ic Bloody Nora

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy rolled her eye at Nora comments, dealing with Nora was a little like dealing with a small child or even an unruly animal. She felt a little guilty at even thinking such a thing and concentrated on dealing with the problem at hand.

“Now Nora, remember he’s here to try and help you. Your best behaviour please.â€

She wasn’t sure what to expect but beneath all that leather and face paint, and she had seen stranger sights in this city, was quite an attractive young man. She gave a genuine broad smile and offered Nick a hand.

“Hello there I’m Lucy Harker and this is Bloody Nora. Thank you for coming on such short notice, you already helped more than you could possibly imagine.â€

[trollthumper]

"Always happy to hear that." Lucy definitely lit up before Nick's eyes - and it wasn't just her looks. Death was bone deep in her, soaked in like oil in a sponge. But it was also something in constant motion, flowing, kicking and living like a car engine where the horsepower was provided by actual horses. Death - well, undeath - was something vital within in, directed with all the force of a guided missile.

Nora, on the other hand, looked like a lava lamp. Traces and motes of undeath floated throughout her corpus, briefly colliding with one another before drifting back into their respective orbits. Everything else was simply a void for those motes to drift through, a hungering, yawning void. Nick had run into plenty of vampires in the past, and knew that hunger was always lurking somewhere in the nature of most of them - but definitely not to an extent like this.

"Hmmm..." He studied Nora some more. "I think I can fix this. I don't exactly buy into pseudo-alchemical quackery like 'the balance of humors,' but... it's something we can use. I'm going to need some time, though... and some blood."

[Supercape]

GM

"mmmm! tasty tasty blood!" rasped Nora.

"The hunger is so much less,

When there is a bloody mess!"

She sang, almost in a trance, and fairly off tune.

"Blood sounds good. You have lots of blood in you!" she said to Nick, eyeing him up "even if you are a bit scrawny. I could...let it out!" she said with a toothy grin.

"Or Steve, yes! he ran away, but he has plenty of blood in him he doesn't need! well, maybe he does, but we need it more!"

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy put a gentle but firm hand on Nora’s shoulder.

“Now Nora remember that Nick here is trying to help.â€

“If any blood will do then this place will have that aplenty.†She gestured towards the part of the building that was the meat packing plant “I think that’s why Nora choose to live here. If possible I’ll donate as much blood as you need, though I suspect it flows round my body out of habit. Actually…â€

For once her boundless optimism seemed to fail and she looked down and shuffled her feet.

“There something you might find useful to know. I’m not sure, as you can see it’s difficult to get things out of Nora, but she’ suggested that we both come from the same source. That she was the prototype and I’m the finished model.â€

She seemed extremely embarrassed about the fact.

[trollthumper]

"That... would be helpful," Nick said. "Then again, I don't think that would work for what Nora wants. If we wanted to complete the transformation - bring her all the way into the vampiric condition - that would be great. The blood sympathy would definitely help her cross the threshold." He stroked his chin. "But it sounds like she's been dealing with hunger for a long, long time. While the transformation would help with the balance, the hunger would still be there at times. But if she's spent longer undead than alive... it might help her adjust." He shrugged. "It's her choice entirely."

[Supercape]

GM

"I just want to be Nora again..." said Nora, her voiced etched with sadness.

"I was nothing special, just a poor girl, living off the streets when times was 'ard. I weren't too bright, I weren't too strong. My mam', she died, giving birth to me, and My daddy, well he wasn't so much of a daddy at all. 'All I could say for myself was that I got good and just plain 'survivin, any which way I could. And some of those ways, those ways weren't going down to well with decent folk. But Nora, well, Nora didn't much mind any how, as long as she got to surviving. Guess it go so much of a fight to survive, I didn't give much thought to whether I should be surviving. And I was hungry, and I was cold..."

"You folks today, you would never know..." she said, with an Iron meanness to her voice.

"So, I want to be just old Nora again, don't know what I would do, but I'll do what I got to..."

[trollthumper]

Nick nodded. "Then it's settled," he said. "I'm going to need some time to put together the working. No more than a night, if I push it. I'll need blood - but, as you said, this place has plenty of it - and the right tinctures... and probably an invocation." He turned to Nora. "I know it sounds like a lot to wait, but one more night, and then I'll try and make you free of this. I'll see you again at midnight."

---

The next night...

It took a while for Nick to work out the proper stricture of the ritual, but the framework was solid enough to ensure that nothing overtly hideous would happen. No horrors from the beyond, no out-of-control transmutation -- just the ritual as designed. Whether that ritual actually worked was something to be seen.

