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ghostmagnet) wrote2016-05-30 03:10 pm
ghostmagnet) wrote2016-05-30 03:10 pm
Cassie history
Childhood:
- She was named for Cassandra, the Greek seer who'd refused to be controlled by anyone and had run from Apollo to avoid having someone tell her how to use her gift.
- parents were killed at the age of 4 by a car bomb
- had been told it was an accident
- raised @ a Master Vampire's (Antonio Gallina) court until she came into her powers @ age of 14
- Eugenie
- Always been something of a ghost magnet
- Tony didn't let her study much/learn about her powers because he'd been afraid that she might've found a way to use it against him.
- Was a teenage runaway
- To be turned, it takes 3 bites over several consecutive days by a Master level vamp. Tony bit Cassie once when she was a child and again when she'd returned home after running away the first time. With two bites a vampire could control most normal people without turning them... But Tony's attempt had failed. She had a theory that her constant association with ghosts interrupted the signal.
Tony had hidden all information on her parents including photos, letters, high school yearbooks. It had taken her years to even learn their names, considering he'd also hired a lot of staff after their deaths who knew nothing about his operations previously. She only had snippets of her own positive memories when it came to her parents: the smell of rose talcum powder for her mother and the sensation of strong hands throwing her in the air and spinning her around for her father. As well as his laugh, a deep chuckle that made her feel safe. When puberty had hit, she had a vision of their deaths, a fireball that had left nothing but metal and burning leather seats behind. She'd watched it all from Jimmy's car, heard him make the phone call to say it was done and they should pick her up at daycare before the cops showed up. She'd run away for the first time an hour after that vision and managed to stay out of their grips for three years.
Since she'd run on her own, she didn't have anything she got the second time from the FBI - no fake social security number or birth certificates, no job, and no back up if shit hit the fan. She also had really no grasp on how things worked outside of a Vampire Court in the 'real world.' It was one of the few times where her ability to talk to spirits had really paid off and kept her alive through the experience. She'd had a ghostly childhood friend, Laura, who was 6 when her family had been killed by Tony at the turn of the century. Laura had taught her the more normal things a child should experience, like mud-pies and practical jokes. She also showed her an old safe that had about $10,000 in it that Tony had missed. Laura had made sure that Cassie not only got the money, but was able to get away safely.
She could have stayed away with that money and started over, but she's far too headstrong to stay away from a problem when she knows she can be part of the solution. She'd made the decision to go back in order to take Tony down, along with his entire organization. She spent another three years back in the organization, collecting enough evidence to bring him down through the human justice system. She helped get him taken down for racketeering and tax-evasion - 100 year sentence. Or at least, that had been the plan before the sting went wrong. Tony wasn't caught and Cassie was punished for trying to bring him down indirectly. Tony had not only killed, but maimed her former nanny, Eugenie, leaving the pieces for Cassie to find along with a note. He'd apparently had his hitman Jimmy the Rat torture Genie until she broke and had left her for Cassie to dispose of properly.
"All I See is the kind of stuff that nightmares and serious drinking problems are made of."
Imprint Zones: "Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it's usually something traumatic, running into one isn't fun. I'd spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I'd been looking for was imprint zones. I'd found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency... I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget; I don't need other people's nightmares."
two types of shields pg 16 touch the dark
Her ward/shield - ensures that anyone touching her with harm in mind would end up screaming in agony.
She normally gets warnings prior to visions, thirty-ish seconds of disorientation before it starts
High tolerance to gore and violence growing up at Tony's
necklace description: hand wrought gold, heavy and intricate, with a mass of squirming vines and flowers around a central cabochon ruby.
Touch the Dark:
After having been on the run from Tony for three years, she'd settled into a life of something resembling normalcy at a Travel Agency in Georgia when she finds an obituary on her computer screen after grabbing a quick lunch. It's her obituary, and it's dated for tomorrow - detailing her gruesome death at the hands of a gunman. Rather than sticking around to find out if she would actually die at 8:43pm, she took the hour head-start she'd been given and had taken her 9mm semi-automatic Smith & Wesson out from under a travel flyer for Rio. There was something to be said for continuing to be paranoid and not having laughed the FBI agent that had told her to get the gun in the face. Hard to not be paranoid when she'd helped take down one of the biggest crime families in Philly. She wasn't a great shot, but Agent Sydell had taken 2 weeks to make sure that if she couldn't hit the side of the barn, she wouldn't miss it by much.
Jerry Sydell had been a good guy to her, helpful - so it wasn't a pleasant experience when she'd caught a vision of his death. Her visions hadn't exactly been kind when it came to timing, that one having hit when she was getting into the bath. She'd tried to change what she'd seen by not only reaching out to the Witness Protection Program emergency number, but also one of Tony's thugs... The very people she'd been hiding from. An attempt to keep them from killing the Agent with a threat of the action angering the Vampire Senate - a group of ridiculously old Vampires who passed laws for the less powerful ones to obey. While they may not care about regular humans, they didn't exactly want people to think of them as more than a myth - wanting to keep a low profile. Killing an FBI agent wasn't exactly the way to maintain that.
Too bad the same attempt wouldn't have worked when it came to her. Usually whatever Tony wanted, he got - by any means necessary. She'd just hoped that Tony had decided she wouldn't be too much trouble to bring back in and used human thugs instead of calling in the real talent. Made the running easier. Of course, that would have been an easier hope a few years ago when she'd been just a disobedient court clairvoyant. A few years ago she wouldn't have dreamed of entertaining the idea of Tony turning her because if she's turned, she loses exactly what he'd wanted her for: her psychic abilities. But, turning someone guaranteed loyalty to the master and knowing Tony... That was a price he might be willing to pay now given the amount of grief she'd already caused him, but she didn't share the sentiment.
"If they caught me, I wasn't going down without a fight, and if worse came to worse, I'd eat the last round before I called that bastard master."
There's something to be said for being on the run from Tony's thugs for 3ish years, having opted to wiggle out of the bathroom window - something that looks a lot easier in the movies while wearing panty hose, a mini-skirt, and knee-high 4 inch go-go boots. She makes the most of her abilities in the streets of Atlanta, enlisting the help of some of the ghosts she'd gotten to know to track down the ghost that was bound to a necklace she'd picked up at a junk shop when she was 17 - Billy Joe. He was basically her personal pain in the ass aka guardian spirit who was sometimes useful. He'd been an 1858 Irish gambler who'd cheated at cards and had been tossed in the Mississippi. He'd gotten caught in a necklace he'd recently picked up from a Countess, a magical sort of battery that collected magical energy from the natural world and stored it. When he wasn't out and about, his spirit rested in the necklace. When he boosted up, or drew energy from her, it usually felt like a cool breeze on a hot day. It was a welcome feeling and she usually got glimpses of his life each time.
With still no Billy in sight, she'd continued on her usual 'getting ready to run' routine, paranoid enough to have a separate bank account under a fake name and a bag of clothes at the bus station - stopping by her other part time job at a bar where she helped out bartending and reading tarot cards with a deck that had been a 10th birthday gift from her old Governess, Eugenie. They were charmed, but the cards had a way of being spot on with predictions - such as today. That wasn't her reason for stopping in the bar, though. No big goodbyes for all her coworkers - no - she needed to track down her roommate and give him a heads up. She had a soft spot for street kids, having taken in Tomas and gotten him the job. She usually didn't make friends because of her life, but Tomas had been different. She owed him an explanation for ditching, but couldn't be 100% honest for his own protection. Although, he didn't make it easy for her. They'd been in the alley a matter of minutes before shit hit the fan.
