Chapter 1: In The Blood

Time slows, and in that stretched moment I finally take stock of the absolute shitshow this has become:
The walls, floors and ceilings shot to pieces.
The mass of dead bodies, blood and viscera scattered everywhere.
The gathering sirens outside as the cops finally have clued in.
My sister's corpse, being consumed by the thermite charge she set off with her last breath.

She did not scream, made no sound whatsoever. One thing that I can console our Mistress with is that she died with dignity. Another will be my testimony on Maxwell Canthrewyn's final death. Of course, that does mean I have to make it happen. Currently, he's a few meters away from me, reeling from a combination of the thermite's intense light and heat and the vampire's equally intensely ingrained fear of fire. Any other day, and his death would've been a formality; a simple execution using this moment of weakness. Any other day, well, I would not be cowering behind a toppled desk with most of my ribs broken and my left lung punctured. The rest of my body has not fared any better; we did not expect Canthrewyn to pay his goons a personal visit and paid a heavy price for it. Said goons are now dead save for one and I make a mental note to rectify that oversight as soon as I'm done here.

Unfortunately, Maxwell was supposed to be next, not now so neither of us really packed for vampires. I flick open my revolver's cylinder and frown at the ring of spent casings in there. Sure, regular lead does very little to the Undead but even they tend to pause when the lead in question comes from a BFR. I point the gun up, holding my hand under the back of the cylinder to prevent the cases from falling out, and prepare myself for what will undoubtedly be the next of many godawful experiences on this godawful day. Normally, I'd just make a cut as unobtrusively as possible for this but with the state my body is in, that won't be necessary. I go through the motions, feel my gorge rise and finally vomit a tide of blood over the upturned casings. I somehow keep my focus despite feeling like 70 different kinds of shit and lock the cylinder back in place. Now, for the actual hard part.

Canthrewyn is still hissing like a severely displeased cat at my sister's funeral pyre so I take my shot while the opportunity's still here. There's no roar from the BFR this time like with the usual .500s, just a wet splat as if it were lancing a particularly large boil. Acoustics aside, the bullet flies true; a red streak aimed straight for his head. However, he's apparently not as tied up as I thought and he moves aside with inhuman speed, his face briefly contorted into pure indignation before my second (because you always double-tap) and third (because vampire) force him to move again. Normally I'd be here exerting control over the trajectories to counteract his agility but such finesse became beyond me when he ragdolled me onto a piece of rebar a little while ago and I had to spend most of my efforts keeping my insides inside. So, brute force it is. My fourth shot wavers due to my injuries and Canthrewyn seizes the opportunity by lunging at me but I briefly relinquish control of my fifth shot, causing the bullet to expand back into a splash of blood that he has no way to fully dodge. He lands a few paces from me, face slack-jawed and covered in blood, completely stunned that a mere mortal like me would dare to throw blood at him. I take a ragged breath and renew my focus on the blood on his face, extruding it into a series of spikes digging into his skull and both of his eyes. He shrieks and claws at what to the untrained eye looks like a series of red pinpricks across his now-bloodless face.

It's not enough to kill him, of course so my next action is hopefully going to hurt him more than it will hurt me: I will the large scab on my torso to open up again and thrust my fingers into my chest cavity, coating them in fresh blood that hardens into long talons when I pull them back out. I will the hole to once more scab over and aim a swipe at Canthrewyn's neck but his wild flailing means I only slice the windpipe. A second swipe lops off a few of his fingers and a third gives him a grin to do any Glaswegian proud. By this point my agony and exhaustion give way to irritation at this idiot's staunch refusal to just die. The next slash bites deeper than the first but still not enough to completely sever the head, meaning it's now lolling to and fro on a body that somehow still has not gotten the message and so it lurches towards me in what by this point I can only assume is a reflexive desire to ruin my day as much as possible. I defend and chop the hands to ribbons but the body just falls on top of me with whatever force is left in it, causing us to fall to the floor in an undignified heap. The impact knocks my head, and as my focus slips, my talons splash to the floor, inert. Thankfully, I hold on to the BFR and manage to slip the barrel against its exposed vertebrae and pull the trigger. The wet splash is superseded by the crack of bone and the former Maxwell Canthrewyn's head at last goes flying off the remainder of his body. I successfully struggle to free myself from underneath the gurgling, twitching bulk and toss his head onto my sister's pyre, which is now well on the way to burning through to the next floor below.

