Victoria listened to the silence more loudly than anyone. She had no blood rushing through her ears, no breath in her throat, no movement in her body to speak of in that instant. There was no wind in the trees, no flakes falling to the ground. She heard the quiet as none of them could - unaltered, unblemished, and deafening.
It lasted less than a second before heads turned, throats growled, and heartbeats rose. She felt Fallon's warmth before her weight, and let her self lean back into the soft fur, hoping it would numb the sensation of defeat. It helped... for a moment.
Victoria's ears pricked beneath her hood just as the garou's did, and she whipped her gaze to match theirs towards the treeline. There were no heartbeats sounding from that direction, no scent of warm blood, but there was movement. And there was blood, she smelled it now, but it was old and...
No.
Her eyes went wide in shock as the very last thing she expected to see came slithering from beyond the woods. Every hair on her body stood on end when the pack shifted. The rush of heat, the unfathomable bloodscent of muscle and bone tearing apart only to knit back together in moments... the uncanny sense of something righteous and holy beneath it all that made her survival instincts scream to run away.
But she couldn't run, because there were predators all around. Predators like
her. She ought to kill whomever wrote this chapter of her life for the sheer irony of it all, but she didn't have time to think much about it. She didn't have time to think at all, she just acted. Fallon and her family were in danger.
Their assailants danced over the snow like smoke, dark plumes of cloth and shadow leaving hardly a trace on the fresh powder. If they had noticed Victoria was a
vampire, they had given no indication, and one of them was heading right for her.
Victoria kicked off to meet them, moving with equal speed and grace over the glittering snow but with far more ferocity. Righteous indignation was a strong-suit of the high-born, and she channeled every ounce of arrogant, disdainful rage into her claws.
She caught the vampire in the throat, stopping its head and neck in its tracks while its body swung around like a pendulum, feet flying up above its shoulders as Victoria slammed it down into the ground. She braced against the impact in her arm, unblinking as the powdery snow sprayed in her face, and reveled in the crunch beneath her palm. The vampire made a wet, gurgling wheeze through its crushed neck, staring up at her with wide blood-shot eyes.
Victoria didn't breath, her heart did not beat. Maybe she was proving the garou pack right, but she didn't have time for frivolous imitations of life. She would fight best without distraction, without pretense, fully as a
monster.
The pack would need a monster like her, because she could already feel the vertebrae knitting back together beneath her fingers, and a strong hand reaching up to pull her into the snow. Quickly, she withdrew her hand, straitened her fingers into a blade, and jabbed straight through the creature's neck. Cold, wet,
undead flesh enveloped her up to the wrist, and Victoria snarled as she wrenched her arm to the side, tearing through bone and sinew and feeling the creature's corpse go limp as its head was severed.
She grabbed the skull through the eye sockets with another sickening squelch, and hurled it over the tree line. That would not kill the beast, but it would buy them time as its body stumbled to reach its head.
She looked up and squinted against the dimming light. Her pupils were a blur as she scanned the battlefield, already washed in red. A garou, massive and black-furred, was swiping at a cloaked vampire, keeping it from biting his neck but sustaining many scratches and bites on his paws. Victoria bolted for him, melting the snow under her feet, and tackled a vampire woman who had been running to stab him in the back.
The woman swung wildly, stabbing Victoria several times in the ribs before she caught and broke the vampire's wrist, making her drop the shimmering blade. The vampire looked at her in surprise, clearly glancing at her wounds that did not bleed.
"How --" she started, before Victoria's fingers plunged into her brain.
"Don't recognize me?" Victoria chided bitterly. She grabbed a fistful of snow to wash the grey matter off her hand and caught sight of the dagger the vampire had dropped. For some reason she could not place, it intrigued her, and she snapped it up.
It was ornate, and heavier than she expected. It looked too ceremonial for battle... but
vampires were not known for subtlety. It felt familiar, and Victoria realized with horrifying clarity why it shimmered so strangely.
"Silver..." she whispered.
"Silve--!!" she yelled out to Fallon, before she was hit in the head
hard.