Or it should have.
There was something Tomas had been holding onto, a little fact that he was in fact a Master Vampire and not the broken human she'd thought. Most vamps spent their lives at the lowest level, basically slaves to the Masters... But others could work their way up to one of the seven levels. With each level, there were new powers and freedoms. She'd grown up around Master vamps, most not exceeding Tony's 3rd level. Only first and second level masters could walk in the sunlight, which said a lot about Tomas considering he played the human card to a t. Between him, the ghosts of former Confederate Soldiers one of her ghoulie friends had recruited, and the ward shaped like a lopsided pentagram on her back, they'd gotten through the 5 vamps sent to kill her. It honestly would have been better for Tomas to tell her the truth rather than her seeing it in a vision, but when did life ever cooperate. It was a devastating thing to discover considering she thought she'd done something to help someone rather than being played by yet another vamp. She usually didn't let people in close to her, considering that trust was usually betrayed and people she loved tended to die.
In the end, she was still human, as far as she knew, and between the violent attack, learning the truth about Tomas, and dealing with his compelling her to cooperate? Needless to say it was a little much. Tomas compelled her to sleep at 8:37pm and had taken her someplace safer. Sort of. She'd equated the space to that of a waiting room in Hell and she wasn't alone. Of course not. Because that'd be too convenient. Tomas was there, as well as someone in 17th century court clothes, and a familiar face from Tony's court: Rafe aka Raphael, the famous Roman painter from the 1500s. He'd painted the ceiling of her bedroom when she'd been a child, angels watching over her while she'd slept. He was one of the few people she'd regretted leaving, but she couldn't tell him because Tony was his master and if a master asked a direct question, they couldn't lie. Despite being told that Tomas was assigned to protect her by the Senate, she still didn't take it well. Incredibly headstrong and stubborn, he'd betrayed the trust she'd originally given him and there was no amount of apologies to make up for what had happened.
Her anger was nipped in the bud by Alphonse, relocating her to the Senate chamber to watch them address Tony - her former 'keeper' and also the guy who'd just tried to have her killed. He apparently was under the impression that he should be compensated for taking care of her by way of him getting to keep her heart. Despite being in the Senate chambers, though, a room filled with first level Masters that could turn her into mince-meat, including the head of the Senate (the Consul) who happened to be Cleopatra herself - she doesn't bother to hold her tongue at Tony's demands. Again, showing just how fearless she really is when she actually should be terrified.
"You had my parents killed so you could monopolize my talent. You told me my visions were helping you avoid the disasters I saw and were being passed on to warn others, while all the time you were profiting off them. You're mad that I cost you some money? If I ever get close enough, I'll cut off your head."
As happy as she might be to see Tony get his ass handed to him, she couldn't let it show. There were certain ways to behave in a Vampire Court and smiling at Tony's misfortune wasn't it. She had an expression she relied on way back when she was at Tony's - an empty poker face she'd used growing up. Like with Rafe, there was another familiar face in the room - that of Tony's Master: Mircea. He was the older brother of Vlad III Tepes aka Dracula and someone she'd known since he'd first visited Tony's court when she was 11. While Tony was a problem, having the attention of the Senate - especially when they needed something, wasn't fun. It didn't help when the subject was whether she'd be helpful or a threat. And just like the topic at hand, it seemed some of the extra members had made up their minds already that she was a threat. Between a war mage named Pritkin trying to add his two cents and the Senate's resident torturer Jack the Ripper. Although they'd had two different ideas of how to fix it, Jack's being to turn her and Pritkin's being to hand her over to the mages to deal with.
As if that experience wasn't enough to deal with on top of everything, there was actually a second attempt on her life in the Senate chamber. Tomas had barely gotten her out of the way before the first onslaught of the attack, although it was over almost as quickly as it had began considering who all was in the room. To say she was grateful at the suggestion that she be relocated before Jack started 'interrogating' the only surviving attacker would be an understatement. But, even with the considerations for her wellbeing and sending along familiar faces while they explain the situation didn't comfort her. If anything, it only fed the paranoia because everything came with a price.
If only the idea of a cost had been the only concern. She hadn't been counting on getting hit with a vision - and a doozy at that. It was the first development of her powers she'd had in awhile, having starred in the vision rather than just being a bystander - a ghost to blend into the background: unseen and unheard. The vision had been a memory of Louis-César's past - the man dressed in the 17th century clothing... And it had been vivid and incredibly violent - she'd watched someone torture someone else through his eyes. The visions didn't normally leave her quite so shaken, but they also usually weren't so real - didn't have the smells, touches, and tastes that accompanied some of the more disgusting things in life. And it was all because he'd touched her. Usually when she got visions from touching very old things that had been through a traumatic circumstance, but those usually gave off negative psychic vibrations. It was something she'd learned to pick up on rather quickly after brushing against an old tommy gun as a child. She also usually tried to avoid shaking people's hands or making physical contact for that exact reason as most people didn't respond well to her figuring out who was cheating or about to commit a crime. Just like she avoided touching people who she knew had done awful things, trying to not add to her already growing list of nightmares.
But even with the remnants of the traumatic vision, the Senate still needed something from her. And usually what the Senate wanted, it got. They weren't going to care about her already existing guilt from what she'd inadvertently helped with at Tony's, the sleepless nights she's had, or the fact that she'd made a promise to herself after living at Tony's court to never let her abilities be used to hurt anyone ever again. She'd been given the chance to take a bath rather than find out what they wanted after the vision, taking the time to catch up with her ghost - Billy Joe. He filled her in on the details he'd been able to pick up as well as her location: the main headquarters of MAGIC in Nevada. MAGIC stood for the Metaphysical Alliance for Greater Interspecies Cooperation. A long way from Georgia, considering the circumstances and how quickly it had all happened considering the sun still hadn't risen... Although it was close. Billy Joe also filled her in on the fact that Rasputin (the former adviser to Russian Tsar Nicolas II and his family) was out for blood because he didn't get a seat on the European Vampire Senate so he had his sights set on the North American Senate. A Senate that currently had at least 4 seats open thanks to him. Hence why Louis-César was on loan from the European Senate to be Cleopatra's second. Rasputin had challenged her to a duel as current Consul and she'd called in a second to fight in her stead - Louis-César.
All of that information, though, wasn't enough to make her want to break out of the MAGIC headquarters. No, what had her revving to leave was the fact that Jimmy the Rat was in Vegas. He was a hitman for Tony and had planted the bomb that had killed her parents as well as tortured and killed her former Nanny. She wanted vengeance and to make sure that if he died, it was at her hand. Even if she had doubts that she'd actually be able to follow through with killing him, the drive was there to go and at least try. If nothing else, Jimmy would have information on her parents that Tony had very carefully kept from her as a child. When Billy Joe had done his normal routine to draw energy from her, he'd released a block a vamp had put on her to drain her energy and put it into a 'metaphysical holding pot' of sorts. Billy Joe had managed to break through the wards around it. With the energy boost, they were ready to break out, but they hadn't been counting on a screaming window latch. Someone had cast a 'Marley' on it so it yelled anytime someone attempted to touch it. Cassie ended up using a washcloth for its mouth as well as an entire roll of toilet paper to keep it from sliding out of reach.
