The History of Gotham by those who lived it!
Panic and Paolo DeMarco
Cult of Ecstasy and Verbena
Delaney House
Paolo potters around in the kitchen, finishing the washing up and other general chores. His thoughts are on Jesse and what she has gotten herself involved with at the Temple. From what he knew about that place, mainly that he was glad he hadn't been involved with Gotham's Mages three years ago, he was more than a little perturbed. On the other hand he could feel that pull, the same thing Jesse had felt. The same thing every mage in a hundred mile radius had felt. The only difference was, where the other Mages felt it as an abstract pull, Paolo recognized something in its tenor. Paolo had met the Mages of the Temple of the five Dragons and he had felt it quite clearly when they had died. Feeling their Avatars calling out to him now was just a little more than he was willing to face. He went back to scrubbing dishes.
Even that most domestic of meditations didn't last long. Something else was troubling his train of thought, or his lack of it. Something hovered around the edge of his consciousness like a fly. He actually tried to swat at it several times before he realized it wasn't present in the real world. He stops and focuses his minds eye. The dull, annoying buzz takes on form, resonance, intent. Paolo's eyes snap open and he lets the scrubbing brush fall into the soapy water.
The door opens and Paolo looks down at the figure standing in the path, wreathed in Tobacco smoke. He hadn't needed to knock and the building itself seemed to intimidate the visitor. Demarco lent casually against the door frame, his expression could be disdain or amusement, it wasn't clear which.
"Panic!" he snorted "what are you doing here Barrabi?"
"Call me that again Tree hugger and I'll turn you inside out and make you blow yourself!" He steps forward, almost threateningly, but then steps back again, casting a nervous look about the building. His face set in a stern mask he takes a final draw on the cigarette and flicks it into the flowerbed. "Look, do you want to come down here so we can talk or shall I just piss off?"
"No boy, wait there and I'll come out!" Paolo takes one last look around, making sure he can spare a few minutes away from the charges at Delaney house. Satisfied that all Hell breaking loose isn't on the immediate agenda he pulls the door closed and walks down the steps. Panic lights another Marlboro and quickly retreats to the gates, glad to be as far from the house as possible. "So what is it that brings you here Ba… Boy!"
"Perhaps I wanted to see what your flesh tasted of? See if it has sap instead of blood!" He relents, "or perhaps I thought we needed to talk. Your lil girl is getting pretty close to the Temple and I thought you deserved to know the truth about what happened!"
Paolo's eyebrows shot up, he was completely unable to hide the surprise he felt. There was no love lost between this Infernalist and himself, and even though he had tried to find out what had happened to the Chantry of the Temple, Panic had refused to tell him even the basics. Now suddenly, here he was, ready to spill the beans.
"No need to pull faces, its not like I'm doing this out of the kindness of my heart Witch! I'm just making sure that all you newcomers don't screw up everything I did."
"You …. I Knew you were to blame you vile little …" Paolo advances on Panic, ready to ring his neck. Instead he finds himself dropping to the ground, his head suddenly feeling like a cold steel spike had been driven right through it. Panic stepped up to the prone Mage and placed a hand on his shoulder. "What .. what was that?"
"Try not to fight it Demarco, it goes away in a coupla minutes. Till then, just try and listen ok?"
"Ngghhd what .. what did you do to me?" The Verbena master had honestly believed this chain smoking slip of a boy was no match for his own abilities, he wouldn't underestimate him a second time. Then again, his powers came not from the masters of life but from the denizens of the dark places between the worlds.
"Nothing. But if you keep trying to pound on me, She'll do a lot worse than that! Now shut the fuck up and listen. You been wanting to know what happened that night three years ago since it happened, well its time you found out. Time you realised exactly what your friends at the Temple did and why this city is in such a precarious situation right now!" Again, another cigarette.
"You see, the danger that threatened to engulf the city back then hasn't gone away, its still here. But both sides took a lot of casualties on that night and they have been licking their wounds while we were licking ours! At least, they were. Now your Jesse, Doc Lazarus, all the halo wearing champions of the people, they are the targets for Akril and his unending lust for that Dragon Nest. And it's the temple that will save them, if anything can."
"The .. Temple, what do you mean Panic? The Temple is just that, a Temple. The Mages who once dwelt there are no more." Paolo wasn't sure who he was trying to convince, himself or the barrabi.
"The Mages aren't gone no, they are still there, at the Temple!"
"Your wrong Panic, they died, every Mage for a hundred miles felt them torn from the tapestry." But he knew only too well that something had remained, he had felt it. Only until now he had been able to convince himself that it was his own loss that caused him to avoid the Temple.
