A bit of a warning before I begin writing this. This story is pretty fucked up and deals with some disturbing imagery in spots, moreso than the others. I guess you could consider it the 'Halloween' episode of sorts (it is the 28th of October as I'm writing this), but to anyone who reads this... well... be warned, this gets pretty damn dark. 

The group lands at Open Air Ranch about half an hour before the sun rises, exhausted from the ordeal they experienced in the Underworld. As Simoni goes to inform Nelen of what Eliza told them and warn him of Paale's return Natasha heads upstairs to her coffin, currently in a room belonging to Trixie's cousin, Tiffany 'Nightingale' Smith, who is a bit of a goth in the same way that Dawn is a bit of a cat. 

"Hi Natasha! Where'd you guys go? Did you bite anyone? Did you do anything neat?" she asks, jumping up from her bed as the vampire enters the room, jabbering away in a very non-goth manner... but then she's been pretty excited to not only find out that vampires are real but that she'll be bunking with one. She's been dropping none-too-subtle hints about Natasha biting her, letting her taste the vampire's blood, and possibly even getting turned into a vampire since the night Coyote attacked and the group's cover got blown. 

Natasha lets out a soft groan as the goth girl goes off on her rapid fire questions yet again. The girl was sweet, and at the very least in a choice between her and some weird Twilight fan she would pick her any time, but man was she not used to 'groupies' she didn't have a mindlock on..."No Tiffany I didn't bite anyone, just a pretty normal information hunt" she says, figuring even if she was annoying she probably didn't need to hear her cousin barely made it out of the literal Underworld tonight.

As she endures the torrent of questions from the excitable goth girl, Dawn appears in the room. She informs Tiffany that Nelen has finished pirating the Anne Rice movies she wanted to see and before the girl can respond Dawn teleports them both downstairs before returning alone. 

"Figured you'd wanna avoid the Q&A mess after that." she grins, "We can keep her busy for a while at least. If nothing else long enough for ya to get to sleep." she nods, "Still, gotta admit I didn't expect it to be Eliza that Simoni saw when your cousin gave her the ol' omnomnom." she stretches out on the bed, "You two really knew each other back then?" 

Natasha smirks faintly as she sits in her coffin trunk, she usually fell asleep just as the sun was coming up, so she had plenty of time to talk for now. "I wouldn't say KNEW knew, not like we were best friends, but yea she passed through my town when I was fairly young, by my standards at least." she says with a light smirk.

Dawn comments on how it's ironic that she wound up travelling with Eliza's great grandchildren after meeting her when she was young, though Natasha dismisses it saying that she stops noticing little ironies after the first century or so. Dawn then leaves, promising to keep 'miss doom and gloom' occupied so Natasha can get some proper rest as she climbs into her coffin and closes the lid. 

As she drifts off she thinks back to that encounter with Eliza, back when she was no older than Simoni and the rest, just over a hundred years ago in 1912. 

Snow blows against the outside of the window as a young girl, about twelve years old, lays on a bed, frowning up at the ceiling. She's clearly Irish, or at least from that part of the world, with flaming red hair tied into pigtails over her shoulders and bright green eyes. She's wearing a green cotton tunic and a long black skirt, her feet covered by a pair of thick woolen socks, her boots by the door. There's a black cloak that looks like it's made out of some kind of feathers hanging from the door and next to her bed is a staff with a stylized raven carved out of the top few inches. "Ah dunna see why they had ta drag me along..." she grumbles in a thick accent, "All they be doin' is goin off ta fight some elder vampyre, just leavin' me stuck at th' inn..." she sits up and shakes out her hair, then gets up and stops over to the fireplace in the room to toss another log on the dying embers. 

The room is pretty sparsely decorated. A metal washbin with an empty pitcher next to it, a chamberpot under the bed, a large mirror in one corner, and a small pine dresser, the bed not even having springs but rather just stuffed with goose down. "They dunna even have proper plumbin' out 'ere either! Even th' castle's got that now..." she grumbles, that was an unwelcome surprise... "Ah mean is this any way ferra Fullmoon witch ta travel?" she sighs. 

