"Sybil! Sybil!" Hope exclaimed. "How are you even sinking into the water? It's not even that deep!" Her answer came as a form lifted its way out of the water, rapidly throwing another person off of them...one that had a large stake of wood through the heart.
"Stakes. They work surprisingly well underwater." Sybil let a bunch of water fall from her mouth, being that the water did not impact her ability to...well, not breathe.
"You're ali-wait, no...no, you're not." Hope started, but caught herself halfway through the thought.
"Neither is he." Sybil said, kicking the paralyzed form in the water next to her.
"Part of the tunnels must have given out underneath." Ox said, rationalizing why Sybil had seemed to sink thanks to her attacker. "Kindred?"
"He is." Sybil said, reaching down to grab at the mask, pulling the glassy covering away to reveal the face of a Kindred.
"That's 9-Ball. What's he doing down here?" Ox asked.
"9-Ball?" Sybil asked.
"One of the Anarchs. Malkie, like you. Seemed like a nice guy." Hope said, crossing her arms.
"Well, it seems like I wanna have some words with what's in his brain." Sybil said, grabbing the rigor mortis-stricken arm of the Malkavian, trying to hoist him up onto her shoulder without removing the stake that paralyzed him. "We got somewhere near here where we can put this asshat down?"
"Pup, help her out." Ox gestured to Hope, who moved over to help support some of the comatose Malkavian's weight. "This way." He said.
"Are we close?"
"Pretty sure we are."
"Great." Anthony was getting more than a little impatient. Having come with Marion for another stakeout in trying to find one of the damned keys, he'd now come to Seattle's lovely King Street Station. By 3:00 AM, the trains weren't moving. It was one of the few times you could say anywhere in metro Seattle was quiet.
Anthony was not fond of this particular bit of quiet.
"Be patient. The spell says the key is here..." Marion said, having folded out the map onto the table in the back of her van. A bit of Thaumaturgy saw her following along. "If whoever is carrying it stays on their current path, we have about five minutes."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Anthony asked, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the passenger side seat.
"Anthony!" Marion hissed at him, quickly moving to go after him, grabbing her satchel along the way.
"Alright, Nine...start talking." Ox said, his arms crossed over his chest as he looked to the Malkavian that was now tied to a chair, the stake having been pulled out of his chest.
"Why, though?" Sybil asked. "Why are you doing this?"
"You know why, cousin." 9-Ball looked to her. "You can feel it in your blood. I know you can. He's waking up, even now."
"He...is." Sybil said, almost as though she were distracted by something.
"Sybil, focus!" Hope nudged her friend's shoulder.
"Hmm? What?" Sybil turned to her.
"Camarilla. Anarch. When the keys are brought to his cage and the door is opened, neither of them will matter. None of them will matter." 9-Ball said.
"Key?" Ox asked. "What key?"
"Don't play dumb..." The Malkavian secured to the chair smirked at his former boss. "It's unbecoming of you, Baron..."
"I'm nobody's Baron," Ox snorted, "and I didn't live this long by listening to ranting asshats like you."
"The Glaziers will come here. Their eyes are blinded by madness, yet they see...they feel..." 9-Ball said.
". . .put something over his eyes." Sybil said, suddenly tensing.
"What? I-?" Hope asked.
"Do it! He can see, they can see!" Sybil said.
"Better idea." Ox grunted, a low growl as he channeled his vitae, hands slamming hard enough into 9 Ball's head to sever it at the neck. Within seconds, the head was rolling around on the floor and both the body and the head had the ages catch up to it as it crumbled into useless dust.
". . .you broke rule six!" Sybil protested.
"Indeed he did!" The Malkavian and the two Brujah turned to see an all too familiar pair of Tremere enter the basement.
"Ah, shit. . ." Sybil hissed.
"I have a feeling the Prince might want to know about that." Marion said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Ox said, "all I see here is a couple of Kindred and a pile of dust."
"Maybe," Marion said, "but do you think the Prince is going to look past an excuse to get rid of an annoying little pest like you?"
"Depends." Ox said, cracking his knuckles. "Think you can say 'abra kadabra' before I sail across the room and rip your throat out?"
"How about we just-" Sybil started to intervene.
"Sybil, don't." Anthony spoke up for the first time since he and Marion had entered the room.
"No, please. Go ahead and talk, Sybil." Marion said. "I'll be happy to send you with your kinsmen on the floor there."
"Is there something you want, Blood Witch?" Hope asked.
"I think you all know what I want." Marion said. She pointed a finger at Ox. "You're meddling with something you don't understand..."
"And you do?" Ox sneered at her. "I watched so many of my friends take the Final Death over these stupid things."
"Which is why we need to destroy them." Marion said. "We-"
"I've tried. You can't." Ox cut her off. "The best we can hope for is to keep them away from those nutjobs."
