Vanessa follows quickly after the pack ghoul Armande, holding her precious cobra Una in her hands and cooing to her softly.
"Oh my darling, my baby! They brought you back safe and sound to me-- they brought ALL of you back! Oh I'm so happy! Are you well, mi Una? Did they treat you gently?"
Armande glances over his shoulder at Vanessa and shakes his head with a smile. Hefting the three heavy sacks he has slung over his shoulder-- each containing one of Vanessa's boa constrictor-ghouls-- he starts down the stairs to the basement where the pack has their rooms. Once they reach the bottom, Vanessa hurries ahead and opens her door for Armande. Practically skipping inside, she lays Una on the dresser, and instructs Armande to lay the sacks on the bed. Armande does as she instructs, and then steps back and folds his arms-- watching Una warily out of the corner of his eye. Vanessa quickly opens the sacks and gently pours her boa constrictors out and looks them over worriedly.
"Ah mis bellezas...my beauties..." she murmurs, running her hands over Culebra, Dientes, and Apretura lovingly. Finally she looks up and smiles at Armande.
"Thank you SO much for your assistance, Armande! You're a treasure!" she cries, relieved to have her snakes back safe and sound.
"Eh-- not a problem, Vanessa! Dat's what I'm here for, right?" he says cockily, shaking out his hands. "Anythin' else I can do ya for?"
Vanessa smiles and looks Armande over appraisingly. "Not tonight...but perhaps another night!" she chuckles and winks.
"All right, den, I got some stuff ta do for Carter-- I'll catch ya later!"
Vanessa nods and waves as Armande leaves. "Ciao Armande!" she calls, and then hurries to close and lock the door behind him. She looks in the corner where bags of her things that she'd had to hastily leave behind in Toronto are now sitting, and hurries over to rummage through them. When she finds her stone statues, she lets out a sigh of relief and checks them over for any knicks or scratches. Finding none, she stands and hurries back to the center of her room-- placing the large statue on its platform in the middle, and the other two at either end of the room.
Vanessa hurries back over to Una, lifts her, and places her on the bed with the boa constrictors.
"There we go, ninos, everything is back to the way it should be! Now I bet you're hungry!" Vanessa hurries into the closet and comes back holding a white mouse by its tale. Una's head comes up interestedly, and her flat eyes watch Vanessa as she approaches with the mouse. Vanessa smiles and drops the mouse gently in front of Una, and Una flares her hood-- striking the mouse with her fangs even before the mouse has completely dropped to the bed. Vanessa laughs and claps her hands, and then strips off her maroon, velvet jumpsuit and boots and tosses them on top of the bags. Tonight has been quite an ordeal, but it's not over yet, and now she will feed her darlings with the blood of a prince!
Vanessa walks over to the top of the bed-- Una happily eating at the foot-- and lays down in the middle of her boa constrictors. "Vaminos, amores..." she calls to them, and they instantly begin to slither their way over to her. They lovingly wrap their coils about her arms and legs, and Vanessa closes her eyes. The girls-- Culebra and Apretura-- each extend their jaws and place one of Vanessa's wrists in their mouthes, while the boy-- Dientes-- places his distended mouth around her neck. Almost in unison, the snakes bite down gently with their small, curved fangs, and begin to drink from their mistress. Vanessa moans and her flesh prickles with excitement. Her sire never fed HER snakes this way, but Vanessa came up with the idea once when she was feeling arroused, and has never fed them any other way since.
The minutes pass by pleasurably until finally the constrictors are satiated. They carefully unhook their fangs from Vanessa's flesh, and lay their heads on her body. It takes a moment for Vanessa's eyes to roll back from the back of her head and her breathing to slow, but when it does, she strokes her snakes and smiles at them contentedly.
"Mis bebes, tonight is the new moon...the dark moon...the moon of power. Tonight I will be performing that ritual that is most-valued by our clan...most sacred and secret...most powerful."
Vanessa gets up off the bed slowly, stretching languidly, and walks back over to her closet. She turns around holding a clay urn that she's painted with her own blood, and sets it on the floor in front of the large statue in the center of the floor. Then she returns to the closet, and comes back with her hands filled with ashes. She sprinkled the ashes in a circle, using the two smaller statues as markers for the diameter of the circle, and lights the candles placed in the statues. She brushes off her hands, and goes back to the closet one more time.
Vanessa carries a handful of scalpals back to the circle-- she wants to make sure she doesn't have to stop this operation for any reason-- and a carraf of blood. She places the carraf to one side of the urn, and the scalpals to the other side. Kneeling in front of the large statue, she raises her hands to the ceiling.
"Ayida Wedo-- beautiful rainbow serpent-goddess-- be with me as I perform this most sacred of operations of the Serpents of the Light! Keep my hands and nerves steady! Guide my knife!"
The boa constrictors slowly slide down off the bed and slither to circle around the outside of the ashes. Vanessa closes her eyes, breathes deeply until she's in a trance, and then opens her unseeing eyes and snatches up a scalpal.
