The Gaming Outpost

Pocondero, the South Coast Dlaliqua as its called by its promoters, is the sort of town where the not quite rich go to celebrate finishing their A Levels, and give their newly minted Adult Alcohol Consumption Card a very thorough breaking in. The beach under the moonlight, and raucous music called them from the hundreds of tiny cottages for the more connected, or more female (who tend to have more friends than guys), and from the dozens of temp apartment complexes where you can rent a room for a week or a day without the abundant paperwork it requires elsewhere.

Paperwork was a great way to disguise methods of keeping out ‘that sort of people’ and ‘troublemakers’. Here, everyone was just assumed to be looking for trouble, and no one cared if you were ‘that sort’ as long as you filled out a swimsuit nicely.

I come to Pocondero every year, looking the same as I did when I first started to come twenty years ago. Benefits of being an immortal verser is that I’ve got twenty years practise at being Cool and Hip. Downside is I’ve seen it all before way too many times, and so I started to pay attention to what was happening around me.

Always a dangerous thing to do, paying attention. You might learn something you would rather you did not know.

Now, I walked with a crowd of guys and girls a third my age even though I look as if I’m one of the younger ones here. It does not bother, Marie and Kimberly on my right and left arms, or is it Kimberly and Marie on my left and right arms as we stroll in a clot down the moonlit path.

A golf cart driven by security guys honks us out of the asphalt path slowly, but here in the Mile Zone (a mile from the Center Beach) all other vehicles were forbidden. We jeer at them, but friendly like, and several of what we thought of as our girls gave the hunky slightly older guard types whistles.

Not my Missy and Keila, or what was their names again? Never mind, some questions were not worth getting in too.

Joining the larger road, which in the daylight hours carried food trucks, we sang our way along the road down toward the beach. Occasional calls of “Jacke!” and “Morissa!” and whatnot, as if meeting other friends you had met before and knew were going here was the greatest shock in the world resounded about me, and for a long second, I felt very lonely.

No one here knew of America, or England, or Football, or Basketball. The shapes of the continents were different.

Morose, I followed along with the jokes with the upper part of my mind, and watched us merge into the main flow of traffic. Even though we were in sight of the Center Beach, and its dozens of small shoppes and party houses, I knew from past experience that it would take us at least an hour to walk down the Great Ramp, and then turn right through the Beach Gates.

Ten years ago, I had helped build those Beach Gates to keep another mob scene from forming where a sudden frenzy took the crowd and everyone stampeded. You’ve never known fear until you’re on your stomach in a charging crowd of thousands, with people stepping on you, kicking your head, and breaking your fingers with high heels.

That adventure let me know something important. I have a very high pain tolerance. The doctors at the hospital had been surprised I was alive, let alone that I walked two miles to get to the ER.

With Bunny and Stephanie on my arms, I guided us in quick spurts down the ramp, and toward the party houses. The girls were all enthused, ready to dance the night away, and I felt enthused as well but for far different reasons.

We finally hit the beach sand, white spooky as it was called for its strange glitter at night, and its pure whiteness. Already I was being kissed and fondled, and yeah, it felt good. For a moment I was tempted to let my cares go, and just be Jase the Really Cool Guy We Met. But then I looked up and saw one of Them at the first party house.

He was standing alone on a second floor porch looking down on the crowd like some dark god. Behind him, the house was painted a traditional light green, but it should be blood-red.

Stiffening, I looked at him over the frenetic crowd of dancing beach goers revelling in their first good legal drunk, and in being dressed skimpily around dozens of eligible mates.

I stood still, and almost lost my Candy and Charlene, but I reclaimed them at the last second from two opportunists who had tried to coax them away to dance. Candy pouted at me as I was not paying her enough attention. I kissed her, and remembered a dozen women just like her, and for a time, I forgot what year it was. Then I had to kiss the other, and it was good.

I really could be happy I think being Jase the RCGYWM. But then I saw a pretty blonde being taken up to the dark god, and he sniffed her neck, and turned aside. The blonde almost cried, I could see from her shaking shoulders, but she did not know what mercy had spared her.

I took my two with me, and made my way to the party house, the most exclusive, closest to the Great Ramp, and found the front door just totally blocked by a horde of partygoer wannabees who wanted IN Now.

I grinned at my two, and said.
“Hey,I promised I’d get you in. Bethany.”