Natasha grins a bit as she crouches on the other side if the window to the young Irish girl's door, the snowstorm providing good cover for her as she presses her face near right up against the glass, if she still breathed she'd be fogging it up...The Irish were a rare treat this far into eastern Europe, usually merchants or the occasional mercenary, sticking tot he bigger cities and such for their trades. She frankly didn't know what a 'Fullmoon' was, and didn't find the bird cloak too odd, here in the frozen east people made coats and capes out of near anything warm. One of her friends' fathers had a rather large cloak made from vulture feathers to keep him safe...The window slowly opened as the girl turns her back to keep grumbling, letting Natasha slither in and shut it quickly behind her. The young girl was dressed...well as she was when this girl's ancestors would find her a few centuries later honestly, long black cloak, black pants, black shirt, pointed polished leather boots. Vampires didn't tend to update fashions much...

Natasha sneaks into the room via the window while Eliza's back is turned, but the witch notices when the wind shifts (being attuned to that particular element), and the minute she enters Eliza spins around and sends a blast of air at the window. Natasha dodges, but the window gets punched right out of the frame. Natasha scolds her for just making herself cold, but Eliza ignores it and goes for her staff. The top is carved to look like a raven, but the bottom is sharpened to a point. Not just for vampires either, after all there's more than one monster that will go down from a well placed stake. 

As the two square off Eliza accuses her of being sent by the vampire, Kernovich, that she and her clanmates were hired to kill. Natasha is surprised to hear the name, but moreso when Eliza refers to the vampire as male. 

Natasha blinks "Wait...Kernovich GUY?" she she says before springing into the air when she feels her legs being pulled, shoving her grown out finger claws into a gap between two roof beams. The girl wasn't here to fight, she really wasn't the kind of vampire who enjoyed random violence and such, but if the girl wanted to fight she wasn't going to let her dinner beat her up! She swings from the roof, letting her claws retract back to fingernails as she goes for a kick to the girl's chest! "I don't know who this guy is, but I'm Natasha Kernovich!"

The two discuss this male Kernovich vampire, who Eliza refers to as 'Vasily Kernovich'. As it turns out that was the name of Natasha's brother when she was still mortal. Natasha insists that it can't be him, after all Vasily isn't an uncommon name in that part of the world, but Eliza points out that Kernovich is. Finally, Natasha decides that she wants to look into this and see if it's her brother or not... and not out of familial affection either. Apparently her brother wasn't exactly the kind and gentle type with her when she was still alive. Eliza, already irritated that she got stuck indoors while her kin went vampire hunting, decides to show her where he was. She knows it could be a trap, but she's young and rather brash at her age, and she has more than just her magic to help her. 

After tying the laces of her boots together and looping them over her neck she changes into her raven form and flies out of the inn with Natasha behind her, gliding along to where they'd heard the vampire was making it's lair. An old abandoned village past the woods, nothing but half-collapsed houses and empty buildings now. 

As the two explore the village they notice a pair of glowing red eyes in one of the windows. Eliza takes a small reddish egg out of her cloak pocket, then tosses it into the hut to illuminate the buiding, the girls getting a glimpse of a rat-like human before it darts down into the cellar of the house. 

Natasha blinks softly "Was that a Blajini?" She says, frowning at you "Don't scare it off, it's harmless" she says as she climbs into the window, apparently seeing this as a creature from Romanian folklore... 

She shakes her head, the chittering noise growing louder. "Nae lass, that's no Blajini... That's ah bethulu." she says, "Rat spirits, they possess hyoomans an' turn 'em inta those things. Bloody 'ell, those villagers probably dinna even know what they was seein! They see big fangs an' ugly face and they think 'vampyre'."

Natasha mistakes it for a Blajini at first, a sort of rodent-like gnome that lives in Romania, but Eliza recognizes it for what it really is. A bethulu, a human possessed by a rat spirit and twisted into a monstrous creature that exists only to breed and eat. As if on cue the windows of the other houses suddenly fill with beady red eyes as hundreds of rats swarm out of them towards Natasha and Eliza. 

