Tales around the campfire

[nick_garou]

Nick told the following story to Val, Salem, and Mouse while they were camping out overnight near Mount Saint Helen's after doing some poking around in the spirit world.

 

This happened--god--probably about fifteen or twenty years ago? Back when gothic stuff was in. And in San Francisco. I'd heard rumor of it when I was in my late teens and ran with a certain crowd, but I got more details a couple years ago when I was actually there and talked with another mage--who confirmed it'd actually transpired. It involves a mage, who I'll call Andrea. The story starts in an abandoned church that served as a haven to a coven of mages, where they were preparing to host a Halloween ball for themselves and their goth friends. A few friends had arrived early to help set things up in advance of the party, and a vampire had managed to sneak in. It attacked and bit a girl in the bathroom, but a mage walked in on them, caught the vampire in the act, turned it into a rat, and then staked it though the heart with a pencil. The mages gathered round the staked rat and discussed what they ought to do. And that is essentially the starting point for this story.

Because this group of mages frequently hosted nightclub-like events a number of their friends, allies, and acquaintances attended, they thought it might be best to come out and announce their presence to the local vampires and see if they could come to some kind of truce: The vampires stay out of the mages' parties and the mages don't turn offending vampires into rat-kabobs. The coven already knew where the vampires hung out, and where the vampire leader ruled from, so they decided to nominate an emmissary. Andrea was selected to represent the mages' interests.

 

Andrea drove out and successfully brokered a deal with the vampires. I'll just skip over that, as it's not particularly important. What is important is that she was invited to spend the night at the vampires' ball that night, met a wealthy vampire--let's call him Edward--who'd been turned for only about half a year. Edward had two still-alive and quite young children, who we'll call Will and Ella. Edward had been married--we'll call her Rose--but she had passed away earlier that week.

 

Edward's nocturnal lifestyle was certainly not conducive to raising Will and Ella, and he was in desperate need of a live-in nanny for his two children and to direct the staff that tended to the mansion upkeep and security. Preferably a nanny who knew about vampires and was willing to cooperate with them--as Andrea had shown she was capable of doing in negotiating a deal earlier with the Prince. Also, someone who could redirect the staff so that they did not accidentally barge into Edward's room and discover him dead during the day.

 

Normally Andrea would have turned the job down, but she'd recently needed to vacate her prior resident and had been reduced to rooming in a flat with a friend--and the friendship was starting to wear a little thin. Plus, the salary was triple what her last job had paid. Naturally, she asked Edward if he had killed his wife, and he said he hadn't. Andrea further clarified that her accepting the position of live-in nanny did not mean she would let Edward feed on her. He concured that that was not part of the position--and, in fact, was part of the problem. Edward explained he could only drink the blood of certain well-bred individuals. Andrea did not have the appropriate lineage. And Edward had never--and never would--feed off his own children. Obviously, finding people of a certain at night took up a considerable amount of Edward's time, so he had almost none to spend with his children.

 

Andrea accepted the job, packed up her stuff the next day, and moved in to Edward's mansion. She met the children and got along great with them: they knew their father was a vampire and, as a result, she'd volunteered that she was a witch. Not a black witch, and not exactly a white witch either. Kind of a gray witch with white-leaning tendancies--but dressed in black and with white facepaint, as was the style for goths back then.

 

Later in the evening, after Edward woke up and spent some time giving his children horseback rides before it was their bedtime, Andrea worked on unpacking her books in her new room. She came across one spellbook that she'd acquired--one she found among the material goods of a particularly nasty witch she'd defeated earlier--and one who specialized in the dark arts and stealing of souls. On a whim, Andrea opened the other witch's spellbook and began leafing through it.

 

Nestled amongst the spells for making crops die, giving someone the evil eye, or stealing men's dicks, Andrea found a ritual for stealing butter from a neighbor's churn.

 

Theft--particularly of butter from a neighbor's churn--was not something Andrea had much familiarity with, as stealing is wrong and--in modern times--it's much easier to simply pop down to the store and buy a pound of butter than it is to steal it from some backwards neighbors.

 

However, there were some notes the spellbook's prior owner had made in the margins next to the ritual: specifically a caution that any purloined butter, if cut with a knife that had been previously used to commit murder, would bleed when cut. As it happened, Andrea also had the evil witch's sacrificial dagger.