"No witch, its you who are wrong. The Mages, they knew what was coming before it ever hit them. They knew what was coming because I told them. They knew what they had to do because they had that Node, its power is unlike anything most of us will ever understand. Its right slap bang in the centre of a great web, a matrix of energy lines. The eye of the storm if you like. Destiny was like an open book to the master of the Temple and they all saw what fate had in store for them all too clearly."
"If what you say is true, why didn't they escape, get to somewhere safe? Or come to those of us outside of the city for help?"
"Because it would have been inconceivable. They had to accept their fate or the consequences would have been cataclysmic. That's what I have never wanted to tell you Demarco, the Mages of the Temple chose to die."
"Nonsense!"
"Don't let your grief blind you Demarco. You knew those guys far better than I did and you know just how far they would have gone to protect the sleepers. They were a human shield against the combined powers of the Infernal hierarchy and they absorbed everything that Akril and his sponsors threw at them. Without that sacrifice we would both be standing in a ten mile crater right now. At least you would be, I'd be toast along with the other 13 million people in this city. When Akril and Kinkaid attacked the city, every single man and woman, awakened or acolyte, sat down in the garden and opened themselves to it. One huge fucking sponge for all that Qlippothic energy."
"By the Goddess …"
"Yes, but the Crone, not the maiden or the Mother!" Panic lights another cigarette. "For my part, I did what I could. I had made a few deals of my own for that night you see, but part of the bargain I made was for the fate of those Mages. The Akashics and the Hermetics, the Verbena like you and even the Dreamspeakers, all the shiny, happy good guys who sat contemplating their foreskins and never once came up to the Chaste Dragon to see if they could rescue us worthless whores from the Fucking Nephandi. I gave up the very Prize the Fallen were fighting over to save a bunch of cock suckers who never once lifted a finger for me and mine."
"What are you talking about boy, what Prize?"
"Gotham, you prick. I could have had My node, Bellamy's node and the Temple node all to myself, but I chose a different prize instead. I chose Hope over revenge Demarco, and rather than being ripped from the world and sent to the ovens of Hell, the souls of everyone who died that night found a sanctuary."
"The … the Node!" Paolo stood, wiping blood from his nose "I had already guessed as much, I recognize them in my dreams."
"Yes, that's not something I had expected either. If I had known that I would have to put up with their voices yammering on at me day and night I might well have let the devil take them after all. But what's done is done. Destiny had them penciled in for a horrible fate, but I changed that. With their eternal punishment closed to them, there was only one place for them to go."
"You altered fate Panic, by the gods boy, what forces have you made this bargain with? What on earth did you give for such power?"
"Don't get your knickers in a twist Verbena, it was a once only deal. I'm not going to replace one Diabolical sorcerer with another if that's what your worried about. In fact, the consequences for screwing with destiny will catch up to me eventually and you won't need to worry about me anymore! That's the thing with selling your soul Demarco. Once you have destroyed all Hope, there's pretty much nothing to fear anymore. There's nothing you can't face, if you understand what you've done, no fear can ever match your inevitable fate!"
"So why are you telling me this Panic, what do you want?"
"Want? What do I WANT?" Panic's anger grows and as it rises, so does the wind. The trees shake and what few leaves remain on evergreens and hardy bushes are dislodged. The air crackles with static electricity. "I want to make sure that nobody else dies in this fucking city because of Kinkaid! I want to make sure that Khan Akril and those things at Melcom don't strike another pact for the souls of everyone in this shit soaked burgh. I want The Ba'ali and the Nephandi and the Satanists and all the slaves of Hell to die screaming you idiot! I want blood Demarco, I want pain and I want those kids like Jesse and F.J. and Indigo to have the chance to become a sanctimonious old fart like the rest of you so called Magi." As his ranting fury grows, Panic rises from the ground, sparks of black electricity arc across the grounds of Delaney house. "I want the innocent to stay innocent Demarco, but more importantly I want to make sure that nobody else ever uses my ….. my …. The girls at the Dragon, …. like that ever again. I want to make sure that when I am gone, they are safe Demarco and for that I will need the help of Witches like you, Witches and Vampires and shapeshifting monsters with blood already on their hands. I want you to do what comes naturally to your kind!"
"You ….. you want to go to war" Paolo watches as Panic slowly descends to earth once more " … war with the enemy of man, the Fallen throne itself!"
"Not the Throne Demarco, only its vassals here in Gotham! After all …" He looks at the Verbena master, and Demarco finally sees the flickering power of his soul staring out of those dark eyes "… what do I have to lose?"
A tour of the Arkham Asylum
Dr Burton, Brother Cho
The shaven headed monk sat on his bed and rocked back and forth. His mumbling continued day and night without cease. The man, perhaps 25 at the most, has signed himself in 3 years ago on a 28 day stay. After which he had seemed greatly improved. He said he no longer heard the voices and as he had committed himself, Dr Burton saw no reason not to release him.
