Birth (part 3)
Hanna Clay
April 27th, 2006
Las Vegas, NV
Slowly, the dreamless sleep that held her completely started to slip away. She felt the softness of the bed beneath her, letting her mind absorb the fact that she no longer felt any pain. It was wonderful to finally be free of pain. Now, she would be able to protect herself, fight anyone or anything that tried to touch her. She knew Hanna was strong, one of the strongest of her Kind. So she would end up being a pretty strong vampire too, that no scum could touch…
Come to think of it…other than the absence of pain, Jenny didn’t feel all that different.
It was then that she realized she was breathing. It took a moment for it to sink in. Almost lethargically, her right hand moved up to her throat, resting on the side. Her pulse, while slow from sleeping, was steady and strong.
Jenny bolted upright in the bed, screaming in fury, “YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU PROMISED!”
As she turned to lunge off the bed, she found Hanna sitting in the lazy-boy by the TV, sitting perfectly still. Her white dress, her short hair. If Jenny wasn’t so pissed, she would have seemed like a statue to her.
Jenny propelled herself towards her. “WHY?!” she screamed. “YOU PRO…” She stopped mid-stride, rebounding as if she had hit a wall. She didn’t fall backwards…it was more like something grabbed her and kept her from moving at all. She was about to scream again, and found she couldn’t open her mouth. All she could do was move her eyes. She tried to struggle, tried to fight, but it was as if her body belonged to someone else, and she was just along for the ride.
Hanna shook her head mockingly. “Such rashness will never do. Had you remained calm long enough, I would have explained why I had not Embraced you. We will temper this rashness within you, Jennifer. I will not tolerate a Childe who does not think about her actions.” She waited, cold and implacable as stone.
Jenny stared at her, knowing that Hanna could crush her like a bug, and she couldn’t even bat an eyel…
“Oh stop that. You know better, Jennifer. While it is true that I could kill you, and probably every living thing in this ridiculous city with hardly any effort, you should know by now that I would never harm you.” She paused, deliberately for the effect, “Unless you make me. And you aren’t going to make me harm you now, are you?”
No, damn it, Jenny thought to herself. I was just angry. I thought…
“You thought I betrayed you. Betrayed my Word to you.” Hanna shook her head again, with that same mocking air to it. “Again, you should have known better.”
Jenny suddenly regained control over her body, and almost like a chastised dog, scuttled back to the bed and sat down, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Hanna snorted in disgust. “If I want you to be a good little puppet, I’ll remove tendons from your body and make you dance like a marionette. Now stop sulking. It’s repulsive coming from you. You have survived so much for so long, to turn into a cowering, simpering idiot is beneath you. And insulting to me.”
The tone in her voice made Jenny raise her head, her eyes flashing, She was NOT simpering damn it! Hanna chuckled, the velvet that she had been keeping in her voice slipping back to the broken glass. Jenny had almost forgotten how she really sounded now. Forgot that she was making the effort to put enough healing into her throat so as not to alarm Jenny by her voice that sounded so much like Davistch…
And just like that, the velvet was back again. “Forgive me. I have spent the past few years outside of ‘pleasant’ company, and enjoyed scaring the life out of those who caused my attention to fall upon them. I prefer the torture the sound of my voice causes them.” She glanced sadly at Jenny. “Watching you these past few years has caused me to become, shall we say, a very nasty little bitch.”
Jenny’s eyes widened about as far as they could go, and then tried to open wider. In all the time she knew Hanna, she never once heard her swear…or enjoy being evil either.
“I didn’t say ‘evil’. I said ‘nasty’. Perhaps ‘vicious’ is a better word. It’s amazing really. All this hatred and anger I kept invested in August and everything she’d done…with her gone, it had nothing to focus on. I finally found something for it, but we’ll get to that when it’s time.” She looked at Jenny pointedly. “Are you ready to hear me now?”
Jenny nodded once. Calm, controlled. She didn’t say she wasn’t “going” to Embrace her after all.
Hanna chuckled again, the broken glass once more. “Instruction must come first. You are aware that our Kind of vampire descends from Caine, yes?” Jenny nodded. “Caine Himself only ever made three Childer, and destroyed two of them Himself when He cleansed the cities they had created. They had made slave-cities, all of lesser Childer, that they fed upon, and their numbers continued to grow until they threatened to outnumber the humans in the world. That must never happen. For what happened in those cities…they began to fight and kill each other over the ever dwindling supply of human blood. Your Bible speaks of these cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. Though they were not destroyed by any angels. Caine is far from angelic. He went through both cities, wiped His two Childer and all the others they had made, off the face of the Earth. I was told by Lamech, His only surviving Childe, that the effect of seeing the destruction of his Brother and Sister was a lesson he’s never forgotten in all these thousands of years.”
