Upon entering the feeding room, Emilia imdiately honed in on the ashes left on the floor. The imprint had been disturbed, but that would only make tracking the face thief easier. She looked the feeding room over and noted the imprints on the bench. Her senses were still augnted from burning her store of blood. That Discipline was one of her finest, and she could do more with it than the average Rotblu kindred.
For instance… She focused and twisted her blood within her body into a pattern, then shifted it towards her physical brain. The strands were, by necessity, thin, which ant mistakes would have greater costs than they otherwise would. But she was well practised in her craft, and once she determined that the pattern was correct, she activated it by burning her blood.
Her vision whited out, then she began to see shadows. She turned the burning pattern widdershins and ti flowed back. She jolted when she saw the face thief’s silhouette—only that was no face thief. At least, no face thief she’d ever encountered before. They were malleable in flesh, so who was to say their auras could not also be shaped to conceal?
The silhouette was burnished gold overlaid by muddy brown. The silhouettes of her fellow Rotblu kindred were darker than black. The movents were muted such that she couldn’t see the fine details of the conflict. This was further complicated by so kind of bright light that emitted from the face thief as she fought.
Well, the details didn’t matter much at this point, and what did matter was that she had an impression of the aura imprint, and she could follow it. The technique wouldn’t last more than ten minutes before she’d be forced to burn another asure of blood. While using her blood to enhance her senses barely burns any of her stored blood, Aura Imprints cost as much as she needed to burn every night to continue her life. A flagrant waste if she dallied.
Emilia pulled out one of the new-fangled devices that had just beco available to the wealthy and the well-connected: a mobile phone. It was about twice the length of her palm and curved like a banana.
She dialled a number, waited for the call to connect, then said, “Send a squad car to the Stolen Whispers.” She hung up after she heard the confirmation. The car shouldn't take too long to arrive, but she'd still be forced to burn another asure of blood. She was getting peckish, but she didn't want to waste what she had already spent. She followed the imprint as it made its way through the dance floor. The writhing, sweaty masses just inflad her hunger, but she had self-control.
She watched the silhouette as it went down the street and around a corner before she returned to the security office. The guy waiting there jumped when she entered, and she gestured for him to sit down and extend his arm. He did so with alacrity.
She pushed his sleeve up and delicately bit into his wrist. Her fangs pierced the vein, and she drew a asure of blood. Since he was a thrall, she went out of her way to make sure the feeding was as pleasurable for him as it was for her. So thralls compared being fed to having sex, but she couldn't really tell since she hadn't partaken before she’d been converted. She could also turn the act of feeding into the worst sort of torture, but she only did that to the deserving. Anyone who went against Rotblu certainly deserved it, and she'd visit that fate on the killer.
Taking more than a couple of asures of blood from anyone within a week wasn't healthy, and she read that he'd already had one asure taken a couple of nights ago. She marked him as exhausted as she withdrew her fangs, tuned out his profuse gratitude, and left the building.
Right on ti, the police squad car arrived. The officers inside were thralls, though they weren’t the sole possession of the clan. Rather, it was the Rakkisgrad Kaiser’s, the ruling kindred of the city.
“Ma’am, how can we help you?”
Emilia answered, “I’m on the trail of a kin murderer. Follow my lead.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
From the backseat, she directed them towards the trail. The cruiser could just fit the alleyways, but after the third block, they had to stop: the alley was blocked by a dumpster and a wire fence. The trail went through it. Worse, the imprint was already fading. It was just past midnight, so the imprint should not have faded so soon, but it felt as if space wanted to gobble up the traces.
She alighted and had one of the two officers follow her. She moved quickly enough that the thrall behind her was breathing heavily by the ti they reached Petal Boulevard. The imprint was barely a wisp of itself, and Emilia ran down the pavent to the elevated crossing. The officer was about half a dozen paces behind her while the cruiser was probably making its way around. She saw headlights and the blue and red of the flashers take the turn on the far side.
On the covered walkway, she could sll fresh spray paint, and she grimaced in disgust at the Honey Bludger’s gang signs. She wondered if the face thief was hidden within that immigrant gang, but it hardly mattered. Face thieves didn’t belong anywhere, not even with their own fellows. She actually wasn’t even sure how they reproduced, just that, like the kindred, they were once human as well.
As they jogged down the other side of the walkway, Emilia caught sight of the gangsters. They were just turning down an alley, right where the imprint was headed to. One of them turned around when they heard the officer’s footsteps, and after a mont’s hesitation, they ran deeper into the alley.
