Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to the all night society, an actual play podcast brought to you by Queen's court games.
[00:00:38] Growing up where I grew up, how I grew up.
[00:00:41] Maybe I was meant to end up where I am now, part of the dark.
[00:00:46] All those decades ago, before cities sprawled out and turned the night sky and neon, where I lived.
[00:00:52] You follow a particular set of rules in those mountains, in that particular kind of darkness.
[00:00:59] Firstly, there is no forest. Those are woods. It is not some majestic wonderland of critters and flower line paths up to Mama's house. It is deep and dark and very old.
[00:01:13] The word used most often is primordial adjective existing at or from the beginning of time, primeval.
[00:01:25] After all, the appalachian mountains are some of the oldest mountains on this earth.
[00:01:30] I was made to understand from a very young age that you treat those woods with respect. Don't go asking for things. Don't go looking for things. If you see something. No, you didn't. If you hear someone calling your name, know the fuck you didn't.
[00:01:46] Make sure you're in before the sun goes down. And keep the curtains closed.
[00:01:51] I'd always wondered if something had been watching me from the beginning.
[00:01:57] Out there, just waiting.
[00:02:02] As scared as I was of those woods, it was the mines that caused the most heartache. I suppose daddy was lucky that he'd been able to lock down a job with the federal number three.
[00:02:13] Make sure there was a roof and four walls for me and Mama to maintain.
[00:02:18] Being a black miner usually meant coal, Odin. Or at least that was the ideal. You get the assignment, you fill your quota for the day, you go home. Little to no interaction with the foreman, so less chance of well, was the 19 aughts in West Virginia. We were a black family. You figured out it was long hours under those mountains. And while coal loading wasn't bad money, the issue came with trying to spend it. Everettville was segregated along with the rest of the damn country. Sure, you could request supplies be held at the company store, but whether or not that lily white manager was in the mood to sell to us colored folks changed as often as the tide.
[00:02:59] We were as likely to get a box of weevil eaten biscuits as he were just to be ignored. So the majority of us colored folks learned to fend for ourselves. My family was no different.
[00:03:09] By the time I was 13, I'd learned the heft of a rifle and the smell of black powder.
[00:03:14] Knew how to skin and dress a full grown buck without wasting a knife stroke. And I'm not ashamed to say that I found comfort in that measured brutality.
[00:03:24] Well, it's the order of the natural world.
[00:03:28] Bobcat eats the garter snake, garter snake eats the field mouse. Everything takes what it needs to survive, with no compunction about it. They're all just living.
[00:03:37] So were we.
[00:03:39] Daddy brought home his pay. I brought home food. We helped Mama keep that house in order, making sure we had enough to keep our bellies full and the wood stove warm. Some months were harder than others.
[00:03:52] Thinking about it now, it was perhaps a bit more responsibility than a young and should have had.
[00:03:57] Hell, Nash had been climbing trees or kissing boys instead of learning how to tan pelts.
[00:04:04] It wasn't od, per se. Most of the families at our end of the holler had some kind of similar setup, but then again, most of them had sons.
[00:04:13] I was the jumped up little shit with a rabbit's blood under her fingernails and pricker burrs in her hair. More often than not, too wild by half.
[00:04:21] Shit, at least I'd been taught to read so I wasn't completely feral.
[00:04:28] I think there was a time when Mama might have been mortified, but wasn't. As if I was destined to go on to something greater. No chance of me meeting some high top oil baron, being swept away to live like a queen in Charleston.
[00:04:41] Maybe I dreamed about it at some point when teenage girl didn't.
[00:04:45] Whenever my head started floating up towards the clouds. Reality was very good at yanking me back down to earth.
[00:04:53] Hell of a rough landing.
[00:04:56] You see, the men in charge, those rich white men in their mansions and offices, they always wanted more.
[00:05:04] Like the woods, like the mines. They were hungry.
[00:05:07] They needed more to fill their own pockets with.
[00:05:10] Dig faster. Dig deeper. Stop wasting your fucking time on the vents. There's more coal to bring up. Break your back and destroy your lungs. And maybe, just maybe, we'll make sure your family don't starve over the winter.
[00:05:24] Deadly as those woods were are, they weren't nearly as bloodthirsty as the mines.
