Thirst

The Damned do not dream...but for the first time in centuries, Bishop Odovico's daysleep was disturbed by phantasms of the mind.

They floated above a swampy nightscape - five giant, fanged skulls painted with colors that recalled the Feast of Saint Clair of Assisi. There was no mirth to their pageant, simply the grotesquery of their gawping mandibles overflowing with red, trailing down their chins like a drunkard gorging on wine. The gray sky was suffused by an amorphous glow that illuminated the scenery in place of the sun's long-forgotten face.

Free of the tumorous weight of a body twisted by centuries of unlife, he walked to the place where all the gore collected, a channel in the swamp that meandered aimlessly like a snake. He found his attention drawn to the bottom, lined with bloated corpses whose faces were on the edge of recognition.

Unbidden, a warm hand found his forearm, turning him to face his mother. She always seemed to laugh with her eyes, even during the worst of those old times. "What are you staring at? Do you wanna be late?"

Late for what mama?

"My lord, late for what...come sweet boy, the fifth evening bell is soon to sound. Grandma is already there with Catia - they received dispensation to leave the cloister today." Mother tugged him along as she'd always done. "Are you going to keep them waiting after not seeing them all year?"

Of course not.

She ruffled his brown, shaggy hair - had it been brown? Or black? - and drew him closer to a cacophony of festive music...drums and pipes, a trio of mandolins. "It's so nice to see you outside, actuallydoingsomething. Good-lady Pipa brought her oven out, can you smell the raisin bread?"

I can, it smells amazing. Can we buy some? I brought my coin purse.In truth it'd been so long since he'd consumed any real food that such flavors were as lost to his memory as the afternoon sunshine.

"After the show, my hungry pigeon." He pouted quietly - there was never enough time for raisin bread - but the sights and sounds of the festival had him chattering and pointing with her. Striped red and white tents lined either side of the blood river where faceless people played bawdy games and listened to ballads that were fashionable centuries ago

The river emptied into a sea that stank of refuse and excrement, just as he remembered. Straddling the winding stream was a steel platform whose design was far too modern for a place and time such as this

A crowd of townspeople wearing the undyed browns and grays of common folk, dappled by the occasional blue dress or red tunic that marked a person of status, were milling eagerly before the anachronistic stage, taking little notice of anything out of place. He spotted his sister and grandmother in their nun's habits, as faceless as the rest of the crowd; his mother's was the only visage he could remember. Excited to finally see them after unending decades of eternal night, he ran towards them both to kiss their cheeks just as a church bell struck five times

The smile withered and fell from his face as he finally got a clear glimpse through the throng. A dust-gray figure on the stage was bent over, its head plunged into the bloody river; following the logic and physics of dreams he suddenly found himself standing a few yards from the platform

Squatting on over-long, emaciated legs like a spider, he listened to it greedily gulping down the river's contents. Obscured by greasy shadows that squirmed like vermin over its body, he watched blue veins pulse in taloned hands gripping the edge of the steel stage

As if compelled by his presence, the ghoulish thing straightened and lifted its head from the blood, staring directly at him. A mantle of polished stone squares with heathen imagery carved in geometric complexity hung around its throat. He could see its heart pulsing rhythmically like a coal in its chest; a mask of burnished, featureless iron was nailed crudely to the edges of its face.

The sun hung like a pink tumor against the horizon as the crowd fell quiet with anticipation. "It's about to start!" His sister whispered in excitement.

What? No, that thing shouldn't be free -

Their voices were drowned out by the baying of hounds, twisted and keening. The crowd clapped and cheered as if in the opening scenes of a passion play as the thing brought its claws to the edge of the mask, tugging.

He knew intimately the mind-scourging horror that lay beneath.

What are you all doing?! Look away!

They couldn't hear him over the crackling rip of tearing skin, the -tnk- of rivets striking the stage. It was staring at him, specifically, through the featureless pane of metal as he shook his mother, his grandmother and sister in vain.

You can't look at it, you'll lose yourself! Look away, stop! Please mama!

