'Qui: The Fall of Ottawa' Part 2, Chapter 6

[Please note this is not an official World of Darkness licensed product. All chapters within this setting will be available free of charge and will never be behind a paywall.]

For previous chapters all in one place, visit the collections tab. New chapters on Mondays!

Previously: Qui and his ally Sam visited a mechanic shop in the south end of Ottawa, investigating a murder. Qui was forced to remove Sam from the situation for her own safety and rewrite a portion of her memory before facing a foe that turned out to be a flesh-crafting Tzimisce vampire! The two vampires fought, and Qui destroyed his opponent's familiar, a massive spider named 'Ennis.' The enraged vampire threw Qui through a plate glass window into the street. Both of them were close to defeat when a third party joined the conflict and shot the Tzimisce in the face. Qui's foe had finally had enough--it transformed into a wolf and fled the scene.

Chapter 6

Qui turned toward the source of the shots, astonished to see Sam standing there, gun held out and clutched tight in both hands, her arms shaking with fear. She was pulling the trigger over and over again, though the magazine had already run empty. 

Click, click, click.

"Sam!" Qui called out as he tried to get to his feet. He reached down and gingerly pulled the spider's disembodied mandibles out of his leg. He would mend the injury when he could and his body would return to form over time, but for now he had more pressing concerns. "Are you hurt? We need to get out of here! That thing may have friends!"

"It–it was naked!" Sam said. She was speaking so low that he could barely hear her. Her face was still slack, mouth open in disbelief of what she'd just seen. She was fixated on the absurdity of its nudity as if her mind was incapable of processing what she actually saw. "Why was it naked?"

Qui staggered over and took the gun from her trembling fingers, sliding it into his coat pocket. She looked at him and blinked. Her eyes were unfocused, uncomprehending. "Come," he said simply, leading her to the open passenger side door and sitting her down on the seat. "We're leaving."

Sam held onto his hand as he buckled her seatbelt and looked up at him, searching for something. The cloudiness had gone from her eyes. She was fully lucid now and already questioning the alternate scenario he'd implanted. That wasn't a good sign. 

"How did I get back to the car?" she asked. "Why can't I remember?"

"I'll explain when we're on our way," he said before closing the door and jogging back to the driver's side. He cursed to himself. He'd been sure that she would have been out of it for longer, but it seemed he'd underestimated Sam's constitution. Now he was stuck in a difficult position–he needed to do something about what she'd witnessed, but his talent with mental manipulation was severely limited. Too many rewrites of adjacent memories in too short a time risked leaving her with permanent scarring and waking nightmares that could be worse than the actual memories he'd erased. Some Kindred could alter the mind with scalpel-like precision; by comparison Qui was essentially grabbing hold of a book's pages and tearing them out one by one. It was simple, blunt, and usually effective. But it left much to be desired. 

He sat in the driver's seat and winced as he reached down and pulled his injured leg inside. He took a moment to focus on mending–he couldn't risk being unable to properly shift gears as he drove, even if it was the middle of the night. He simulated taking a deep breath for Sam's benefit and turned the key. 

The headlights sprung on, revealing the ruined plate glass window and beyond it the torn apart front desk of Bob's Auto. He felt a sudden unexpected urge to stay and investigate. If he left now, he might never figure out what actually happened here tonight and why he'd almost met his end at the hands of a fleshcrafter. This wasn't the kind of thing he expected to discover in a seat of Camarilla power like Ottawa, and Qui hated being surprised. If the Sabbat were lurking around the outskirts of the city, Cranston should have warned him about them when she hired him for the job–and if she didn't know, detailed information about the threat could be worth something to her. There were tangible benefits to having a Primogen owe you a favor.

"James!" Sam shouted, pointing a finger toward the alley leading behind the parts warehouse. "Look!"

Something was moving back there, a shadow caught in the glare of his headlights. He cursed to himself. So much for the investigation–neither of them were in the condition to fight off a new threat of the Tzimisce's caliber. He'd survived too long to meet his end in a place like this; information that didn't pertain to his primary assassination assignment wasn't worth risking well-being for.

Qui got the car into gear and slammed on the gas. The Celica lurched forward and to the left as he cut the wheel hard, U-turning out of the parking lot. The right-hand tires thumped over the median and the car jolted wildly before it achieved proper traction again and he managed to pull into the lane heading north, back toward Parliament Hill.

It was at least five minutes before either of them said a word, but that wasn't nearly enough time for Qui to think up a way to dismiss everything she'd seen. This wasn't the first time in his unlife that he'd been well and truly fucked, and none of the previous occasions had ended well for anyone. By all accounts he should risk tearing her mind apart to protect the Masquerade–the penalty for exposing Kindred to the mortals was final death after all–but he just couldn't bring himself to go through with it for some reason. 

Many of his contemporaries would simply kill the woman without a second thought, but where they would see a threat, he was beginning to see an opportunity. The way Sam stood up to the monstrous creature was impressive and she may very well have saved him from a particularly ignoble end. That kind of courage under fire was worth something and it shouldn't be squandered.

"What happened in there?" she said, finally asking the dreaded question. "That thing claimed you killed someone named Ennis."

He could have told her that she'd misremembered. He could have told her that the monster was simply out of its mind and spouting gibberish. Instead, he told her the truth, or at least as much of it as she would be capable of understanding. 

He very much hoped that he wouldn't have to kill her, afterward.