We walked in the heavy sand around the back side of the house, and in full view of a dozen couples necking, I tossed a grapnel hook up to the second floor. From it depended a rope ladder.

Bethany went up first with a squeal and a look of admiration for my clever boldness. By the time I was up, a guard was on me.

“Shove off loser, and take your jailbait with you.” He made to push me off the second floor porch, and I slammed him between the legs with a kick. As he fell over, I heard him say into his radio.

“Help.”

And then there was Help, of a sort. A dark god stood ten feet away. He had not been there before. In his black, full-fitting suit jacket and pants, he stood out, as he meant too. It was a form of royalty. You lot show off your body for me, but I am above you. I give nothing in return.

“You’ll need to leave.” He Said. I nodded, not impressed with his Control, but willing to fake it.

We walked past the darkling, and my two pets brushed him as I led them to do. He gasped.

“Stay.” He Said. And this time, I had to work to free myself from his Control so much Power he put into it.

And then he slinked up to the first girl, and touched the skin of her throat with his tongue. He gasped in delight. And then sniffing, he went to the other, and did likewise to similar effect.

And then his fangs came out, and he bit, and drank from the second, whats her name. She just stood there with an exalted look on her face as he prepared to kill her.

The guards had come up and ushered everyone else away, but in a Feed, the vampire has the natural ability to Blur what his happening in other’s minds. This operates most strongly in his victim’s mind, but it also effects others.

Well, except for me. Practise, practise, practise. It turns out that the type of concentration needed to drive a motorbike into a ramp, and flip it in the air is great for making ignoring vampire Powers possible.

“Why don’t you drink from both of them. Be quite a cocktail. Two pure sources at once.” I said cajolingly. See most blood is tainted. I had found two pure blooded sorts and gotten them to go with me.

The dark god stared at me a bit perplexed that I was still talking, but in the middle of a Feed most of a vampire’s brain is off. It sounded good to him, and so he bit other girl.

And then he reared back and fell off the balcony screaming in agony.

“Darslt and Veininbrum.” I shouted down into the party house even as the shrieks of the dark god rose into a crescendo. His Power woke the others of his kind, those who had not the Power to wake so early in the night, but must needs wait for the Traitor’s House of One O’Clock, and told all within hearing distance of his great pain.

I dove off the balcony even as guards, human guards, rushed me. The rope ladder let me spiral spin onto the first floor porch.

And while there were dozens of humans in my way, they all were keeling over as the dark god sent out Pain.

He felt as if he were dying. Unfortunately not so. D and V are harmless to vampires and humans apart, but together, well, they taste to a vamp like a nice healthy chug of hydrochloric acid.

And a vamp can smell them together, but not apart as they had no need to do so. Well, not until I dosed one of my girls with a burger and the other with a pizza slice.

Down the porch, over the bodies, and on the bodies, and I went out the back, and up the sand dune and into the grass.

I surprised a couple, so enthused in their kissing that even a dark god’s pain could not reach them. My presence meant nothing either until I started up my hidden motorcyle and leapt it downdune over the top of them.

I roared the engine, thrusting through the falling crowds as the Scream beat at even my concentration.

As I reached the Great Ramp, I heard voices in my head.

“Master, we come.” They said. He spat out a reply.

“Kill him!” And he gave a very detailed picture of me. Already the D and V’s effect was fading.

I shifted into a higher gear and ran straight up the Great Ramp trying to bruise and not maim. Most were collapsed so that made it easier, but still I know I broke at least two arms.

Above the ramp, I let my engine howl even as I felt the chill wind at my neck. The Others were coming. Above me, in the sky, black shapes, almost human, almost bird, but too still to be alive soared after me.

And I leaned forward, and coaxed more from my engine. I was keeping ahead of them when I felt Something, some Power in the wind.

And around the next curve I saw a double parked double row of golf carts fully blockading the road uphill. Gut wrenching cries from above rippled my skin, and made me want to dash out my brains. But that was not me, I knew. That was Power. The same skill that had twisted the minds of the Pocondero guards to block my way.

With nothing left to do, I shoved the throttle over to the maximum, and headed straight at the first cart in my path. I got closer, and my concentration narrowed until there was only the cart and its hood, and my bike in the whole world.

I did not exist. Only the bike existed.

A sudden shift of weight, and my front tire popped up six inches. Before it could fall back, the tire slapped on to the slanting front hood of the golf cart, and I was up, along the hood, and taking my bike straight up the metal rod at the corner of the hood and the door.