With a deft movement, Vanessa plunges the scalpal-- tip-first-- into the place just under her ribcage, and cuts a deep cut from her sternum straight across to her left side. She blinks once, but betrays no pain. Blood begins to flow from the cut, but much slower and in less quantity because of her trance. The scalpal continues to cut away sinew, muscle, and flesh, until finally she throws it down and reaches into her chest with her bare hand. She gently grasps her heart-- the seat of all emotion and that by which she will one day be judged by the goddess Maat...or so those foul Followers of Set claim-- bends and grabs a smaller scalpal, and expertly severs the aorta and other vessels. The heart now free, she slowly brings it from her chest and holds it up-- black blood and gore dripping from her hand and down her arm-- and drops the second bloody scalpal on the floor.
She holds her heart now in both hands, and stares at it in amazement. It's hard to believe that a simple piece of wood driven into it could cause her to go into torpor-- even severed from her body! This thought sobers her and brings her out of her trance, and she winces and grows light-headed. Carefully, she places her heart in the clay urn, and then locks the lid into place and drips wax from the candle all over the top to seal it from the elements. This done, she reaches a shaking hand to the caraff of blood, drinks-- spilling some of it down her chest because of the shaking-- and then concentrates, willing her blood to heal the wounds she created.
Vanessa slumps to the side for a moment, and when she's regained her strength, she gets back up onto her knees, raises her hands to the ceiling, and thanks the loa for the success of the operation. Still incredulous that her heart is now out of her body and in the urn, and stands and lifts the urn with large eyes. A quick glance at the clock shows her that she better get moving, so she places the urn back on the ground and gets dressed. She runs over to the closet, finds the backpack she wants-- which is filled with identicle urns, but without the blood-markings-- and places the heart-urn with them. One day they may hold other Kindred hearts, but for now they will serve as decoys.
Vanessa uses her blood to make herself melt into the shadows and increase her speed, and then tears out of the mansion. She runs until she finds the voodoo-protected graveyard of those Voudoun who live in New York, and runs to the center of the cemetary. She looks around until she has her barings memorized, takes the shovel she stole from the toolshed nearby, and rapidly digs a narrow but deep hole. Placing her heart-urn at the bottom of the hole carefully, she fills the hole back up. She repeats this process with the other 4 urns-- placing them in various places around the graveyard-- and then runs the shovel back to the toolshed.
After all this work, Vanessa is positively famished! With only an hour until sunrise, she has to be quick...and she knows what she wants. Unknown to Nero, she has taken quite a liking to drinking blood laced with cocaine, and stashed some of his bags of cocaine in her clothes. She remains invisible, and runs to the nearest bar where she hides and watches the entrance. She watches the drunks leave until she sees one that will do just fine. He appears to be a man in his late 30s, has long, scraggly dark hair and a beard, and is wearing small, round mirrorshades and a black trenchcoat. She smiles to herself, and steps from the shadows.
She approaches the man, pretending to be drunk. "Well hello!" she says, pretending to stumble. "What a coincidence! You're leaving the bar alone, and I want to blow your mind!"
The man turns to face her and lowers his sunglasses, looking at her over the tops of them. "Iss that sso..." he slurs. "Well good, 'cause I'm sick of you high-class bitches walkin' all over me...laughin' at me...thinkin' you're too good for me..." the man walks towards Vanessa, almost trips over the uneven pavement, and Vanessa smiles and steps foward faster than he can follow to catch him.
"Wow...you're a fast one...in many ways..." he says, looking at her in amazement. He blinks, shakes his head, and pushes his sunglasses back up. Vanessa looks at the sky and bites her lip. Should she take him home? She can't go to HIS place or she'll be stuck there until the sun sets! Besides, after the fun she had with Prince Janee, this man will only be a disappointement-- she can tell.
Vanessa looks back at the man, thinking how good it is to be back in New York where she's free to do what she's about to do, and grabs the collar of his coat. "Come with me and I'll show you how fast I am..." she lures in a low, sexy voice, and the man stumbles forward after her. She continues walking backwards until they reach the end of the building, and then turns to walk backward down the alleyway until the two of them are concealed in darkness.
"Never done it outside in an alley before..." the man mumbles, his voice sounding quite arroused.
Vanessa smiles and reaches into her cleavage to pull out a small baggy of coke.
"You'll enjoy it even more after a snort of this..." she whispers. The man takes off his sunglasses and puts them away.
"Now you're talking, babe..." he says, and takes the baggy. She hands him a small glass tube, and he proceeds to snort the coke straight from the baggy. He staggers back against the wall blinking and exclaiming over how good the stuff is, and Vanessa smiles and steps forward, pressing her body against his. She reaches down into his pants, and as she grips him, she extends her fangs and latches onto his neck in the blink of an eye. The man-- happy from the coke and distracted from her hand-- doesn't try to push her away at all, but gives into the extreme pleasure of the Kiss.
"This is your lucky night...you'll live to see morning..." Vanessa thinks, realizing that she can't possibly drain the man dry. But before she leaves with quite a bit of the man's coke-laced blood, she makes sure he's had the best orgasm of his life. As his blood hits her fully, she feels her muscles fill with strength and speed-- it's dizzying-- and she barely conceals herself in shadows before she takes off running faster than she could have ever run on her own, arriving back at the mansion just before sunrise-- the bloodfeast only 12 hours away.