Arrival in the city
Like all Vampires, or at least those she had met, Occamrazor had started out a human.
She had been a young, bright, petite, blond haired graduate student studying by day and by night she working in a think tank in the city. She had always been curious about how things worked. Her name had been Bethany then. She studied, she thought, and she worked. She had little time for sleep let alone a social life.
Fangfull was not the type of person, living or dead, that she would have hung out with. But then she wasn't given the choice, she was taken by force. In remembering back to the attack in which she was sired, he had seemed so menacing, so powerful. Now, while only a newly formed vampire, she found him weak and insipid. She asked him why she had turned her rather than merely draining her. He replied dimly that he had thought she was rather pretty and he was lonely.
His name has been Andy. Why vamps seemed driven to rename themselves was a question she never did answer. Most picked incredibly stupid names and seemed indelibly attached to them after that. She felt this irresistible pull for a non de plume as well. While the rule of Occam's Razor was useless in most of the sciences she studied: fluid dynamics, chaos theory, organic chemistry, the idea that the simplest answer is usually correct was a very helpful tool in her own thought processes. That fangs and razors were similar icons sealed the deal for her and she became branded Occamrazor.
Fangfull didn't get it. This would become a pattern.
The thought that she would spend a week with him, let alone eternity, was not one she could imagine or stomach. He did not prattle endless but neither was he stoic. He spoke of being her sire, that she was in his thrall, his control, because of it. But even a few hours into her new life she knew his mind was weak. She could feel thoughts he did not mean her to know as he talked and she felt that that link did not go both ways. Through his thoughts she felt great power beyond - his sire and their sires. But he was as witless and aimless in death as he had been in life. Only the thirstlust drove him occasionally to action, and very little drove him to curiosity.
She kept him talking, learning more from the thoughts her questions provoked, than from what he actually said. It took less than a day to learn all he knew. Almost everything in the movies and books was wrong (she saw in his thoughts he had almost never read anything that did not contain pictures or channel listings.)
There were truly immortal he said. Beheading would not kill them.
"Know any vampire that was beheaded?" she asked.
"No."
"Ever been beheaded?"she asked.
"No," he answered slowly. He did not seem to understand the point of the questions but wanted to gain her favor and his thoughts revealed perplexion that she was not already in it. "But I was set on fire once," he added hopefully.
"Probably by someone who was stuck in a room with him, " she thought but inquired with added interest, "and what happened?"
Short pause. "I got better," it sounded like it had a question mark on the end.
This went on and on. She asked questions, listened to what he said and didn't say. All the time she tested her new body. All her senses were sharper. She could hear bugs crawl a block away. She could smell how many people had been in the alley outside that day. She could see in detail the filth in the pores of Fangfull's skin. With her fingertips on the walls she could tell the power of the breeze outside. Later she would learn that her tongue was better at chemical analysis than any laboratory, but that sadly the taste of food not longer held any interest for her and in fact caused a strong revulsion. Except for blood.
Her body was still maturing, metamorphosing, and it needed blood. Fangfull, like his sire before him, took her on her first hunt. It was easy. She was small, she was pretty, there was blood on her shirt, the human came to her, to help. And help he did. Fangfull understood is responsibility was to stop her before she killed the human. Vampires try not kill, they just take a pint or two. The human recovers, and either through denial or through some innate power of the vampire blames the attack on something else. And goes on to make more blood. It was fascinating to her, some humans had been attacked hundreds of times and refused to both acknowledge the truth, or leave the city. Walking victims, happy meals with legs.
She drank twice more that night all the while pumping Fangfull for information. Immortal, he kept saying and thinking. Sunlight made them tired, but not burst into a flaming death. Crosses did nothing, but oddly Holy Water and Garlic Spray both caused some damage. Vampires often used these tools to wage war on each other. There was a whole structure of bloodlines, and old feuds and friendships that crossed centuries that Fangfull knew only in the vaguest of senses.
Suddenly, in that mid thought, she was attacked from behind by a foe she sensed the mind of, but otherwise did not see or hear. He drained two pints from her neck and was gone. She gained a feeling of power from the encounter, and a sense that the attacker had learned a lot about her. She glared at Fangfull. He had not moved to intervene.
"What? It happens all the time. We feed off each other. Little nips. It is nothing personal. I find it easier to stick to the humans myself."
"Nothing personal, my ass," she thought. They were gaining knowledge with the blood. And power.
Her mind returned to immortality, it bothered her. Too many what ifs. She wanted to test an idea. She needed thin strong wire and some solid two by fours. She thought the thought, and immediately felt it flow to Fangfull's subconscious and to a force beyond and back to her. And she knew exactly where to go.
While she felt, and was, stronger than before moving through the city seemed to take great effort, after awhile she needed to rest some before proceeding. Soon she seemed to need to stop and rest between each and every block. But eventually she had completed her "shopping". Along the way she attacked and drank from several fellow vampires. They seemed distracted. They either didn't care or didn't notice her attack.
Too tired to go back to Fangfull's place they went to an abandoned building, the city had lots of these, and he watched, slack jawed, as she started to build a frame. Then she realized a doorway would work even better and she started string the wire back and forth across the door and then up and down the same, creating a grid of roughly one inch squares. Fangfull was asking questions about it so she stuck a couple of newspaper pages at random spots and said it was going to be art.
"Art?" he asked.
"Self expression," she tried again.
