Alyce falls to her hands and knees on the floor where the vampire had thrown her, one hand automatically going to her throat as she tries to get her breath. Her body has rarely felt so abused and she has to shake her head to get her bearings. One of the really neat things about a good ultrasound sensor package is that it gives a very accurate picture of what is in the area and Alyce has a very, very good one implanted in her and it gives her a better picture of what is going on than if she had eyes to see it all with. Al had worked his own kind of magic and had cleverly arranged to anger the vampire enough to throw him across the room. Alyce would have to remember to congratulate Al later on his fine acting ability to pretend to be hurt. As it is, the woman is now several feet from either of her opponents and her attention is on Al. Not on Alyce. Not on where Alyce's severed finger is.
The vampire is screaming at Al so much that Alyce does not even really need to be sneaky, although she does try to not draw the vampire's attention to her. Finger in hand, she sends a wireless command to the whip inside it, praying that the whip itself is unharmed and still responds to her wireless commands. She is quite glad to feel the whip unspool and pool on the floor at her feet. The vampire remains unaware of Alyce until the Keeb screams out loud enough to be heard. "Keep your fragging hands off of my man, bitch!" She takes the finger in both hands and swings the whip from behind her, putting every bit of her skill into the strike, knowing that this may be the only one she will get.
The vampiress takes a step towards Al and is momentarily surprised when she loses her balance and crumbles to the floor, leaving the foot and lower right leg behind. As the vampire falls, Alyce picks up the broken table leg from where the woman had dropped it after ripping it from Al's hands and tosses it to him.
#85
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Touch Sideiron. Out on the North Sea taking bounty on paras. '56 or '57. Touch had sailed with them, what was it? Three, four runs? Good man, knew the right weapon for the right critter. He'd talked a lot about his time with some vampire hunters working the Southwest deserts. Ute and Pueblo lands, mostly. Always been on about how dangerous they were, how tricky. So Al had been a bit disappointed at what a bunch of pussies most they'd encountered today had been. To be fair, his own powers were admittedly prodigious, so perhaps he ought to judge them on a sliding scale or something.
But Touch had been a pro, always known what he was talking about. Consequently, Al had assumed as they'd progressed deeper into the coven's sanctum that the worst was yet to come.
So when he caught the table leg and sprang to put it through the one-legged she vamp...and found only air, he was surprised but not shocked. Leaving her foot behind, she had somehow launched herself up to the ceiling, and there she was flat against the stone masonry up there, out of his direct reach. She smiled down at him coldly, putting on a brave face, but Al knew she was having a harder time than she let on - he could literally see her elevated pulse rate as blood gouted from her stump with every beat of her black heart.
Alyce's whip had a hell of a lot longer reach than Al's little wooden stick, but even as she swung it the vampire skittered along the ceiling at a speed bordering on teleportation, ending up in a tight corner where the weight-tipped monofilament line would have no space to swing properly. And even as she did so, she flung a hand at Al, throwing an invisible freight train into his chest. It sent him flat on his back - again. He popped back up, and by the time he did the spurts of blood from her stump had stopped.
She thrust her hand in Alyce's direction and knocked her flat. Al charged, aiming to take a step on a chair to launch himself ceilingward. This time he was ready for the monster's sorcery - she flung her hand and he spun. It looked like the blast had spun him around, but instead had slipped its force just as he might a punch. Still, he cried out and dropped to the floor. She was on him faster than he expected, but that just meant he had to be a little quicker. Rolling over, he thrust up and impaled her pouncing form as it impacted him. She knocked the wind out of him even as he punctured her immortal aorta.
"Rope-a-dope, bitch."
Trying to catch his breath, he was pushing out from under her when when she sucked in a huge inhalation like a free-diver emerging from a deep plunge and clamped her doomed hands around his throat with a strength born of fury - the fury of someone that has just been consigned to an eternity of hellfire and knows it. Al switched to internal air, but oxygen was academic - she'd clamped off all the blood to his brain and was working on literally squeezing his head off of his shoulders....
#83
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Alyce had been flung to the far side of the room from whatever the vampiress had cast at her, leaving her crumpled against the wall, sucking in great breaths as she tried to get her balance. Internal alarms were going off all over her body and the physician in her knew that she was hurt badly, probably very badly. Her leg, still weak, had never fully recovered from what the bitch from Below had done to her and she can tell that the treatment she had just received had made it worse. From her position on the floor, Alyce's sensors let her know exactly what is going on. She "sees" Al make his leap from the chair to get to her, only to be knocked from the air like some pesky gnat. Then Al's true genius showed again as the woman gave up her precious place of safety and leapt down on him. The arrogant bitch actually thought she had Al Guthry at her mercy. There are many, many reasons why Alyce loves Al, and one of them is the crafty way he seems to get the bad guys to do exactly what he wants them to do.