Tenebrous darkness dripped like oil from its chin as the mask slithered upward. He did the only thing he could, turning away and shielding his eyes as the cheers turned to screams. They warped and warbled in agony, the crowd driven from joy to a soul-wrenching terror; soon the familiar notes of violence unleashed surrounded him and he fell to his knees to babble prayers he couldn't recall correctly

The shadows of men and women thrown against the ground morphed as their bodies stretched and broke, turning upon one another in homicidal mania. Iron-hard fingers dug into his shoulders, stabbing into the joints. The horror shook him violently, rattling his bones -

- and then Odovico was there in the waking world. An inhuman sound rasped from beneath his white sleeping veil, hands flailing at the still air of his tomb like an old man waking up frightened in his own coffin; he experienced a twisting tension in his stomach, as if a large spider had died in there with twitching legs. A pair of hands indeed grasped and shook his shoulders, rattling the inert flesh of his brain in his skull - he batted them away with a hiss of complaint, gripping the edges of his sarcophagus.

Sister Clementia let her hands fall to her sides, bowing her head in a show of contrition for juddering him awake. It was truly unprecedented; absent the human curse of dreams, there'd never been cause to pull him 'unnaturally' from his slumber...he must have been disturbing the blessed quiet of the sacral mortuary, and ultimately he was grateful that she'd awakened him.

"Be at peace Sister," Bishop Odovico hauled his misshapen form out of the coffin like a blood-gorged tick. He was shaken enough by the jarring experience of dreaming that he neglected to kneel before the Black Icon in the center of the burial chamber, his withered claw seeking the reassuring weight of his iron crozier resting against the wall. Intimately aware of Clementia's gaze beneath her gilded mask, he turned ponderously to face her. "My thanks for stirring me from a less than graceful slumber, my dear."

Odovico held an open hand, banded by rings of white gold and faceted rubies - she came to him, wrapping her delicate, velvet-gloved fingers around his palm. His fondness for her had never wavered during their long centuries together, and she remained one of three entities he trusted; the other two were Longinus and, of course, the Lord himself. Where all else was the sort of banal complexity that grew between figures of authority that had long hated one another yet saw little choice but to collaborate, theirs was a simple understanding

As surely as letters engraved in stone, so could Odovico read Clementia past her vow of silence. Beneath the gilded mask guarding a visage he'd all but forgotten over the cobwebby years, her questioning gaze was apparent to him. "I dreamed," he confessed as she walked by his side, leaving the burial chamber; he felt her give pause in her stride beside him...clearly alarmed.

"It comes as no coincidence, given the unpropitious timing," Odovico whispered, his voice barely above a grave scarab's skitter. "Only a matter of moments before we reap the fruit of disturbances like last night's...and it won't be angels bringing His displeasure at the interruption of mass, before you get excited," her chided her, knowing well her childlike fixation on them, "it's the Blood...we couldn't present nearly enough." Clementia stiffened, casting her gaze southwards towards the sea where their dark secret stirred.

Built in the swampy flats of Louisiana's shore, the sort of underground spaces he'd once found comfort within were an impossibility. A long staircase curled within the confined tower of his cathedral. The journey to and from the fourth floor awaited him at the night's zenith and nadir, with their footsteps barely scraping the smooth stone when they left their resting places

Before their descent Sister Clementia simply placed her fingers over her unbeating heart, the motion subtly pregnant with the promise of violence

"No, you can't set out against her," Odovico hissed with a sharp creak as he shook his head. "A visit from theCarnifexwas in store for Miss Carter until her stunt last night...in exercising equal justice among her followers, we'd either drain the ranks of the Neonates dry for their complicity, or in going after her alone would we simply provoke her fellows to open rebellion

This was Ashland after all, not Los Angeles where the Carthians had taken to the barbarity of displaying the bleached skulls of their Invictus overlords. "Not that the others would even take that into account," he groused, long frustrated with the despotic conduct of his fellow Overseers.