When they'd arrived at Dante's in Vegas, she flirted with one of the bartenders to try and find out where Jimmy was hiding and even though he didn't tell her directly... Billy Joe was able to peek inside his head and get the info - a handy trick in situations like this. Of course, there were complications. Jimmy was being held in the basement of the club, about to be sent out to fight in Tony's underground ring - his punishment system and way of eliminating loose ends. They'd found fey and witches in cages and Cassie being, or attempting to be, the good person she is... Well, she couldn't just leave them to go out to their deaths. After some complications, she'd started freeing the captured witches - noticing a familiar face. The witch from her vision when she'd touched Louis-César. It wasn't something she had time to dwell on, though. Not when everything was its own level of dire. They were all almost out of the casino's compound before being found by Pritkin, Tomas, and Louis-César. And as if that wasn't bad enough, while trying to evade them, they happened to find were vamps. Apparently Jimmy's nickname was more because he was half wererat on top of being half satyr.
The plan to get her out of harm's way went to hell in a handbasket because once again, Cassie just had to be stubborn. Her attempt to get Billy to possess Jimmy had failed, Billy's spirit crashing into her body and sending her own spirit out of her body and into Tomas's. A feat that should have been impossible considering he was a high level Master vamp. Even while possessing someone else, with Billy Joe babysitting her body, she happened to have a vision and brought a friend with her - Tomas. They were back in the torture room from Louis-César's past with the witch, Francoise. With the help of the ghosts, they got her out of the torture room, but they didn't stay for long. She did end up back in her own body when they returned to the present, but the shock of the situation didn't keep her anger in check when she realized that Jimmy had died while she'd been out. Granted, she didn't get a lot of time to be mad about it before realizing there was a new problem. A dark mage had joined the vamps outside of Pritkin's protective shield, a shield that was fading. At least until Cassie had said the one power word she'd known to boost it. She'd previously used it to stay awake for three days straight when on the run from Tony the second time.
It lasted for a little bit, long enough for Billy to fill her in on exactly what they were facing and make a plan. An attempt to replicate what they'd done earlier and it had worked - sort of. She was better equipped to break through the mage's wards with her own, having always visualized hers as fire which didn't mesh well with his wooden ones. She'd managed to break through and stop his attack, but it didn't last long. The witches she'd freed had stopped by to deal with the other dark mage, but she had a problem inside. The magical dagger bracelet she'd pried off of him was back in action helping to take down vamps. She was eventually kicked out of the body, almost at the cost of her spirit.
By the time she'd regained consciousness after passing out in Louis-César's arms, it was time to talk back at MAGIC - only the talk was really three separate conversations in a room with her, 4 master level vamps, a warmage, and a golem. At least they'd provided food to go with the interrogation and apparently show between Cassie and Pritkin while she defended the vamp's feeding methods as well as Senate punishments. It led to her revealing a little more about herself than she might have wanted, including demonstrating how a vamp could feed without breaking the skin with Mircea to prove a point to Pritkin. Not that Pritkin really wanted the demo, a fact he made clear - his own assumptions about what would happen taking over. But just like it was time for Pritkin to learn, it was apparently also time to learn something for herself. That Tomas had been feeding on her without her consent while he'd been living with her. Repeated feedings tended to create bonds and because of that, there were very strict rules.
The demonstration with Cassie had gone smoothly, but when it was offered to Pritkin, the reaction was quite different. Eventually the discussion had shifted back to the discussion of Francoise and the development of Cassie's powers. How she was no longer just a bystander in her visions, but slowly becoming an active participant who could change the course of history. Things heated back up, and after arguing with Pritkin, the magical dagger bracelet that had once belonged to the dark mage and had decided to make Cassie it's new power source, went on the offensive against the warmage... Which didn't help with keeping him from calling her a demon and attacking her. Wracking that up to about 5 or 6 attempts on her life in the past 48 hours. And he would have succeeded if it weren't for Mircea and the others. They were able to disprove the demon theory by having her drink holy water, but it didn't answer the questions of just what she was considering her power source and the fact that she'd done a lot of thing no one should have been able to do over the past few days. But, the big thing that they needed to figure out first was just how she'd managed to change history.
There was one theory they could come up with, but Pritkin didn't like it - it was that the Pythia's power was passing to Cassie who was not the designated heir. Not that the power cared, it chose who it wanted despite people's attempts to prepare and guide it in their direction. The power would allow her to travel through time and change the course of history. It also called into question why Pritkin had been sent to make a decision on her considering he was known for being a hot-headed demon hunter. Even with the pissed off vamps and an incredible amount of tension in the room, Cassie still fought for answers, even if she wasn't going to like them.
But, even if she didn't like it - he knew about her mother. Which was more than her. The fact that she'd been a former heir to the to the Pythia power but had fallen in love with Cassie's father, a vampire's servant, and became pregnant had destroyed any chance of that. And as far as the circle was concerned, the entire bloodline was tainted. It was necessary for the heir to be a virgin so as to possibly be an uninfluenced by others as possible and Pritkin had made a lot of assumptions about Cassie to rule her out. Assumptions that were untrue. As far as Pritkin was concerned, Cassie was a Fallen Sybil unfit for the power, not that the power cared, and even with the loaded protection of the Senate... She was in for one hell of a fight. But it was a fight she needed to win, especially if the current heir the circle had picked was doing the unthinkable: siding with the enemy. Giving him the edge to stay one step ahead and basically cheat death and losses. To travel back in time to set things up to ensure visions didn't come true - to mess with bonds between vampire Masters and servants.
Which meant, she had a new task - to keep Louis-César's past intact and keep the heir working for Rasputin from wiping out the duel contestant completely starting at his birth. It was a task she'd originally refused before Mircea haggled a price - to find out the truth about her father. If Jimmy's words had been true about him still actually being alive. Or at least that had been the agreement made in front of everyone before she and Mircea were the only ones left in the room. Something needed to be completed before she could fully assume the role of Pythia - her v-card had to go bye-bye. It was the tradition through the centuries, however the circumstances weren't ideal. Needless to say it didn't go as Mircea had planned, just like the apparently original plan with Tomas hadn't worked out. He'd not only been sent by the Senate to protect her while she'd been on the run, but to also make sure the Circle couldn't control her as a sybil. She'd rejected him in the almost exact way she was trying to reject Mircea, but she also hadn't harbored a crush for the former for 12 years. Too bad for him, she was very good at delaying and doing some negotiations of her own by getting answers to her questions before they got too far.
And thanks to that, she got the truth about her father. That his spirit had been trapped in a prison world of sorts to be a seen as both a punishment and a warning. That Mircea had tried to free the spirit, but the task had been impossible for anyone except the Silver Cirlce... And as the Pythia, she'd be able to command the freeing of her father. All the more reason for her to go through with what Mircea was offering, although reason still rang through. She didn't want to go through with it because she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle the powers of the Pythia - or if she even wanted that responsibility.
"I didn't want to be Pythia. The office had helped to get my mother killed and promised me only life in a gilded cage - assuming the Circle didn't kill me. Besides, Pritkin was right: I hadn't been trained. I didn't know if I could handle seeing any more than I already did. I hadn't liked the new powers I'd obtained, and I doubted I'd enjoy the others any better, whatever they were. But, if I refused the position, I wasn't sure I could do anything to help my father. I knew Tony well enough to know how vindictive he could be. He would view my father's imprisonment as serving the double purpose of torturing both him and me; and he'd never voluntarily give him up."
