zg_shadows | A Valkyrie ponders...

Summer was ending. Oh, autumn had not yet come, but the leaves were beginning to darken on the trees, and the air was crisp and clean. The rain, when it fell, didn't fall from humid and heat clogged skies, but rather was as cold and brisk as English charm. The nights were drawing in slowly, and the sun rose a little more sluggishly in the morning.

In Kindred society, the sleepy nights of summer were over. Lady Jade Allen had held her last court, and (theoretically at least) would now be relegated to a more minor political role for the next twelve months. No one actually believed this (any more than anyone believed that the cautious old Malkavian, Giles Reuven, was really going to become Head of the Primogen Council for the next three months either), but the court would not be so directly subject to Jade's whims and notoriously stringent rules of social engagement. Instead the Kindred of London would be able to relax under a more liberal regeime.

Rumours were also floating back from the States that the Blood Plague had been ended. No one quite knew how, or at who's hands, but murmurs floating on the night time winds talked of the progenitor of the plague having been slain somewhere in upstate New York. Some said that he had been an Anathema, taken down by Alastors. Others said he had been something else - some other kind of Kindred threat, destroyed by Archons. Others talked of Kindred bounty hunters and death dealers. No one quite knew the truth yet, and no one was prepared to relax with their feeding just yet.

Even a woman who should have been sure enough of the truth of the rumours to feed freely had no relaxed just yet. Firinne Devon still carefully went out at night for rabbits and deer, and killed as few as she could. She was not entirely sure why she remained so cautious, but she had not yet felt safe enough to go back to the nightclubs and bars where she had always fed before.

"It should be safe," Matana bari Hadad told her, confident in the magicks he had channelled. "The ritual destroyed all of Corazon's spawn."

Firinne shrugged. "It's not just the Blood Plague," she said, and then refused to say anything more. There were parts of her brain which she didn't try and explain to Matana. She couldn't. She didn't even have words for it herself.

How could she explain that the thought of prowling through bars in see through tops, throwing come hither looks at boys who were (these days) young enough to be her grandsons made her feel slightly sick. It was such a messy, dirty, weak way to feed. It left no bodies, but it sure as hell left a load of stains on the soul, and Firinne was weary of her soul feeling quite so mucked up.

Hunting as she did now was different. It felt honest - clean, even. There was no pretense between herself and her prey. She hunted and the prey ran, as it always had as long as predators had walked the earth. Why this should matter to her (she who had been taught that honesty was a subjective matter for a vampire) was something she didn't understand entirely. She had a suspicion it mattered to her because valkyries (What little she knew of them) did not hunt in such a sneaking and underhanded way.

But it was ridiculous that she should feel this way. First of all, 'valkyrie' was really only a word, after all. It was a word which meant she carried with her the support of Clan Gangrel, voiced by their Justicar, which made it a powerful word, but it was just a word. She did not have to act like a Valkyrie away from the gaze of the Camarilla, any more than she expected Jade to be 'delightful', or whatever other Toreador words of favour she carried. It was just a mark of power, as all things really were with vampires.

Yet she still went out hunting amidst wet grass and dark trees, instead of in bars. And when Firinne crouched over the bleeding body of her prey, she let a little of the warm blood trickle through her bone thin fingers, and whispered a prayer to the grey cloaked figure she sometimes thought she could see, lurking at the corners of her eyes.