"Hey, as thrilling as this dick measuring contest is, shouldn't we be leaving?" Sybil asked. "I mean, those glass faced motherfuckers are trying to break in."
"What?" Marion, Ox, Anthony, and Hope all asked in chorus. Sybil pointed to the staircase that Marion and Anthony had come down. From it, the four could hear footsteps.
"You didn't ward the door?" Marion asked, casting a look at Anthony.
"I did!" Anthony insisted.
"Doesn't matter now. They're in." Ox said. "Let's go."
"Uh..." Hope said, looking to the manhole cover that Ox had wrenched open to get them into the basement. It had been to bubble and smoke. "Pretty sure we can't go that way..."
"Great. Trapped in a basement and all because of a damn key." Sybil sighed, pulling out her gun once more. "I'm gonna be out of shots..."
"Can we get a ward circle up?" Anthony asked.
"Not enough blood and not enough time." Marion was gritting her teeth. She drew a knife from her belt and cut into a vein. Her eyes rolled as she resisted the urge to cry out in pain, the blood dripping onto the blade as it began to bubble and smoke with the sudden venom that had manifested from her vitae. Anthony had his hands raised to prepare a spell of his own and Hope was standing with raised fists, waiting for the moment the first enemy came into striking distance.
Ox, though, had picked up the stake he'd used to paralyze 9-Ball and was standing at the ready.
In came the first of the Glaziers, meeting the end of Hope's foot as she slammed a perfectly-timed kick right into his stomach, knocking him back into two others that were coming up behind him.
At the other end of the room, the manhole cover had been melted away completely. The first of the Glaziers was coming up from the (further) underground and Sybil squeezed the trigger of her gun, putting a bullet in his head and knocking him back down.
"I've got ten more of those, asshole!" Sybil shouted down to him.
"Pup, start working on a way out!" Ox shouted, rushing up to assist Hope, trying to get her to break off and do as he asked, one hand even pressing to the small of her back to get her to move. Hope growled in irritation, but she broke away from the combat, moving toward the further doors that led into other parts of the basement, pulling one open and looking for a way out.
"Not exactly the best exercise." Anthony commented as he reached out, using his vitae to start to sap from one of the attackers coming his way. They'd moved past Ox, who was slamming his stake into the nearest one and then applying his fists liberally to the rest.
"If my heart could beat, it'd be racing right now!" Sybil snorted as she took another shot at another one of the oncoming Glaziers, having a pretty effective time at bottlenecking them from the sewer access. Marion had slid her blade into the chest of one of the Glaziers, who screamed out as the acid burned through his flesh. She pulled the weapon from the newly-created cavity, spinning around and jamming it into the chest of another.
"Hope! Today, please!" Ox shouted at the top of his lungs. No answer came.
"Ox, watch your six!" Sybil called out. Alas, the warning came too late. Ox turned just in time for a large chunk of wood to be thrust into his back. Direct hit to the heart. He wrenched, paralyzed by the impact and it was at that moment that Hope returned.
"I've-NO!" Hope screamed out. The Glazier that had thrust the stake into Ox's heart reached into the Brujah's jacket pocket, pulling out a small, black box. Hope leaped across the room, hands raised to grab at the figure in the glassy mask.
"Be still!" A voice, magically enhanced by vitae, rang through the room. Hope found herself rooted to the spot against her own will. Sybil, Marion, and Anthony likewise found themselves in various degrees of being unable to move. "If the others move, kill them!" The other Glaziers were now moving to form a barrier between their apparent leader with the paralyzed Ox and holding the box in hand. The other hand opened the clasp and pulled up the lid. ". . .it's empty!" He tossed it aside.
Even with him paralyzed, Hope knew that Ox would be smirking if he could. She started to laugh. The lead Glazier almost seemed to growl as he grabbed Ox by the throat, forcing his eyes to meet his own. "Where is the key?!" The Malkavian roared after tearing the stake out of Ox's chest.
"Fuck you..." Ox spat at him. The Glazier grabbed at his throat tighter and Ox began to convulse. Try as he might, Ox was unable to look away.
"Oh, god..." Sybil didn't breathe.
"Tell. Me. Where. The. Key. Is." The Glazier demanded.
"Fuck. You." Ox said. "I'm not telling you...you...anything..."
"Fight it, Ox! Fight it!" Hope insisted.
"Not for long!" Marion shouted, flinging her knife. It managed to slam blade first into the Malkavian, causing him to cry out as the venom on it started to burn. Ox fell and with a bestial growl tackled into the Glazier, sending them flying into the dark. "Move it or lose it, you idiots!"
"We can't just leave him!" Hope protested, hearing the sounds of the struggle between the two. The other Glaziers still forming their barrier. "Get out of my way or we're gonna have more piles of dust in here!" The first tried to leap at her, Hope grabbing them about the throat and using them to fend off a knife attack from another.
