Amadeus Lazarus (sanguinemagic) wrote in nybynightic, @ 2020-08-18 04:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | activity type: log/thread, character: amadeus lazarus, character: ariel lee underwood |
Another Kindred is attacked and Sheriff and hound move in to deal with the hunters responsible before they can strike again.
Tracking this hunter down was a lot easier than the last. The Confluence had managed to come up with a possible location for where they were hole up. So instead of tracking the hunter, all they had to do was lurk around outside and wait to see if he came back and sure enough he did.
To an abandoned church.
Of course it was an abandoned church. Where else would religious zealots hang out at. The zoo? Grand Central Station? No, they had to go for the glass windows and the steeples. Amadeus was sure inside there was a statue of the Virgin Mary weeping blood. Or maybe she wouldn't start with the blood tears until the feet of the Damn touch down upon holy soil. Not that Amadues was worried. All that about vampires not being able to step inside of a church was lies.
"Shall we go in and pay our respects," he asked as he looked over at Ariel. "Or am I going to burst into flames?" He couldn't help but tease that last. He respected that his lover still believed but in this situation it didn't mean he wasn't going to tease him. "Also, this counts as a date right? Taking you out to dismember some hunters? Dinner afterwards?"
These hunters had to be fucking amateurs. There was no way. Or it was worse and it was a scouting party. They were being sacrificed by their higher ups to know exactly what kind of power was waiting for them in New York. Ariel didn’t like any of it and it was very clear on his face. Something was off. Something smelled fishy and he had said as much to Amadeus when they realized the idiots were holed up in a church. That bothered Ariel even more. Now they were going to be desecrating a church? Alright, it was already abandoned and probably dealt with by the Church but that didn’t make it any better.
“I really feel off about this,” he muttered, ignoring Amadeus’s teasing. His focus was already elsewhere. The claws were out and the teeth were many and dangerously long. If they were any longer, he would have looked more like an orc than Kindred. “This does not count as a date and you are not getting out of planning one that easily,” he noted, arching an eyebrow as he glanced over at his lover. No nerves, no worry, just a discomfort in his own skin that needed to be expressed sooner rather than later. “Remind me of the plan so I can ignore it in about ten seconds?”
Amadeus looked over at Ariel aghast for a moment. “Plan? There was a plan? Damn. I knew I forgot something.” He padded his pants and then his jacket for a moment. “Must have left it in my other pants.” The Tremere gave Ariel a shrug before letting the humor slide away off of his face and lips formed a hard grim line. The odds were likely that this indeed was just a scouting party. Probably meant to scare them into shutting down their feeding grounds.
After all, why would they be so bad at their jobs? How hard could it be to stake Garnet of all vampires.
“I think the worst we have to worry about them doing is running. I’ll knock on the front door”—they both knew he would indeed not knock on the front door but would burst in with some dramatic entrance—”and you be ready around back in case they decided to flee that way. There’s likely only a couple, but let’s keep two alive for my purposes.”
“You have other pants? Oh right, they’re usually on the floor. That’s why I’m confused,” they could both afford a little bit of humor but the work before them was dour. He had no doubts in either of their abilities but he wondered if he would be able to control himself long enough to keep two of the hunters alive. Ariel rolled his shoulders, feeling like something was crawling and curling under his skin, screaming ‘let me out, let me out’. His nose wrinkled at the thought.
There were so many conflicting scents that he couldn’t actually begin to guess how many were in there and he hated that. The stink of natural rot overpowered a lot of it. “Yeah, well, gimme a second to get back there. I’ll know the signal when I hear it,” which would likely be a lot of yelling. He took a moment, as brief as it was, to steal a kiss. Then he stepped away with a little salute before making his way, quickly but quietly, to the back of the church.
As he watched his lover circle around to the back, Amadeus realized that this was his true test of whether or not he could handle Ariel being a Hound. Not facing Sethius because that would have happened sooner or later from just being with him, but this here—spending him into danger. Not that Amadeus didn’t feel the two of them couldn’t handle it on their own.
He waited until he was sure that Ariel had enough time to get in place. Then the Tremere straightened his jacket as he approached the door. He gave them a push with his magic and whatever they had holding them shut cracked under the force of it and the doors flew in followed by the Warlock walking in like he was there for Sunday services. “I’ve come to repent for my sins. Or I would if we had more time. Unfortunately—,” he quickly counted the number of hunters who had set up shop in here. The pews had been pushed away to make more room. “You just don’t have the time to listen to them all.”
The moment of shock on their faces was gone and they started to move, going for their weapons even as they debated whether they wanted to attack him or run. It was obvious he was a bit more dangerous than the Kindred they had been going after before. Something Amadeus powered as he curled his fingers into a fist, magic swirling around his fingers as he did, and the hunter he targeted doing down on to his knees screaming in agony as his blood started to heat up and boil inside. That got the hunters moving. Two towards him, two fleeing out the back.
It didn’t take Ariel long to get into position. He had kept to the shadows just in case there was a guard on the back entrance. But there was no one, nothing. No protection or anything else. Jesus, these guys were cannon fodder. If Ariel was a little less pissed off, he might have felt bad for them. Instead, he was just glad he had the chance to get into position without alerting anyone inside of what was going on. He heard the doors crash open and Ariel rolled his eyes, stepping into the building but keeping to the dark still. He almost wanted to laugh when he heard his lover’s voice. Was this the way he always did his hunting? A good quip and a quick bout of boiling blood?
