The Windy City in Spring
Landing in Chicago
Chicago. This is home for me. As in I grew up here. My family roots are deep in the muck that is Chicagoland. Gary, Chicago, Evanston, all old stomping grounds for me. Here I am on a plane flying into Chicago.
I don't want to be here, but I need to know what happened here to my family, my sister and her kids. So I met a Settite named Steven a while back, he came up with some answers that might yield some solutions, or a shit ton more questions. I'm betting on the questions.
Behind me in second class are my niece, nephew, and the older woman who has been helping me care for them the last four years. I am bringing them back to the family seat because I had to declare war back in New York in order to protect the domain I was given. I pissed in a bad guys Cheerios. He is gonna want some payback. The kids are just sitting ducks during the day without me. At night too, I have things I have to do, and can't sit and protect them.
The kids have been a good thing for me. I needed a reason to not be a monster. I needed a reason to climb out of the hole of death and destruction I was sliding towards. Though this whole morals and consequences thing makes being a vampire much harder. My life is much easier without all those morals, but also very dark and empty. Bad enough that I eat the flesh of the dead and drink the blood of the living...for a while there I was a real whirlwind of destruction. Sad when the Sabbat is the eye of the storm...the calm place to recover.
I feel the plane get cold. Not temperature cold. Supernatural cold. As in the dead are walking by. So I take a deep breath and look across the shroud. My vision greys out. I can see a shattered plane, wires hanging, blood and bits on the walls. Somebodies body chunks on the floor. I look out the window and see a figure crawling up the wing of the plane. It is broken, limbs bent wrong. It's a ghost, a wraith, whatever you want to call it.
Taking the next step I use the senses of the creature. Whoever it was, the eyesight sucks. It doesn't feel the wind, or the rain. I watch is slide through a crack in the plane that will be there someday. It begins to examine the passengers looking for someone. I notice it seems to be looking at men closely. If I were alive, I would be getting goose bumps. What are the chances? Luckily it seems to be at the back of the plane, and moving slowly in an odd fashion.
I get up and go back, balancing the view of the dead lands, and the reality my body has to move through. I mumble something to Steven, letting him know I will be back. I am sure he is giving me a weird look. I pass the stewardess, she is going to die of a head wound. I see a couple of heart attacks, a couple of strokes. Being able to see others deaths isn't for the weak of stomach. Taking my time I finally get to where the wraith is looking passengers over. I can see it...her.
She is a brunette. And her body is pretty messed up. My logical brain categorizes the damage...either she was in a car wreck or a building fell on her. With her back to me I feel a tug of recognition. When she turns toward me my stomach drops to my feet. It's Susan.
Susan Catherine Allegria Hall. My wife. The reason I fought back from the depths of my ptsd after Nam. The person who kept me going so that I graduated college with a medical degree. The mother to Catherine...the one in the end I couldn't maintain without. Losing Susan tore my grasp of reality away. I swirled back into the darkness of the war. My grief was so deep I only kept going because of Catherine. But everywhere I turned I saw Susan. I could swear some nights I would wake up after her death and smell her next to me. I was sure some mornings she had just kissed me.
But this wasn't that Susan. This was the after death Susan. This was the memory she had of her mortal body, of the pain she suffered before she died. I knew if she would will it, that her corpus would heal itself, but she might not know that. I didn't want to talk to her. I sure as Hell didn't want her to find me here. Who knows what a mess she might cause in the skin lands if she freaked out here. Of all the ghosts from my past I dealt with...I am still not comfortable with her.
I went back to the front, and heard the Captain say we were landing soon. Thank God. I just wanted to get away from her. She didn't make it into first class with me until we were on the ground. I grabbed Steven, and we were the first ones off the plane. He looked at me like I was mental, and I suppose in this case I am. As we started out of the cabin, I glanced back and saw her lean over my seat, smelling me. Her wail cut my senses still attuned to the deadlands and I heard her cry out pitifully.
"TREMEN!"
I practically ran from the plane.
A Place to Call Home
Steven knows fuck all about Chicago.
I got us a cab. Because I have been on the run before, I have been thinking about where I will go to avoid the sun. Did I mention that this is my home? My parents lived here all my life. My grandparents too. I happen to know that unless my brother Albert sold it, my Grandfathers townhouse is empty... or at least not occupied. Actually its a gamble, I am playing the odds of what I know of my eldest brother.