[00:05:35] I'll never forget the sound of that explosion.
[00:05:40] Sure, it were judgment day and the trumpet sounded, but no, the federal number three. It just shook and it buckled.
[00:05:52] And then it vomited.
[00:05:56] A mess of fire and gas here in the ground and consuming nearly 111 souls.
[00:06:07] Those who weren't killed in the initial explosions succumbed to what was called the after damp. It's the leftover gas, methane and carbon monoxide. I believe if you are unlucky enough to be trapped below after an explosion like that, you die gasping, crawling at your own throat until your lungs seize up and stop.
[00:06:28] There was so much screaming from men as they died. And families as they realized what they had lost.
[00:06:38] That mind took those men and those boys and swallowed them down like so much red meat. Tore them asunder like some great beast with gnashing teeth and foul, fiery breath.
[00:06:51] The bodies that were found were hardly people anymore.
[00:06:55] Charred skin and bone, blackened teeth and faces.
[00:07:00] Faces were just gone, melted like tallow.
[00:07:07] The reek of cooking flesh lingered for weeks, hung over the township like a funeral shroud.
[00:07:15] There were times when we thought it was gone and then the wind would kick up just right, bringing that smell back up from where it had soaked into the earth.
[00:07:22] Sometimes I couldn't be sure if the smell hadn't just become a part of all of us.
[00:07:27] Like when you sit too close to the campfire and the smoke is drawn into each pore, each follicle of hair.
[00:07:34] At least with the smell of wood smoke, it's something that you can get used to. But that smell.
[00:07:40] Sickly, putrid, but sweet. Roadkill. Panning over an open flame.
[00:07:50] I couldn't look at a piece of red meat for about two months without puking.
[00:07:58] They buried an empty coffin for Daddy.
[00:08:01] In some small ways, I think it was a blessing.
[00:08:04] I always hoped he'd been the closest to the blast. Dark as that sounds, at least he would have died fast.
[00:08:10] Flash a roar, and then nothing.
[00:08:15] Better than choking in the blackness or screaming agony through the end.
[00:08:22] And in a good world, in a righteous world, the next akin should have been taken care of by the company, but, well, it was the 1920s in deep Appalachia.
[00:08:33] We were a black family.
[00:08:36] You figure it out.
[00:08:40] They wouldn't take girls in the mine.
[00:08:44] Honestly, after seeing what that mountain did, what it was capable of, I was too scared to go anywhere near it. No amount of money would have been enough for me to take that chance. Besides, I had Mama to take care of.
[00:08:57] She went sort of cold after the funeral.
[00:09:02] Like she buried a piece of herself in that empty coffin. I tried not to be mad at her, but it wasn't fair.
[00:09:13] I lost him too, but I never got the chance to grieve. If I'd fallen apart, we would have fucking starved that first winter. I could not have the luxury of grief.
[00:09:24] Hunting became.
[00:09:28] Hunting became more than a way to fill our bellies. It made sure we were able to keep the damn shanty house in repair.
[00:09:36] Meat was dried and sold. Pelts were bartered. I nearly lost a fucking finger trying to craft from antlers and bone.
[00:09:44] Not that it fucking mattered in the end.
[00:09:47] You see, without a company contract we had no right to. Company property smug look on that solicitor's face as he walked away from us after delivering that news.
[00:09:58] I'd never felt fury like that before.
[00:10:02] I dreamed about leaping off the porch and tearing into him with my bare hands, shredding him like a panther might a rabbit.
[00:10:10] Wouldn't have done us any good, but I fucking will. Would have felt better.
[00:10:17] It might be something of a blessing that Mama passed before we would have been out on the street.
[00:10:23] Neighbors helped me bury her next to daddy, and there were offers to take me in, let me have a cot on somebody's floor. But my pride couldn't take it.
[00:10:33] The idea of staying in the town. It took everything from me. It graded.
[00:10:41] I just wanted to get out.
[00:10:43] So I did.
[00:10:46] Took what I could carry, took what little money I had saved, took my dumb stubbornness and hit my way out.
[00:10:53] No real plan to speak of because that would have required forethought. And as previously stated in our tale, I was and still am, a jumped up little shit to this day. Probably the worst idea I've ever had. And that's saying something.
[00:11:10] It was miserable.
