Chapter 31: But Tonight It’s A Hot Dish
The speaker crushed the lid on the leaking hole and sprung out before anyone could further react. When he landed on the ground, everyone was frightened and instinctively stepping back for this…striking abomination they saw in front of them—it was even worse than a Nosferatu, because besides all the tumors, twisted limbs and torsos, his body was at the same time rotting, and bits of flesh were falling down all the time, so his brain and ribs were partially visible, with the odor of corpses dead for month kept coming out from his inside.
"Kanker…"
Only Skelter could recognized the identity of this monster now. He muttered his name in a light voice and held his hands in fists, seemed to struggle between two sides of emotions, while Brother Kanker was singularly angry with him:
"Skelter, you treacherous little brat…I saved you and avenged you, and you betrayed me like a coward! But I should thank you and the girl for leading all these fresh bodies in here…now I can make an army of epidemic carriers!" As he was saying, the zombies he had made all these days were climbing from the hole behind him, "By the way, you know what is the funniest thing? Even the murderer knows better how to be grateful than you…"
Just when Leona was confused about what he was talking about, another newly made plague-bearer crawled out of the passage like a demon from hell, whose face was extremely familiar.
It was Muddy, Mike Durbin. Obviously, Kanker caught him after he escaped from Skelter at that night in Paul's place, and the Tzimisces turned him into this. Compared to Kanker, his body was still in a…fairly fresh condition—or rather, he seemed much more muscular and stronger than he was when he was human.
Unable to believe what Kanker just did, Skelter was about to jump on him in rampage, but Jack immediately pulled the kid down and shouted to everyone: "Get the fuck back to ground floor!"
It was a wise choice. The cold storage house was a relatively closed space, and Brother Kanker was bringing probably all the humans he infected throughout the United States, so this wasn't really the best spot to confront them. On their way through the staircase back up to the surface, Leona and her Tremere partner quickly exchanged some ideas:
"We need to inform Regent Strauss about this…"
That was Leona's first reaction, and she was already doing so, trying to get one hand free in this heavy firefighter suit and reach for her phone. If the Regent still wanted to catch the plague-bearers alive like planned, he would definitely want to send people here—there were two and a freaking zombie legion here, so the Anarchs absolutely wouldn't care about getting a specimen for the Camarilla: with their number and their equipment, all they could hope for was to just get out of this alive.
"And I just Auspexed that Kanker, he's the only commander here." The Tremere apprentice had another discovery, "His strings were connected to every walking dead, and that Muddy guy, too, so if we take him down first, the rest will be much easier."
Usually for most Kindred, their Strings of Curse will never come out of their bodies, unlike Tremeres, and the string itself is invisible in sights—unless, of course, someone sees them with educated eyes, like using the Auspex discipline. Considering how the strings are the major source of vampiric supernatural strength, insight about them would be greatly helpful in battle, if used at a right time and place, like now.
"OK then, what do we do?" Nines was listening to them and then asked, for at this moment the other Anarchs were already starting to barbeque the zombies. For all the accidents that happened tonight, at least they were glad to know that Skelter was right about the fire thing.
"That Muddy guy would be a tough close-battle fighter—his body was frigging covered in strings like a cocoon, so we need you guys to distract him." The apprentice was already building his blood armor underneath, "Me and Leona will subdue Kanker."
"Alright."
Damsel was leading others to clean up the infected humans, then Nines joined with Jack to hold back Mike Durbin. As a plague-bearer, though Muddy was deprived of his mind and the ability to think, he had an extreme physicality as a compensation, and the infection he carried just made him more dangerous.
As for Brother Kanker, the target of the two Tremeres, was quite the opposite—he himself seemed fragile and slow, but was surrounded by a wall of defence made by the dead. At first it was slightly easier to approach him, when their flamethrowers could diminish the number of these zombies quickly, but unfortunately these amateur, fire-breathing weapons ran out pretty soon, and even though they were only fighting brainless walking corpses, it was not like they were just going to stand there and be burnt: they would evade and fight back very keenly.
So when they lost the fire as an advantage, what came next was the hardcore combat: the Anarchs had their melee and brawl skills, while Leona and the apprentice had Thaumaturgy—they drew out their blood and concentrated it on the tips of their strings, formed it into thin and sharp blades, using them to slice everything that stand in their way.
Though of course, them two had a division of jobs, just like what they practiced in the Chantry. Since Leona wouldn't be able to do a proper blood armor now, she would be the one who mainly focused on attacking—she could wield her blood blades like commanding a frenzy, deadly swamp, and the apprentice took down every corpse within a dangerous range. It worked well at the beginning, but as they hadn't seen any back-up from the Camarilla show up, Leona would have to come up with something else pretty soon. They couldn't keep this up forever.
"Is there any way to shut down Kanker's control?" She asked the apprentice, who was more senior and knowledgeable, "Or at least weaken it?"