As if her decision hadn't been complex enough, he'd filled her in on a few details of her life on the run - the threats that had been kept at bay with his help. The fact that there'd been two hit squads after her that night, not just one. The fact that she'd actually almost evaded the Senate's intelligence Network and that Mircea had been keeping tabs on her since he learned the truth about who her mother was. She'd also learned just how important her taking on the full office of the Pythia was to the Senate. That things could take a turn for the worst if she didn't back down on her decision to delay things because he knew her and he knew how she'd handle something that extreme - that development of distrust. It was something to be avoided at all costs. But, Mircea's reasons for pushing so hard for her to go through with it weren't entirely selfless. He'd been told he could travel back in time with her to save his brother, Radu, from a lifetime of torture while she and Tomas saved Louis-César. She could help repair someone else's broken family and maybe get some closure when it came to her own.
It was worth a shot.
Too bad that by the time she'd made a decision to move forward, all hell had broken loose outside. Rasputin and his men had broken through almost all of the defenses in record time... Which meant they had a spy on the inside. A spy Mircea had put a name to all too late: Tomas. He'd been promised the Latin American Senate and control of Cassie. Tomas had tried to undo Louis-César's turning by helping her free the witch, since he'd originally been turned because of a curse - not a bite. In Tomas's mind, however, he wasn't doing this to bring down the Senate. He wanted to freedom from a life of having a Master and at the same time, wanted to keep Cassie safe - believing he was the only one truly capable. It was a betrayal that cut her deeply, one that just continued to perpetuate her issue with letting people get close to her and show how jaded she really was when it came to her view of the world. Where Tomas had believed the lies, Cassie saw the truth - Rasputin would never let her live while he had a compliant sybil already doing his bidding. He needed her dead to make sure his sybil became Pythia.
Pritkin managed to buy them time enough for Cassie to find a way to re-access Louis-César's past. Between his hair clip and the Tears of Apollo, used to help strengthen visions, it was doable. She'd sent herself and Mircea back where he'd filled in the gaps on who Louis-César was - the Man in the Iron Mask. She and Mircea split up to try and keep them from killing Radu in order to keep Louis-César human while she kept Rasputin busy with her ghostly army she'd met the last time she was here. Cassie had put herself between Radu and Rasputin's sybil and inadvertently attacked her by putting up a hand to ward her off - a hand bearing the dagger bracelet. They'd put two rather large holes in her spirit form. Her ward had also followed her into the past, stopping another word of power from affecting her before sending her ghost army to attack a spirit and destroy it by eating it before he could harm Mircea.
In the middle of the fray, Cassie tried to save the sybil from certain death - thinking she could get through to her; That she could help. Luckily, someone else intervened before she could deal Cassie a deadly blow straight to the heart. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place as she met the current Pythia, Agnes. The one who'd left her the warning on her computer and who'd come back to this moment to stop her heir, Myra, from destroying everything. And the one who dropped the bomb that Cassie was basically screwed when it came to her trying to avoid the power because it had chosen her - she was going to be the new Pythia whether she wanted it or not. She also dispelled the virginity myth, stating that one of the Pythias had wanted a lover so she claimed to have had a vision. But, it didn't actually make a difference in getting the power although the ritual was still in place for a reason so she can control the power instead of vice-versa.
"For what it's worth, Cassie. I'm sorry. There hasn't been a Pythia since the first one that has had to take on the job completely untrained. But then, with your abilities, you're likely to rewrite the rule book anyways...Plus, most of our adepts take years to learn what you've managed to teach yourself in only a few days."
And despite her yelling about not wanting the power one more time for good measure, Agnes gave Cassie a kiss on the cheek and told her she was the Pythia now before the full brunt of the power hit her. Rasputin and Myra escaped and Cassie took the time to fill Mircea in on the newest developments as well as what the Senate would need to know. Especially that Myra might be able to hold onto the little bit of Pythia power she had. Which was a problem, a big one. Myra could try to undo her the same way she'd almost succeeded with Louis-César. Mircea wanted her to tell the Senate herself, but she'd already made her decision. Rather than be kept somehow and caught between the two circles, the Senate, and maybe Tomas - it was too much. She was going to run, again. Hide until things were a little more under control. So, she got them back to their present time and took off on her not-so-little adventure as the Pythia.
Claimed by Shadow:
After grabbing a few things from M.A.G.I.C., Cassie went back on the run, but with a different purpose this time. She needed answers and was bound and determined to get them however she could. She'd found her way back into Tony's incredibly tacky bar, named Dante's and modeled after the 9 circles of Hell, to talk to Casanova. Casanova is an Incubus demon that had managed to take over a very young vampire that didn't know how to stop him from possessing his body. He and his other Incubi worked at a brothel that was covered as a spa inside Dante's, although Cassie's arrival definitely put a halt to business. She'd opened one of the boxes from M.A.G.I.C that held a small iridescent sphere. and had released the Graeae of Greek Mythology (the Three Fates) into the world. The three old women had followed her along and were wreaking havoc on the Incubi and Satyrs in the brothel while Cassie got her answers. The women were basically like old toddlers, leaving Cassie feeling more like a babysitter than the Pythia.
While they stood out, Cassie had tried to blend in, slipping into one of the uniforms before having approached Cassanova. It was a sequined devil costume with a tail and horns, which while impractical, worked for her purpose of not being recognized right off the bat. Cassie eventually got the information she'd needed from Casanova, despite his hesitations when it came to Tony - her old Guardian. It wasn't exactly as direct as she'd wanted, but it was a step towards the right direction of finding him and Myra. She'd found something to hold over Casanova's head in order to try to activate his desire to stay alive and not face the Senate, a reminder that Tony had been involved in slaving magical creatures which was illegal. Between that, the reminder that Casanova would be in a great position to fill a power vacuum if Tony went down, and Tony's love of pinning crimes on other people, it was enough.
At least until the geis made itself known when Casanova had tried to use his powers of seduction on her. It was the first she'd heard of it which meant it was time for a crash course lesson from the Incubus about the claim that had been put on her that basically worked like a 'keep off' sign. That and the fact that the geis had been in place for awhile... Which left her thinking of just one person.
"I sat there, feeling a new wave of heat creep up my neck. I remembered a cultured, amused voice telling me that I belonged to him, always had and always would. I was going to kill him."
Mircea. Casanova managed to strike a nerve by phrasing the geis as the equivalent of being owned, something that Cassie was pretty adamant about not being. She'd fought so hard for her independence, this was just complicating things. The geis allowed the person who'd put it in place to know her real emotions (not what she was projecting), a rough estimate of where she was at all times, and heightened attraction between her and the person who'd placed it on her - something that would become more intense with each meeting. Cassie was pretty adamant about making it known how she felt about having her thoughts and feelings altered, immediately taking her reaction to an extreme of believing that nothing she'd felt for Mircea was real. It's a thought that's quickly shot down with more information, confirming that the geis didn't create emotions - only amplified what might've already been there.
With more time to let it all sink in, she'd started to let the pieces fall into place. There was a guess that Mircea might have put it in place when she'd been eleven or twelve to make sure she'd be eligible if the Pythia power ever became available considering she was the daughter of a former heir. The information Casanova had been filling her in on quickly dried up, though, when she mentioned Mircea's name. Something about dropping the Senate Member and Master Vampire's name seemed to have struck fear in the Incubus - enough to give her a warning to cooperate with Mircea and run while he called the Master Vamp. Of course, Cassie wasn't exactly in a cooperative mood.
"You've had your speech, now listen to mine. I know all about manipulation. I haven't lived a day when someone wasn't pulling my strings. Even this whole Pythia gig wasn't my idea. But you know what? It does change things, doesn't it? Mircea doesn't own me, no matter what he thinks. No one does. And anyone who tries to jerk me around from now on is going to find that I make a very bad enemy."
