Sera
Okay. She is doing three separate effects on two different days. The first effect she is casting during daylight hours @ Washington Park. She'll put up a mind shield first (music is her focus), then huddle up with Dan and smoke a joint as her focus for the Time 2 / Mind 3 divination she is performing. She is heading back in time to the night she and Grace were attacked in the park. She will be looking for the vampire and the other figure with the vampire and will be reading at least the vampire's mind, or trying to read the vampire's mind.
Mind Shield: 5 successes.
Time 2 / Mind 3 effect (rolled as coincidental) - 6 successes.
Then, Sera and Dan leave the park. I think she either has a permanent lease on the cabin where they stashed Leigh or has purchased it. Either way: that's where they are going. From that cabin (just in case something crawls back over her correspondence link - so she's far from both the chantry and from her home), Sera is going to go back and scry the Black Orchid: Correspondence 2 / Time 2. She is specifically looking for the night the vampire fled back there, listening / watching as much as she can (especially what happened when the vampire she injured showed up there: how much does the vampire know / tell about what happened?). She smokes a joint and takes a half-tab of acid for this one. Correspondence is harder for her and requires more umph.
Correspondence 2 / Time 2 - effect, rolled as coincidental - 9 successes
Night 2: Sera spends the day / night at the cabin. She starts the next night with another mind shield:
Mind Shield, night 2: six successes.
Then, starting right about sundown (smoking a joint, taking a half-tab of acid, ready to supplement later on with the other half-tab) she is working to scry the Black Orchid, looking for vampires to help her narrow her focus.
Correspondence 2 / Life 1 effect - rolled as coincidental - 8 successes.
She is just paying attention to the rhythm of the place, looking for people on whom to focus, that sort of thing. This is just an initial scouting mission, so to speak.
[Supporting rolls in the transcript]
Howl ST
Divination at the Park:
Sera returns to the park. She returns to that night when the vampire attacked her and Grace, searching back until she sees the dark, wintery landscape laid out before her. Until she sees herself sitting on a bench by the lake. Until she sees a woman and a man walking together through the snow.
The woman - the vampire - is leaning into the man, as though unsteady. As though the snow makes it harder for her to stand in heeled boots. As though perhaps she has been drinking. But she has not. Her mind is clear. The man has though. His face is flushed. He seems pleased. His arm wraps around the woman's shoulders and pulls her close. Keeping her warm, keeping her steady - even though it is him that needs the support. She is beautiful, this woman. Sera scarcely got to see her before, but she can see now.
The woman's mind is clear. This is a dance to her - one she thinks she knows all the steps to. It is by design that she lets her prey think thathe is in control. She is hungry. Maybe the echo of it will remind Sera of someone else. The woman is hungry, and when she looks up at the man, she is thinking of the artery that lies just beneath the skin of his throat. She is thinking of what his blood will taste like. There is anticipation. Pleasure. A predatory rush of excitement.
Then she sees Sera and Grace by the lake. She sees them, but she keeps walking. There is a turning of thoughts in her head: should she change course? No. She is hungry, and they will not see her feed. (She does not seem to know who she is looking at - or what they are capable of.) So she spots that tree and leads the man to it. He makes a joke about making out in the park like teenagers, and she says, all hungry and wry, that she was thinking of putting her mouth somewhere else. That's when he laughs, pleased and excited. She lets him think the obvious. It's part of the dance. When they reach the tree, she presses him up against it. They are out of view of the lake, but she wants to make sure that no one sees, so she calls the shadows to her in her mind. This part is unsettling. It is like the woman's thoughts are made of shadow. Like darkness calling to darkness. (Not the natural kind. Not simply the absence of light. A kind of darkness that is tangible - that has been infused with all the properties of childhood nightmares.) She calls the shadows, and they come. They wrap around her and the man just as she leans in. Just as her fangs meet his neck.
It is absolute ecstasy. The man loses all sense. He lets her bite him. Does not fight the shadowy darkness that crawls over him. Does not even seem capable of it. All he knows, all he feels, is the ecstasy of that kiss. And for a few moments, that is all the vampire feels as well. It is remarkably, unnervingly like sex - the way it brings them together at the height of this single, shared moment. But it is not sex. Sex is not an act of vampirism. Sex does not end in one person consuming the other. (No, that is not always true. But that is how it should be.)
She drinks his blood, and it is difficult for her to keep her thoughts present. Her mind wants to regress - to become this lower, animal thing. She wants to drink him dry, and her control slips. She takes too much. She knows she does, but she is so. hungry. Finally she forces herself to stop. She knows she can't kill him. It would be waste. And it would put her and... others at risk. There is a brief flicker of faces in her mind. A dark haired, tan skinned woman. A pale, lanky man with odd, dark eyes. The one that sticks in her mind the longest is of a handsome brunette with a light goatee and a hungry smile. She wishes he was there with her now. Hunting together. Sharing this moment with her.
She licks the man's neck. Sera can see it through the woman's eyes. Can see how the puncture wounds close. But he loses consciousness and slumps down against the trunk of the tree.
The woman thinks about leaving. But she is still hungry. And Sera and Grace are so close. There is a high buzzing through her brain. It's making her reckless. So she calls the shadows again. She calls them and this time she makes the darkness wide and impenetrable, and she tells it to engulf the two people by the lake. The darkness is cover and protection. It gives her the upper hand. It is also terrifying, she knows. There is a bit of a thrill in that. Reckless, yes, but she enjoys it anyway. If they remember her, she will make them forget.
The attack is not simple aggression. She is hunting. She means to feed from them. She goes for Grace first because Grace screams and runs, and she doesn't intend to let her escape. But then the shadows part for a moment and she turns and sees Sera...and that light. She doesn't understand what she is seeing. Only knows, in a split-second instinct, that something horrible is about to happen, and that she has misjudged her prey. When the light hits, the pain is unbearable. It eviscerates her body, and she screams. She forgets the hunt. She forgets the man by the tree. All she knows now is pain and panic and fear. She wants to run, but even walking is an act of will. Still, her panic makes her desperate, and she manages to limp away. She thinks surely that Sera will follow and kill her. But she doesn't. And finally the woman makes it out of view, and Sera's connection to her mind breaks. The rest of the scene she already knows. Grace checks the man by the tree and sees that he's unconscious. She calls Kalen, then calls 911. Not long after, the paramedics arrive for the man and take him to the hospital. He's weak, but he'll be okay.
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