Jenny tried remembering what she had learned in Sunday school, and Hanna stopped her. “Don’t bother. Most of it are clever lies made up to control the masses. And takes us away from the Instruction. Lamech had only one surviving Childe. August. He came after me once he learned I had Diablerized her.” She paused briefly, sighing. “Caine is the First. We mark our rank, our strength, in Generations separated from Him. Lamech is Second Generation, which made August, his Childe, Third. Jonas was then Fourth, and I was Fifth. Normally, when one Diablerizes an Higher Generation, one climbs a single rung of the ladder. Only, with Jonas’ destruction, there was nothing that stood between August and I. What was left of his essence was left within me, as his Childe. So when I Diablerized August, I didn’t become Fourth Generation. I became Third. In the baldest of descriptions, there is Caine. There is Lamech. And then there is Me.”
Jenny was frozen half in terror, half in awe. She did truly know how much she meant to Hanna, but to be told that the third most powerful vampire in the Kindred world personally wanted to take care of her, and was willing to Embrace her, was daunting.
Jenny blinked, and Hanna was sitting on the bed next to her. Like she just…
“I’ve had years of practice in being what I am. I’m making the effort to move slowly for your benefit. I can no longer pass through the mortal world without extreme effort. The power within is too great. Such is the reason that Lamech and Caine both remain removed from the world.” She looked directly at Jenny; violet eyes meeting brown. “It is the greatest sin among our Kind to Diablerize another. When Lamech attacked me, I was no more than a ragdoll. However, the moment he tasted my blood, he knew everything. All that August had done, everyone who had been killed, or worse. He knew of her destruction of the Garou, to the murders of almost every Kindred in New Jerusalem. All of Casa Loma…and the rest of her 2000 years of life. He also knew two things: in all the world, no one had more right to kill her that I did; and, by our laws, he was responsible for her actions. By our laws, I should have killed him, and he would have let me. He had left her to go her own way, and never once thought to stop her from anything. And just as with Lamech and August, I will be responsible for what actions you take. If you were to behave in a fashion that brought about your destruction, I would be called to answer for it. Though, by all rights, only Lamech or Caine Himself can call me to accounts now.”
She reached a tiny, delicate finger to brush a strand of Jenny’s hair from her face. “It can be rightly said that my Blood is too strong, that it can only drive you insane. But I will not abandon you to it. I will be at your side, tempering the effects, so that you are able to grow into them, learn to control them. I believe that you have the strength to endure and overcome whatever madness there is.”
Her gaze held Jenny like a vice suddenly. “I do believe, however, that you have to be purged first.”
A chill ran through her body. “Purged?” she asked hoarsely.
“Of your anger. Your hate. Your rage and guilt. You’ve spent these past years debasing yourself because you thought you deserved it for surviving. I have seen everything you have done. Everything that has been done to you. If you are ever to be whole again, ever be anything other than a monster, you must be purged of your demons.”
“How?”
Hanna smiled, and Jenny winced again when she chuckled. “You’re going to confront them, of course.”
Suddenly, Jenny was alone on the bed and Hanna was standing by the door that led to Lance’s “playroom”. “When one is Embraced, most Sires do not give back enough blood, causing their Childe to Frenzy. Rarely do they do otherwise. Jonas, however, did this for me because he did not want me to suffer the taint it would bring to what remained of my Humanity. I will do the same for you, though for an entirely different reason. When you Frenzy, there is no control, no thought, no comprehension. I want you aware of what you are doing.”
Hanna opened the door to the “playroom”, and Jenny’s eyes widened in fear and confusion. Bound wrist to ankle, on the G-chair as she had been, was Lance. His new “toy” was on the table next to him, along with the flagellum and all the other things he had used on her.
“I decided it fitting we start with Lance, since the damage he inflicted is still fresh in your mind and spirit. I leave it to you, Jennifer, to decide. Do you wish to begin your “purging” as a human, or as Kindred.
Jenny paused for a moment. “I can cause and control the damage done to him better as a Kindred, right? Do things to him to keep him from dying too fast?” She licked her lips unconsciously.
Hanna’s answering smile was all the answer she needed. “Embrace me first. I want this to last a long time.”
“As you wish. Once we are done with him, we will visit them all; each one that has hurt and abused you. All the rapes, all the beatings. You will make them all pay, one by one, and purge the demons of their acts from your soul.”
“And when we’re done with that?” she asked, her eyes still locked on Lance.
Hanna looked at her intently. “We’ll discuss that when the time comes.” She closed the door to the “playroom”. Turning to Jenny, she said, “And now, my dear Jennifer, lay down.”
Jenny lay back, her heart beating fast. Hanna sat down next to her, turning her head to the right with a tiny hand.
“First, I will take most of your blood. When we come to the point that your heart is ready to stop, I will feed you my blood. It will hurt; your body is dying after all. But there is so much pain that it soon becomes ecstasy. I tell you this so that when it starts, you will know it is normal, so that you will not be afraid of it.” She stroked Jenny’s hair as she leaned in slowly. “Once you have taken back what I have drained, you will rest. And then you will begin on Lance.”
“I am ready, ” Jenny whispered.
FITS OF OPINION 