Another breath as I survey the carnage. The Circus will be less than pleased that all its clowns are dead and part of me feels annoyed that Canthrewyn and his goons have actually done the world a service with this massacre. But I can't spend more time breathing in the carcass of an intelligence agency, no matter how satisfying it may be to me. There's still one more goon left to clean up; a burly one called "The Dane" or some nonsense like that. I pry a shotgun out of a security agent's cold, dead hands; more for its use as an impromptu walking stick than anything else. As I limp my way down the floors I spare a few thoughts for Olga. I can't mourn her, not until the job's done and I've returned home to our Mistress, but a few short, hushed words provide me a measure of calm I desperately need.

I spot The Dane on the second floor, or rather it seems he was waiting for me -or the cops who, considering the noise below us, still seem busy trying to breach the barricade.
"I regret to inform you the honourable Maxwell Canthrewyn has passed away." I throw at him as I try to straighten myself a little bit more and hope my grimace isn't showing too much.

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"That so? Good."
I frown: even a mercenary would dislike losing their paycheck, especially considering how much this ill-advised assault has cost them.
"What?" he chuckles "Surprised I'm not angry? The world belongs to the strong, and Canthrewyn just proved himself inadequate, just like I-"

No, no, no, no, no. I tilt the shotgun in my grip and open up on him before he has a chance to vomit more garbage. The blast knocks him off his feet, although he's wearing a vest so the most he'll get out of it is a light bruising. It also staggers me due to my mangled state and that's why I'm not fast enough to react when I see him produce an injector pen and plunge the red liquid in his system with a look in his eyes that's a cross between rage and elation. I fire again but it's too late: he's past the hail and on me in a fraction of a second and tosses me bodily across the room like a sack of flour. I land hard, bowling over one of the few potted plants that had stubbornly remained standing, and I'm sure I just cracked my last remaining unscathed pair of ribs. Canthrewyn, for all his superhuman strength, was more of a wiry guy but this Dane was already built like a truck before he decided to drink Renfield juice and I'm at this point too injured to really exert any sort of focus over my blood besides trying not to die. More out of instinct than anything, I try to lift the BFR in his general direction but he kicks it out of my grip before lifting me with a single hand around my throat. My lung already has a second breathing hole so I'm not too concerned about choking, but he could still snap my neck like a piece of celery. His eyes are manic, triumphant, and the few functioning neurons in my head fire as fast as possible to come up with a plan that doesn't involve my untimely demise. All of the options I can come up with fail to meet this criterium, save for one. And oh, how I'm hating this next step.
I'm vaguely aware of him ranting on about the right of the strong and the weakness of nations or somesuch, but at least he seems enamored enough by the sound of his own voice to not notice my right kidney -or rather the brick of thermite replacing it- burst from my body and into my hand. Doing this does mean I have to relinquish all of my remaining control so all my wounds reopen and I'm bleeding out at a, frankly, hilarious pace. This he does notice and as his mouth hangs open in mild confusion I jam the brick into it and activate the magnesium strip. The thermite ignites, starting with the part inside his mouth and I get thrown away as he desperately tugs at it to save himself, but I train my will on whatever remnants of my blood on his mouth that haven't yet been evaporated and hold fast until his muffled screams turn from panic to agony. At that point I have to let go and tend to myself because I sure as hell won't be outlived by some upstart anarchic fascist. Plus, I have now disobeyed a direct order and the only way to make amends for that is to get out of here alive. I drag myself towards the staircase and do my best to evade the cops who are still working on the barricade.

Leaving Vauxhall Cross is, thankfully, a lot easier that it would be to enter even in its current, besieged state. I find the third story window that Olga and I marked as well as the ritual circles we prepared here. I crawl into mine and start the chant, mentally bracing myself for the usual lurch as well as what will likely be a new definition of pain.
I am not wrong: my body screams at me as I burst from the prepared corpse in a building on the other side of the Thames in a shower of gore and I'm pretty sure I started screaming back before a pair of hands drag me out of the mess. The handmaiden tuts at me as she checks my wounds and moves to grab her set of surgical tools but I brush her off:

Already, my Mistress is calling for me.

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