"Art?" he asked again just as she was finishing?
"Yes," stand here she said positioning him in front of it. She mocked moving her hands like framing him for a camera. He looked confused but just stood there just the same.
Then, summoning all her newly gained vampire strength, she leapt from the ground and with a mighty roundhouse kick shoved him at and into the doorway. She had expected him to go through but he only sunk in about halfway, his back cubed, but not enough force to slice through his spine.
He managed one "Hey!" before a second kick finished the job and a large bloody pile of 1 inch square logs lay in puddle beyond. She marveled that between her improved eyesight and brain she knew the exact number of rectangles that lay there.
Was he truly immortal, or was he now dead? No way to truly know for sure, but for his sake, she hoped he was dead. She had planned to cut the rectangles into cubes but as she planned to bury each piece in a separate block of the city it already seemed like a daunting task. As it was it took three nights.
From there on she learned relentlessly. From each vampire she drank from, she also gleaned some knowledge in the process. She learned of the shops and the guilds. She learned of magic. By now it seemed natural, it vampires existed, why not magic? She learned of bars, and that barkeepers seemed immune to her charms but that a purchase or two loosened their lips quickly enough.
When she learned of guilds she learned of powers and set about possessing them. Suction, Celerity, Thievery these seemed the most vital, followed quickly by stamina. With these conquered she quickly went onto learn even the abilities she saw no immediate use for. As in life she learned for the sake of learning.
And she drank, human, vampire, whatever crossed her path. She was not discrete, but she was not reckless either. Just an agent of chaos, no plan or agenda other than gaining knowledge.
When all the powers she had heard rumor of were hers to command and control, she starting drinking less and robbing more. She was not as good at this as drinking. While the humans still walked up to her for the taking, most had learned not to carry large amounts of currency in the city at night.
And the vampires rarely carried coin, there was a whole underground banking system set up just for them. Only the vampire hunters seemed the exception. She needed money so she studied them. Humans, not in denial, that knew of the vampires and had trained themselves to hurt vampires. Using blades, garlic and holy water they would spring into vicious attack when preyed upon rather than just standing there like usual.
She would have existed in their myth, lore and nightmares if she had ever left one alive to tell the tale, but so far she had not. Thus they knew not of her.
The more she studied them, the more she sort of respected them. She had had no use for most of humanity while a human, and had little use for most vampires after she was turned. Whatever traits you had had seemed amplified. A listless slacker is just a bigger and immortal waste of skin as a vampire. At least the hunters were doing something.
Respect did not mean mercy though. They had the money she needed, and after careful study she went after them with a vengeance. They could cause pain, and blood loss, but once you wore them down they had to be completely drained and for reasons she still did not understand they almost always had large sums of coin on them. Maybe the clans were after them and they had to live on the lam.
And so her next months were full: slay, drink, shop, learn. She built an arsenal of scrolls, weapons and knowledge. She studied the city which seemed both artificial and inexplicable. As a human she remembered leaving the city many times, in fact she grew up in another city altogether. She also remembered roads that bent and curved. Now everything appeared straight and when you reached a certain point you simply could not move further on. There was no force holding you back, it was not like you were pushing against anything. You simply couldn't form the command, the will, to move there. It frustrated and fascinated her. It hinted at an entire world beyond her senses. She explored all the edges of the city she was allowed to enter; a perfect square. She sensed no structures, humans or vampi
She sensed no structures, humans or vampires beyond these points.
She kept testing the limits of her knowledge and powers. She could take energy from the life around her, in fact it took concentration to keep the grass from dying near her footsteps. While exponentially harder she could accelerate the growth of life. This left her exhausted more than walking the city. She did not sense any other vampire with this ability in the knowledge gained from drinking blood.
She no longer aged. She would be 28 forever. Neither exercise nor lack thereof seemed to cause any change. Injury healed and left no scar or change. However she noted that some of the older, much older, vampires looked less and less human, and she concluded that the mind could effect the body. The mind's image of the body determined the body. This was a guess and she tried for months to change herself through will power to no result. However she was also under constant attack from vampires and hunters, and thus she learned she was right, but it was the form the body repaired itself to after injury not the form itself.
She threw herself off a tall building and concentrated her full focused mind on a firmer, shapelier, slightly slimmer self and as she healed her body was closer to that mental ideal image. She took five jumps before she was satisfied with the results.
After that the cattle really started lining up for slaughter, even the hunters seemed more off their game. She grew powerful rapidly, all the while trying to stay under the radar of the ancient ones. She could sense them out there in the city, most sleeping, rousing only occasionally to take stock of their holdings and lineage.
She was most aware of Fangfull's sire, Karmann. She had assumed that with Fangfull dead she would be a master pire, but if fact what occurred was she felt more drawn to Karmann. She felt what Fangfull had described as in thrall. It was weak, but persistent. Karmann, and her masters, Ngthhawk and the very powerful and mysterious starreagle wanted her to come to them.
6:46 PMThis was why she had assembled the arsenal. Whether it was to assist them or free herself of them depended on how upset they were over the dispatched Fangfull. She couldn't think they were very upset, denial seemed to run as strong in vampires as it did in the humans. This was evidenced in the fact that she could not find one record or hint of Fangfull's entire existence after his dispatch.
Just under a year into her new undead life she was already considered a Supreme Vampire in the parlance of how vampires ranked each other.
Her study was complete for the moment. It was time to met the family.
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