[00:11:13] Half dozen winters, freezing my ass off and busting my hump in any number of truly humiliating od jobs.
[00:11:21] Got damn good at hunting and trapping, though.
[00:11:25] And in spite of my fear, I ended up finding shelter in those woods more often than not.
[00:11:31] Like I said, stupid.
[00:11:34] Stubborn.
[00:11:37] Too damn stubborn to die when it seemed like that was all the world wanted me to do.
[00:11:44] This day, I still wonder if that resistance, that refusal to accept the end, was what drew my sire to me at last.
[00:11:53] The woods were always watching, always listening. To an extent.
[00:11:57] Suppose he was too, waiting to see if I really would give up and lay down, or if I had enough fat to keep on swinging.
[00:12:06] Honestly couldn't tell you.
[00:12:09] Kind of funny, though. I was too stubborn to lay down and die, so that bastard decided to kill me.
[00:12:17] Shit.
[00:12:19] I think that's enough for one night. You're going to be sick of my damn voice by the time you come back.
[00:12:26] Just don't take too long, all right, puppy?
[00:12:34] I feel skinny for taking her muscle out of commission. You owe me a rematch in the ring, and besides, you barely scratched the surface of your unleave.
[00:12:45] There's more to see out here.
[00:12:49] Now get your ass up, boy.
[00:13:17] You don't belong here, said the stranger. To be fair, neither did he. At least that was my first impression. He had that rough, weather beaten skin that I was so used to seeing on some of the men who come up from the mines. He was so deeply tan that I could hardly tell his heritage, but he spoke a bit like me, drawlin with more of that easy roundness that you get out of Georgia or the Carolinas. He'd come out of nowhere.
[00:13:45] 1 minute I'd been settled in next to my little cook fire, the next he'd been onto other side of it, silent as a shadow. Almost shot him. To be honest, at this point it was my first summer, I think, out on my own.
[00:14:02] Standed the back roads and jumping in freight cars for travel and shelter as I worked my way along the edge of the mountains. I'd been lucky enough to keep out of trouble so far and fend for myself when this od quiet man appeared.
[00:14:16] It should have tipped me off from the jump, but he was still.
[00:14:21] Not just standing still like the kind do, but truly predator, naturally. Still to the point where I thought for a moment that I was in the midst of some kind of fever dream. He couldn't be real.
[00:14:34] He asked me what I was doing on my own, so far out from the civilized world.
[00:14:39] I responded with nothing so much as and what kind of fucking business is it of yours?
[00:14:46] I think it startled him.
[00:14:49] He didn't look particularly miffed about the rifle barrel aimed squarely at his chest, which likely should have been another hint, just a bit surprised that this woman alone in the woods with a strange man was so thoroughly unpleasant.
[00:15:04] There was a chuckle and a shake of his head before he assured me that he meant no harm. He went on looking at me for a spell until I got irritable and told him just what I thought of him creeping up out of nowhere in the middle of the night. I reminded him as I pulled the hammer back on Daddy's gun that one of us appeared to be armed at the moment, and while I was usually more charitable, I wasn't in the habit of trusting strangers out in the wild. Could you please fuck off?
[00:15:34] He smiled a little, and the firelight showed me teeth that were too sharp to be entirely human.
[00:15:42] At the time I thought it might have been a trick of the light, but by the time I'd put more than half a thought into it, he was gone.
[00:15:50] No rustling of the underbrush, no footfalls. Just gone.
[00:15:57] What I know now is that that man, the man who would become my sire, had already been watching me, would continue to watch me over the next handful of years. Just watching, never intervening, not really, at least not until it chose to.
[00:16:15] But I am getting ahead of myself. Where were we?
[00:16:20] Yes, of course, plucky dipshit skips town after personal tragedy and hardship. There are still times when I look back and think, what the fuck was wrong with you, calamity?
[00:16:35] Don't answer that.
[00:16:41] Hitchhiking out of Everettville likely would have been in my best interest to find my way to one of the metropolises metropoli.
[00:16:50] Fuck.
[00:16:52] I'd heard about Harlem in New York, heard about the way black folks thrived, building up something all of our own.
[00:17:00] Given my upbringing and present financial status, that mecca seemed like a pipe dream. Besides, what would I have been able to bring to a place like that? Pelts and bone flutes?
