Planet Ysmault…

She did not know how she could smell the world before she could see it, but she could already smell the coppery scent of blood by the time the ochre tinted orb came into view and she entered the atmosphere. There was an ocean of it, as far as her eyes could see over the coast of the landmass she arrived on, after staggering to her feet and falling to her knees, she crawled to the beach and dipped her face into the viscous life fluid. She had been without blood for too long, the thirst was unbearable. She hated herself for the thirst and what it would make her do, but here? There was blood EVERYWHERE. She could finally drink her fill and know that she did not have to hurt anyone to get it.

When she finally had her fill, she leaned back and rolled onto her back, hugging herself tightly as her hands continued to smoke and burn from the five rings she wore. Her eyes flickered from one colour to the next as she licked her fingers and wiped her face clean, her heart and mind a maelstrom of emotions bombarding her psyche. Breathing hard and rolling onto her side, she tried to regain her wits when a blast of red light blew her off the sands of the beach and tumble against a craggy outcrop of rocks behind her.

Looking up in a daze, Zatanna found a trio of people in red and black, wielding red glowing rings looked down at her with barely contained murderous rage.

“Who are you…” Hissed the blue skinned one, the tattered leathery wings behind her were spread out but were not what were keeping her aloft. She would have been considered beautiful if not for the twisted sneer of anger on her face.

“You are not permitted on this world, who sent you? Was it Atrocitus?!” Barked the floated head, his vestigial fist aiming his red ring right at her like it was a weapon. Fluttering her eyes and recovering from the daze of the blast, she barely had time to spin and duck out of the way when Bleez, the winged one opened her mouth and spewed a molten column of red light at her, destroying the stony outcrop into slag and red flames.

“You will ANSWER us, NOW!” Conjuring an axe out of red light, Zilius Zox, the oversized head with tiny arms and legs, raised it over his bulbous head and swung it towards Zatanna who guarded herself with her arms, only for the blade to never reach its mark. Looking up, she found a sword made of solid red light blocking the axe, conjured by the third member who floated down to land on his feet and get a better look at the vampire woman.

“Whoa! Whoa! WHOA!!! Zee? Is that you?” Crouching down to pull the woman up, Guy Gardner was surprised to find his friend worse for wear, AND out in this neck of the Galaxy. He wore the garb of a Red Lantern, but his demeanor was softer than his compatriots behind him. “How did you get here? And what’s with the added jewelry?” Picking up her hand, he immediately recognized the other lantern rings and how they seemed to burn at her gloves like they were red hot, but only to her. “Are those…?”

Suddenly the woman gripped at his shoulders with inhuman strength, baring her teeth in a sneer as her eyes glowed yellow. “Give me what I want, or you will drown in terror!” Just as quickly her eyes turned indigo, her expression becoming more nurturing and her grip softening. “You’re trying to help them, help all of them, making up for… I WANT IT! Give me the Red now!” She hissed; her eyes glowing orange then violet when she pulled the shocked man into an intimate kiss.

Pulling away in shock, Zatanna fell to her hands and knees, clutching at her head as her eyes continued to flicker between colours before settling on green and her sense of control returned. “So many… Too many to keep control… I need the red Guy… Where do I find the red lantern battery?”

“You want a red lantern ring? While in possession of THOSE? Blasphemy!” Accused the two other red lanterns floating overhead, beside themselves with anger before Guy raised a hand to silence them.

“What is this about Zee? Why are you wearin those and why the hell do you have fangs?”

Managing to regain some semblance of control over herself, Zatanna stood up and reeled through the ache from the five rings burning her. “I need them Guy, I need the seven rings to bring back Constantine… I only need two rings left, please, I need the red ring.”

The next few minutes that passed, Zatanna explained everything to the stunned Guy Gardner as they made their way down the bloody beach towards a pulpit where a column of red light could be see in the distance. How Bruce had become the king of werewolves and Dracula arrived to end him, turning her and others into vampiric thralls under his command. She even detailed how under his control she had done terrible things. Now she was making up for past sins, and she was so close now. So close.

When she was brought before the red lantern battery, it became clear where the ocean of blood had come from. Blood dripped and oozed from the battery’s core like an open wound, spilling down its pedestal to the pulpit and down into the surrounding pool. All around her there were over a hundred red lanterns glaring down at her but stayed their hand since she was with their leader. The core itself was like a glaring baleful eye, so full of rage it was hard to ignore. Hugging herself and breathing sharply, she tried to maintain control over herself and listened as Guy explained the new order of Red Lanterns under his rule.

“Ever since Atrocitus got the boot, I’ve been runnin things around here. He kinda had the whole lot of dem crawling around like rabid animals pukin up red stuff until he needed them. Poor Basterds… All of’um driven insane with unfocused anger, wasn’t a pretty sight.”

Looking around, Zatanna found several giving her the evil eye or looked like they were just boiling over with barely restrained rage. She had no doubt that if they had the chance, they would attack her on sight for no other reason than because she was there. But if Guy was telling the truth, then everyone here were saints compared to what they were before Gardner took over. Behind the stares of anger and contempt she could make out that they wanted to be something other than angry, it was almost like they were intentionally being abrasive. But why?