She shouldn't have expected to keep things on the somewhat DL for long, though, her time with Casanova quickly interrupted by Pritkin and a few other war mages. Enyo, one of the three Graeae, transformed into something reminiscent of an blood covered Amazonian. Cassie followed Casanova out to a safer spot, watching the carnage through a large spy glass as Pemphredo had lived up to her reputation of being 'the master of alarming surprises'. Rather than running away from the situation, she follows Cassanova - her mind on the goal of finding out where Tony was.
Upside of everything? She wasn't dead, but she was crawling through a cemetery trying to not get caught by the mages or struck by lightning. She'd replaced her old gun with a new 9mm, having moved up from just keeping it available when she felt her life was in danger. With the new title, it meant her life was in danger more and more.
- She was named for Cassandra, the Greek seer who'd refused to be controlled by anyone and had run from Apollo to avoid having someone tell her how to use her gift.
- parents were killed at the age of 4 by a car bomb
- had been told it was an accident
- raised @ a Master Vampire's (Antonio Gallina) court until she came into her powers @ age of 14
- Eugenie
- Always been something of a ghost magnet
- Tony didn't let her study much/learn about her powers because he'd been afraid that she might've found a way to use it against him.
- Was a teenage runaway
- To be turned, it takes 3 bites over several consecutive days by a Master level vamp. Tony bit Cassie once when she was a child and again when she'd returned home after running away the first time. With two bites a vampire could control most normal people without turning them... But Tony's attempt had failed. She had a theory that her constant association with ghosts interrupted the signal.
Tony had hidden all information on her parents including photos, letters, high school yearbooks. It had taken her years to even learn their names, considering he'd also hired a lot of staff after their deaths who knew nothing about his operations previously. She only had snippets of her own positive memories when it came to her parents: the smell of rose talcum powder for her mother and the sensation of strong hands throwing her in the air and spinning her around for her father. As well as his laugh, a deep chuckle that made her feel safe. When puberty had hit, she had a vision of their deaths, a fireball that had left nothing but metal and burning leather seats behind. She'd watched it all from Jimmy's car, heard him make the phone call to say it was done and they should pick her up at daycare before the cops showed up. She'd run away for the first time an hour after that vision and managed to stay out of their grips for three years.
Since she'd run on her own, she didn't have anything she got the second time from the FBI - no fake social security number or birth certificates, no job, and no back up if shit hit the fan. She also had really no grasp on how things worked outside of a Vampire Court in the 'real world.' It was one of the few times where her ability to talk to spirits had really paid off and kept her alive through the experience. She'd had a ghostly childhood friend, Laura, who was 6 when her family had been killed by Tony at the turn of the century. Laura had taught her the more normal things a child should experience, like mud-pies and practical jokes. She also showed her an old safe that had about $10,000 in it that Tony had missed. Laura had made sure that Cassie not only got the money, but was able to get away safely.
She could have stayed away with that money and started over, but she's far too headstrong to stay away from a problem when she knows she can be part of the solution. She'd made the decision to go back in order to take Tony down, along with his entire organization. She spent another three years back in the organization, collecting enough evidence to bring him down through the human justice system. She helped get him taken down for racketeering and tax-evasion - 100 year sentence. Or at least, that had been the plan before the sting went wrong. Tony wasn't caught and Cassie was punished for trying to bring him down indirectly. Tony had not only killed, but maimed her former nanny, Eugenie, leaving the pieces for Cassie to find along with a note. He'd apparently had his hitman Jimmy the Rat torture Genie until she broke and had left her for Cassie to dispose of properly.
"All I See is the kind of stuff that nightmares and serious drinking problems are made of."
Imprint Zones: "Imprints are like a supernatural theater that shows the same movie over and over until you want to scream. Since it's usually something traumatic, running into one isn't fun. I'd spent my free time for a couple of months after I moved in learning the streets in the area, and one of the main things I'd been looking for was imprint zones. I'd found about fifty dealing with the burning of the city during the Civil War, but most were too weak to cause me more than a twinge. But there was a big one between my apartment and the agency... I started taking the long way around after I got caught in it one day. I have a lot of memories I'd just as soon forget; I don't need other people's nightmares."
two types of shields pg 16 touch the dark
Her ward/shield - ensures that anyone touching her with harm in mind would end up screaming in agony.
She normally gets warnings prior to visions, thirty-ish seconds of disorientation before it starts
High tolerance to gore and violence growing up at Tony's
necklace description: hand wrought gold, heavy and intricate, with a mass of squirming vines and flowers around a central cabochon ruby.
Touch the Dark:
After having been on the run from Tony for three years, she'd settled into a life of something resembling normalcy at a Travel Agency in Georgia when she finds an obituary on her computer screen after grabbing a quick lunch. It's her obituary, and it's dated for tomorrow - detailing her gruesome death at the hands of a gunman. Rather than sticking around to find out if she would actually die at 8:43pm, she took the hour head-start she'd been given and had taken her 9mm semi-automatic Smith & Wesson out from under a travel flyer for Rio. There was something to be said for continuing to be paranoid and not having laughed the FBI agent that had told her to get the gun in the face. Hard to not be paranoid when she'd helped take down one of the biggest crime families in Philly. She wasn't a great shot, but Agent Sydell had taken 2 weeks to make sure that if she couldn't hit the side of the barn, she wouldn't miss it by much.
Jerry Sydell had been a good guy to her, helpful - so it wasn't a pleasant experience when she'd caught a vision of his death. Her visions hadn't exactly been kind when it came to timing, that one having hit when she was getting into the bath. She'd tried to change what she'd seen by not only reaching out to the Witness Protection Program emergency number, but also one of Tony's thugs... The very people she'd been hiding from. An attempt to keep them from killing the Agent with a threat of the action angering the Vampire Senate - a group of ridiculously old Vampires who passed laws for the less powerful ones to obey. While they may not care about regular humans, they didn't exactly want people to think of them as more than a myth - wanting to keep a low profile. Killing an FBI agent wasn't exactly the way to maintain that.
Too bad the same attempt wouldn't have worked when it came to her. Usually whatever Tony wanted, he got - by any means necessary. She'd just hoped that Tony had decided she wouldn't be too much trouble to bring back in and used human thugs instead of calling in the real talent. Made the running easier. Of course, that would have been an easier hope a few years ago when she'd been just a disobedient court clairvoyant. A few years ago she wouldn't have dreamed of entertaining the idea of Tony turning her because if she's turned, she loses exactly what he'd wanted her for: her psychic abilities. But, turning someone guaranteed loyalty to the master and knowing Tony... That was a price he might be willing to pay now given the amount of grief she'd already caused him, but she didn't share the sentiment.
There's something to be said for being on the run from Tony's thugs for 3ish years, having opted to wiggle out of the bathroom window - something that looks a lot easier in the movies while wearing panty hose, a mini-skirt, and knee-high 4 inch go-go boots. She makes the most of her abilities in the streets of Atlanta, enlisting the help of some of the ghosts she'd gotten to know to track down the ghost that was bound to a necklace she'd picked up at a junk shop when she was 17 - Billy Joe. He was basically her personal pain in the ass aka guardian spirit who was sometimes useful. He'd been an 1858 Irish gambler who'd cheated at cards and had been tossed in the Mississippi. He'd gotten caught in a necklace he'd recently picked up from a Countess, a magical sort of battery that collected magical energy from the natural world and stored it. When he wasn't out and about, his spirit rested in the necklace. When he boosted up, or drew energy from her, it usually felt like a cool breeze on a hot day. It was a welcome feeling and she usually got glimpses of his life each time.