[00:17:14] There's too much coal dust on me. I would have stuck out like a sore thumb.
[00:17:21] So I stayed where I was. Relatively, at least.
[00:17:24] I dragged myself through most of West Virginia. The hunting skills I'd picked up over the years served me well enough to keep a roof over my head when I needed it. As I moved from township to township, made sure I could hold up in a roadhouse if I needed to. Black only, of course, it wouldn't do in that day and age for white folk to run the risk of sharing facilities with the lax of us.
[00:17:48] Depending on the size of the city and the black population, though, I could usually manage to find a place, some of them more reputable than others. But beggars certainly can't be choosers, and if there wasn't meat or pelts to be bartered, I was at least strong enough to handle manual labor. From time to time, you patch a hole in a roof in exchange for a hot meal, you put a fence back together and have yourself a room to sleep in and hot water to wash with.
[00:18:17] I ended up spending more time in the woods than I ever thought possible.
[00:18:25] In spite of all those warnings I'd gotten as a child, every strange thing I'd heard.
[00:18:31] Sometimes it proved to be safer than the townships, depending on the cultural makeup of the citizenry.
[00:18:39] Didn't help that a fair amount of the law had a proclivity for running around in wet sheets, if you get my meaning.
[00:18:47] That hasn't seemed to change much.
[00:18:52] That was just how it was.
[00:18:55] Had remained ever since the white folks decided the upward mobility of the colored masses was a danger to their continued american experiment.
[00:19:05] You were not shackled, but no sane person could have called that freedom, not when I had to be so damn careful about where I went and where I stayed and who took note of me in their town.
[00:19:20] Some folks would just ignore me, which was preferred, even if it made gathering provisions a bitch and a half.
[00:19:27] But there were even ods, as to whether or not the appearance of a strange black woman in the town general store would invoke a particular level of violence.
[00:19:38] For the most part, though, it was distrustful silence, slurs, and then that cold, contemptible tone that some of them were so very good at.
[00:19:54] What are you doing here, girl?
[00:19:57] No negroes at the storefront.
[00:20:00] Oh, my personal favorite. You better get before the sun goes down, you hear?
[00:20:08] You see, while Everettville had been segregated, it meant any pushback could be cushioned.
[00:20:15] We were an insular little community, the colored workers of federal number three. If the company store or the foreman gave us any grief, we were able to survive with the help of our own.
[00:20:27] We looked out for one another, picked up the slack when the men in charge were content to either antagonize us or ignore us altogether.
[00:20:36] But on my own, well, I was on my own, wasn't I?
[00:20:41] Nobody to cushion the blows from the disdain or the outright disgust that followed me as I traveled.
[00:20:48] Most people, they had no compunction about letting me know exactly why I didn't belong.
[00:20:57] And I shut it out best as I could, because what good would it do me to let that prejudice get under my skin? What was I going to do about it anyway?
[00:21:07] Sir? I'd always been strong enough physically, but I was still a woman alone in the world.
[00:21:15] Nah.
[00:21:17] I spent years biting my tongue, scrapping by, and choking on my pride. Bitter though it was, I kept my wits about me and my anger tucked away, and it kept me alive for another handful of years. I'd been lucky so far, but that luck did eventually run out.
[00:21:37] It had started getting colder. The sun would dip below the treeline earlier and earlier. I had to risk civilization in the winter or risk frostbite and gangrene in the woods.
[00:21:50] The town I ended up in was somewhere south of paradise. I don't even know if it exists anymore.
[00:21:57] Shoes had started to wear down.
[00:22:00] I needed a real bed and hot water, and the desperation made me sloppy.
[00:22:07] I didn't realize the place was a fucking sundown town until, well, nearly sundown.
[00:22:16] They let me wander into the company store and gather what I needed. And then they crowded on me through rough looking hillbillies, asking questions, making comments. Wanted to know who the fuck I thought. I was. Coming in here, into their town, buying up their supplies, when all I wanted to do was get out of there and be left alone. But they just kept dogging me.
[00:22:45] One of them is red faced bastard. He was built like a fucking cold cart. He made a grab for me and I hit him. Short swing, close fist to the jaw. They did not like that one bit.
[00:23:02] If you.