Airborne.

Sweet, sweet, pure freedom. This is what I truly am. I fly.

:We fly. You only fall.: Said the voice of the dark god in my head. And he truly was a god. For he had risen against the Creator, and been cursed with the form of a vampire instead of the stellar guardian he had been, who tended stars and flew from sun to sun, he hid from their light, and stood only in one world. His acolytes were even less than him.

:You scorn me.: The dark god sounded amazed, and I shut him out with renewed concentration even as my tires came down on the terracotta roof of the cottage to the left of the roadblock.

Up, I went with tiles breaking wildly under me, with the roof shuddering threatening to collapse as a whole and take me with it. Over the roof, and the back tire caught the very edge of the descending roof, tossing me face forward so that I should crash the bike nose down into the asphalt.

Instead, I went with it. Threw myself all the way forward past the handlebars, and flipped the bike in the space between roof edge and rising hill.

I landed chest high and hard on the handlebars with an oof, and bounced. By the time of the second hit, I had my feet on the bars, and me and my bike landed on our rear wheel.

I held for a second that seemed like forever, and then gunned it one wheeled up the hill.

:Very impressisve.: The vampire god said in my mind. I did not want him thinking so I taunted him back.

:How many thousands of years have you been here, and I bet you could not do that.: I smirked, sure that he would catch the emotional flavor. A still, inhuman rage flashed back over our link, and part of me wondered if I could have saved the dark god. In his way, he was a magnificent creature.

And now I came to a house at the top of the hill overlooking the beach. A cliff beyond it, and a hundred feet below there was a forty foot wide beach, but with no visitors as it was stony and harsh.

I went into the house.

But I left the front door open and the light on.

:I ‘m safe in a house.: I said in my mind, letting some of my deep weariness and real pain come through.

Outside, the pack of pursuers dropped out of the sky.

:I have human lackeys I could send in after you. Or I could simply burn the house down. You are alone on this high point with no place to escape.:

Some sense of a conversation outside, and I waited.

A voice came to my mind, but I shut it out.

“So you want me to talk to you as normal people do.” The dark god shouted from outside. His voice was like a trumpet. “My spawn points out that in this place and time a lit lamp by the front door and an open door constitutes an invite.”

“You’ll never take me alive.” I shout, mainly because I had always wanted to use that line. They rushed in to stop me from killing myself, and spoiling their fun.

I gunned my motorcycle in the empty living room, and crashed out through the bay window overlooking the cliff. The dark god followed me, so fast that he could catch up to a fleeing motorcycle if given time.

:You will die.: He Sent as I careened to the cliff edge. His Power sought some way through my adamantine will, some fear he might exploit to bend me even for a second just long enough to catch me. In truth, he was faster than I had expected. My plan lay in extreme danger.

:Nope. But you will.: And I sent him a vivid image, the most detailed one I could manage of me filling up the basement of the rental house with barrels of liquiboom, a highly flammable and extraordinarily powerful explosive.

He paused in horror and shock for a second. I gained the cliff edge and soared like a bird. He made to soar, and the explosive force caught him, for even he could not fly faster than the shock wave. Air as hard as steel expanded in a sphere at four times the speed of sound, and ripped and pummelled the dark god. His acolytes were still in the house. They never had a chance.

He had time for one thought.

“Why O Creator?”

And then the fire caught him a tenth of a second later and incinerated him down to his atomic components. And he who had danced in million degree flames was utterly destroyed by a mere twenty thousand degrees.

I had raced over the lowest part of the cliff going left, and thus went into the land shadow of the highest part of the cliff edge. The firebloom went ten feet over my head, and out for nearly a hundred more feet.

Liquiboom is good stuff. When you positively, absolutely have to blow something up, I completely endorse it.

I plunged, not being a bird, or a vampire acolyte. Thoughtfully, I stepped off my bike, and shoved it to the left.

And so I hit the water feet first a good seventy feet from the cliff edge, and thirty feet from the beach edge.

For a time, I thought the riptide was going to get me, and verse me out, but I swam parrallel out of it, and got to shore, sore and soggy.

I was definitely not getting my renter’s fee back. As I pulled myself in to land, I saw several girls in scanty clothes looking at me wide-eyed.

“You…”
“The fire…”
“Jumped your bike…”

“Yeah, my name is Jase.” I said. No doubt I would not remember their names in the morning, but it would get me through the night.