Eliza manages to summon up a cyclone around them to stop the swarm as Natasha attempts to assert dominance over their minds. While she does manage to control some there's simply too many, and the barrier can only hold them back. As Natasha thinks frantically Eliza starts to dig in her cloak again. 

"Bugger it, ah gotta have somethin... phoenix feather, salamander egg, basalisk tear... aha!" she grins, then pulls out a small pouch, "Just what ah needed, catnip!" she nods, then tosses and catches it a few times, " 'e doesn't like th' cold, but hopefully 'e'll come fer ah feast like this..." she tosses the pouch in the air and whistles sharply, the pouch bursting as catnip swirls around, "Oi! Tom Tildrum, king 'o th' cats! The feast is laid an' fit fer ah king!" she yells into the sky as the smell of catnip fills the air... 

.. and then in a burst of snow and fur a massive black tomcat with glowing yellow eyes appears, its back arched and its fangs bared. Its huge, bigger than a wild dog even, and it chuckles as it speaks in a deep masculine voice, "Aye, a fine feasting indeed." it purrs before jumping through the wind barrier (it can keep out small animals, but not the giant cat) and laying into the rats. Many scatter, but the rest fight even as the cat claws, bites, and thrashes them apart.

The large tomcat is Tom Tildrum, a cat sideh and apparently the 'king of all cats of the isles'. He's able to talk and is quite strong... but he points out a disturbing discovery about the rats he killed. 

"Still, that was a bad joke you played on me Eliza." he says, nodding to the snow. "These are no rats." 

Laying in the snow are... well... something awful. Human fetuses, small and stunted and clearly dead. Eliza makes a face and leans back, "Ugh... aye, ah was worried 'bout that... 'e's been kidnapping gels an, well, the bethulu breed like rats... so those poor lasses are probably bein' treated like brood mares by yer brother." she shakes her head, "Its 'ow those monsters do that. They get th' baby far along enough fer it ta be possessed, then out comes ah rat an' they start it over again." 

Natasha twists her face in disgust "My brother is a horrible creature but if this is truly his work it's a new low for even his soul." she says, looking to the cat "Can you sniff an actual rat out, then?" 

The cat grins, "Oh yes. I can smell a rat from up to two miles away in bad weather... and I can tell you right now that there's several big ones right under us. They dug out all the basements in this village and made it into their warren." it nods. "Yes indeed... several big fat plump rats..." it purrs, licking it's muzzle. 

"Lass, if yer brother is ah bethulu then 'e ain't responsable fer this." comments Eliza, "Bein' possessed by one is like bein' killed. Th' rat spirit gobbled up 'is soul th' moment it got in." she nods. "What's down there is only remotely hyooman now." she nods, looking around the houses, "Bugger. If they're underground then we may need ta find me clanmates afore we go after 'em. Me magic is tricky, it dunna work as well indoors."

Natasha however, refuses to wait, pulling off her cloak to reveal a large sword edged with silver. Eliza shrugs and decides to go with her, still having several magical tools in her cloak, and Tom Tildrum seems rather eager to try to find some proper rats to eat. 

As they enter the cellar of the house they find a tunnel leading into a large warren that the bethulu have dug out for themselves... as well as the victims that the 'vampire' took from the villages. 

It's downright repulsive in there. The bethulu are rats and they certainly don't care about hygene or cleanliness. The room is covered in filth, rotted food, and other messes and, tied to the walls, are several young girls who have been beaten into near unconsciousness. They're either naked or in tattered clothing and some of them are indeed showing signs of pregnancy. Eliza, despite her tough exterior, has to force her bile back down at the sight and the smell, "Bloody 'ell... ah 'eard stories about th' bethulu... but this is just -sick-..." 

Natasha simply shakes her head as she looks around "Disgusting." she says before slapping her blade against the wall loudly a few times "Demon, come out here! You have one chance to release my brother and let him face God's judgement before I free him myself from you..."

