Micro-Burst

To humans… Those catacombs in Paris are just a place, corpses were as well as still are kept.

In the 17th century to the humans the catacombs had been introduced as a fix to the rising stench problem within the capital. Historians even criticize both Kings Louis The Fifteenth as well as Sixteenth for the issues that still could not be solved into the very later years of the 1700’s. To Coraline, as well as the other vampires of her blood line. It was more of a compound for badly behaved within the covens of the area.

Those who had a little too hard of a time keeping off of massacre binges, or simply those who were too outspoken against the order of things and would simply get the greater mass of vampires caught. The catacombs are much older than the 17th century. That is just when the human world was introduced to them. These vampires in particular had a bellonda agent in the blood as the vampires in the area called it. Meaning only a person with this gene could be made into one. It also meant for those who carried it only a few options arose. One would either be turned before their 30’s or die a slow death of illness those in the apothecaries could not source or cure. This meant by the very pulsing of those with the bloodlines… veins were still held to some order of the bloodline that started it all. The Catacombs were a place of terror for most. Even in modern times the most closed off and caving in parts that tourists dare not venture to there are still vampires with a stake in the heart.

Like putting them in shackles. Being blood-let and dried up like mummies into madness. If a human got too close a vampire frozen in time got a snack, if not even freedom due to the blood high that kind of rush gives one in a mummified state. The memories that mix between truth and perverse nightmare are enough to make even the most skilled immortals go mad for a time. Coraline should have known better.After all this time she wished she had known better.Yes. She had gotten herself locked away in this place for betraying the very immortals that brought her into this world.

Though … did she really owe those who made her have to hurt others in order to survive much? Well her elder brother Viktor who had been woken from his sleep certainly thought so.

The siblings had all met in the dark of night in a dungy little wine cellar in Vadenhill. This had been after it took Lance 17 months to track her down. Coraline had betrayed them all and taken the only thing that would help them hide from another vampire hunt like in the late 1700’s during the guillotine madness. There was only a little of the compound left and she had wasted over half of it just to feel what it was like to be human again. Just to use it on a vampire she turned in the 1950’s without anyone’s permission. For a fleeting chance at a silly dream of a human life without being caught. Sure it was seen as selfish in the coven’s eyes. To Coraline she had done it out of survival.

With every monetary resource she could muster in the 20th century she had pulled together a team of plants from her old greenhouses and scientists to recreate the compound. It wasn’t her fault that due to an overuse of getting mortal Ash from the plants in Greenwood that the main plant in the compound needed was extinct. On top of that she had only been a month or two from really duplicating the plant. She was sure of it!

Still Coraline had been sloppy and when she was human she had been attacked and placed in the hospital. Everyone had used her alias Morgan Vincent but it was too late. Her sire and older brother. Etienne had known her too well and the hunt had begun. Coraline was caught then and Mick, the vampire she turned… Was too weak to stop it in his simple fresh human forum. The cure he chased after so hard. The cure she thought she could use to help him with his life… The very thing spitting in her face and getting her in the vampire forum of shackles.

This place felt beneath her as she was covered in dirt and grime with the six of her brothers around her. Coraline’s face had bruised a little as she had not fed in the two weeks it had taken its toll on her skin. Now it looked sickly and pale and she smelt of old rot.

All of the siblings come for them to all meet here. It was clear to see on her pale skin even in the gray light of this place lit only by lamps and candles. Coraline knew what was going to happen to her.

The fear in her violet orbs and she was cast in stone and could not move.

They had done this in 1804 when she had her first binge on humans. That sentencing had lasted 34 long years that left her cold and cynical. As well as a few times in 1900. That was how she had missed clapper dresses and she never really forgave them after that. Her fate was tied to the same string now. Though it was Viktor and Guillaume who did the sentencing over a century ago. The two brothers in all her years of punishment had never gathered all the heads of the bloodline before.

Lance only watched with a sick smirk that made her angry only due to the fact it was like looking at a replica of her own. Her own face looking back at her while she was frozen in place helpless.

Lance was the only one of the siblings with the power of the sight and he was using it to look into her soul with his one pitch black eye. While the other was also sclera in rage. He came from behind and she felt the needle of a syringe in the back of her neck as her world began to bubble and turn a painful still gray in her eyes.

Silver… to them all it was a little burst of poison in her. Making her tame enough to pull the stake from her heart if only long enough to let her speak and say goodbye. None of them saw themselves as monsters after all. Only looking out for the greater good of the species if there was another purge that sent them all into hiding. Perhaps without it in her system she could have fought a few of her brothers off.

Coraline might have even made her way out of the cellar walls and away from this place… Now… that chance was crushed. It reminded her of the Aesop’s Fable of the dog drowning in her own reflection. The consequences of her own actions mixed with the fact this place was dingy.

