These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

{In the storm's lull, the Chosen discovered the Directrix had crawled through a concealed passage beneath the temple's altar, a long forgotten escape route installed during the war. The doors to the Treasury found swinging in the non-existent wind, where the bitch added grand larceny to her rap sheet, lifting large quantities of the Scribe Virgin's precious stones, diamonds, citrines, rubies, emeralds... before fleeing to the Far Side. It was a no-brainer she would hit Caldwell, with its high concentration of Glymera, hoping to grease the palms of the vampire aristocracy in exchange for shelter and hiding. But she seriously underestimated the King's influence. No bribe worth incurring the monarch's wrath, doors slammed in her face while the Glymera came squealing like pigs in a slaughter house with deets of her whereabouts. And so the trail led here...Flicking the lit butt of the hand-rolled into the night, lids framing ice-white irises in narrow slits. If vengeance is best served cold then I am a fucking iceberg, a terminator in black leather, dagger holsters hugging tight to my chest, packing enough concealed weapons to take on a fucking army of Lessers. Not that I expected to need any of them tonight, I could snap the Directrix' slender neck with one hand, true. Fists flexing at my sides, fangs bared in a snarl, visualizing the act. I had no right to ahvenge Serhenity, no claim on her and sure as fuck, I hadn't earned the privilege of taking out her tormentor. But if not me, then who? Her father, the last Primale, long dead, perished in the symphath war. The Scribe Virgin? Still MIA, and fuck knows her sister Chosen understand nothing of violence, let alone the Far Side, where the Directrix was now a fugitive, hounded off the streets by the threat of approaching dawn to this shit-hole motel, wedged between Trade street and the social housing projects that were the hotbed breeding ground of Caldwell's vice and drugs scene. This truly was the lowest common denominator of human habitation. This squalid pit where the Directrix had no doubt cowered for what would be the last hours of her life, while I paced the mansion's foyer, every second of daylight counted down in the tiny stone chips of the mosaic floor, waiting, willing the flaming fireball to sink below the horizon. The sunburn of its dying embers still hot on my face as I stealth along the corridor, shoulders hugging the wall, the soles of my shitkickers sticking to the filthy carpet, stained with beer and piss and fuck knows what other bodily fluids, stepping around a semi-conscious crack whore sprawled in the graffitied stair well, sounds of dirty sex and voices raised in anger permeating thin partition walls.  As I approach the last room on the left, the smell of barbecued meat rises up through the air, reminiscent of crackling bacon and spit-roasted wild boar in the Bloodletter's camp, a scent that once would have made a starving, scrawny pre-trans boy salivate with hunger. The metal bolts of the door lock disengage on my mental command, gloved hand palming the handle to swing the door wide, and the smell intensifies, overpowering, churning my stomach and threatening to deliver my last meal onto the steel capped toes of my boots when I see what's cooking, diamond eyes locking onto the target of my search and destroy mission, slumped to the side of the window with its torn drapes ...fucking Virgin Scribe...the sun...swallowing back the gorge rising in my throat... the smouldering form of the Directrix a living testament that indeed there were fates far worse than death...the female is unrecognisable, flesh charred black, auburn hair singed to smoking, frizzy clumps, a once white robe melted into her skin, eyelids scarred into a frozen, unblinking stare of horror, a hoarse whisper, dry as sand, croaked through lips cracked and fissured with crusted blood} <<Kill...me... I...beg you...end it>> {a jerky flexion of one withered, charcoal black finger indicating a sack on the floor. Unsheathing a black dagger, jerking the blade through the ties of the bag, spilling its glittering, jewelled contents onto the grimy rug} <<take it...all yours...please...only end it>> {my eyes fixate momentarily on the sparkling green of the emeralds scattered amongst the stones, a vivid image of Serhenity's blind eyes bubbling up rage in the black tar pit of hatred festering inside of me. Hunkering back on my heels to eyeball the pitiful husk of female, lips pulled into a sneer, a fistful of the precious gems flung in her mangled face and bouncing off the rug like hailstones} You think I'd take your filthy blood bribe, Directrix? {the title spat like battery acid, leaning in to growl into one deformed ear} I came here to kill you, bitch, but it looks like the sun beat me to it...Is it true what they say? That being burnt alive is the worst torture imaginable? I might have made it quicker, less painful, true. {Female was already good as dead, just a matter of time. Whatever survival instinct that drove her to dive away from the sunlight leaking through the torn drapes was long gone, countless hours of searing agony leaving her begging for a quick death at any cost, her eyes greedily tracking the glint of the blade in my palm. Lifting the dagger, passing it in front of her face, a cruel torment} You want this, don't you? {her dark eyes light up like an excited fucking puppy. Touching the tip of the blade just off center of her sternum, feeling the beat of her six chambered heart in the steel} Just. One. Hard. Push, true...and the misery is over {leaning in again with a harsh whisper} but you're going to have to do it yourself {the shiny, melted flesh of fingers clamp around the hilt like a lifeline, greedy for death and an end to misery, my words are growled, laced with anger} Your choice. Your destiny. More than you granted Serhenity when you took her sight, true. Just remember, Directrix, that you take your own pitiful life and you can kiss the Fade goodbye, true, for an eternity in the Omega's pits of Dhunhd {as the grim realisation dawns, so torn, eyes wild, body physically shaking with the warring dilemma of the choice, but the immediate agony wins through on a jolt, a rough jerk plunging the blade deep, straight to the centre of her beating heart, blood welling crimson heat, the breath catching in her throat as the last remnants of life bleed away, the black dagger retracted from her charred chest with a wet suctioning pull, venom in my final words} That's right, Directrix You go to fucking hell, you Bitch