He started with some of the asylum's store of blood, as well as a few packs he was able to buy off of a friend at Sisters of Mercy General. The blood was mixed together into a pail and, with the aid of paintbrush, used to scribe the alchemical symbol for air across the cleared-out floor of the surgical theater. Alchemy wasn't exactly Nick's strong suit, but he at least knew he was getting somewhere on the sympathetic ties - the blood he had mixed together was both old and likely flowing through Nora's system, and fresh and from the world outside. Air represented both breath - to be restored to Nora - and, in the classical system of the four humors, blood. He turned up to Nora.

"I'll need you in the center of the sigil, just standing over the line in the middle of the triangle. Try not to disturb the blood - the symbol needs to be whole for the process to work."

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy spent the day watching Nora sleep, keeping any away any interested parties as she did. To keep herself occupied she read all the files and journals of the poor artist who Nora had sent slowly mad by her presence. The poor man had drawn her to this point; she couldn’t help remember that Nora had done this as she watched the woman twitch as she slept.

There was something else that she kept coming back to; could Nick “cure†her to? She could go on and have a normal life away from all this craziness that was going on around her. But did she want to? Did she deserve to? There were people who depended on her being exactly who she was right now, and she didn’t feel she wanted to let go of this life right now. But there was an option there for the future if things ever did change.

It was a little more difficult when Nora woke up; she had to keep her occupied until midnight, when she led Nora out to the location Nick had chosen for the ritual.

[Supercape]

GM

Nora was, for the first time, showing signs of nervousness when Nick performed his ritual.Impatience too.

"Hurry ups! Hurry ups! No tricking Nora!" she hissed, eyeing the Necromancer carefully as he dutifully performed the deed.

Whilst the build up for the event was long, arcane, and, to many, tedious, the actual transformation was brief. Mercifully brief, for it induced pangs of agony and visible distortions in Nora's form. She yelled to the heavens as her eyes shone with black light and her breath became alive with horrible ghostly forms.

Her screaming was short but horrible.

She collapsed to the floor, arcane smoke dispersing from her form. Heaving with exertion, and clearly exhausted, she looked up. Her face was sallow still, and malnourished. But it was different. The glaze, the hunger, the pallid nature of her flesh had gone. Yes, it looked human again.

"Its....finished...." she whispered.

She still looked like she needed a good meal.

[trollthumper]

Nick reached into his jacket and pulled out a sandwich, salvaged from the end of day stuff at the Black Petal. He knew that even if the ritual went well and Nora was restored to mortality - or immortality, according to her choice - she would still be somewhat ravenous. You didn't just get rid of decades of hunger in one go. He had a few other pastries waiting in the Pale Horse - some of the higher calorie stuff, which Nora looked like she could really use.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," he said. "The ritual's built to last, but there's some weird magic stuff in this town that could cause complications. If things start to unwind, come visit me at Lantern Hill Cemetery. I'll see what I can do to tighten the bolts. And if you run into your maker and he's giving you trouble over the choice... let me know. I'll see what I can do to help."

[Tiffany Korta]

Lucy helped Nora up to her feet, draping her jacket over the woman.

“How do you feel?†she gave a friendly little smile

She turned to Nick.

“Thank you again.†She lowered her voice hoping that Nora couldn’t hear “I’m no expert but will her master know that the links been broken? I want to make sure as much as possible she has the chance of normal life this time around. And I’m not sure how to get all the necessary documents you need in this modern world.â€

She turned back to Nora “Let get you back to my place and we can start building you a new life.â€

[Supercape]

GM

Epilogue

And so Bloody Nora's new life began. Firstly with the help of Revenant (and Nick), back at Lucies flat for a slap up meal, and then slowly, reintegrating into modern life.

She was always going to be different. And not just because she had lived nearly a century, if "lived" was the right word. Not just because she was still ignorant of much of modern life.

She regained a normal complexion, and no longer looked emaciated, but she was always thin. And her poor mind was always somewhat...ragged. Cunning, but it was never going to be the sharpest tool in the box.

However, she had the keenest sense of smell, and retained the ability to sniff out a drop of blood at a thousand yards or more. As well as a knack with meat. She soon found gainful employment in a butchers shop - she was not squeamish, worked hard, and handled knives and carcass perfectly.

And, on rare occasion, her nose was put to use by the police service and an even a hero or two, for investigative purposes.

Back at the Meat Plant...

Steve staggered out, clutching his bleeding his neck. He was sure he was going to die. He felt faint, and dizzy, and soon fell to his knees, leaning against the crumbling brick outer wall of the plant. He felt his life force bleeding out of his neck despite his best efforts to stop the bleeding.

He did not look up, but saw a dark figure of a man standing beside him, just the shadowed legs and shoes.

"He...lp..." he croaked.

"Hmmmm" murmured the figure.

"Nora was only the first draft" said the velvet voice, brushing Steves cheek, staining it with Steve's own blood. "And now, Revenant, better. I saw it all. Beautiful. Quite the creature. "

"Of course" he added, thoughtfully, bending over Steve encasing him in shadow.

"I always like to think my masterpiece was my third effort...."

~Fin~