Buga Difinoz – Part 3
I was so frustrated, I knew I was close. I knew what she looked like but this city is huge. I really had no idea where to start. I had almost completely lost her scent in the suburbs, but the few hints I had indicated that she was heading towards a place called Manhattan. This was only a guess but it was all I had to go on. The trail I was following was very faint since the bikers’ way back west.
This, of course, was a two-edged sword. While she remained “untransformed” she was relatively safe but hard to find. Once she transformed again the powers that allowed me to find her fell into place. But it also meant she was dealing with a power about which she had no knowledge and her ability to control this would be limited to what she’d learned by chance alone. This was the critical time. The time when most Trios failed. Their Guardian, being completely inexperienced, called too much power, went too far and perished.
Further, once she was truly awakened, my ability to find her would be greatly diminished. The magic’s parameters were deliberately harsh and heavily weighted against success. Time was very short and, I’ll admit it, was starting to feel very despondent. This girl was the strongest I’d ever felt, and she’d already proved very resourceful.
Gods, I needed to find her, I needed to guide her. I didn’t care if she was taking the path of chaos and destruction or a path of love and guidance. She just needed to know what she was doing. I have to admit, I personally, was hoping for a leaning towards a hybrid path. One guided by kindness and consideration (what have I become?), but where she would not be afraid to “wield the knife” when required.
Still, she had not called again so I had time to think. My views were no longer those of a warrior captain. I was more likely to show compassion than my forebears (that wouldn’t be hard, they showed none). I also now had an idea of friendship (something unheard of in my kind).
Recently, I started to feel something else. For the first time, after I laid eyes on the image of my new Bretava, I’d experienced flights of fancy, wondering what it would be like not to have been created, but instead to have been born. Maybe having the capacity to have offspring. I was learning something of what it must be to be like to have to deal with the complex emotional soup that was humankind and their like.
Unfortunately, her just being promiscuous (She was Part succubus after all) did little to summon me. Although it did give a little “tickle”, giving a vague idea of a direction but no clue of distance. I was slowly moving to the south east in this gigantic city. I saw a sign saying, “Hell’s Kitchen” and wondered if it was an omen. I couldn’t go any faster. I had only the faint tickle to guide me now. I was still having trouble coming to grips with the sheer size of this place.
When I was last summoned, many, many years ago, there were no cities that compared to this. I think if you grouped all the cities of the world together and put them here, there’d be plenty of room for more. Hell, this city possibly had a population that matched the world-wide population back then.
My kin have set a wide arc searching for even the hint of her presence. This part of a search has always been the most frustrating. The size of the city was not a help.
Quietly resting after yet another day of fruitless searching. Dismayed that the kin had again failed to locate the Bretava and frustrated that I still had not detected more of her scent. Just as I was thinking I may need to change my plan of attack, there was a second call. This call was strong, so strong. It was associated with the drawing of immense power, it felt angry and promised an unforgiving degree of malice.
SHIT!! I was still over 100 miles away, in New Haven. But, the good news: I had a far better fix. We were definitely going to the place called Manhattan.
Never before had I felt such power from an awakening Bretava. It appears that someone had really pissed her off and she was expressing her displeasure in a most direct way. She must have almost fully awoken and my time was growing short. The kin and I made haste to this place called Manhattan. I prayed that she is able to control her transformation, or all could be lost. A powerful Bretava was the family’s best chance.
Frustratingly, but at the same time reassuringly, the call ended after a fairly short time, maybe an hour. When the call ceased, we were still about 30 miles away from Manhattan. While still not having an exact location, the search area was smaller and now we had a much greater chance of finding her.
We arrived in Manhattan some time after her call had ceased. As frustrating as this was, I was still very happy that we had gotten much closer and that she had been able to control such a powerful event. Something big had happened and knowing her basic nature, I expected that the very efficient information sources, of this time, would provide more details in the very near future.
This place called Manhattan, was designed just for us. There was the large “Central Park”. Busy by day but left to the denizens of the underworld after dark. I don’t think they were actually catering for ones from as far “under” as us. There were numerous natural and unnatural caves and crevasses for us to set up our home. So, we did.