The scarlet faded wallpaper was peeling off to show the wood panel. She too was drowning if not by the river side but in such an embarrassing place.

Her oldest brother Viktor was bearded and gray, not like the others. He had been turned much later in life and had used the cure more than any of them so he had aged the most.

Now he looked older than her father when she was still human. He pulled the wooden stake from her chest and she felt herself gasp for air. Not that she needed it.

It was just a source of comfort to feel more normal that her body had done for over 200 years. Her violet orbs looked into Viktor’s green hues with rage. Old French to Coraline was like breathing. For you my dear reader I will break it down in simple terms.

“You think that because you resemble a flower you can get away with whatever you want.”

Viktor’s brassy hair had peppers of gray in it and his beard was a solid white. His eyes sclera with rage as he spoke.

Silas, the only brother who had ever stood up for her, rose from his seat in the back now. He was dressed in all blue and his dark hair was long now down to his back.

“ Coraline never recovered from the last time you put her in The Place Of Death. That is why she longs to be human. To send her again is to promise her mind to madness!”

His voice was bold though a few others in the back scoffed.

Lance spoke up in a monotone cockiness that came across uncannily human for the words he spoke. “Thats all that Mick st John ever was a human obsession with her to ease some loneliness.”

Coraline wanted to speak but her lips were dull and fuzzy. All of her wanted to scream at how wrong they all were. How Mick had always been her best friend … how even if he moved on with Beth as much as she had fought it. At the end of the day she was here giving her life once again for Mick.once when he burned her alive and nearly killed her

Now her sire Etienne, the only blonde of her siblings spoke in his icy tone that held no life or love only calculation like a taction.

“Our Baby sister wants to live like a Duvall. We shall let her do so. I think she should be put away much longer than the last time…” He smiled and touched his chin as if in a day dream.

“ What was it that drove our dear grandmother Isabel Anna mad 200 years in the combs? “

Guillaume only scoffed and bit his knuckle. He thought of how he regretted the last sentence on his baby sister and held his tongue.

Etienne raptured on ignoring them all and lectured as he felt responsible for her

“Coraline wants freedom but she should only wake when she can handle being the elder she is.”

Now Yves nodded he had been quiet the whole time he spoke for the first time and his voice was unlike anything she remembered.

“ As much as my heart carries love for you Coraline, humans kill one another everyday and no one even blinks.” He approached her now, taking her bruised chin in his hands. “Humans rage war and what you did could have started one among our own bloodline.”

She moved her lips to speak but he brushed a thumb over her lips.

“ We must hold our kind to a higher standard rogue vampires with no meaning to live or not you experimented with a duplicate compound on that of your own kind… Did you perhaps think it was your place to play Mother Maria?” his eyes narrowed in accusation.

“It was all of you who made me this way….” she spat at him as tears rolled from her violet orbs.

When she spoke at last her voice didn’t sound her own. It hurt to speak. This time Coraline was bound in silver ropes that singed her skin and even bubbled it a little causing rings of bubbles on her flesh. It must be what her insides looked like. The thought made her laugh.

When she saw however Viktor take the wooden stake that had put her in place like stone be pulled from his coat pocket… the very same one that had been her dear friend and a part of her being for 34 years. Her eyes welled in terror mixed with a strong rage. It was dark brown with a silver crest at the top of a Fleur- De- Lis.

“You can’t do this… don’t ground me… you can’t make me go back to that darkness.”

Lance repeated himself… the same thing he had said right before he brought her to this grungy place. Yet another insult on her last taste of freedom, nothing good to look at… grime met by filth and cobwebs that had been abandoned long ago.

“You made your choice, Coraline.”

Once again she did not feel the fear of the stake, only she feared what this meant. To the place she was going to be taken!

The stake was not pulled from common wood … it was taken from her greenhouse in Villiers-Saint-Frederic from the very foundation wood. The only thing she had owned as a human or vampriess. Coraline reached out to Lance; she wasn’t going out without a fight she let her fangs rip out and she leaned into him biting his shoulder and digging in deep knowing the silver in her would transfer a little to him. She could not do much bound in this much poison but he would feel the agony of his flesh burning in the place she dove her fangs in him for a few days, even if he got fresh blood.

It was the only bit of wood that could hold true long lasting power over her and more of a symbol than anything. Salt in her wounds. Or so they thought… Still her absolution would be that no matter what happened to her mind as it plunged into her chest cavity she would have a piece of her true home within her heart. With a roar of frustration Lance plunged the weapon used as shackles once more to the side of her chest and into her heart. Her body was stone. Not even her lungs could move to pretend to breathe. The silver had a hold of her now and her world was darkness. Six on one has hardly a fair fight. Coraline had lost track of time. It felt like lifetimes as well as only moments. The … Ophelia.