He could already imagine with accuracy how their emergency session would proceed as he climbed down the claustrophobic staircase, voicing his frustrations to Clementia behind him. "Isidoro will advise pointless overcaution, infiltrating their organization as if that has ever worked...that pox-addledBratva, I have no doubt Maksim would personally lead his ghouls door to door, dousing our flock in kerosene - and Lord damn me twice before I begin, don't let me start on Shira

Clementia's silence just happened to be tacit permission for him to continue to vent. "Remember Jacksonville?" His crozier clunked against the ground with each uneven step. "That nightmare passes over my waking eyes every time I look at her."

No amount of time spent in Torpor would banish the memory of those Shira had put to the torch for defying her rule, gleefully unafraid of the fires. He'd never seen Shira happier than when she exulted in their screams.

Clementia gently touched his shoulder, turning him to face her and pressing her palms together. She inclined her head ever so slightly, inviting him to prayer. The simplicity of the gesture was heart-warming for the Bishop, who suspected he'd have become like others his age without her consideration. The people and places that had defined the human remnants Elders' requiems were almost always dead or ground to grave dust by the merciless march of the changing world. Clementia had pulled him more than once from blustery tirades that served to only deepen his despair at the ironic powerlessness of his authority, but she reminded him that her own mental and spiritual stability was tied to his constant ministry

He closed his palms in prayer around hers. "Help me Lord, that my hands may find the strength to bring penance to the deserving, that they might guide the worthy to Your side, and that I might find the courage to be Your monster, rather than simply a monster."

They shared a moment of quiet together, a private validation of their mission in this afterlife

The two heads of the Lancea et Sanctum in Ashland - the so-called Church of the Damned - left Saint Eleanor's Cathedral with the crowds departing from evening mass; so often had the two Nosferatu come to cloak their presence among the Kine that it'd become reflexive

Odovico's gaze lingered on a handsome woman in a paisley gown and wide-brimmed hat, walking arm-in-arm with her stately husband...once he traipsed among them, trailing the human flock for whole nights, patiently awaiting an admission or evidence of sin to justify feeding from them. Now that he and Clementia had become such dread things as to require sustenance from other Kindred, he found himself meekly swept among the Mortals, hiding in their midst rather than stalking them.

Looking at them as children of the Lord, rather than simply meals, had given Odovico a different perspective than others of his kind. Even those who didn't worship or believe were merely acting upon the autonomy and freedom God had granted them, and that they so rightly vaunted here in this New World. It was an attitude he'd ultimately come to admire. He, Clementia and every undead were forcefully guided by their inner-Demons made manifest in the Beast, and the buzzing temptations of Beelzebub only grew louder with each passing night.

The Kine had little clue how precariously dangled their treasured independence. Just because the brutal nights of undead kings and queens had been thoroughly forgotten (and the memory painted over by rightly paranoid Kindred) did not mean they were forever extinguished. Human lives, even in their swarming billions, were sacred. That made the task of winnowing the wicked along to Hell and testing the virtuous all the more urgent in its own way

All of that could be cast unto screaming ruin if the younger Damned did not pay their tithe - if she knew the Truth of the matter, why they demanded this pound of flesh from her fellows, would Monroe Carter be moved to her previous pious compliance

Impossible. The risk was too great, and she was far too cunning.

A black Sedan waited outside to transport them to The Pit, Maksim's gathering place of choice; surely the former Boyar was aware of Odovico's and Clementia's deeply held disdain for that place where humans beat each other to death like unprized fighting animals. That was likely why he chose the venue.

Their driver dared not utter a word in their presence, and they themselves maintained a careful quiet born from the passage of countless nights. The two of them, having preached for a hundred years in this place, had watched it grow from an anonymous wound in the landscape to a sin-swollen tumor.

A woman wearing a dirty gray hijab limped along the concrete median, swaddling an infant, hawking balloons that glowed from within with LED lights. She was staunchly ignored by those driving by.

A quartet of young Asian men wearing gray suits and sunglasses carefully led an older man in their midst. He stared forward with the paralyzed fear of a deer, trudging ahead like a cow rounding a corner to the killing chamber.