 

Andrea assumed that if she shoplifted butter, it would be essentially the same thing as if she'd stolen it from the neighbor's churn. And if she cut the shoplifted butter with the deceased witch's sacrificial dagger, then she might have discovered a way to provide blood for Edward so he'd no longer need to spend so much time looking for food each night. Of course, because of Edward's predisposition towards aristocratic bloodlines, Andrea also assumed she would need to steal the richest, most expensive, organic butter the stores had. Blood from ordinary butter would probably not do.

 

After the children went to bed, Andrea talked to Edward before he had to go out looking for food and mentioned the spell and what she believed she might be able to do. Edward looked ecstatic about the possibility of not having to go preying upon people anymore, and begged Andrea to see if the spell would work. Andrea said she would take the children to the city the following day to do some clothes shopping--and she'd see about stealing some high-grade butter as well. And while stealing was not something Andrea normally did, it seemed like a good karmic trade-off to steal butter so that a vampire didn't have to feed off others and could spend more time with his two children. She did, after all, consider herself to be more of a grey witch than a white one.

 

The next morning, after breakfast, Andrea, Will, and Ella all piled into her car and drove to the city to do some shopping--and a little shoplifting. After the shopping and shopplifting were completed, Andrea was leading Will and Elsa back to her car when, suddenly, a man stepped out of an alleyway.

 

The strange man looked at Andrea and said, "Let me take the children." Andrea could feel the man trying to push at her mind with some kind of magic, trying to get her to surrender the children to him, but she resisted it.

 

"Excuse me?" Andrea said to the man.

 

This man tried again, but more forcefully and strained this time. "/Let/ /me/ /take/ /the/ /children./"

 

Andrea shunted away the second attempt to control her mind, said "No," and pulled the children closer to her for protection in the event the stranger attempted to grab and kidnap one of them. She was about to scream for help and make a scene when the man did it for her: with his growing anger at failing to get Andrea to comply with his magically-enhanced request, he turned into a werewolf--right there on the sidewalk.

 

Now werewolves are tall creatures and the stranger had been tall to begin with. Andrea was rather on the short side. So when the stranger who'd been so close earlier turned into a werewolf right in front of Andrea, she naturally tried to push it away--but her hand pushed against his much higher than before, much larger than before penis.

 

And it came off in her hand.

 

She'd stolen his penis: Probably the result of the black arts spellbook she'd been perusing the night before.

 

Andrea briefly debated throwing the werewolf's penis into traffic to distract him while they ran away, but a car was careening off the road and onto the sidewalk--the driver having lost his mind at having just seen a werewolf---and Andrea ended up reflexivly tightening her grip on Ella's hand and what had--moments before--been Will's hand. The werewolf doubled over in pain. The car that jumped onto the sidewalk hit a telephone pole and came to a stop. Andrea tossed the penis into a shopping bag, grabbed Will's hand, and pulled them out onto the street. She figured she had better odds of getting away by running through traffic than she did going toe-to-toe with a werewolf. They made it safely across the street with a few close calls, but the werewolf did not fare so well and was hit by one car and then a second. By the time the werewolf got back up, Andrea and the children had made it to the car and escaped.

 

After returning to Edward's mansion and requesting that the security guards be on particularly high alert that evening, Andrea confronted Edward that evening--asking him why a werewolf might be after his children and if that was perhaps tied in with his desire to have a mage for a nanny--so she could double as their protector. Edward immediately confessed that he'd been concerned about the possibility that there might be a werewolf problem, but hadn't been sure if it would become an issue. Clearly, it had.

 

You see, the werewolf--and let's just call him Gregory--was Rose's brother.

 

Rose and Edward had fallen in love some time ago. They'd married with the consent and blessing of both their families. Edward rarely ever saw Gregory, though. Gregory attended their wedding, though he'd made many of the guests very nervous. He'd also visted shortly after the birth of their first-born, Ella, and their second-born, Will. But then he disappeared for nearly 6 years, largely only communicating with Rose by phone calls where he asked for money or other favors--and Rose indulged him and Edward's tolerated it, as Gregory was family and they had the money to spare. Edward had been turned against his will into a vampire shortly after Will's 5th birthday. When he re-appeared, released by his maker, he returned home, told Rose what had happened, and--so strong was their love for one another--Rose offered to let him feed from her so he could stay with her and not need to hunt others to quench his newfound thirst. This went on for nearly a year, and Rose told him to be wary of her side of the family, as some of them were werewolves--and she wanted no harm to come to Edward or their children. She did, however, make use of her family to have the vampire who turned Edward destroyed, freeing her husband from his grip. Life went on, Rose running the household during the day, Edward socializing with the children and Rose just after sunset, and working to help support the family in the late night.

