Another hero might have been tricked by the subtle, insidious pull inside their mind, but not me. Not Venus Ascendant. Many of my battles have taken place outside the realm of Man's world and Man's influences, and I've been forced on countless occasions to exercise the self-will and self-discipline necessary to spot the tiny, almost imperceptible differences between one's own thoughts and the duplicitous snares of dark magic disguised as natural impulse. Time and time again, my life--my very soul--has depended on spotting the manipulations of some sorcerer or demon as they attempted to achieve through careful craft what brute force could not achieve. This feeling, this tugging desire to follow some inchoate whisper in the back of my brain... it's not mine. I'm sure of it.
For a moment I think about simply ignoring it, shrugging off its enticing siren song and settling in for the evening to catalog some of the more interesting exhibits I've acquired in my secret identity as museum curator Helena Katsaros. But then I imagine someone like WildRose or Adventure Girl catching a hint of that wordless murmur in their head and following it with the trusting complacency of a child, and I know that I can't simply let it rest. I have to let myself act as though I've given in to the nefarious wiles of whatever's calling to me, allow myself to be drawn along so I can surprise whoever's behind it when the time comes.
So I wrap the Girdle of Minerva around my waist and take flight, leaping free of gravity's bounds and dancing through the thin air of the stratosphere in search of the source. I can sense it doesn't want me to know I'm following any kind of call; there's an insistent pressure on my mind, an urge to let my eyes glaze over and travel without any true thought in my head toward the source of the telepathic whisper. There's something hypnotic about it, a numbing quality that wants to lull me into sleepy indifference to my own safety and fly heedlessly on until I reach the owner of the compulsion attempting to control me. If I wasn't a demigod myself, I might allow myself to succumb to it.
But as it is, I feel a growing confidence that whatever it is I'm being drawn to, I can handle it as easily as I would any other would-be world beater or rampaging monster. I haven't a doubt in my mind that my decision to confront this sinister mesmerist is the right one, and I know full well that all I have to do is follow that pull. Let it guide me. Silence any concerns in my head and push myself to fly as fast as possible to arrive at its side as soon as I can. Crossing the Rockies, arrowing my invulnerable body toward the Pacific Northwest, flinging myself through space with the calm certainty of an immortal veteran of a thousand battles... none of it stirs a moment of hesitation inside me.
It's only as I descend through the clouds into the city of Cryptopolis that it occurs to me just how unnatural that is. But by then, I'm too deeply ensnared in the grip of the call's spell on my mind to think about turning back. Even as I realize that I've simply been rationalizing my own surrender to the pull of the wordless voice inside my head, convincing myself that it was all my idea to do exactly what it wanted me to, my glazed and sleepy eyes are staring vacantly at my final destination. It looks like an ordinary block of condominiums, a tall tower of steel and glass inhabited by the wealthy technologists who made Cryptopolis the opulent testimony to futurism it is... but I already know better.
Something inside that tower summoned me here, not just overwhelming my mental defenses but twisting and warping them against themselves until I eagerly fell under its irresistible spell. Something here called me for a purpose I've yet to discover, taking me and making me its own with an ease and from a distance none of Man's creations could possibly match. And something made the hole in one of the windows on the fifteenth floor that I'm helplessly hurtling toward, then through. It's clear that an act of grave violence has already been committed here tonight. And the night is far from over.
It only takes my heightened senses a moment to detect the iron tang of blood in the air, but I stand frozen in indecision for far longer before I'm able to sense the delicate odor of decay frozen in its tracks by the taint of undeath. It's been perhaps three years since I've stood in the same room as a true vampire, but there are some things you never forget. I find myself nodding in absent-minded recognition; of course a vampire would be able to do this to me. Once you've been marked as prey, there's very little that can hide you from their irresistible telepathic call. And it is so easy for a vampire--a real vampire, not one of the many pallid imitations that walk this world created by science and sorcery alike--to mark you as their prey.