In theory they could do that by cutting of the strings he was using to restrain his minions with their own ones—that's the only way to physically affect the String of Curse—but since Kanker was actually spreading the epidemic with his strings, Leona couldn't be sure if doing this would get themselves infected.
"I could try to Dominate him and give you a shot, but it would take some time to take effect, and by then you are on your own. I can't get distracted to protect you in the process." The apprentice told her the pros and cons honestly, "You are up to it? My blood armor could hold for a while against these zombies, the problem is can you last that long against him..."
Leona took a look around, a little bit hesitant about this. When she was left alone and the other Tremere was trying to Dominate Brother Kanker, Kanker would no doubt do his best to attack them, probably ignoring everyone else. Even though he shouldn't hold on for too long against the Dominate effect, there would still be a risk…maybe she should wait until Nines or Jack had the time to watch out for them…
Just while she was pondering over this, Leona heard a sneer from Kanker, and the next thing she knew, was a face suddenly appeared in front of her eyes. A face she had known for too long—It was Alice, decomposed, drooling Alice opening her mouth and biting Leona's face.
Leona only had the time to act out of intuition for survival, so those feather-like, blood-made blades of hers flew back in a blink and cut whatever attacked their master into pieces and chunks.
It was done, even before she realized what she had done. Again.
"I heard from Bishop Bridget that this was your best friend, wasn't it?" Kanker looked at the blank shock on Leona's face in satisfaction, "She brought it back and specially requested me to send it back to you. Now you have your reunion…"
"Do it."
Leona didn't respond to Kanker. She simply said this to the Tremere partner by her side, and changed the form of Thaumaturgy she used from blades into floating, spherical missiles. Though her voice sounded calm, and her expression was hidden under the firefighter mask, the apprentice knew immediately Leona wasn't thinking straight when she chose the missiles—it would cost a large amount of blood. He tried to talk her out, but seeing her already taking her steps towards Kanker, he knew he would have to start.
And soon, Kanker felt a sudden pressure on his mind from an undeniable willpower, forcing him to surrender. If anyone was Auspexing now, the strings of his were now quavering fiercely on the edge of breaking, and as Kanker grinded his teeth and squeezed out a vicious smile, there was only one message these strings were delivering to the receivers.
And so every zombie, even Muddy, who was just now wrestling with Jack, turned their heads at the same time and jumped onto Leona's direction, though many of them were dragged or shot down by other Anarchs, this wave of attack still formed up almost a dome above her, leaving no breach to get out.
Then Leona just waved her hand and sent out the missiles. When the dozens of tiny little blood balls hit the flesh, they melt into it, and started boiling it, turning all their targets into bombs.
The next thing everyone saw, was the crimson, bloody explosions in the air, and Leona was walking through a rain-down of meat fragments, coming right in front of Brother Kanker when he lost the command of his legion. The plague-bearer still wanted to say something, but Leona picked up a broken piece of table leg, and stabbed it right through his heart. He was paralyzed on the scene and fell down on the ground—it was the only way to completely subdue a vampire while keeping it alive.
All the walking dead had eventually rested in peace, and everyone else was exhausted, particularly Leona. This kind of flesh-bombing Thaumaturgy was really something only an experienced Tremere could achieve, and she could only push herself to do that because of the "specialness" of her strings. Leona stumbled towards the front door of the building, as if wanting to get out of this hellish place as soon as possible, yet she couldn't help but stop at the dismembered body of Alice, standing there, staring at the ragged, slashed dress Alice was wearing.
It was the only thing of hers that could reminded Leona of something else…instead of the fact that she had to kill her twice.
"Jeez, finally this shit is finished…"
Right after Jack finished saying this sentence, Muddy, who was thought to be harmless by everyone else since he dropped dead just like other zombie creatures, suddenly stood straight up and dashed towards Skelter, with his piss-yellow eyes full of raw hatred and rage.
And by that time, Skelter was alone and still in astonishment of the great battle he just witnessed. He was in no way prepared to deal with this Muddy, the one that had become a plague-bearer, and the closest Kindred to him was Damsel, who didn't have any sort of defence against the infection:
"Watch out! Kid!"
She shouted, but Skelter felt merely numbness in his legs. He thought he was going to die right now, because even though Muddy had been turned into a sheer animal, he still wanted to kill Skelter for bringing this to him—if it wasn't for this kid, in his basic, primitive mind, he wouldn't get involved with these monsters in the first place.
Skelter closed his eyes in fear. But he didn't die.
Leona spread her wing and skewed Muddy with it. She didn't have time to think about the consequences, so again she just did what instinct told her to.
Then the strangest thing happened: Muddy's body turned to ashes upon its contact with Leona's Strings of Curse, just like what the infected would be when they touched the fire. Moreover, this whole process was clearly witnessed by Regent Strauss, who had just led the Camarilla agents here. He finally got what he wished for.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Fiona_Singer
Fiona_Singer Sorry about the delay...I'm just so bad at writing battle scenes so I need to spend more time on thinking about it :p
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