[00:23:05] If you really want to know what happened next, I'll tell you one day. But you're smart enough. I.
[00:23:11] I don't think I need to spell it out for you.
[00:23:15] All I'll say is that I'd been in fights before, but I had never felt anger like that before.
[00:23:25] It was like somebody had heated my blood and pushed it back through my body, molten and boiling and so insistent that they could see it, that hazy red at the edges of my vision even as they dragged me out to the edge of town. I screamed and I clawed and I bit one of them hard.
[00:23:47] Dug my teeth in until I tasted copper.
[00:23:53] That's a bit blurry. After that, ground was still damp, still a little frozen.
[00:24:03] There were bits of rock and dirt ground into the palms of my hands and blood in my eyes.
[00:24:11] They laughed all around me. And then one of them started screaming.
[00:24:17] The rest followed suit.
[00:24:21] In all my time working with animals and hunting and the like, I don't think I've ever seen so much blood.
[00:24:29] It coated everything warm and steaming in the air, almost black under the moonlight. It smelled like a slaughterhouse. Like dragging a wolf back to the shed and getting your fingers under its pelt to pry it away from the meat and the muscle of metallic little sweet.
[00:24:49] Most of what coated my tongue in the back of my throat was my own.
[00:24:55] I was unlucky enough to still be conscious of the pain that lit up my body, keeping me from blacking out entirely.
[00:25:05] Martin Shell was brutally efficient when it came to killing.
[00:25:11] He let those men see him. Let them see what he did to their compatriots as he tore into them.
[00:25:19] One of them, hamstrung, tried to crawl back to the main road. And Martin dug his claws and laying his back open like you would fill it. A trout.
[00:25:28] I watched him tear into that man's throat and drink deep.
[00:25:36] His prey looked right at me as he died, confusion and anger sparking behind those eyes. And eventually that spark was tamped out.
[00:25:46] I expected to be next.
[00:25:50] I mean, for all I knew, this is one of those beasts Mama told me about, warned me about.
[00:25:56] One of the things in the dark you need to run from. And in spite of the shape I was in, I tried.
[00:26:03] Dug into the dead leaves and dirt with my fingernails as I tried to drag myself away from the carnage in defiance of my own death.
[00:26:11] All pain and confusion, likely pathetic sight, to be sure.
[00:26:19] But Martin seemed to think my refusal to go quietly into that good night meant something I don't think I've ever seen a kind more determined to give death himself the finger. Before she goes, he said.
[00:26:38] Picked me up.
[00:26:40] He cradled me to him like a squalin babe and cleared the worst of the blood from my face and my hair.
[00:26:47] His eyes had that shine to him.
[00:26:51] Then you see a panther in the dark and the lantern light catches behind its pupils. He smiled again, and there was no mistake in the fangs in his mouth before he sunk them into my throat.
[00:27:06] God, it hurts feeling the life being pulled out of me with such brutal efficiency.
[00:27:16] I started fighting him again, almost on principle, until he slit his arm open and held the slow bleeding wound in my mouth.
[00:27:27] Nothing had ever tasted so sweet.
[00:27:33] And then I was reborn.
[00:27:37] Too defined to die and given unlife because of it.
[00:27:42] Martin Shell looked me in the eye as my body succumbed to the embrace and told me in no uncertain terms that, well, humans were not the only monsters out there.
[00:27:53] That there were things in the dark that would hate me double for what I was becoming. But he would help me fight back.
[00:28:02] When I came to again, the hunger was enough that it felt like it would tear me apart.
[00:28:09] And as it turned out, my sire had been kind enough to leave me one of my attackers.
[00:28:18] He dragged the whimper and mess to a feet and told me to feed.
[00:28:24] Feed, be satisfied.
[00:28:31] I did.
[00:28:34] I was.
[00:28:38] I felt no shame as that bigot's death sustained my first night of unlife. There is no room for shame when you're just trying to survive.
[00:28:51] I hope you understand that, pup.
[00:28:54] There's no shame in what you are. You're surviving like anything else on God's green earth. Like any other apex predator.
[00:29:05] It can take time, but you'll learn to make peace with it.
[00:29:30] These first few years are likely going to be the worst for you, sugar. I won't lie.