After a moment a hissing voice comes from one of the tunnels and the bethulu reveals itself. It barely looks human, and is quite obviously not a blajini. As big as a grown man but skeletally thin, with a human face exteded into a rat-like muzzle with long yellowed teeth and long claw-like fingernails. Its eyes are a deep crimson that shines in the gloom, and a long bald rat tail comes out of it's hips. 

It tells Natasha that her father threw him out for failing to protect her and that he had to survive on rotten food and meat out in the cold, trying to get her to show sympathy, but Eliza warns her that it's a trick and that the rat spirit would have gained his memories when it ate his soul. Natasha calls the rat's lie and tries to run him through with her sword, but the bethulu turns out to be more agile than his misshapen body would suggest. 

Despite it's appearance the creature is very fast, skittering away from your blade strike and hissing at you. "Foolish vampire..." it chitters, "Your kind hunts all alone... but my family is all around you..." it clicks it's teeth and in the gloom red eyes light up all through the tunnels, Tom hissing at them as Eliza holds the eggs ready to throw. "You are so few... and we are so many... and once I kill you and the cat and we subdue your friend we will be so many more..." 

Natasha looks over to Eliza as she reaches her free hand to her cloak, taking a long snow white owl feather out, it must have come from a VERY large one "Hold them back, I know exactly how to beat them but it'll take a moment." she says, starting to whisper in what sounds like a strange blend of Hebrew and some dead tongue mixed in...

Eliza nods to the vampire's words and throws the eggs down the tunnels. They're salamander eggs and they explode on impact, filling the tunnel entrances with flames and causing the swarm to panic. Most of them refuse to run past and those that do are easy prey for Tom, the giant cat smacking and clawing them, biting them to break their necks and then spitting them away when the rat spirits flee and the bodies change back into half-formed human ones. 

Natasha Kernovich the spell takes a bit to cast, but thankfully not too long as soon enough the bird feather seems to dissolve into dust, blowing on an unseen breeze around Vasily slowly before it takes the form of a massive, angry, owl, letting out a loud shriek and clawing and pecking at the rat man's face. "This is an ancient spell, maybe as old as Egypt, it's called the bird of sin, it's only as powerful as the sin in your heart...and I'm afraid the heart you're currently riding in has MUCH to account for." she grins wickedly as the spectral bird tears and rips at the rat man's flesh. 

The bethulu shrieks and claws at the bird, but it's claws just pass right through the owl's spectral body as it flails and hisses frantically. The rats, sensing their leader's own panic, scatter into the tunnels as it flails on the ground under the weight of the owl, "Damned vampire! Damned blood drinker! What do you care!? They're humans! Nothing but weak sacks of meat and blood for us to use!" it snarls before the owl's talons rip into it's chest and the rat lets out one final tortured scream, then a human body slumps to the floor as the spirit flees Vasily's flesh, leaving behind the body of a very old man. 

"Ach, well, that does it then..." sighs Eliza as Tom nods in a pleased sort of way. "Indeed indeed, only one thing left to do now sadly..." he says, looking around at the women hanging up. "The bethulu's is gone, fled back to the spirit world, but these women are simply too far gone. Bethulu are spirits of disease as much as anything... I'm afraid we'll have to put them down." says Tom gravely.

Sad but true, many of the girls are showing pox marks, sores, and other signs of severe infection. Natasha offers to do the job herself, but Eliza sniffs and says that she's quite capable of doing what needs to be done, taking a silver edged dagger from her cloak. Its still horrible despite the girl's boast, the two of them taking it in turns to slit the captive's throats, unable to let them go without risking spreading plague to their villages. Finally the victims have been 'released' and as they leave Eliza tosses her remaining salamander eggs into the middle of the warren, the combined explosion igniting the bodies and turning the cave into it's own crematorium. 

"Ach... some parts o' this job..." she sighs, shaking her head as she cleans her dagger off in the snow, "Good thing ah'm Irish, ah'll need ah drink after that." 

"More than a drink girl." says Tom, "My services have yet to be paid for." he nods firmly, "Aye aye, ah'll find ye a nice plump fish or somethin' Tom. Head on back ta me room at th' inn and ah'll bring somethin' up fer ye." she says as the cat smirks in a satisfied way, then runs off into the snow. 