Now, Emilia was pretty sure that if she imdiately followed behind them, she would be shot. Were it any other ti, she would have welcod the fight. Clearing the streets of filth was what any right-thinking citizen ought to do. But she couldn’t afford the delay. The imprint continued to fade, but she knew if she let the riffraff have so ti, they’d clear the way instead of being in it. The cruiser managed to pull up next to her before she felt comfortable proceeding. She bent her ear towards the alley and didn’t hear anything other than the rumble of air conditioning units.
The officer next to her was still puffing out steam and had yet to regain his composure. She gave him a sidelong glance, then shrugged. Too much sitting and driving, she supposed.
She couldn’t afford to wait any longer, and she couldn’t recall if this alley was functional. Considering it was off one of the main boulevards, she hoped it was clean. She walked through it anyway, and the cruiser followed behind her. The other officer had gotten back in the passenger seat. As she expected, the Bludgers were gone.
Her quarry continued for another couple of blocks until the imprint finally went into a motel rather than another alley. Good.
She ignored the receptionist, who looked to be half asleep anyway. The boy jolted when the two policen entered, then stood while wringing his hands nervously. He tried to say sothing, but all that ca out was a high-pitched squeak.
She followed the imprint, which had almost faded completely, up to the second storey, but as soon as she ca up next to room 208, she froze. Her skin crawled, and it felt as if soone ran a finger across every exposed inch of flesh. She shuddered and backed up until the sensation faded, while thinking furiously.
This was not a face thief’s technique. Unless the mimic managed to copy a mage, but even so, creation of a magi heart wasn’t so easy as simple mimicry. So then, what was the person behind the murders?
Caution. She hadn’t lived this long to gamble with her life. She intended to see well past her second century and hoped to live millennia. She gestured at the policen, “Flush her out. The room at the end.”
“Aye.”
She stepped behind them, but cognizant of the fact that the culprit killed two kindred with relative ease, she leapt over the guard rail and landed easily on the parking lot. Then, she rushed towards the street and took cover behind the parked police cruiser. She drew her sidearm, a pistol with a nine-bullet magazine and aid it towards the target room. She released the aura imprint reading technique and fed blood into her senses. Her vision sharpened until she could see the door as if she were right in front of it.
She also carefully fed blood into the pattern that threaded throughout her body, particularly in her spine and limbs. Many kindred preferred preternatural strength, but she always subscribed to speed and accuracy. All it would take was a thought to set her blood ablaze, and then, the world around her would move as slowly as honey dripping down a spoon.
____________
When Yuriko felt the intrusion through her Anima perception, she ignored it. Over the past hour, she set up the processes to create her Radiant Physique. The thod had changed compared to what she used at the beginning, though it had mostly been optimisations and minor improvents. The major one being the inclusion of Radiant furnaces within each cell as opposed to relying on the Radiant core to produce motes. In her true body, her core produced more than enough for her needs, but her incarnation body didn’t have a Radiant core, which was why she’d been perpetually short.
There was little reason not to include Radiant furnaces in her true body’s physique, and she hoped her greater self had done just that. In any case, her isolated incarnation self needed all the help she could get, and a steady source of the most powerful primordial energy was what she needed. She was also leery of the fact that she couldn’t feel a single droplet of Radiant energy from the Moon, and while normally Luminescence overshadowed Radiance at night, there was always a tinge of Radiance there, just as there was Luminescence lingering during the day.
Not that she could actually sense Luminescence, but Damien had been able to, and thanks to that, if she focused, she could do so as well. She had no affinity with that primordial energy, though, so there was little point to it. Except it turned out to be relevant now. She took a mont earlier to sense if there was Luminescence, and it ca as no surprise that there was none. With everything else absent, she would have thought this plane was like Irvalla back then, but Amalia’s assailant had shown her otherwise. There were more than mortals in this realm, and she had to be cautious.
That being said, she ignored the intruder because she was on the brink. And when that intruder pulled back, only to be replaced by another two, she could have scread. She couldn’t stop now.
The process of igniting the Radiant Physique was just a hair away from completion. She just had to connect the last few links, and the circuit would be complete. Every cell connected into a circuit that funnelled Radiance wherever she needed it. She basically copied the body’s circulatory system, but optimised it without the central pump that was the human heart. Instead, the circulation was pushed by pressure as each cell produced more than enough Radiance to sustain itself, and the excess beca available for her use. As before, she set up a central storage that could beco a Radiant core, but she also set up smaller reserves throughout her body.
Of course, the ignition began the process of conversion, but it was by no ans instant. But it was done, and she didn’t need to do anything else but wait.
“Open up! Police!”
She would have ignored the first shout, but they didn’t even give her the chance to respond when they kicked the door hard enough for it to splinter.
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