent of ones Giuseppe would get when I finally figured out his puzzle. I looked down at him. "This isn't over, you know."
It would have probably sounded more threatening if I'd been able to school my expression into something other than the self satisfied smirk. He nodded. "Oh I know."

I turned and headed to the tunnel door. I heard the furball exclaim from the now brightened hallway, "She can control shadows?! What the fuck?!"

I pulled the heavy door open and called back over my shoulder, "Vampire voodoo. You'll get used to it." and pulled the door closed behind me before he could respond.

I was annoyed with Giovanni, but it took a backseat to the sense of accomplishment that I got from twisting the shadows around me. I practiced out in the tunnels, moving them around, detaching them, and downright creating them out of nothing.

It was definitely a thrill. I used the blood to do it, then refilled and did it again. I stayed out there for a couple hours. The downside was the number of fucking sewer rats I had to find to sate the roaring hunger until it was just the usual gnawing ache. Animal blood seemed to be less potent than human...

After I finished hunting, I went back inside and into my room. I doubted Gio would use the same trick twice, and certainly not while I was awake, so I shut the door behind me. I didn't take the time to see what everyone else was doing, I was too engrossed in my own thoughts and meditations.

I decided to work on something else. I had grabbed a bowl of water before secluding myself, and proceeded, after a few minutes of preparatory meditation to bring myself off the power high) to slice a blade across my wrist. I made the wound deep. It fucking hurt. It always fucking hurts. Then, like the last time, I urged the blood out and into the bowl..and watched as it swirled into recognizable patterns and shapes.

The swirling took the form of a spire in the center of a city, there were two figures inside the spire. One had vaguely feminine features, and blood seemed to wafted off of her, almost like flames.. but it smelled.. wrong.. putrid. It reminded me of my training with Giuseppe, when he'd taken me out and showed me how to discern which people were safe to feed on and which were.. plagued, by disease or addiction. It wasn't a pleasant smell. The other figure was black..The blood became dense and coagulated as it formed that figure...the blood was rotting as I watched (but only for the single figure).. and he just felt WRONG. I looked at the rotting blood and was overwhelmed with a sense of taint and malice. I repressed a shudder and focused on what the rest of the blood had started to do.

There were smaller figures approaching the spire, 8 that I could count, but it was difficult to do so because a wave of blood suddenly crashed down on top of them...washing them away.. then, the blood darkened again, but not like it had with the figure, more like a shadow falling over the scene.. it lashed out and cut through the entire vision with a sliver of perfectly clear water..so cleanly I could see more clear water beneath.. it formed a mouth and seemed to snarl before the entire vision dispersed.. and I was left holding a bowl of bloody water with a throbbing gash on my wrist.


I healed the gash and I puzzled over the meaning of it for awhile, not coming up with very much. The entire vision had occured in less than a minute. This new power of mine was still unfamiliar.. I hadn't learned to read the visions properly yet, and the whole thing still gave me the creeps, like someone was running an ice cube down my spine. I wondered if it had anything to do with the Pain of Animals.. but that didn't seem quite right.. I wondered about the details I couldn't decipher because of the medium.. was the woman really on fire? Or did the waves coming off of her signify something else? Disease maybe. What did it mean that the blood began to coagulate when forming the other figure? I thought and thought.. but it didn't yield anything. I decided to see what everyone else thought about it later. I had other work to do. I tried to push the troubling thoughts to the back of my mind, but it was pretty hard. The vision was fucking creepy.


I grabbed a laptop off the desk and hooked it up in the internet room...then got to work. The laptop was one that I'd bought awhile back, just in case, and had encrypted to high hell and back again. It was clean of any personal data. Basically, if found, it couldn't be linked back to me. At least not by any mundane means. I'd also spent some time setting it up behind more than a couple proxy servers.

Because, if I was going to attempt to hack into Solomon Birch's computer, I sure as hell didn't want him to be able to trace it back to me. It took awhile, and it wasn't easy (not that I'd expected it to be) but I managed to locate his computer using connections through a business I had heard he owned. Thankfully, it had been true. I was pretty impressed that I'd been able to find it at all, and a little uneasy that I'd been able to find it at all.. but its possible that no one had ever been as stupid as me to try and hack his computer. Or I was going to get myself in a world of hurt. Could go either way, but I accepted that.

By the time I made it into his computer, it was close to sunrise. It had taken me hours to trace it, bypass the security measures, and cover my tracks in a way that didn't trip the booby traps, or give any indication of compromise. I only had time to switch his web cam to 'on' and set it to record the feed to my computer. I made sure to tweak the coding so the web cam light didn't come on, among a couple other safeguards if he went to use the web cam himself, it would work as normal for him.

I sat back in the chair and smirked at the screen, crossing my arms over my chest in silent satisfaction. I did it. I was spying on Solomon Birch. I must've been fucking insane. From what I could see, he was in a room on his cell, pacing back and forth. I left it to record, turning on the screen saver to prevent anyone who walked into the room to see the feed, and went to bed. It had been a profitable night. It was probably a good thing that it takes a great deal of effort to stay up when the sun rises.. if it didn't, I think I would've been up all day trying to sort out that vision I'd seen and the can of worms I was opening by spying on Solomon Birch...

2 comments:

  1. Wise to your schemes eh?
    Mayhaps I can trigger another profound leap in ability. (It's genetic after all)

    Let's dance you and I

    ReplyDelete

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