Natasha simply nods as she wipes her own sword off "Well, at least it's been taken care of for good...though there is the question where your friends are..." 

She shrugs, "Eh, they weren't down there, so they're probably just runnin' around th' countryside lookin' fer ah vampyre named Vasily. If we dunna find our target in ah month's time we assume they ran off or somethin' else got 'em an' we go back home." she replies, "Since there's no vampyre named Vasily that'll be what happens." she nods, then sighs, "Which means ah'm stuck stayin' at that dinky little inn fer a whole bloody month while they go pokin' 'round crypts and stuff."

Natasha points out that the window of her room back at the inn is still smashed in and that she'd freeze if she went back there, offering to let Eliza stay at her home instead. Eliza hesitates, but decides risking that is better than dying of hypothermia and the two take flight. 

As they fly off Natasha stirs in her coffin, the sun having gone down and the vampire awakening from her daytime sleep. 

Natasha blinks as she knocks lightly on her coffin as a warning, she's had Lupe rest on top of it a few times, leading to the poor girl getting tossed half across the room when she pushed the door open...She pauses, though, when she looks over to see the goth's bed "Lupe, go get...ugh...Nightingale...I figure she deserves at least a few better answers than I gave before..." 

Lupe nods and nuzzles her cheek as she gets up onto all fours, "Okay alpha-bat." she replies, the werewolf padding out of the room on all fours as Dawn materializes on the bed, "Mornin' sleepyhead." she smirks, "Nelen says we don't have to worry about Paale. So long as he doesn't have any sin-eater to bind with he won't actually be able to affect us if he leaves the Underworld." she says, then tilts her head, "You alright? You look like you just went through hell and back... again."

Natasha tells her she just had a bad dream and Dawn seems to accept that, vanishing as Tiffany enters the room. She seems surprised that Natasha wanted to see her, at least able to tell that she was more annoying than anything to the vampire. 

Natasha sighs, smiling a bit as she sits up in her coffin, patting the padding next to her "Come on, sit down, I wanna actually answer your questions" she says. 

She nods a bit, seeming a bit puzzled that she's so eager now, but not complaining in the slightest as she takes a seat, "Okay, um so, why are you hanging out with a werewolf? I thought you guys didn't like each other... oh, and do you just like wearing the cloak or is it kinda required for vampires somehow? What does blood taste like too? Is it like how it tastes for humans or is it different for you guys? Can you actually still eat stuff or can you only have blood?" she jabbers away, not needing too much encouragement it seems. 

Natasha chuckles, putting an arm around the girl. If the rude little Celt she met a long time ago could help her through a difficult thing like that, and grow into a matriarch like she did, even slightly annoying little fangbangers probably had some chance...if guided right...

As the two chat it up Nelen and Dawn discuss a new potential threat. Nelen has seen some report on the supernatural message boards he uses online (most people dismiss them as just another load of crap, hide in plain sight and all that) of something that could wind up in their area. 

Dawn reappears downstairs and stretches out next to Nelen as you have your little Q&A session with the goth, the girl hanging on your every word once you get going. "So, any word on McCall?" she asks as Nelen rubs his eyes, having barely slept today as he tries to find whatever he can find, "Not as of yet... but there's something up near here I think we ought to look into..." he says, turning the iPad to face her. On the screen it shows an image of several men dressed like old fashioned outlaws riding huge black horses, but each of the 'outlaws' had heads like cattle skulls with fiery eyes. "They don't usually use a Wild West theme, but apparently the Wild Hunt is in the area." 

Dawn whistles, "Huh, didn't know they came this far west." she says, "Why do we have to deal with it though?" she asks. "Because they're coming this way." he replies, "They only hunt at night, but they started just past New Orleans and are moving west. I don't know if McCall is behind this, but given the ties Faerie has to fate and time and how easy those mix with luck... its not a stretch." 

Dawn grins, "Well, this ought to be fun at least. Wonder what Trixie'll think of this kind of fairy." she smirks, glancing over at where Stephen is playing Arja in Smash Bros.