[00:29:36] You got all this power and all this hunger. And with your clan, that rage.
[00:29:43] It was something even I had to contend with.
[00:29:46] There's still that rational, calm part of you that knows you still need to keep your cool. You can't just fly off the handle at each trespass, no matter how grievous. No, you cannot simply drain people who annoy you, no matter how tempting.
[00:30:02] I think gangrels and Bruja are more alive than they care to admit.
[00:30:07] Either that, or my anger issues have colored things a bit.
[00:30:12] Probably both.
[00:30:15] I was.
[00:30:17] Well, to be frank, I was half feral for those first five years or so.
[00:30:22] Getting used to the heightened senses and the strength. How quickly my body seemed to burn through the blood I consumed like puberty, only deadlier.
[00:30:34] Martin and I had to be very careful about where we traveled and stayed at first. Kill. I think it branded itself into me.
[00:30:44] The slats that I'd experienced for a woman of my background had been vexing, but easier to shake off when I was human.
[00:30:52] Fuck, I had to shake it off.
[00:30:55] Mouth off to the wrong person, it's a beaten or worse. No, thank you.
[00:31:01] After my embrace, the fury would build with each sneer and slur.
[00:31:12] Martin intervened a time or two to make certain we didn't bring a whole mob of pitchforks and torches down on our heads, but sometimes the insults were too great to bear.
[00:31:24] I was kindred now, but that didn't mean a good goddamn to a particular subset of the kind I encountered. I was still just colored, negro, still subhuman.
[00:31:39] Now I was more than willing to return the sentiment.
[00:31:43] They were prey now.
[00:31:45] Food.
[00:31:49] One summer we holed up just outside of Shreveport.
[00:31:54] I had been irritable for a few days, let's call it that.
[00:32:01] Just heard about what had happened to that poor till boy in Mississippi.
[00:32:05] Spoiling for a fight. If I'm being completely honest with myself, I wasn't human anymore. I'd started to understand that. But that was pain and the fear, anger that began to see. After we all saw what those white men had done to that poor little boy, my humanity was still intact enough to bear that sorrow.
[00:32:32] For the most part, I managed to keep my head down and my mouth shut, but there was a tension.
[00:32:38] Even in this little backwater we'd set up in, folks knew something had shifted. There was a hanging dread in the air that summer, the threat of lightning, the palpable animosity that hummed, roiled, set your teeth on edge.
[00:32:59] I needed something to take that edge off, so I went looking for a pack of Marlboros at the singular shitty gas station right off the highway.
[00:33:08] I knew better.
[00:33:10] I just didn't care.
[00:33:15] There were two men behind the counter.
[00:33:17] First, they stared as if that enough would be alone to dissuade me. When that didn't work, they started to whistle at me, tried to get my attention, like you'd call somebody's fucking hound dog, until one of them got brave enough.
[00:33:32] He followed me outside under the ugly incandescent lighting out in the parking lot, calling me everything but a child of God, and I let the beast sunger take over.
[00:33:46] I relished in his blood, fed myself and my sorrow.
[00:33:52] The terror made the blood almost sour, but I did not care.
[00:33:57] Something about knowing these fuckers were going to their graves understanding true fear for a minute. Maybe they'd see the world through the eyes of those who'd been strung out. Black strange fruit all over the deep south.
[00:34:12] It was more than just feeding. I toyed with him.
[00:34:15] When he followed me out, I left just enough of his vocal cords that he could scream for his buddy, let the other one watch when I tore into his friend's throat and drained him slow as he tried to crawl away.
[00:34:29] So strong there was no way he could break my grip. But I shattered his shoulder when he tried anyway.
[00:34:36] Another one ran into the woods. Ran. I don't think he knew where he was going, just trying to get away from me. And I followed.
[00:34:44] I hunted, tracked his scent and the sound of his breathing, the rhythm of his pulse that ran fast as a scared rabbit. I stalked him like any good predator until I ran him down, came out of the dark and threw him off his feet into the dirt before I was on him.
[00:35:06] Blood tasted like nicotine and cheap beer.
[00:35:09] Horror. Sharp and bright.
[00:35:13] Scotch bonnet. Peppers and vinegar.
[00:35:16] It was good.