With still no Billy in sight, she'd continued on her usual 'getting ready to run' routine, paranoid enough to have a separate bank account under a fake name and a bag of clothes at the bus station - stopping by her other part time job at a bar where she helped out bartending and reading tarot cards with a deck that had been a 10th birthday gift from her old Governess, Eugenie. They were charmed, but the cards had a way of being spot on with predictions - such as today. That wasn't her reason for stopping in the bar, though. No big goodbyes for all her coworkers - no - she needed to track down her roommate and give him a heads up. She had a soft spot for street kids, having taken in Tomas and gotten him the job. She usually didn't make friends because of her life, but Tomas had been different. She owed him an explanation for ditching, but couldn't be 100% honest for his own protection. Although, he didn't make it easy for her. They'd been in the alley a matter of minutes before shit hit the fan.
Or it should have.
There was something Tomas had been holding onto, a little fact that he was in fact a Master Vampire and not the broken human she'd thought. Most vamps spent their lives at the lowest level, basically slaves to the Masters... But others could work their way up to one of the seven levels. With each level, there were new powers and freedoms. She'd grown up around Master vamps, most not exceeding Tony's 3rd level. Only first and second level masters could walk in the sunlight, which said a lot about Tomas considering he played the human card to a t. Between him, the ghosts of former Confederate Soldiers one of her ghoulie friends had recruited, and the ward shaped like a lopsided pentagram on her back, they'd gotten through the 5 vamps sent to kill her. It honestly would have been better for Tomas to tell her the truth rather than her seeing it in a vision, but when did life ever cooperate. It was a devastating thing to discover considering she thought she'd done something to help someone rather than being played by yet another vamp. She usually didn't let people in close to her, considering that trust was usually betrayed and people she loved tended to die.
In the end, she was still human, as far as she knew, and between the violent attack, learning the truth about Tomas, and dealing with his compelling her to cooperate? Needless to say it was a little much. Tomas compelled her to sleep at 8:37pm and had taken her someplace safer. Sort of. She'd equated the space to that of a waiting room in Hell and she wasn't alone. Of course not. Because that'd be too convenient. Tomas was there, as well as someone in 17th century court clothes, and a familiar face from Tony's court: Rafe aka Raphael, the famous Roman painter from the 1500s. He'd painted the ceiling of her bedroom when she'd been a child, angels watching over her while she'd slept. He was one of the few people she'd regretted leaving, but she couldn't tell him because Tony was his master and if a master asked a direct question, they couldn't lie. Despite being told that Tomas was assigned to protect her by the Senate, she still didn't take it well. Incredibly headstrong and stubborn, he'd betrayed the trust she'd originally given him and there was no amount of apologies to make up for what had happened.
Her anger was nipped in the bud by Alphonse, relocating her to the Senate chamber to watch them address Tony - her former 'keeper' and also the guy who'd just tried to have her killed. He apparently was under the impression that he should be compensated for taking care of her by way of him getting to keep her heart. Despite being in the Senate chambers, though, a room filled with first level Masters that could turn her into mince-meat, including the head of the Senate (the Consul) who happened to be Cleopatra herself - she doesn't bother to hold her tongue at Tony's demands. Again, showing just how fearless she really is when she actually should be terrified.
As happy as she might be to see Tony get his ass handed to him, she couldn't let it show. There were certain ways to behave in a Vampire Court and smiling at Tony's misfortune wasn't it. She had an expression she relied on way back when she was at Tony's - an empty poker face she'd used growing up. Like with Rafe, there was another familiar face in the room - that of Tony's Master: Mircea. He was the older brother of Vlad III Tepes aka Dracula and someone she'd known since he'd first visited Tony's court when she was 11. While Tony was a problem, having the attention of the Senate - especially when they needed something, wasn't fun. It didn't help when the subject was whether she'd be helpful or a threat. And just like the topic at hand, it seemed some of the extra members had made up their minds already that she was a threat. Between a war mage named Pritkin trying to add his two cents and the Senate's resident torturer Jack the Ripper. Although they'd had two different ideas of how to fix it, Jack's being to turn her and Pritkin's being to hand her over to the mages to deal with.
As if that experience wasn't enough to deal with on top of everything, there was actually a second attempt on her life in the Senate chamber. Tomas had barely gotten her out of the way before the first onslaught of the attack, although it was over almost as quickly as it had began considering who all was in the room. To say she was grateful at the suggestion that she be relocated before Jack started 'interrogating' the only surviving attacker would be an understatement. But, even with the considerations for her wellbeing and sending along familiar faces while they explain the situation didn't comfort her. If anything, it only fed the paranoia because everything came with a price.
If only the idea of a cost had been the only concern. She hadn't been counting on getting hit with a vision - and a doozy at that. It was the first development of her powers she'd had in awhile, having starred in the vision rather than just being a bystander - a ghost to blend into the background: unseen and unheard. The vision had been a memory of Louis-César's past - the man dressed in the 17th century clothing... And it had been vivid and incredibly violent - she'd watched someone torture someone else through his eyes. The visions didn't normally leave her quite so shaken, but they also usually weren't so real - didn't have the smells, touches, and tastes that accompanied some of the more disgusting things in life. And it was all because he'd touched her. Usually when she got visions from touching very old things that had been through a traumatic circumstance, but those usually gave off negative psychic vibrations. It was something she'd learned to pick up on rather quickly after brushing against an old tommy gun as a child. She also usually tried to avoid shaking people's hands or making physical contact for that exact reason as most people didn't respond well to her figuring out who was cheating or about to commit a crime. Just like she avoided touching people who she knew had done awful things, trying to not add to her already growing list of nightmares.
But even with the remnants of the traumatic vision, the Senate still needed something from her. And usually what the Senate wanted, it got. They weren't going to care about her already existing guilt from what she'd inadvertently helped with at Tony's, the sleepless nights she's had, or the fact that she'd made a promise to herself after living at Tony's court to never let her abilities be used to hurt anyone ever again. She'd been given the chance to take a bath rather than find out what they wanted after the vision, taking the time to catch up with her ghost - Billy Joe. He filled her in on the details he'd been able to pick up as well as her location: the main headquarters of MAGIC in Nevada. MAGIC stood for the Metaphysical Alliance for Greater Interspecies Cooperation. A long way from Georgia, considering the circumstances and how quickly it had all happened considering the sun still hadn't risen... Although it was close. Billy Joe also filled her in on the fact that Rasputin (the former adviser to Russian Tsar Nicolas II and his family) was out for blood because he didn't get a seat on the European Vampire Senate so he had his sights set on the North American Senate. A Senate that currently had at least 4 seats open thanks to him. Hence why Louis-César was on loan from the European Senate to be Cleopatra's second. Rasputin had challenged her to a duel as current Consul and she'd called in a second to fight in her stead - Louis-César.
All of that information, though, wasn't enough to make her want to break out of the MAGIC headquarters. No, what had her revving to leave was the fact that Jimmy the Rat was in Vegas. He was a hitman for Tony and had planted the bomb that had killed her parents as well as tortured and killed her former Nanny. She wanted vengeance and to make sure that if he died, it was at her hand. Even if she had doubts that she'd actually be able to follow through with killing him, the drive was there to go and at least try. If nothing else, Jimmy would have information on her parents that Tony had very carefully kept from her as a child. When Billy Joe had done his normal routine to draw energy from her, he'd released a block a vamp had put on her to drain her energy and put it into a 'metaphysical holding pot' of sorts. Billy Joe had managed to break through the wards around it. With the energy boost, they were ready to break out, but they hadn't been counting on a screaming window latch. Someone had cast a 'Marley' on it so it yelled anytime someone attempted to touch it. Cassie ended up using a washcloth for its mouth as well as an entire roll of toilet paper to keep it from sliding out of reach.