Alyce is a bit surprised that the monster does not die immediately, but realizes that she must be tougher than the run of the mill vampires they had killed so far. Even badly injured, this one was still fighting. And, still, Al was playing her, getting her to do just as he wanted. But that meant that Alyce needed to do what he needed her to do and she uses the wall to push herself to a standing position and limps forward the few feet to where the vampire has her hands on Al's neck. So far, she had managed to take the loss of a leg and a wooden spear to the chest and still remain in the fight, but Al's genius had placed her within Alyce's reach again. The creature was like a wounded bear, so fragging focused on killing Al that she did not even hear Alyce walk up next to her. In fact the first sense of danger came only when she felt the monofilament wire tickle her neck. Alyce began tightening the noose she had looped around the vampire's throat, croaking her words out between pants. "I thought I told you to keep your fucking hands off the man I love."
At this point, at least in Alyce's mind, it should have been all over. A quick pull and "Wham!" no more vampire. Sure, in a normal world, that would be exactly what happened, even in most abnormal worlds but this is a very abnormal world and the vampire did not simply die and go away. She moved with an incredible speed and strength, removing one of the hands from Al's throat and reaching back to grab Alyce's arm, twisting with all of her inhuman fury and strength. Alyce screams as the bone snaps, feeling it puncture the skin of her arm. Reflexively, the vampire tosses Alyce aside as she begins to scream, her voice full of invective. "I will take you both to hell wi................"
When Alyce has time to think of it later, she can laugh at the full irony of the situation. With her arm shattered and bleeding, she was no longer in any condition to pull the whip taut, but one hand is locked about the severed finger that holds one end of her deadly whip and the other still grips the weighted fingertip that acts as the counterweight. The force of the Vampire's throw sends Alyce along the floor, crashing into the remains of the table, her broken arm slamming something hard and unyielding enough to send a severe thrust of pain through her entire body. The ironic side effect is that the action forces the whip edge through the neck of the monstrous woman, popping her head from her shoulders and cutting her diatribe short. Alyce laughs out loud as the vampire's head bounces across the floor before landing with it's now now-sightless eyes facing the open doorway to the next room. In this moment, not even Alyce's ultrasound sensor could show her the expression of surprise on the head of their foe, but Alyce does not need to see that. She lays back on the floor, still half laughing and half screaming in pain. "Frag, I guess we showed her, didn't we?"
The moment of triumph is short lived, though, as both she and Al hear a might roar of anger and frustration come from the other room and her sensors let her know that Bressington is now standing in the doorway to the cell. The sight of the head of the woman looking up at him from the floor sends him into a rage. Of course, this might have been perfectly timed if Alyce and Al had been ready for it, but, sadly, they are not. Al is still groaning and trying to breath again and Alyce is nearly unconscious from pain and losing blood. The vampire lord focuses on the woman who has just killed his lover and stretches out a hand, sending a blast of some sort of energy into the already injured Alyce, causing her body to arc and writhe as she screams in pain. Al reflexively looks in her direction and his eye is caught by the sight of what has to be true evidence that the pair's Voodoo gods have not completely abandoned them. Just six inches from his right arm is the shotgun he had brought down and that had been put on the now shattered table with everything else that had been taken from them.
#86
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Still beneath the vampire queen’s headless corpse, his face and neck bathed in the arterial flow from her severed neck, Al’s hand darted to the right to snatch up the Remington 990 shotgun. Breathing out mantras to the distant voodoo gods that served him, he line up on Bressington’s outstretched hand. The digital readout behind the rear sight read 03. He fired true and the capsule of wood pulp broke on the ubervamp’s wrist, tearing off his hand and breaking the stream of mana streaming into Alyce’s screaming form.
Al had thought the room full of wooden implements and furnishings had represented the pinnacle of overweening arrogance, but leaving your prisoners within a few yards of their loaded weapons? But if she-vamp was the opening act, there was every possibility Bressington was just badass enough to get away with that sort of overconfidence.
Eager to prove he wasn’t, Al kept firing, sending two more into Bressington’s face as he turned toward the new threat. The capsules tore away his right eye and surrounding bits of skull and then his lower left jaw, horribly disfiguring him. Al knew that left the shotgun empty, but the vampire didn’t, remaining eye glowing with outrage as he retreated into immateriality, his body breaking up into mist form.
