It had been…an interesting series of events that had led him here. To this point in time, to this Kumpaniya. One he was very familiar with. A ringing was in his ears as he stood by the fire that blazed in the center of the ring of Vardo. The male’s gaze was dark and fixed. They were all gone, every last one of them: well, except her. No, final death was too permanent. Too final. Too good for what she put him through. What he allowed her to put him through.
The pressures.
A crack.
The expectations.
Another.
This whole path of misery started the moment he had been born. But the particulars were of no concern to him now. What mattered was the here and the now. Blood stained his hands as the metallic scent perfumed the air around him. The world began to spiral out of control.
But this was a path of his own making. Ravnos trying to bring him home, to return him to the clan. As if he had suddenly grown a conscious, feeling guilty. To welcome him back with open arms…..he barely knew him and yet he knew so much about the ancient vampire he could tell you where he was born as a mortal Roma. Not that it existed anymore.
Standing there in the middle of the camp he thought back to Cassius. Teeth clenching as he remembered how it felt to smash his face in. Clenching his fists in response to the memory. If he had survived it was no real consequence to him. He was Grendel’s son after all. And hers.
After that Ravnos had finally appeared himself but only to hurt Zapathasura more. And then the God. A fire burned deep and scorching in his belly. Remembering being thrown into the wastelands like he was a piece of trash. To be so easily discarded. And then he found Lilith’s cave. There he did battle with his darker side, but he was certain the outcome the experience had produced was not the outcome that had been meant to happen. The Beast was clever. He had slept for so long and the darkness that still lingered in Zapathasura’s very essence bade its time. Growing in strength as it watched and waited.
The vampire had dragged his sorry self out of the Wastelands. And no sooner had he stepped into the ruined outskirts of Hemlock he was accosted by a woman. “Erica….” His voice was low as the memory came flooding back to him. Their initial meeting. How she had given him the information about the camp of mortals and when she found him again. Covered in blood just as he was now. They had been attacked. Other’s vying for clout among the rabble if they could take out a Disciple’s kid. Like it was some ******** competition. Some trophy to lord over other’s heads. He was nothing special but who his parents were mattered to others.
Drugs that laced their weapons had hit them both hard. And one thing led to another. They had wound up wrapped in one another’s arms. The darkness had gone silent then. It’s incessant scratching at the walls of his mind stopped. It slumbered. Forced into its own version of torpor the more time he spent with Erica. He…..
A crack of the fire drew him back from those memories. He had left the blond just recently and was expected to return soon to the little place that they had begun to share. Oddly enough, for all her sass, he felt her presence comforting. And for the first time he could see a future maybe not so clouded with pain. He had treated her poorly and yet she still stayed by his side. She had somehow come to sooth his pain, ease the darkness within him.
But as he gazed around at the bodies that lay strewn about in puddles of blood coagulating in the warm night air he saw that slipping faster and faster through his fingers. Glancing down at his blood covered claws he flexed his fingers as if they confused him. Or they weren’t his own fingers. Every single one of them. Every mortal, every vampire in this Kumpaniya he had hunted down. It was a slaughter. If they tried to hide he would drag them kicking and screaming from where they cowered. He was surprised no one outside of the camp had come to investigate all the screaming. Perhaps they had thought it just another Patshiv or the camp was being particularly rowdy. Either way he has been able to work in peace.
Glancing up he spotted the body of Cryso laying half diablerized on the ground. She would be unable to move or do much of anything for a while. He could feel her blood, her power flow through him and the muscles in his biceps flexed in response. She had been so easy to get close to. The woman was so desperate for attention all he had to do was open his arms and she came walking right to him. Once she had been in his grasp the fangs came out and he mailed her neck with such ferocity. He could feel the power that flowed in her blood as he drank deep. Teeth like a vice on that slender, tan throat. His original plan had been to give her final death but in the middle of it all he decided that that had been too good for her. Release from pain was not for her. And so he drank half or enough to incapacitate her for a while at least and left here laying there on the ground in a crumpled heap. Blood seeping from the wound in her neck, flesh his teeth had shredded, red and oozing.
When he he stepped from her Vardo the aroma and other vampires around him had been caught off guard over the blood that was smeared across his face. The mortals began to run but the vampires tried to put up a fight. Keyword tried. Zapathasura killed each one in turn and then his gaze sat upon the Kumpaniya and its inhabitants. Fear permeated the immediate area as mortals ran, they hid, some attempted to fight. It was all pointless. By the time the punk haired male had finished there was not a soul left. And if they were they were very good hiders or had run fast enough to escape his reach. Someone would find the camp eventually. And they would discover what he had done here. Not that anyone would know it was him.
Zapathasura felt invigorated by the carnage. The darkness wrapped itself around the beast, strangling it as it had slept. Assimilating it. Corrupting it to it’s core. He embraced that darkness. It whispered in his ear, trailed fingers up his spine. It burrowed within him. ‘You can be limitless and fearless.if you follow me….’ it smeared in his mind. He listened as it spoke, his pink gaze sweeping across the camp once more as his body began to move. Stepping over bodies as he walked along. It didn’t phase him, what he had done. In fact, he felt nothing. That hollow aching hole had opened up once again in his belly, a hand running instinctively over the scar on his side where there had once been a hole.
As he reached the edge of the camp he paused, not to turn around and look. But a thought crossed his mind. If he returned to Erica looking like this there would be questions. He would have to find somewhere to clean himself up. It amused him, a wry smirk in his lips as he finally slipped into the shadows. Where he was heading not even he knew.