When they'd arrived at Dante's in Vegas, she flirted with one of the bartenders to try and find out where Jimmy was hiding and even though he didn't tell her directly... Billy Joe was able to peek inside his head and get the info - a handy trick in situations like this. Of course, there were complications. Jimmy was being held in the basement of the club, about to be sent out to fight in Tony's underground ring - his punishment system and way of eliminating loose ends. They'd found fey and witches in cages and Cassie being, or attempting to be, the good person she is... Well, she couldn't just leave them to go out to their deaths. After some complications, she'd started freeing the captured witches - noticing a familiar face. The witch from her vision when she'd touched Louis-César. It wasn't something she had time to dwell on, though. Not when everything was its own level of dire. They were all almost out of the casino's compound before being found by Pritkin, Tomas, and Louis-César. And as if that wasn't bad enough, while trying to evade them, they happened to find were vamps. Apparently Jimmy's nickname was more because he was half wererat on top of being half satyr.
The plan to get her out of harm's way went to hell in a handbasket because once again, Cassie just had to be stubborn. Her attempt to get Billy to possess Jimmy had failed, Billy's spirit crashing into her body and sending her own spirit out of her body and into Tomas's. A feat that should have been impossible considering he was a high level Master vamp. Even while possessing someone else, with Billy Joe babysitting her body, she happened to have a vision and brought a friend with her - Tomas. They were back in the torture room from Louis-César's past with the witch, Francoise. With the help of the ghosts, they got her out of the torture room, but they didn't stay for long. She did end up back in her own body when they returned to the present, but the shock of the situation didn't keep her anger in check when she realized that Jimmy had died while she'd been out. Granted, she didn't get a lot of time to be mad about it before realizing there was a new problem. A dark mage had joined the vamps outside of Pritkin's protective shield, a shield that was fading. At least until Cassie had said the one power word she'd known to boost it. She'd previously used it to stay awake for three days straight when on the run from Tony the second time.
It lasted for a little bit, long enough for Billy to fill her in on exactly what they were facing and make a plan. An attempt to replicate what they'd done earlier and it had worked - sort of. She was better equipped to break through the mage's wards with her own, having always visualized hers as fire which didn't mesh well with his wooden ones. She'd managed to break through and stop his attack, but it didn't last long. The witches she'd freed had stopped by to deal with the other dark mage, but she had a problem inside. The magical dagger bracelet she'd pried off of him was back in action helping to take down vamps. She was eventually kicked out of the body, almost at the cost of her spirit.
By the time she'd regained consciousness after passing out in Louis-César's arms, it was time to talk back at MAGIC - only the talk was really three separate conversations in a room with her, 4 master level vamps, a warmage, and a golem. At least they'd provided food to go with the interrogation and apparently show between Cassie and Pritkin while she defended the vamp's feeding methods as well as Senate punishments. It led to her revealing a little more about herself than she might have wanted, including demonstrating how a vamp could feed without breaking the skin with Mircea to prove a point to Pritkin. Not that Pritkin really wanted the demo, a fact he made clear - his own assumptions about what would happen taking over. But just like it was time for Pritkin to learn, it was apparently also time to learn something for herself. That Tomas had been feeding on her without her consent while he'd been living with her. Repeated feedings tended to create bonds and because of that, there were very strict rules.
The demonstration with Cassie had gone smoothly, but when it was offered to Pritkin, the reaction was quite different. Eventually the discussion had shifted back to the discussion of Francoise and the development of Cassie's powers. How she was no longer just a bystander in her visions, but slowly becoming an active participant who could change the course of history. Things heated back up, and after arguing with Pritkin, the magical dagger bracelet that had once belonged to the dark mage and had decided to make Cassie it's new power source, went on the offensive against the warmage... Which didn't help with keeping him from calling her a demon and attacking her. Wracking that up to about 5 or 6 attempts on her life in the past 48 hours. And he would have succeeded if it weren't for Mircea and the others. They were able to disprove the demon theory by having her drink holy water, but it didn't answer the questions of just what she was considering her power source and the fact that she'd done a lot of thing no one should have been able to do over the past few days. But, the big thing that they needed to figure out first was just how she'd managed to change history.
There was one theory they could come up with, but Pritkin didn't like it - it was that the Pythia's power was passing to Cassie who was not the designated heir. Not that the power cared, it chose who it wanted despite people's attempts to prepare and guide it in their direction. The power would allow her to travel through time and change the course of history. It also called into question why Pritkin had been sent to make a decision on her considering he was known for being a hot-headed demon hunter. Even with the pissed off vamps and an incredible amount of tension in the room, Cassie still fought for answers, even if she wasn't going to like them.
But, even if she didn't like it - he knew about her mother. Which was more than her. The fact that she'd been a former heir to the to the Pythia power but had fallen in love with Cassie's father, a vampire's servant, and became pregnant had destroyed any chance of that. And as far as the circle was concerned, the entire bloodline was tainted. It was necessary for the heir to be a virgin so as to possibly be an uninfluenced by others as possible and Pritkin had made a lot of assumptions about Cassie to rule her out. Assumptions that were untrue. As far as Pritkin was concerned, Cassie was a Fallen Sybil unfit for the power, not that the power cared, and even with the loaded protection of the Senate... She was in for one hell of a fight. But it was a fight she needed to win, especially if the current heir the circle had picked was doing the unthinkable: siding with the enemy. Giving him the edge to stay one step ahead and basically cheat death and losses. To travel back in time to set things up to ensure visions didn't come true - to mess with bonds between vampire Masters and servants.
Which meant, she had a new task - to keep Louis-César's past intact and keep the heir working for Rasputin from wiping out the duel contestant completely starting at his birth. It was a task she'd originally refused before Mircea haggled a price - to find out the truth about her father. If Jimmy's words had been true about him still actually being alive. Or at least that had been the agreement made in front of everyone before she and Mircea were the only ones left in the room. Something needed to be completed before she could fully assume the role of Pythia - her v-card had to go bye-bye. It was the tradition through the centuries, however the circumstances weren't ideal. Needless to say it didn't go as Mircea had planned, just like the apparently original plan with Tomas hadn't worked out. He'd not only been sent by the Senate to protect her while she'd been on the run, but to also make sure the Circle couldn't control her as a sybil. She'd rejected him in the almost exact way she was trying to reject Mircea, but she also hadn't harbored a crush for the former for 12 years. Too bad for him, she was very good at delaying and doing some negotiations of her own by getting answers to her questions before they got too far.
And thanks to that, she got the truth about her father. That his spirit had been trapped in a prison world of sorts to be a seen as both a punishment and a warning. That Mircea had tried to free the spirit, but the task had been impossible for anyone except the Silver Cirlce... And as the Pythia, she'd be able to command the freeing of her father. All the more reason for her to go through with what Mircea was offering, although reason still rang through. She didn't want to go through with it because she wasn't sure she'd be able to handle the powers of the Pythia - or if she even wanted that responsibility.
