city_limits Truth Will Out
Katherine needed a wake-up call. It was dusk and the vampiress was still yawning, which meant an early evening bout of something nasty would probably do the trick. Feeling too lazy to get in the mood for anything too energetic, the vampiress found herself in need of something easy to preoccupy the coming stretch of night. Some girls collected shoes; she collected... Well, yes, guns, but also a lot of other things and, really, what was the point of having a box of surgical gloves sitting around and collecting dust?

The first couple of haunts she visited had nothing of interest. The third, however, did. A lone female with one of those throats which looked like it could scream out louder than a banshee in heat. Good. A couple of hours' worth of entertainment, at least.

Approaching, Katherine adopted her usual nonchelant manner, making an arrogant sniff, as she made sure to slip in beside already-chosen prey and order a beverage. Glancing over in such a way as to suggest only just having seen the other female, the secretly fanged brunette looked her way with a casual smile.

"Don't recall you coming here, before... New?"

The rejected Kathleen had moved on to another bar after her failed encounter at the speakeasy. It had been a very embarrassing night. She had tried to pick some random stranger for a night of carnal pleasure and failed. She had this terrible need to release. It was something about this city, something about the energy which brought her this urge.

Chicago was where she lost her virginity to an graduate student from Brazil. It had been the most liberating experience. Years of suppression. She had gone her entire undergraduate years without experiencing what fellow classmates experienced. because she was afraid of the consequences. Maybe she was more afraid that she would settle down with someone and stay trapped in Idaho or Montana for the rest of her life.

Medical school was her ticket out. She learned to live her own life when she moved to Chicago, back then. Kathleen wanted that feeling back, the excitement of experimentation and not having to worry about the consequences.

Kathleen would leave that for another night. She was here to pass the time and enjoy the light company which was encountered. If she had gone straight back to her room after the speakeasy, she would have been miserably alone.

She had not noticed the brunette who had slipped beside her, at first.

"Yeah, I've never been in here before. I've passed by it, a number of times, but never entered, until tonight," she replied and turned to look at the woman. "I kind of like it. It's sort of relaxing here. What about you?"

"Oh, just looking for someone good to eat."

Even Katherine, however, mentally balked at that sudden declaration of intent. It was not what she had planned to say, but on second thoughts, hey, why not? If the woman was that way inclined, this would be even easier. Still, if she was not, then it would be a lot more difficult, which was why Katherine had not intended on making a verbal pass, quite yet. She could smell this one was sexually frustrated, but one thing did not always equate to the other. With that in mind, she decided to try and roll with it, covering mouth with hand to make a small clearing of throat.

Hopefully, this was not a sign of going senile in her vampiric old age.

"It's a little different to the places I used to visit," added the vampiress, going for a change of subject, just in case. "Back when I used to go ballroom dancing and I don't think they even had jazz back theeeeennnnn..."

OK, what the hell was up with that?! The revelation dove-tailed into a sort of partially slurred conclusion, as Katherine realised she was being a lot more literal with the truth than even sarcasm might excuse. Slightly worried at this turn of events, she frowned, looking down at hands, as if the answer would suddenly be revealed there, then gave the other woman a friendly smile.

"What I mean to say is, I wasn't really brought up on heavy metal or anything like that. That came a lot later."

Well, fuck... Because now she was just sounding like a total idiot. Maybe, decided Katherine, she should have just stayed in bed.

Kathleen had been maintaining her semi-intoxicated state which bordered on total intoxication since she left Oliver. The drink she nursed here was not all that strong, but after what she thought she had heard out of the brunette's mouth. Her natural instincts were on alert.

She stared at the brunette's face, as her heart rate slowly increased. She noted the pale complexion. "You're scaring me," she blurted without censoring. "I thought you said you were looking for someone to eat."

It sounded absolutely ridiculous, what she had verbalised out loud. It instantly relaxed her paranoia and made her laugh. "It's silly, I know. I must be hearing things. Sorry." She shook her head. "I've already made a fool of myself once, tonight."

"No, you're right. I wanna' take you out back, molest you for sexual gratification and tie you up on my bed, where I can perform a live autopsy and what the fuck...?!"

The entire train of announced thought came to a wreck of a halt; Katherine bringing one hand up to throat, as if to prevent herself from vomitting up any further honesty. "Look, I... This isn't..." But the excuses sounded as feeble as they were. "I'm not usually like this," she began, before being immediately seized by the need to blurt out a confessional, "Because I can usually hold it together for long enough to get the abduction phase done and - will I shut the hell up?!"

Few things genuinely unnerved Katherine Williams, but this was one of them. She liked, even needed, to be in control - and this was most definitely not being in control. If she was unable to say even the smallest lie, how was she going to carry on with her dishonest unlifestyle? Things would become intolerable! She might even have to... Get out of the assassination business. Shock, horror.

"Lady, I-I-I can explain," she stated, before the erstwhile victim scarpered. "It's just a matter of me wanting to rape, torture and leave you for dead. I do it all the time!"

That was when Katherine could take no more and she practically launched out of her seat at the counter, with a severely annoyed, "Oh, for fuck's sake!" Hands flinging themselves in the air, before she looked at the ceiling and accusing the heavens with a steely-eyed glare. "What?! You guys up in Rainbow Sprinkles Valley are fine with my body count, but all of a sudden, one more's enough to curse me?!"

Kathleen slowly slipped off her stool and back on her feet. Her eyes locked on the woman who was mere inches from her. Her heart rate increased and her eyes widen as the woman continued to her tell the horrific plan. Oh, God, she thought, but not dare speak for fear of invoking the woman to strike out.