 

And life went on like that until just the other week. Gregory walked in on them unannounced while Edward was feeding on Rose. He flew into a rage, changed into a werewolf, accidentally killed his own sister, and then fled from the scene--leaving Edward to spend the night bereaving her while attempting to clean the area up and creating a cover story for how Rose had departed suddenly to visit family in Europe. The manor's employees were none the wiser as Rose ocassionally would pack and leave suddenly in the night to assist her family in their sporadic requests. The children were unaware that their uncle had killed their mother.

 

But now Gregory seemed intent on kidnapping his niece and nephew, and Edward feared he might lose control again and hurt or kill them--as he had already killed his sister. Edward believed his children would be far safer raised by him than raised by Gregory, and he clearly, deeply loved his children--all that he had left of his own wife.

 

Andrea sympathized with the vampire, and she also understood what a boon it would be if the high-quality butter she had shoplifted earlier could be made to bleed blood that he could drink. She enacted the ritual, placing the butter on a large plate and stabbing it with the sacrificial dagger, and blood welled up and pooled in the dish. Edward sampled it, declared it to be both agreeable to him and a miracle, and drank all of it. So long as Andrea was nanny to his children and ran his household, he would have absolutely no need to prey upon humans--and this made him ecstatic. Edward spent the night playing with his children--until they were falling over from sleep--while Andrea debated what to do with the thing that was still making the occasional rustling noises in a shopping bag in the corner of her room.

 

Shortly after midnight, Andrea looked up Gregory's contact information and called him up. It was the typical kind of conversation one has when speaking to a werewolf who's just had his manhood stolen by a witch: angry but attentive. Eventually Andrea got him to calm down by stepping on it to get his full and undivided attention, then mentioning how it'd easily fit in the microwave or the garbage disposal if he continued making threats against her and Edward.

 

Gregory's tone rapidly cooled down and the conversation became more productive. Andrea arranged to meet with him in a very public place (which she knew had a number of surveillance cameras) the next day for lunch. Andrea specified that both she and he were to come alone, naturally. She'd then return Gregory's penis to him and see about re-attaching it. And they would discuss things that clearly needed to be discussed. Gregory agreed, the call ended, and Andrea promptly called up two other mages to see if they could back her up the next day--just in case Gregory flew off the handle yet again.

 

The next morning, Andrea coordinated with the other mages providing overwatch for her, then they all set off separately for the meeting location. She arrived to find Gregory awaiting her and alone, though clearly upset. After an initial, abortive attempt at threatening Andrea and once again attempting to use magic to influence her, Gregory behaved civilly. They talked. Gregory was afraid his sister's children were in danger from their undead father, but Andrea told him they were quite safe, loved, and well-protected under Edward's care. The only danger was that Edward might grow hungry at some point, but that was no longer an issue as Andrea was fully capable of producing blood by the use of magic, so Edward no longer needed to feed off of humans. Gregory baulked at these claims, until Andrea pointed out that the only person who ever harmed a member of Rose and Edward's family was, in fact, Gregory, who had killed his own sister.

 

Gregory was hurt by Andrea's pointed comment, but he still tried a different argument, claiming the children might someday turn out to be werewolves--and then they would need to be raised properly by werewolves and not a vampire. Andrea stated that she suspected that if one of the children did happen to become a werewolf later in life, their father would willingly release them into Gregory's custody. And, certainly, after they turned 18, they were legally entitled to do whatever they chose and side with whoever they wanted. But, as children, they were better off under Edward's protection as opposed to Gregory's.

 

After more back-and-forth, the werewolf finally conceeded that the children were better off in Edward's care than his own, but he wanted to be able to come and visit them from time to time, as they were his nieces and nephews. Andrea advised him that, because he had so infrequently visited in the past, and because Rose's death had been so recent, he should wait about a month for the emotional wounds to scab over; but she felt that Edward would agree to allowing Gregory to visit from time to time, as he had done so in the past.

 

With peace established, Andrea returned and re-attached Gregory's penis, and everyone went back to their abnormal lives.

 

It just goes to show that a little diplomacy, a little magic, and a firm grip can go a long way.

Note: This story is cribbed heavily from Kevin Andrew Murphy's Mage WoD novel, "Penny Dreadful."