Albert made his fortune before I graduated high school. He built several businesses. He was too influential to be drafted. So when Grandpa died, Albert bought it from Dad, because he had good memories there. Albert doesn't need the money from the sale, and he wouldn't want anyone to destroy it so he wouldn't rent it. Maybe he keeps it for a private get away from time to time. I don't know. I do know that unless something has happened it will be locked up and empty. Besides, can I hope that being in Gary will put us out of the way from the majority of Kindred politics?
I had the cabbie drop us three blocks away. I didn't want any surprises. I could smell the lake. It's spring...May to be exact. The night is cool with rain, but I don't mind the water coming down. I can hear sirens in the distance, but they are not for me, so I don't mind. We both use our abilities to be hard to see. The streets are pretty quiet. Not much in the way of homeless or graffiti here.
The house is as I remember it. The front yard shows neglect on a minor level. Albert is probably paying someone to come and do some upkeep, but no one is living here. I look and Listen, using my senses to feel the house for life. Nothing. We walked around to the alley. There is a stout fence in back, but I know where the spare key is hidden. We unlock, relock, and go up to the back door. It looks like kids have jumped the fence and partied in the back. But the ground floor windows have bars, no one has been in the house. As I have the spare key in my hand, I unlock the back door, and we are in.
The house stands still and empty. I hear some mice...but other than that, it is cool and there is no sign of humanity living here. The furniture is covered with sheets. The gas stove is set very low, just enough to keep this old house from freezing the pipes. We make sure the house is secure, then decide what to do next.
Out For a Little Drink
Steven is hungry. Still shrugging off whatever poison Sancerique gave him, he needs to feed, and flush the poison from his system. Easy feeding is at clubs. Clubs mean mortals and vampires. In this town other Supernaturals will be around too, but hopefully we won't bump uglies with any of them.
We leave and lock back up. I know of a place. I scouted it the last time I was in town, called the Succubus Club. It's a really happening place. Lines out the door and everything. I use my Presence, and we move to the front of the line. The doorman smiles at us and lets us in. I don't know this guy from Adam. He can tell we are Kindred. That is both a good sign and a bad.
The place is full of people. The music is loud. No, it's LOUD. I could set off C4 here and people would think the bass had dropped. Steven grinned and moved off into the crowd. He was guaranteed a drink in here. I do the same. I am hungry for flesh, but this isn't the place for that.
I go downstairs and see some kids necking. I watch them, they use a pen knife to make small cuts to themselves, and begin sucking from the wounds. I have heard of blood dolls, but never seen it. Man I feel old. I also feel the Hunger rise, the smell of blood making my insides clench. I go over, smiling. I turn on my Presence, making myself less threatening. They smile and link arms with me. They pull me into a tunnel off the dance floor, laughing and grinning. I notice some guys dragging along, but there doesn't seem to be any threat. We pass a couple of rooms with people doing things in them, smoking pot, having sex. We all pile into the first open room we find.
Once there we fall on cushions that I am glad I can't see. The girls smell yummy, but the room reeks of old sex, drugs, urine, and beer. One of them lifts her arm to my mouth, it's open wound smelling like ambrosia. I nick myself, letting them begin to lick my richer vitae as I begin to suck life from them. The instant my mouth locks on her and I begin feeding, I hear her go into orgasm, experiencing the power of my Kiss. I feed on each of them in turn. I wind up satisfied, and got up leaving them drunk on my blood. Now if there were just a corpse laying around to munch on...I would be set.
I wander out, trying to remember how I got here. It's dark here, without my Auspex I would be totally lost. I move forward, passing rooms I had seen before. Coming back out, I found myself at the edge of the dance floor, realizing that there was a sunken dance area I hadn't seen before as I was concentrating on my meal.
I hear chanting off to my right, and see yet another lower section, with people standing around the edges as two men fight. The chanting crowd is egging them on. As I watch, I can see them wielding broken beer bottles. Abruptly one of them stabs the other in the neck, and it is all over. The crowd seems to draw in a collective breath...only the throb of the music holds the area. Suddenly people can't get out of the lower mosh pit fast enough.
I look up and lock gazes with an amazingly beautiful woman. She has dark hair, dark eyes. Her skin is flawless, I can see the ample swell of her breasts, her body calling to me. The gurgling of the dying man draws my gaze, and when I look back she is gone. Recovering my senses I jump to the mosh pit and move to the man, trying to stay out of the blood pool on the floor. There is nothing I can do for this guy, he has bled out in that short amount of time. I carefully pick him up and take him to the maze where I was a few minutes ago. He's dead, he won't miss some flesh for me to eat.
