"Kali, she of destruction"

The vampire stopped, looking around at the room, its furnishings, her art, possessed of a sudden urge to smash it all. If her mind had held the power, a whirlwind would have swept through at that moment and wreaked its destruction at her will. But that was not one of her powers, and only emotion swirled viciously around her, invisible cloud of nihilistic spirit.

Elizabeth stood completely still in the eye of the storm. The ringing of the doorbell brought her partway out of herself, and by rote she stepped to answer its summons. Unlock, twist knob, swing open. Her eyes locked to the eyes of the man who stood there. She made a silent gesture, and he went inside.

One of the elect, a member of her herd who was permitted to enter her home. This one had not been so honored before, and he was not quite sure why it had happened this time, but he did not break the silence, in fact felt as if he could not. He followed her to her living room, quiet observant eyes taking in the tasteful surroundings, leather sofa, upholstered armchairs, glass cabinet filled with her crystalline treasures, the ones she'd moments before had that brief wish to shatter. The sense of that wish still lingered, and he looked at the back of her head in sudden trepidation.

She held the door open for him to enter her bedroom. The unease he felt was not enough to overpower the habit of obedience, the tantalizing promise of unequalled pleasure. Once he was inside, she closed the door, then stepped close to him. He smelled a scent on her he did not remember.

This was the perfume she'd worn long ago, and very rarely since. Elizabeth watched the aura of her prey as he breathed it in. She did not usually play with them like this; for the most part, they were sustenance, not entertainment. This was not entertainment, though, this was ... she did not know even in her own mind what this was. Dark whim was the closest.

He had done nothing wrong, nothing to earn punishment. But her heart had need of breaking something, tonight. It might be him.

His aura showed he suspected; somewhere beneath the lust and willing service lay fear in temporary abeyance. She watched the emotions swirl around him, toying with them by means of both presence and body language. Each small movement she made created a new strand of color, or a shift in the colors' balance. It was a thing of beauty, this aura every sentient being carried around, most of them unknowing. She should not destroy a thing of beauty. She knew this; knew too it would be so unwise to do anything destructive within her own home, a terrible risk of immortal existence; but the need, the need was not to be denied.

Suspending her need temporarily as he'd done with his fear, imagining the mirror-swirls in their auras as she relaxed the effort necessary to bring them to full visibility, she gracefully arranged herself on her bed, calling him to her without speech. He came, sat next to her, and she wrapped herself around him, mouth finding the pulse at his throat, beginning to drink. The warmth of his body, taste of his blood, fed her, made the need grow in her as it eased her thirst. She drank only as much as she normally did, but instead of releasing him, she kept hold. She felt him tremble a little.

She spoke for the first time, keeping her voice low, matching his physical trembling with a slight vibrato tone. "Tonight you may have more," she said, "if you like. But if you do, it will be the last." She pushed at his mind with her powers, making him want it. She would not force the choice, but she would make it as tempting as she could, slanting the odds.

He thought he had never wanted anything more. How could anyone ever have enough of what she gave? He was already light-headed with pleasure, the fear he had felt moments ago shrunken into near oblivion. Her final word made it flare again, though. "Last? No, please... "

She laughed softly, and he trembled again at the sound, feeling her arms tighten around him. "As much as you want, tonight. So much you will never need more." She panicked for a moment. She'd gone too far, perhaps. How could she go back to having him once a month after this? Wouldn't he suspect, wouldn't he know too much? Her voice grew a little louder, sharper with the change. "Forget it. You don't want to give that much to me. Get out now, I'll see you next month." She let go of him, shifted a bit away on the bed.

He did not move. "What... what did I do to anger you," he asked softly, a question implied by the words but not the tone.

"You did nothing. Just stumbled across me in a mood. Don't let it worry you." She sat on the other side of the bed from him, her back to him. "Go away now. Forget what I said."

His words stumbled. "How can I forget..." He got to his feet, hurriedly, and went around the bed. He sank to the floor in front of her, glanced up at her face for a brief moment then looked down at her feet. "What can I do? Let me help..."

"You don't want to. It's too much to ask." She sat motionless above him, dark hair curtaining her face. Destruction roiled within, but she had caged it for the moment.

"You look so ... I'd give anything to help," he said, voice intense.

She felt a sudden blow. Betrayal. Another man had said something much like that, and then ... and this one would not be given the chance to betray. "Then you will," she said in a whisper, and took him. Arms stronger than they had any right to be held him and she drank, replenishing the power she had spent three times over. She was replete with all of him, flusher than she had been in years, and he was broken, under her, the destruction fulfilled in pleasure and death.

Dead. She lay there, and he started to grow cold under her. She felt the cold seep into her and trace out her veins. What had she done? He offered, and she gave... it loosed then, and she rose, and smashed everything in the room that would smash. Fists pummeled holes in walls grown suddenly fragile. The bed collapsed in splinters. All that strength went into demolition.

When it was over, she collapsed amidst drywall dust and shattered furniture and shredded flesh, and cried red tears till her face was crimson, till her dress was sticky with it. She could not breathe, she could not scream, and she could not die. Any of them would be preferable to this.