[00:35:18] Some kind of relief, a release after so much time. Being forced to duck my head and avert my eyes to make myself smaller so I didn't get a target on my back. And now, being so strong, so mighty, I could lash out.
[00:35:38] I could hurt the people who wanted to hurt me just because of the color of my skin. Because now I was the one with the strength.
[00:35:47] I gorged myself, rode the frenzy with a bloodthirsty kind of glee until I was flush with color, warm again.
[00:36:00] It was a beautiful rush.
[00:36:06] Of course, any high like that is balanced with a rather vicious comedown. Martin was livid.
[00:36:14] This is before the dangerous cell phones, before the threat that someone might get a photo or a video clip. Before we had to worry about YouTube. But the mess I made was viscera sprayed over the asphalt like spilt paint.
[00:36:30] Wasn't exactly something that could be explained away. The marks had left on the bodies, way I'd torn into both of them.
[00:36:41] Town, that small town where they were unlikely to trust strangers to begin with meant that they would have no problem pointing fingers at the likes of us.
[00:36:50] And to pack up and drive weather for hell that night. Hope we could find a place to bed down for sunrise.
[00:36:59] I can't say I felt bad for what I did.
[00:37:03] That was the night I learned what kind of consequences could follow in that particular kind of violence.
[00:37:10] We had to lay low for nearly a month.
[00:37:13] Only small mercy came from me. Leaving none alive was the fact that there was no one left to give a description to the police.
[00:37:23] Martin kept me from losing my way, though at least once he stopped being cross at me.
[00:37:30] Gangrel, we tend to have more of a kinship with our beasts than some kindred, he said. He didn't want me to think about caging it so much as letting it walk by my side, trusting it, and trusting myself enough to know when to hold fast, when to let the chain go.
[00:37:48] Developing that level of discernment was a process got easier little by little, but it took time.
[00:37:58] As I said, though, my fuse was incredibly short for that learning period.
[00:38:04] At the very least, it lent well to the rest of my training.
[00:38:07] Martin wouldn't be a smart ass when he told me that the humans weren't the worst of what was out there. As I was learning what it meant to be kindred, what it meant to be gangrel, my sire pulled from my other knowledge my skills as a hunter, as a tracker, applied it to a whole new quarry, the Lupines.
[00:38:27] First and foremost. It was drilled into my head just how dangerous they are to kindred.
[00:38:32] Martin had been hunting them for more than a century. At that point, even he knew to be cautious. They hate us, you see.
[00:38:40] As undead as the fronts to the natural order of things, we are their sworn enemy to be struck down.
[00:38:47] Even the most kindred are rather fond of their continued existence. That wasn't really something we could abide. Lupines are tough, though you pup have unfortunately learned about it the hard way.
[00:39:02] Compared to the lacks of us, Garou prefer to stay out in the wilds, rural funnily enough, their existence out in Appalachia is where many of our warnings and stories came from.
[00:39:14] Sometimes, however, they would get it in their heads to encroach and try to clear a territory.
[00:39:20] Their numbers swelled. If they decided that the presence of the kindred in the next town was too much of an insult to be born, they would try and push oust someone out of their domain by sheer force.
[00:39:32] Martin, trained by his own sire, knew how to push back, and as I grew confident in my power, settling into what it meant, I followed in his stead.
[00:39:45] I didn't realize how well known he was until we were presented at my first elysium.
[00:39:51] He was greeted like some dignitary, a visiting war chief tasked with defending the realm.
[00:39:58] Struck me the most, though, was that no one dared demand fealty, Prince or Baron.
[00:40:04] The understanding came to be that Martin Shell and his protege were free agents. We were glad to assist when called.
[00:40:11] It would help keep the garru threat from overtaking a city. And in return, we were not to be roped into servitude. No one, not the cam, not the anarchs, would demand we bend a knee. Not if they wanted our damn help.
[00:40:26] And that was just the way of things. For decades, you were a team, me and Martin. A balance where I could be brash and reckless. He was usually level headed.
[00:40:42] He had no patience for court politics. I stepped in to smooth things over.
[00:40:46] Mostly.
[00:40:48] Sometimes I might still be Persona Nangrata in Albuquerque.
[00:40:56] Orc took us all over, though. East, west, everywhere in between.
[00:41:01] We let the lupines know they couldn't just step in and take what they wanted.