Brother Cho had been out 8 months when the police dragged him back in kicking and screaming. At the hearing Dr Burton had to sit and listen to the Monk’s crimes while Cho had laughed hysterically. A whole family. He had captured them, held them hostage for three days and subjected them to the most evil acts. Forcing the parents to watch while he …….
Burton looks at Cho as his head comes up and those bestial eyes glare back at him. The Doctor does not believe anyone is evil, only the product of a damaged mind. However Brother Cho had tested that belief to its limit. Now as he gazed in to the mans eyes a fear gnawed at the back of his brain. A fear that said, those are not the eyes of the Monk you treated 3 years ago. Cho laughs at the Doctor, spittal dribbling from his chin.
From elsewhere the screams of the insane sounded. Tonight was going to be one of those nights. The Institute was awash with restless patients and the howls of the disturbed. Dr Burton hoped that Nina managed to get some sleep through all this din as he moved onto the next restless inmate.
Panic, Gulfora
Mage, Succubus
The Chaste Dragon
Gotham
Night
The rain that felt that Gotham was ITS home ran in thick rivulets down the window pain. Yuppies actually paid money to have pictures made that faked this, water running between sheets of glass. To Panic it felt like the city was crying. Not the tears of a crocodile, but the heartbroken tears of friends who can only cause each other pain.
Like Him and Shade, like Sue Lei and Cody, Constantine and Columbine, Damien and Kiss. All love is pain, that is what makes it so real. You can’t love someone unless you hurt them too. The working girls who had taken him in had taught him that. The marks could beat them, bash them, rape them. But they could never hurt them. Not really, because there is no love in a whores bed.
The dull ache in his arm began to feel better as he leant his half naked body against the cold glass. That bone deep chill was a new sensation and refocused his attention. The same way biting your hand helps you forget your headache. The burning in his chest told him that he needed insulin soon, well about two hours ago actually. It would wait. He tuned the room out. It smelt too much of Sue Lei. Things had gotten far too close for comfort. Or maybe just far too Close. Panic had no intention of getting romantically involved with Sue Lei. Not in her currant incarnation anyway. She could never handle love as real and passionate as it existed in his world. He had protected her from the Hidden world for a long time, even though it had been involved with every choice she ever made. When the Hidden had stripped Gotham of so many of its Awakened she had been on the sidelines, now it seemed she was in the firing line. Akril and his dark masters had drawn her in by accident where they had failed to do it so often by design. No matter how closely their paths were entwined, he had to fight his attraction. Besides, every hero knows that attraction borne from danger is fleeting.
He cradled a glass of fresh Orange Juice as he played his mind over the city. Beyond the window the city pulsed. In the hours before dawn even Gotham was beginning to wind down, but only beginning. Club Harlequin still served food and exotic cocktails for at least another hour or two. Raindog’s would provide warmth and sanctuary for just as long. By now the hoards of unmentioned cleaners would have the Gotham Museum's Egyptian wing looking like no one had ever been there.
Panic could feel all of these. He shared morning coffee with the foundry workers as they finished the night shift. Shivered to the bone alongside the homeless in Cardboard city. Felt the electric tingle of satin sheet against bare flesh in the Gotham towers suits and winced at the taste of amphetamines with First year med. students over at Gotham city general. He could feel the icy gulf between two Lovers sleeping back to back due to harsh words.
Because he is pretending the room isn't there, he doesn't sense her arrival.
“She would have fucked you, you know?”
Panic sighed. The base remark from the unwelcome creature invading his reverie. His eyes left the distance and homed in on the reflection in the glass. The form of the Succubus swam in the rain, dark tanned flesh spreading warmth over the cold transparency. The air expelled by the sigh slowly mists the window and obscures the image.
“If I used the tricks of your kind, every virgin in Gotham would ……. Succumb! There’s no pleasure in that! But you wouldn’t understand that would you?”
“no”. The Succubus moves into the room as Panic turns to her, his hands tapping a Marlboro from its packet. Her every move is sensual, seductive and primeval. The catwalk supermodel and the lap dancer are met in her lithe and casual gait. “I find my pleasures were they are to be found, rather than looking to be cherished for more than the moment. As did you, … once.”
“I enjoy sex, that does not mean that I can’t feel love.”
“This argument again? You think we Succubi feel no love?”
“That’s not what ….”
“We love Panic. You more than most know that. We Love Her and we love Her Children. Our Children!”
“We are starting to sound like a broken record Gulfora. The sneaking death of boredom?”
“You want to know why I came don’t you Panic?” The naked woman was inches away now. Her breathe mixing with the nicotine smoke of his cigarette. “Your dying to know why I answered the Vampires call.”
“You used her. Don’t sugar coat it. She extended an invitation and you took it. I know how the hidden cross the seals, only an invitation can do it.”