Was this all she had ever been? After her husband, this was the first human being whose life she had ended of her own power. She looked at what remained of the man's face, his hair matted with both their blood. Bryon, she thought. You betrayed me, and look what it has done to me. You will pay for this. The thought cleansed her somehow inside. She stood, surveying the damage.

A lot of cleaning up to do, she thought. Might as well get started. An empty space had opened up inside her, and she wondered if it would fill up with anything. There were worse things than emptiness.

She might have figured Spencer would show up. She was in the shower, warm water sluicing over chill skin, when she heard the voice. "So, you finally snapped. I would say 'I told you so,' but I'm scared to now." She did not open her eyes at the sharp sound of his voice; they stayed closed as she lifted her face to the water.

"I'm not afraid of you," she said to her ghost.

"Of course not, you're the scary one here, Liz. I know what your problem is, though. Pretty obvious once you realize. You should have let them fuck you, then this would never have happened." She kept her eyes closed, turning under the warm streaming showerhead. "Go ahead, look at me. You've already snapped, what do you have to lose?"

"I am not insane," she told him. "You're just my imagination, it's only right my conscience would be after me after... all this... " She turned in the shower again, opened her mouth and let the water wash her tongue and palate and teeth, then her neck and chest again.

"You've been in there nearly an hour, you're as clean as you're going to get."

"It has nothing to do with whether or not I have sex with them, what would that possibly have to do with it? It's just what he said... the way he... I don't know. But Gregory... and then ... with Ian... and then Bryon... " she shook her head slightly, then turned it under the water once more, washing away again the red tears that would not stop. "He wasn't Kindred... but the semblance of... and I already wanted so much to... " Elizabeth stopped, not knowing how to put it into words, not believing Spencer would understand even if she could. "Anyway, I haven't got the time. I have to clean that mess up before ... before there's a problem about his, his disappearance. You know."

"Why are you showering then? You'll only need to take another one after you finish that messy chore." Spencer's voice was harsh. "Waste of hot water, isn't it?"

She heard a sound that wasn't Spencer. Further outside, a knock at her door, like the one that had started it all... She expected panic, but none came. It was that empty place in her; panic could not fill it. She dried herself quickly, pulled a bathrobe on, wrapped the towel around her hair, and went to the door.

A man stood outside, one she recognized. Cynthia's friend, Phillip. Cynthia had told her... she smiled to herself. Luck was with her tonight. "Come in, Phillip. I am so glad you are here."

Phillip walked in, looked around a bit. "Where's Cynthia?"

"She went out for a bit with the Gangrel Primogen," Elizabeth said. "She mentioned a bit to me of your.... skill at eliminating worrisome evidence," she continued. "It happens... I need some help perhaps you can provide?"

Phillip looked her up and down, suddenly wary. "What's that." His voice was flat.

She began to tremble a little to say it. "I... killed the man who... who I was feeding from tonight. I didn't mean to... I made kind of a mess of it..."

Phillip's lips tilted upward a little in a smirk. "Didn't mean to, huh. I've heard that one before."

She frowned at him. "I'm worried about the Masquerade. Will you help me?"

He nodded, smirk subsiding to inwardness, his face taking on the "professional" mien. "Sure, if I can. Show me to the crime scene."

She heard Spencer's laugh behind them as she led Phillip to the bedroom. Phillip tried not to show his shock, but she saw it in his aura. Elizabeth smiled in sad amusement. So, she'd shocked even the Brujah. That was something of an accomplishment.

"Kind of a mess," he said, and thought, ~that's the understatement of the year.~ Her bedroom looked like it had been inside a blender for a few whirls. "This... I don't know what kind of cover story would work for a thing like this. If he were just dead, maybe you could claim he tried to rape you, some kind of self defense thing... but," Phillip said, deciding in his mind, turning to her with his mouth set in a tight line, "the only thing I can say is, I hope you have fire insurance. We're going to have to burn the place down."

"You wanted to destroy," she heard Spencer say, not aloud but silently in her head. Where she'd known he was all along. "Burn, baby, burn."

"No," she protested, but she knew he was right.

"We'll have to make it look natural. Arson would be a mess." Phillip looked at the detritus on the floor. "A lot of this stuff makes good kindling, and you have some of that flammable cloth too. I think a pack of cigarettes and some matches should do us." She nodded agreement; the man she'd killed had been a heavy smoker. They found cigarettes and several packs of matches, plus a lighter, in his overcoat. Phillip took the pack, the matches, and lit a cigarette, dropping it and the pack of matches on a dry area of splintered headboard. "That should do it. If it doesn't, get ready to leave town, is all I can say."

Elizabeth flinched from the small tongue of fire at the end of the match. The flame spread across the kindling, then flared high as the book of matches went up with a small boom. "Let's get out of here," he told her, and they left. She rehearsed a story in her mind. Date, he fell asleep, she went for a night stroll in her bathrobe -- returning to find house aflame --

They saw flames at the curtains of the bedroom, and called the fire department from a pay phone on the corner.

"I shouldn't hang around for this," Phillip told Elizabeth.

"Thank you," she said. She turned and watched the flames eat at her home from a safe distance, and wondered where she would take shelter that day. Perhaps Claudius would take her in. She wrapped the bathrobe tightly around her and watched as Phillip disappeared into the night, then sat down at the curb to await the sirens.