As soon as the screaming started, he braced himself against the doorway they’d have to pass through to escape. Two were headed towards him - he could count them by their rapid footsteps. The first one, he let pass. The second, he grabbed by the shoulders and dragged back into the shadows. When a flashlight rapidly fell on him and the captured hunter, there was a whole mess of blood and his eyes reflected green in the harsh light. The first hunter froze for a moment, even when the body of his buddy slumped to the ground with a strange... mass missing from the back of his neck.
Ariel spat out a clump of vertebrae that he’d ripped out with his teeth - the final explanation of why they got so long and curved in the first place. Without thinking, the first hunter actually threw his stake. Ariel knocked it out of the air with a quick motion but that was when the gunfire started. It had just been a distraction. When the quick, loud bursts started, the Gangrel lunged. Most, luckily, missed but he took two to one shoulder. That just seemed to piss him off. And a moment later, that first hunter was flying through the air back into the main body of the church, landing hard on his back. Ariel appeared only a moment after, running on-- well it would have been all fours if he didn’t have his left arm cradled to his body. But it was very clear that without intervention if Amadeus wanted this one to survive, he’d have to act quickly.
The body of the one Amadeus had been torturing finally exploded. Blood and bits of their comrade rained down upon the two as they were coming towards Amadeus. Somehow the warlock managed to stay clean except for one small chunk that landed on his jacket. He frowned and picked it off before looking at the two who were given pause as they watched the now headless body slump over. “Who’s next,” he offered. He looked up to see Ariel going after the other.
These had to just be fresh recruits. They were too green and easily bothered by the things a Tremere and Gangrel could do to them. Had they not been warned that there were those among the Kindred who could control some of the darkest of arts or that could turn into beasts that could make a lone werewolf seem like a puppy? It seemed not. The poor bastards probably thought this would be easy like it was on Buffy. Oh well, it wouldn’t be a mistake that these would have to worry about for long.
Amadeus decided to leave the other poor bastard for Ariel since for the moment he had two left. He flung outward with his magic and slammed them back into one of the pews and then held them there where they couldn’t move. “Take a load off. Enjoy the show. I’m sure that he’s screaming won’t last for long.”
That was permission if he had ever heard it - even if he wasn’t totally capable of comprehending it at the moment. Ariel settled over the one he had thrown who hadn’t recovered quite yet from his head bouncing off of the hard floor. Still holding his arm close to his stomach, he crouched over the hunter, looking up at the others then at Amadeus. There was that strange look in his eyes again - not filled with empty rage this time but with an odd sort of... Merriment. This was fun. Even being shot was fun. Sad and simple and quick fun but nonetheless, the thing that was occasionally Ariel was having a great time.
“You shot me,” he reminded the man on the ground. The hunter was almost about to stammer out something about him being a monster, needing to die when Ariel’s good arm started swiping. Left. Right. Left. Right. Claws ripped through clothes, the distinct lack of body armor quite telling. Then they shredded soft belly, muscle, fat. The screaming likely seemed endless to the other two being forced to watch until suddenly it stopped with a horrifying gurgle of blood. He just kept swiping, flinging gore from side to side. Oh look, there went a section of intestine. While Amadeus would come out of this relatively clean, Ariel was a fucking bloody mess.
He only stopped when he hit bone. And then his face went in, using his teeth to start pulling things out of the chest cavity until he got the toy surprise. With heart in hand, he made his way over to his lover, still half-crouched. He sat down hard and kept the heart in his lap. Human hearts had to be good for something other than eating, right? He couldn’t think of it right now because he was busy licking his hands…
The two men who had been forced to watch had long ago pissed themselves. It was clear that whatever they had been expecting that this was not it and it was clear that the two Kindred had just confirmed in their eyes that they were indeed monsters. Amadeus didn’t seem bothered by it at all as he stepped over some of the chunks on the floor and came closer to the remaining too who could still not move.
“Now we have so many choices. I could turn you over to my lover and let him do you what he did to your friends.” Amadeus just smiled at the growing horror in their eyes as they realized what he meant. Ah, well, he had told them that his sins were many. “And while that is surely a horrible way to die there are worse things than death isn’t there.” The Tremere sat down on the pew next to one of them like they were just having a friendly conversation. It was a sharp contrast to the frenzy they had just witnessed Ariel go into on their friend. “I have questions. You have answers, though simple minded as you are. I only need one of you. Whichever one of you answers my questions—well, I’m obviously not going to let you live but I won’t do to you what I plan on doing to the one who is too slow in giving up answers.”
Amadeus’s smile was cold as he reached out and ran the tip of his blade ring along the neck of the one he sat next to. “Like I said there’s far worse things than death. Death will come but first I will drain you of your blood and Embrace you which in your eyes is the damning of your Eternal Soul is not? There will be no saving you then. And then as the hunger gnaws at your stomach I will chain you to the roof of the church and let you burn as your society had done to so many of us in the past.. Any questions? No? Good, Let’s get started.”