“There’s all sorts of invitation Panic. Not all are so freely given or intentional. The Mortician who fucks his charges, the place every football stud goes to rape his date, the fat biker who can only get friends by nailing cats heads to boards, the selfish suicide. They are all invitations to something. They all invite something in.”
“I don’t need Demonology 101 Gulfora.”
“Then don’t make out like I did anything wrong. Shade is a dabbler, she is a conduit. That’s that. Gotham has become a bunker in the game. The next note in the percussion will sound here. We needed someone at ground zero.”
“What? What is happening here?” Panic pulled back, the revelation was a shock to him. “and can you quit mixing your metaphors please.”
“Two of the Fallen have pawns here. You knew that. The Symphony needed harmony and I am it.”
“Hardly harmony is it? They have mortal servants so She sends a full blooded Demon?”
“Demonesssss” Gulfora rakes the mages chest with long nails as she snarls out her rebuttal, drawing blood. Her hand stays on his exposed belly. “They take direct action by controlling mortals. We prefer to aid our children where possible in their chosen paths.”
“I’ve heard this one too.” Panic pushes against her talons, letting the pain in “They control and direct like parent’s, paragons of order. You test with hardship and chaos, allowing those of us who are worthy to be all that we can be. Its still propaganda to me sweet thing!”
“Welcome to the war Kid!” Gulfora laughs a husky laugh. Her leg lifts and she rubs the inside of her thigh against his butt.
“I’m a lover not a fighter girl!” Panic grins back, wrapping and arm around her and pulling her close. “But if she wants to use me in her God-damn war, you could at least clue me into what's going on. Why is Gotham so central to the war between Heaven and Hell?”
“You're already in the war Panic, by your own choice.” She lowered the leg again. “Very well, I don't think that would be against too many rules.” She takes a step backwards, pulling him with her. “It all comes down to that night three years ago when you took the Chantry from the Nephandi. From those who had you and the whores enslaved.”
“I could have worked that out all on my own!” he snarled, letting her walk him across the room.
“Shut up and listen! That was a time of conjunctions and auspicious omens, the Nephandi were not the only ones using it to power rituals.”
“I know that too. The Tremere were all locked away in their Chantry doing God knows what. The Harlequin took a trip up there, locked them all in and set the place alight.”
“Indeed he did. The Fae at the Fun fair were also having a party, an orgy of abandon to their pantheon. Somebody set them alight too. But the one that really mattered was your friend Hanibaal Kinkaid, the Ba'ali priest.”
“I knew it!” Panic turned his head for a moment, dodging her lips. “Something he did set all the other things off didn't it? Like a domino rally?”
“So clever..” She purred, pushing her advantage and her attentions on him. “.. so intuitive. Kinkaid's vampire discipline is powerful, strong. He's spent all these years perfecting it for one great ritual, a ritual to open the seals fully and bring his master across!”
“Your ...kidding? He could really do that? Bring one of the Fallen Gods back to earth? Bring Ba'al here?”
“He could do, if we don't stop him. Thats what his millenia of unlife have been dedicated to Panic, that's what you're fighting against. But he couldn't just do it with a click of his fingers. It takes time, preparation. He has to sweeten the meat, hang it till its rancid and maggoty ..”
“Quit being poetic, what meat?”
“Gotham city!”
“Oh!” He feels her stop as her legs reach the bed, nowhere to go from here. “I think I see. If its takes an Invitation to open the way for a minor Demon like you, for something like that it would need an entire city to go bad?”
“Exactly so." She ignores the slight. "And that's what Kinkaid did on that night. He cast a ritual called contagion. He gave Gotham, already a pit of vice, the shove it needed. Tilted the scales towards evil, towards the atmosphere needed for his God to come across.”
“He's terraforming Gotham, so he can turn it into Hell on Earth!” He was too lost imagining that fate to resist her arms around his neck, her leg around his waist again. She pulled him on top of her as she let herself fall back onto the bed. “I knew this city was a cesspit, but I thought that was just us humans being true to form.”
“Don't underestimate yourself sweetie. Humans are a pretty fucked up bunch. But his ritual just helps focus it, makes sure you always choose the darker path. In the natural run of things you might have finished despoiling the earth in a few more centuries. Kinkaid just sped things up here in Goitham, gave it a head start.”
“All those people ...” He said, but he meant something else. Her warm body was impossible to ignore much longer and the feeling of victory he had from learning the truth started to have its own effect.
“You’ll never find her Panic” she purrs, her breathe like a promise on his sensitive face.
“Who?” he asks as he kisses her chest.
“The woman your searching for!” Her head falling back to expose her throat.
“Oh, and who is that?” Panic pushes her back onto the bed.
“The woman you have always been searching for,” her fingers grip his hair “the one who you can fall in love with.” Pulling on his locks “The woman who can say no to you!”