"Anthony! Go!" Marion shouted at the younger Tremere.
"Go yourself!" Anthony snapped at her, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sybil.
"Good to see you're thinking straight finally." Sybil said.
"I won't make a habit of it." Anthony said, reaching out and curdling the blood of the nearest of the Glaziers. When it charged at him, Sybil popped off a shot that shattered its mask and blew the head clean off, the dust of ages crumbling to the ground from where his body used to be.
"Nine shots." Sybil muttered. Marion gave a huff of frustration and joined in as well, her hands raised and a channeling of her blood sorcery causing the Glazier nearest her to begin to have his flesh bubble and smoke as though they were...boiling. It was burning through the mask, the vampire screaming as the feat of thaumaturgy cooked him from within. Sybil could see the agonized face of the monster that looked so, so much like a man.
"Anyone else want some?" Marion shouted. Her answer came in the form of a knife slamming into her chest. Her own knife. She howled as the venom began to course through her veins.
"Anthony, get her out of here." Sybil said, raising her gun toward the darkness, seeing a form emerging from it. One with a crumbled, shiny mask upon his face.
"NO!" Hope protested, plowing through the two she'd engaged in melee and charging for the lead. "YOU KILLED OX!"
"And you'll join him soon enough!" The Glazier leader allowed the dust to fall from his fingertips as he raised a fragment of wood in his hands, intending to stake her much as he had Ox himself.
"Parlay!" Sybil shouted out. This got the attention of the Glaziers, Hope, and the two Tremere in the room who were currently weaving their arcane work. "Parlay!"
"You...wish to parlay?" The leader snorted. "Why would I agree to that?"
"You need all the sons and daughters of Malkav for your little arts and crafts project, right?" Sybil asked, sticking her thumb toward herself. "I'm a daughter of Malkav. You need me, right?"
"What makes you think we ne-" The leader was cut off by the clicking of a safety and Sybil pressing her own gun to her temple. "What are you-?!"
"Crazy? Yes!" Sybil shouted back at him, then lowered her voice and added sheepishly. "Oh, you said what are you, not are you. Damn, that would have been really clever."
'The fire. The fire burns...'
The leader recoiled from Sybil and the others. "Flee! Flee for your lives, my brethren! The key is not here! Flee! Flee the flames!"
"You aren't fleeing anywhere you son of a-" Hope started after the leader, who was fleeing with the rest either up the way they had come or down into the sewers once more. Sybil raised a hand to stop Hope. "Are you kidding me? Move, Sybil!"
"They're running. We need to go before they come back." Sybil said. "Revenge isn't going to help him." Hope glared daggers at Sybil but, in the end, relented.
"What the hell were they talking about with fire? And where are those damned Blood Witches?" Hope demanded. Sybil looked, too, to see that both Anthony and Marion had vacated the premises.
"Doesn't matter. Let's go." Sybil grabbed her arm, leading the way toward the sewer access.
"Hold still!" Anthony hissed as Marion fidgeted upon the lengthier of the seats in her van. He'd pulled out a field kit and was currently attempting to clean out the wound.
"I'll just pump some vitae into my-" Marion hissed.
"I saw what you were pulling back in the basement. You don't have that much left." Anthony said, using the cloth to clean out the wound. While her dying from an infection wasn't a counter, the venom had to be gotten out in some way. "What I don't understand is where that damned key went."
"Ox ditched it." Marion said. "And I think I know where he did it."
"Where?" Anthony asked, raising a brow.
"You mean that was in my back pocket?" Hope asked, looking at the key Sybil had just liberated from her pocket. By now, it was getting close to dawn and Hope had been invited by Sybil into her home for the day.
"Looks like he must have put it in there when he pushed you." Sybil said, setting it down on the kitchen table. She'd seen it before, and it raised more questions than it answered.
". . .well...what do we do now?" Hope asked, looking down at it. She, too, had seen it before. An ancient key with Thaumaturgical symbols all over it.
"I don't know." Sybil said. "I think keeping that hidden away is a good idea, though. Until we know what to do, anyway."
"I have an idea for that. That'll have to wait until tonight, though." Hope said.
"Right." Sybil said, stretching her arms over her head. "Suppose we best get to somewhere with less windows, yeah?" She started for her bedroom, pulling the curtains to.
"Sybil?"
"Yeah."
"Were you really going to do it?"
"Do what?"
"Shoot yourself." Sybil heard Hope's words but, with her back turned away, she contemplated it for a moment. "...Sybil?"
"No." Sybil said, turning back to her fellow coterie member, giving her a smile. "C'mon...I'm crazy, not stupid."
Hope couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah..." She turned, looking back to the key on Sybil's kitchen table.
"Are you gonna be alright?" Sybil asked. Silence followed on from that question, Hope clearly lost in the thoughts of what to do now...and how much she had just lost.
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