It was tempting to let him go - a compound fracture was only the most obvious of Alyce’s injuries, and they needed to find Dreamy - but who knew how fast super-sucker could reform, able to ambush them at will. “Not so fast there, Count.” Al’s left hand held his jury-rigged handivac. He thumbed the power on and lunged while Bressington was half-corporeal, limbs barely visible but torso still only misty at the edges. The vampire screamed in agony and indignity as the ghost of his left leg was caught in the suction of a common household cleaning device. He immediately re-assumed his fleshly form, remanifested foot shattering the handivac apart, its weight pushing Al back down to the floor. No matter - the gadget had done its job.
Only now Al had the handle of the destroyed handivac in one hand and an empty shotgun in the other as the vampire bore down on him. And half a face or not, he came fast, last fang bared. Al met the charge with the butt of his weapon. The impact broke the remaining half of Bressington’s jaw, transforming his visage from mere freakishness to macabre grotesquery. It also shattered his firearm despite the custom melee hardening Al had spent so much time on. The vampire staggered back. Al, still on the floor, tangled his feet in those of the monster, toppling it to the floor. Wresting the stake from the sternum of the she-vamp, Al rolled and stabbed downward, only to have his wrists caught in Bressington’s remaining vise-like hand, the point of the shattered table leg inches from his chest. They grappled like that for a few seconds, during which time Al managed to scramble up off his back to a kneeling position, giving him leverage on the vampire. But even able to use his body weight, he was unable to overpower the vampire.
Face to face, Al bearing down on the stake, its point touching the vampire’s shirt, Bressington met the unshaven adventurer’s eyes. And everything swam.
Al knew what was happening. He knew it was sorcery. But for all that he still wanted to let go of the stake. Wanted to get up and turn it on Alyce instead. He tried to focus on the part of his mind that knew it was all a spell. But the part that wanted to just do as the Great and Immortal Lord Bressington bade was getting bigger. He knew She would be absolutely miffed if he let his friends down. No help. He imagined the fiend had been strengthened by a recent meal, how he hadn’t been able to save Dreamy and now the abomination was using Dreamy’s own essence to overpower him. But still he couldn’t shake the idea that the best possible thing to do was to submit to the Immortal Lord’s divine will.
There was nothing for it. He stood, the stake held in one hand hanging at his side. Time to kill Alyce. Below him, the vampire without a face made a sound that was probably a chuckle.
Al turned.
He saw Alyce.
He saw her. Not an idea planted abstractly in his mind. Her. Crumpled. Bleeding. Barely conscious. The spell in his mind told him that once she was dead, all the never-stopping pain of never being able to have her would finally cease.
Then she opened her eyes. Met his. And, just like Alyce, she smiled.
Al turned and plunged the stake straight through the vampire’s heart.
#84
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The creature that had once been Lord Bressington screamed with an agony that only the deathless finally confronted with true death can feel and the cry of despair echoed in the room long after the vampire had uttered it. Alyce regains her feet, using her sensors to detect even the slightest hint that the vampire is only acting, holding her whip at the ready in her one good hand. Her own agony at the injury to her leg as well as the compound fracture of her left arm is almost more than she can bear but there is still Dream to find, as well as that thrice damned mirror.
As she walks, she has to almost drag her nearly non-functioning leg, but drag it she does almost in some macabre imitation of a late night horror trivid. She tries to cradle her left arm to her chest, to protect it just in case she falls. Al rolls over off of the vampire's body as Alyce hobbles up and she smiles down at him. She does not want to go to the floor but she is able to bend over enough to wrap the whip a couple of times around Bressington's head. As she straightens up, she mutters, "Just in case." and pulls the finger upwards, cutting completely through the vampire's neck and causing his misshapen head to roll a short distance away. Laughing a bit, she glances back at Al. "I never doubted you, Al. You played these......things.....like a master musician. They were always one step behind you. I would kiss you right now if I could bend over far enough to do so, but I am afraid that if I go to the floor, I may not be able to get back up right away. Of course, in my current condition, I am not really the sort of girl any self respecting boy would want to kiss, anyway."
A massive jab of pain mars her features and almost makes her leg crumble. She wobbles a bit and cries out softly as she moves a couple of feet away so that he does not have to see her agony. Sucking in her breath, she manages to control her spasms and turns back to Al. "Now that we have dealt with this pansy-boy, I think we should go look for Dream and that mirror. Hey, give a yell if you see anything that looks like a cane or a walking stick around here. That bitch did something to my leg and it doesn't want to obey. She fragged my arm too, but that is a bit more obvious, I expect. I am bloody sore and could use a vacation from this sort of drek."
As she limps to the door, she wiggles the finger in her hand. "Al? Mind the whip I am trailing from the finger those rat bastards cut off my hand. It is still bloody sharp and I don't need to cut you by accident."
#87
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