In the eaves of tall apartment buildings, many of whose rooms were empty and merely used as investment toys for the wealthy, homeless children sought shelter from the night. He could smell their tears.

In the life he'd once known, under the tyranny of brutal regimes and old families, there was a more tangible separation between the worlds of the high and the low. Here, in the heart of Ashland, their interests flowed together like tributaries melding into one great river of humanity. At the least there were elements of good and innocent thrown among the bad, such that they stood out like diamonds amidst the coal dust.

At one street corner he saw and heard a souvenir vendor hand out keychains to a trio of children whose parents he knew to attend morning benedictions. Odovico found relief that he was yet unjaded enough to feel moved by their giddy joy.

Under a bus stop, a pair of young lovers nestled in each other's company, laughing at whatever they were watching on a phone screen. They were thoroughly within the world of their own love, distanced from the city's grime.

"Look," he whispered, barely uttering a breath as he directed Clementia's attention to a trio of musicians performing jazz under the Threlfall Tower. They listened for the time they were stopped at the light; both of them had heard these songs when they were the newest thing to hit the radio waves.

He held on to those few beautiful things, locking them firmly into the front of his mind...children's laughter, the happy sighs of lovers, and music would serve as a bulwark for the darkness they were to confront.

The Sedan dropped them off in front of a nondescript alleyway, one of many in Ashland's labyrinthine downtown. The smooth black stone of skyscrapers on either side sweated in the humidity, forming greasy puddles that slithered through grates under the street. A dumpster gravid with waterlogged trash had been neglected by the city for weeks; its black bags had burst, their rotten contents spilled along the ground like entrails

The alley was distinguished by a single neon-flashing sign about halfway down reading 'The Frail Maid'. Odovico had only ever entered drinking establishments after death had denied him a relationship with alcohol, and though he'd entered many in pursuit of prey they never failed to tug his heart toward despair. Here the mortals drank and pissed away their judgment, eroding the morality from their collective compass - they may have kept the Lancea busy, but the existence of such darkness was regrettable.

Such a place as this shouldn't have had this many patrons, not least of all because of its innocuous positioning. The floorboards creaked with mildew, cigarette smoke cast a reeking (and illegal!) pall through the air. Odovico surmised that one of the patrons at a table was quite dead.

Seeming unnoticed were those who slipped surreptitiously through a well-disguised door by knowing just where to press their fingers. Unseen amidst the throng, the elder Vampires followed the trickle of human heartbeats down a bare hallway into what looked like it might have once been a factory floor, now thoroughly defiled and known as the Pit.

The Pit...repugnant to every sense, physical and spiritual. The 'underground' fighting arena was at once barren yet overripe with stimulus, as Odovico could taste the spilled blood of many upon the air. Coiled around the tang of rusty iron corroded by the unavoidable humidity, it left an abusive flavor upon his tongue whenever he left

Ululating shrieks of bloodlust strained his sensitive hearing, and even Clementia seemed to shrink away from the unholy sounds. There were easily two hundred mortals in the crowd, all of them fixated on the raised concrete slab in the center of the factory floor, cordoned off by a cage. In that cage two men struggled, their bared fists beating a meaty percussion against each other.

The mortals' faces were somehow twisted and wild, distorted down here. Mouths gaped a little too wide, the shine of sweat had a slimy quality to it...their eyes were unsettling, pinpoint pupils like those of wild dogs.

The bishop's gaze was drawn to the pair of men lashing out at each other, seemingly absent of technique beyond the simple desire to break the other. A rotund, swarthy bald man was holding the other against the cage and pounding his ribs - his opponent, a similarly built man whose teak-dark skin shined with blood, broke free and lashed out for his nose.

The Vampire's sensitive hearing picked up the fracturing bone so clearly it may as well have cracked by his ear. He turned his lip up with disgust and circumvented the arena for a rusty metal staircase leading up to an unlit foreman's office. The door was guarded by a greasy ghoul carrying a submachine gun, one who actuallysawthe Bishop and his guardian...he responded by letting them in, tipping his head forward in deference.