As if her decision hadn't been complex enough, he'd filled her in on a few details of her life on the run - the threats that had been kept at bay with his help. The fact that there'd been two hit squads after her that night, not just one. The fact that she'd actually almost evaded the Senate's intelligence Network and that Mircea had been keeping tabs on her since he learned the truth about who her mother was. She'd also learned just how important her taking on the full office of the Pythia was to the Senate. That things could take a turn for the worst if she didn't back down on her decision to delay things because he knew her and he knew how she'd handle something that extreme - that development of distrust. It was something to be avoided at all costs. But, Mircea's reasons for pushing so hard for her to go through with it weren't entirely selfless. He'd been told he could travel back in time with her to save his brother, Radu, from a lifetime of torture while she and Tomas saved Louis-César. She could help repair someone else's broken family and maybe get some closure when it came to her own.
It was worth a shot.
Too bad that by the time she'd made a decision to move forward, all hell had broken loose outside. Rasputin and his men had broken through almost all of the defenses in record time... Which meant they had a spy on the inside. A spy Mircea had put a name to all too late: Tomas. He'd been promised the Latin American Senate and control of Cassie. Tomas had tried to undo Louis-César's turning by helping her free the witch, since he'd originally been turned because of a curse - not a bite. In Tomas's mind, however, he wasn't doing this to bring down the Senate. He wanted to freedom from a life of having a Master and at the same time, wanted to keep Cassie safe - believing he was the only one truly capable. It was a betrayal that cut her deeply, one that just continued to perpetuate her issue with letting people get close to her and show how jaded she really was when it came to her view of the world. Where Tomas had believed the lies, Cassie saw the truth - Rasputin would never let her live while he had a compliant sybil already doing his bidding. He needed her dead to make sure his sybil became Pythia.
Pritkin managed to buy them time enough for Cassie to find a way to re-access Louis-César's past. Between his hair clip and the Tears of Apollo, used to help strengthen visions, it was doable. She'd sent herself and Mircea back where he'd filled in the gaps on who Louis-César was - the Man in the Iron Mask. She and Mircea split up to try and keep them from killing Radu in order to keep Louis-César human while she kept Rasputin busy with her ghostly army she'd met the last time she was here. Cassie had put herself between Radu and Rasputin's sybil and inadvertently attacked her by putting up a hand to ward her off - a hand bearing the dagger bracelet. They'd put two rather large holes in her spirit form. Her ward had also followed her into the past, stopping another word of power from affecting her before sending her ghost army to attack a spirit and destroy it by eating it before he could harm Mircea.
In the middle of the fray, Cassie tried to save the sybil from certain death - thinking she could get through to her; That she could help. Luckily, someone else intervened before she could deal Cassie a deadly blow straight to the heart. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place as she met the current Pythia, Agnes. The one who'd left her the warning on her computer and who'd come back to this moment to stop her heir, Myra, from destroying everything. And the one who dropped the bomb that Cassie was basically screwed when it came to her trying to avoid the power because it had chosen her - she was going to be the new Pythia whether she wanted it or not. She also dispelled the virginity myth, stating that one of the Pythias had wanted a lover so she claimed to have had a vision. But, it didn't actually make a difference in getting the power although the ritual was still in place for a reason so she can control the power instead of vice-versa.
And despite her yelling about not wanting the power one more time for good measure, Agnes gave Cassie a kiss on the cheek and told her she was the Pythia now before the full brunt of the power hit her. Rasputin and Myra escaped and Cassie took the time to fill Mircea in on the newest developments as well as what the Senate would need to know. Especially that Myra might be able to hold onto the little bit of Pythia power she had. Which was a problem, a big one. Myra could try to undo her the same way she'd almost succeeded with Louis-César. Mircea wanted her to tell the Senate herself, but she'd already made her decision. Rather than be kept somehow and caught between the two circles, the Senate, and maybe Tomas - it was too much. She was going to run, again. Hide until things were a little more under control. So, she got them back to their present time and took off on her not-so-little adventure as the Pythia.
Claimed by Shadow:
After grabbing a few things from M.A.G.I.C., Cassie went back on the run, but with a different purpose this time. She needed answers and was bound and determined to get them however she could. She'd found her way back into Tony's incredibly tacky bar, named Dante's and modeled after the 9 circles of Hell, to talk to Casanova. Casanova is an Incubus demon that had managed to take over a very young vampire that didn't know how to stop him from possessing his body. He and his other Incubi worked at a brothel that was covered as a spa inside Dante's, although Cassie's arrival definitely put a halt to business. She'd opened one of the boxes from M.A.G.I.C that held a small iridescent sphere. and had released the Graeae of Greek Mythology (the Three Fates) into the world. The three old women had followed her along and were wreaking havoc on the Incubi and Satyrs in the brothel while Cassie got her answers. The women were basically like old toddlers, leaving Cassie feeling more like a babysitter than the Pythia.
While they stood out, Cassie had tried to blend in, slipping into one of the uniforms before having approached Cassanova. It was a sequined devil costume with a tail and horns, which while impractical, worked for her purpose of not being recognized right off the bat. Cassie eventually got the information she'd needed from Casanova, despite his hesitations when it came to Tony - her old Guardian. It wasn't exactly as direct as she'd wanted, but it was a step towards the right direction of finding him and Myra. She'd found something to hold over Casanova's head in order to try to activate his desire to stay alive and not face the Senate, a reminder that Tony had been involved in slaving magical creatures which was illegal. Between that, the reminder that Casanova would be in a great position to fill a power vacuum if Tony went down, and Tony's love of pinning crimes on other people, it was enough.
At least until the geis made itself known when Casanova had tried to use his powers of seduction on her. It was the first she'd heard of it which meant it was time for a crash course lesson from the Incubus about the claim that had been put on her that basically worked like a 'keep off' sign. That and the fact that the geis had been in place for awhile... Which left her thinking of just one person.
Mircea. Casanova managed to strike a nerve by phrasing the geis as the equivalent of being owned, something that Cassie was pretty adamant about not being. She'd fought so hard for her independence, this was just complicating things. The geis allowed the person who'd put it in place to know her real emotions (not what she was projecting), a rough estimate of where she was at all times, and heightened attraction between her and the person who'd placed it on her - something that would become more intense with each meeting. Cassie was pretty adamant about making it known how she felt about having her thoughts and feelings altered, immediately taking her reaction to an extreme of believing that nothing she'd felt for Mircea was real. It's a thought that's quickly shot down with more information, confirming that the geis didn't create emotions - only amplified what might've already been there.
With more time to let it all sink in, she'd started to let the pieces fall into place. There was a guess that Mircea might have put it in place when she'd been eleven or twelve to make sure she'd be eligible if the Pythia power ever became available considering she was the daughter of a former heir. The information Casanova had been filling her in on quickly dried up, though, when she mentioned Mircea's name. Something about dropping the Senate Member and Master Vampire's name seemed to have struck fear in the Incubus - enough to give her a warning to cooperate with Mircea and run while he called the Master Vamp. Of course, Cassie wasn't exactly in a cooperative mood.
She shouldn't have expected to keep things on the somewhat DL for long, though, her time with Casanova quickly interrupted by Pritkin and a few other war mages. Enyo, one of the three Graeae, transformed into something reminiscent of an blood covered Amazonian. Cassie followed Casanova out to a safer spot, watching the carnage through a large spy glass as Pemphredo had lived up to her reputation of being 'the master of alarming surprises'. Rather than running away from the situation, she follows Cassanova - her mind on the goal of finding out where Tony was.
Upside of everything? She wasn't dead, but she was crawling through a cemetery trying to not get caught by the mages or struck by lightning. She'd replaced her old gun with a new 9mm, having moved up from just keeping it available when she felt her life was in danger. With the new title, it meant her life was in danger more and more.