[00:41:06] There would be a fight, and it would be a nasty one. We could make the cost of war untenable if we needed to.
[00:41:14] As the years crawled on, weapons and transportation shifted and changed. Well, it was downright thrilling.
[00:41:25] Has been the strangest part of immortality for me. Watching everything around me shift as decades passed.
[00:41:34] Clothing, cars, music, technology, seeing open land give way to concrete and steel.
[00:41:44] Still a bit of a mixed opinion about how all that is developed.
[00:41:49] Martin hated it.
[00:41:51] He watched the cities get bigger and taller, and he bitched about it. Something constant. I tried to tell him. At least it made the garou unhappy too. They had fewer places to hide as the kind spread out. Given it is just important for them to stay hidden as it is for us.
[00:42:05] Our numbers were greater. We had more resources. Even if the lupines had the advantage of being able to move about during the day, Martin still lamented the lack of agree.
[00:42:16] Never hated it enough to truly give up, though. This was his purpose. Our purpose.
[00:42:23] As far as either of us knew, this would be our lot in life. Traveling, hunting, until Gehenna come.
[00:42:32] What I conveniently forgot is the fact that we are immortal, not invincible.
[00:42:40] At that point, Martin felt he could trust me to keep a good head on my shoulders.
[00:42:46] He was finishing up in Savannah. I was told to head on up to Baltimore to begin to barter terms with the prince and make sure we were ready to go when he made it.
[00:42:56] Um, we had a timeframe that we'd agreed upon.
[00:43:03] One of us didn't make it to the next city within that time frame. The other was supposed to keep going, move on.
[00:43:14] I waited four days, longer than I should have.
[00:43:19] There were plenty of people who thought he might have gotten plucked off of the highway by a roving garu. But now the man who taught me to fight like this wouldn't have gone down to some welp in the woods, just like that I had to pick up the pieces again.
[00:43:40] Once again, I did not have the luxury of grief.
[00:43:45] Grief like that is a liability. But damned if it can't be a motivator, either because of it or in spite of it. My time in Baltimore left an impression.
[00:43:56] I was ruthless, unflinching in the face of the garou threat that was trying to muscle in over the Pennsylvania border. Prince Goldwyn was delighted with my efficacy.
[00:44:08] Think I let myself be swept up in the shine of the camarilla for a bit.
[00:44:13] Closest I'd ever come to planting my flag somewhere.
[00:44:17] Promises were made, favors offered.
[00:44:22] It was tempting.
[00:44:25] I couldn't do it.
[00:44:29] Couldn't make peace with the fact that I'd just be confined to that city.
[00:44:34] Besides, Martin had a legacy. Why would I let that die?
[00:44:38] Why would I give up the freedom I had become accustomed to over the decades?
[00:44:45] I think that was just after the Gareth war in Chicago.
[00:44:49] I hadn't been so embroiled with the goings on in Maryland. That would have been one hell of a fight to be a part of. No, I just carried on Martin's name. Opened doors. But he taught me well.
[00:45:03] Soon enough, I was more than just Martin. Shell's childhood made me feel powerful, knowing that my name was floating around these high, hallowed, this backwards, nobody with cold dust in her veins making a legacy of her very own.
[00:45:24] Now here we are.
[00:45:30] Od. Being on this side of Dorper, I was a neonate.
[00:45:36] I ended up right where you are.
[00:45:40] Garou nearly ripped me open before Martin pulled me out of harm's way.
[00:45:45] Told me I lost about a month. But you're still young enough.
[00:45:50] Might not be more than a week or two for you.
[00:45:54] I heard a voice when I was under.
[00:46:01] It was Martin.
[00:46:04] At least I'm pretty sure it was Martin.
[00:46:08] Talked to me, read to me.
[00:46:12] Made the whole thing less daunting.
[00:46:16] Isolating.
[00:46:19] Either way, the very least I can offer you the same courtesy, pup, since I got you here.
[00:46:26] Besides, it's kind of nice to have a captive audience. Ain't like you're going nowhere.
[00:46:31] Wake up will likely be unpleasant. You're going to be hangry. Hangry? Is that what they call it?
[00:46:40] Promise I won't let you eat nobody.
[00:46:43] You'll be all right, puppy.
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