She had encountered the criminally insane before, during her time as an ER resident, in Washington DC. He was someone the Secret Service had brought in, after the criminal had been shot in the leg. He had killed his wife and children, only hours before. The entire time he was conscious, he ranted on about taking down some alien overlord who possessed the President and aliens killing his family.

This time, she could sense the evil.

While the other woman was preoccupied with speaking up to the ceiling, Kathleen stepped back to get away, only to trip on the leg of the stool and fall to the floor. She landed on her ass with a thud. Her legs still moved to push her away with the assistance of her hands, as they grabbed at anything for support.

"Oh my God," she whimpered. "Don't let her kill me."

"But I want-"

The partially-voiced phrase had been accompanied with the shifting of bone and muscle, just a moment before, to form a regal demonic crest and fangs. But no sooner had she stood up to press her predatory demands, than Katherine found herself suddenly paralysed, dropping the floor and helplessly twitching on the same. Perhaps the famed killer really had been struck down by some supernatural deity, for having indulged in such a bloody streak of wickedness through history. That must have been how it felt to the creature, who now seemed quite unable to control her own body functions.

"Damned vampires! Always scarin' my customers away..."

That, however, came from behind the bar. Twin lengths of metal coil could be seen stretching out from something which had been aimed squarely at the brunette and, apparently, had hit home. In this age of sometimes-unwelcome supernatural visitors, it could pay to not only have a shotgun handy, but taser, too.

"Don't you mind none, Missy," spoke the gruff bar owner, waving over a couple of assistants to help him deal with the juddering corpse at feet. "We'll deal with this."

Still in the midst of enduring her own personal sheet lightning enema, Katherine would have cursed out a threat to deal with the girl, later. Of course, had she even the capability to do that much, it would have been accompanied by the qualification of knowing fully well how very unlikely that would be, by the time she managed to actually recover. As things were, she was still very much on the cusp of blacking out and heaven knew what state her underwear was in, after teh impact of several hundred thousand volts of electricity.

It was almost enough to make her wish she was more dead than undead.

Kathleen watched as the woman's faced changed to the demonic mask of a vampire. She screamed and pushed back again the floor with her feet, trying to get back upright. She saw as the monster fell to the floor. "Vampire, vampire," she said between breaths, until the bar owner informed her that the situation was under control. She continued to kick away on the floor from the demon-possessed corpse.

Her hand found another, which belonged to one of the patrons. He assisted her back onto her feet, again. Her grip on his arm was now tight and she stood behind him for protection. Her gaze fell on to the struggling corpse on the floor. How else was she supposed to describe an undead body?

Her lower lip trembled as she looked down on the undead creature. "I'm a doctor. I should see if she's... OK?" She shook her head. "Oh my God, she's the real thing," she swallowed.

Kathleen looked at the bar owner who now maneuvered around the bar with the taser in hand. "Now what?" She asked.

"What d'you think?" He sarcastically replied, frowning. The answer seemed obvious and he moved back behind the bar to retrieve a long stake, fashioned out of an old, sharpened chair leg. "I ain't havin' somethin' like that comin' back here, again..."

But, raising it above head, the would-be plunge into ribs was halted by the hand of another clamping onto wrist. Someone of the same yellow-hued gaze and facial crest of the fallen vampiress. "That mean I'd be next in line?" The creature asked, fanged smile now pronounced. If these were humans, it might have been seen as an almost racial form of solidarity, but with vampires being the territorial creatures they were? This seemed far more like an excuse to simply initiate a fight.

A fight which came with the first swing of a punch into human body.

He was absolutely right, the vampire should be destroyed. She knew that, it had been explained to her in the introduction to her first sub-terrestrial course at Fort Detrick. Wood to the heart apparently disrupted the flow of blood, which seeemed to caused a chain reaction, resulting in instant dust, as it had been explained to her.

"Yes, dust the bitch." She felt much braver now. Nothing in the Hippocratic oath said she had to preserve unlife. She had seen the end results of these creatures caused by feeding on the innocent, when their near-lifeless bodies arrived at the hospital.

She looked down again at the vampire on the floor, from behind one of her protectors. There was no pity for the monster. She would watch it turn to dust.

The man who she stood behind made a sudden move to cause her to look and see the second undead with an ugly face strike the bar owner. "Nooo!" She screamed. This was turning into a nightmare.

The tussle was as destructive as one might expect, from a being with supernatural strength and appetite. It practically needed the disadvantage in numbers, just to even up the odds and, even then, there were at least two incidents of what had to be the sound of broken bones. It ended in the creature's inevitable restraining and transformation to dust - but not before a vicious bite of fangs into ankle, from Katherine's prone position on the floor, brought with it a yell of anguish from the second vampire's destroyer.

"Get her off! Get her off! Get her off!"

But with the initial effects of electrocution now over with, Katherine put that reasserted strength to good use, forcing the man onto knees with a deliberately weakening hit to the back of knees and closing of fangs to neck. The crowd had already gone wild with surprise and now things were erupting into chaos. Now, most definitely, would be a very good time to escape...

The frightened physician let go of him, the moment he yelled in pain and backed off. Even as he begged for assistance, she could not sum up enough courage.

"I can't , I'm too scared," she softly admitted, as if not wanting to draw attention to herself. Kathleen jumped back, as she saw him brought down to his knees and the vampire bite his neck. It had been so violent that the arterial spray from the man's neck splattered across her face.

Kathleen had to escape if she wanted to live. She caught a glimpse of the bar owner's soon-to-be-lifeless body and did not see the second vampire. Where could he be? No time to search him out, she had to run and she did so, towards the front door. Someone else yelled their last breath, but she did not dare look back.

Out into the night, she ran for her life.