As expected, within 24 hours the newspapers and internet sites were full of an incident that I strongly suspected was the one I was interested in. Law enforcement had been called to the site of a particularly gruesome scene.
Apparently 16 people had been murdered, many tortured and mutilated as well. The lucky ones had just been murdered. The less reputable media were describing slashed throats, disembowelment, death by “a thousand cuts” and even one case of complete castration. The offending pieces of anatomy, being used as a gag on one of the other victims.
The incident had occurred on the border of areas known as Greenwich Village and Lower Manhattan. The circle closes. I desperately wanted to get into that crime scene (as the outlets called it). The descriptions certainly fit the pattern of her past kills. It was time for me to make a move.
I made my way to the reported scene but had to wait a few days before I could gain access. As I moved closer to the location I knew it was the one. The presence of her power was strong here. It overwhelmed the dirty air of this place which outside had made it difficult to locate. I watched and waited. I wanted to get in, even though I probably already had all the information this place could supply.
I have to be honest. I wanted to be where she had been at her most powerful. I wanted to revel in that power, to feel her presence, to bask in the aura of the most powerful Bretava for centuries.
It took another two days before the local authorities decreased their presence at the site. Even then it was not released from its status as a crime scene. I guess that a mass torture, mutilation, murder is fairly uncommon, even in this metropolis where my kin and I felt so much at home.
I had not wasted these days and had taken the time to listen to the investigators as they talked. Fortunately for us they had found very little to point to a suspect. The victims appear to have been killed and mutilated with the same blade. Although some of the wounds suggested some beast could have been involved, they had concluded that these appearances were probably artefactual. They had found no other useful physical evidence.
This place was a biker hangout and there were no inside security cameras operational. The investigators did have one table that was covered in biological evidence, but it would take weeks for that to be sorted out and I doubted their technology would be able to detect her.
By this time all that was guarding the building was some yellow tape. I waited until the early hours before entering. The Authorities had removed nearly everything. The one thing they could neither remove nor even detect, was the residue of her power. It was so strong I was nearly overwhelmed.
Dropping to my knees I spread my arms, simply basking in the remnants of that power and what it promised.
Selfishly, I remained there, for about half an hour allowing her aura to wash over me. Only then did I call my brethren to share.
Following this moment of self-indulgence I studied that which the human investigation was blind to. The power present inside was absent outside. This suggested that she left the site in an untransformed state. This was good. It suggested she had gained a measure of control. Further this meant I possibly had a little more time to find her, lessening the chance that she would be snuffed out by a power she was unable to control.
To say I was excited would be an understatement by a factor of many powers. Standing outside the scene I sneezed, cursing the fail air of this city. Had it been a city of yesteryear there would have mainly been such as the stench of rotting garbage, of humans and animals and their excrement and the like. But here, motor vehicle exhaust fumes masked her scent almost entirely.
Even though the search area had been decreased dramatically, even with her photo and the intermittent but frequent tickles, this was probably going to take what seemed like forever. It was frustrating to be so close, but so far from our goal. The tickles told me she was being ‘active’ frequently. The widespread directional nature of them suggested that like her forebears, instinct had directed her to working the streets. This meant I could start to set up a cover and give us all a place to hide while she mastered her abilities.
Then suddenly it happened … We had been looking but understandably the denizens struggling to survive in the dangerous world of the streets where we searched, were suspicious of others searching for one they considered their own. We were making some progress but it was painfully slow. Then I was called again.
This call was close and much more powerful than the last. I was close enough to physically feel the emotions she was experiencing. It started suddenly with a sense of surprise and a degree of fear. This turned to a feeling of immense sadness, grief and regret that was in turn replaced by a tidal wave of hatred, malice and an urge for vengeance … violence was sure to be close to follow.
Someone had done something to the Bretava and she is reacting to this most negatively. That someone was about to pay for this act in a most unpleasant way.
Her power had escalated exponentially, I was terrified that she would lose control and we’d lose her. We were only 10 minutes away … Please, let that be enough time.
First in the series: Origin Stories - Buga Difinoz - Part 1