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| Samuel Beck stepped lightly over the rancid corpse, careful to avoid the hole in the floor that it lay beside. Beck, by appearance, was out of place in the derelict house. An East-ender by birth, Beck was a bookish chap, with round reading glasses and close-cropped hair of light brown. His London Fog raincoat was fresh from dry cleaning, his tweed suit smartly pressed. Odd, the site of him, slinking through the second floor of the darkened house equipped with a medieval hand axe in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. "Garrick," he whispered, though forcefully. Sweat was beaded heavily along his brow. It itched at him, making his skin crawl as the perspiration threatened to cascade in a flood down his face. He had begged his mentor to take him on this adventure, though he was now having second thoughts. The smell alone was enough to suck the courage out of the most valiant of adventurers. "Garrick," he called, a little louder this time. He felt his foot settle into something unsavory and, glancing down, was disgusted by what appeared to be a half eaten organ, a liver or kidney perhaps. He dropped the stake in his hand only to fill it with his own vomit. It spewed hotly between his fingers, splashing back to speckle his glasses with the mess. He gagged, spat, heaved again, and then cursed. "Bloody Hell!" he said openly, no more concerned with concealment. He pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his inner pocket and wiped the bile from his glasses as he walked toward his discarded stake. His vision blurred, Beck stumbled slightly on an overturned lamp and then pirouetted as his foot slipped in his own vomit. Samuel came down hard on his right knee and he felt the floor creak in protest. He laughed a bit at his own expense, sure that were he to be in a position to view the event transpiring upon another that the hilarity would be priceless. "A damned fool, Samuel Travis Beck, that's all you'll ever be," he muttered to himself. He would have said more, but he felt his body tense as a wave of anxiety swept over him. The floor beneath groaned with a life of its own and then opened up beneath him. He fell like lead twelve feet to the floor below. He heard, rather than felt his leg snap as he came down awkwardly on the hardwood. He stifled a cry, no so much from fear of making even more noise, but because he feared that if he let loose with a scream he might not ever stop. "Oh that's a real shame now, lad," a serpentine voice oozed from the darkness. Samuel's glasses were gone now and his vision, particularly in the darkened room, was virtually useless. Still he could make out the vague shapes. He was surrounded by maybe a dozen or more individuals. They were moving toward him, slowly, gracefully. They were inhuman and Samuel was sure of their intent. "Stand back! Away from me, Hellspawn," he cried out, grabbing two shards of floor joist and jutting them forward in the shape of a cross. "Come now, boy, surely Ward taught you better than that. The cross has no power over us," the voice cooed. It was the voice of a dark angel. Seductive, cruel, but delicious all in the same breathe. "Do you know who I am?" she asked. "No," he grimaced. Samuel pulled himself up, fighting through tears and pain to remain the dignified Englishman. He calmed himself by sheer will alone. Years of study in the magical arts gave him the strength to put the pain aside. He tucked it away in a tiny place in his mind, there to keep company with his fear. "I am Inari Verkaik, born in the steppes of the Russian frontier more than 500 years ago. I am vampyre, a goddess reborn to prey on the weak and powerless. Men such as yourself, I think. You stroll into my den intent to slay my children before we've had the chance to prepare for the coming of my Master...that I can not allow. |
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| Prelude "Rise like lions after slumber in invanquishable number Shake your chains to earth like Dew which in sleep had fallen on you Ye are many -- they are few." Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) |
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