“If they are doing better… Why are they…?

“Oh right, you’re the first one to come here without being killed… Or eaten.” Raising his fist to show off his red ring, Guy explained. “These things are a bit of a curse, when you first put’em on, they crank your attitude up to eleven, turnin even a sweet little girl into a brain eatin loon.”

“Atrocitus taught us to embrace the rage, it gives us focus!” Spoke a floating cat nearby, wearing a red lantern’s suit over itself. Zatanna thought it cute except for the angry look it gave her.

“Yeah, yeah, Vader, tell it to the Sith.” Shaking his head and giving the cat the finger, Dex-tar hissed back at his leader and flew off to join the others. “He’s a bad kitty… Anyway, the problem is this thing runs on your bad vibes and nothin else, even going so far as to turn your blood into molten plasma, hence all the red burnin vomit all over the place. the moment you start havin happy thoughts again, your blood goes cold, and you croak.”

It kind of made sense now that she was looking back at the closest lanterns who seemed to keep up an angry facade. They HAD to keep angry, be intentionally hateful and wrathful to keep alive, there was nothing else for them.

“Then how are all of these lanterns still sane? To be forced to always make yourself furious… It must be exhausting.”

Pointing over to the massive pool of blood coming from the core, Guy continued to explain things.

“When you first turn, you go berserk and try to kill anything that moves, dipping into the pool helps deal with that blood lust you got going until you finally get your fill. When it happens, jump in, we’ll catch you.”

Shown the pulpit of the red lantern battery, the ruby tinted core had several red lantern rings orbiting around it, waiting for new people to latch onto. Looking down at her burning fingers and clenching her hands into fists, Zatanna had gone this far, there was no going back. Stepping forward and reaching out for one of the rings, it surprised her that it zipped away like a fly avoiding being swatted. Trying again, the rings avoided her every time.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“You gotta think angry thoughts Zee, try thinking of the time you stubbed yer toe or when you got stood up, that’ll get’em.” Called out Guy behind her, the rest of the Red Lanterns keeping watch and getting ready for anything.

Nodding, she closed her eyes and brought her hand out, her fingers smoking as the five rings she wore continued to burn, thinking back, she began to remember how much she hated what happened to her, how she was tricked and turned and used as a weapon, how she was responsible for so many lost lives. When she felt a ring join the many over her hand, her eyes shot wide open and became blood red.

“With blood and rage, crimson red. Ripped from a corpse so freshly dead. Together with our hellish hate, we’ll burn you all… THIS IS YOUR FATE!”

The explosion of red light followed by Zatanna’s scream sent everyone back in every direction as a column of red light fired off into the sky. Getting up to his feet to look back at Zatanna, Guy’s blood went cold at the sight of her. Wild eyed and crying tears of blood and drooling red hot plasma from her sneering lips, Zatanna had gone completely feral with rage. The moment their eyes locked, Zatanna lunged for him, her burning hands out like claws barely held back by the wall of red light he erected to stop her. With a blood dripping roar, the vampire woman slammed her fists against the wall, shattering its surface like glass. Two more strikes and the wall completely shattered just as Zatanna was overtaken by Bleez and Zilius who tackled her and traded blows with the woman to get her off their leader.

“I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU ALL! ALL OF YOU! Zatanna roared, rage and hatred completely consuming her very being when she backhanded the blue-skinned woman with enough force to send her tumbling like straw and throwing Zilios off her to rake her smoking claws across his cheek. The rest of the Red Lanterns piled in to stop their newest member to their corps. “MURDERS ALL OF YOU! YOU ALL DESERVE TO DIE!!!”

“GET HER IN THE POOL!” Guy called out, finally getting up and joining the fight to contain Zatanna. A fight that only grew worse when the woman started breathing out a column of fiery death from her mouth and sending everyone nearby back. Multi-coloured apparitions began to appear out of nowhere, some of them human people Guy didn’t recognise, others were aliens belonging to a fledgling empire he planned to attack for a string of planetary raids they had done across the sector. When Dex-tar tried to attack her from behind, everyone was surprised to find her teleport like a violet lantern out of the way and attack from below. Her screams and roars exuding raw terror every time. And she was getting stronger, he did not know or understand how or why but however bad she was getting, it was getting worse.

All of it, all this madness was coming from his friend, now turned into a living bomb of raw destruction as she rained hell on the red lanterns. An army of hard-light constructs fighting his corps, pure terror filling the air, his own powers being used against him, it was like fighting six different corps at once… And to make matters worse, she was changing. Spewing out more raw energy from her mouth, Guy though he saw her began to change, her face curling up into the fanged open maw of a bat while wings burst from her back, becoming less human by the second and becoming something else. A scorpion like tail burst out from behind her and snapped at anyone or anything bold enough to come close to her.

“GET HER IN THE DAMN POOL! NOW!!!”

Flying right for her, Guy took a swing at the bat-like creature while she was distracted trying to blast his lanterns out of the sky, knocking her out and sending her falling into the pool of blood near the battery with a splash and fizzle of scolding hot ichor. Breathing hard and being surrounded by his lanterns, they watched as the blood below them began to churn and swirl. A whirlpool formed, one that grew and grew as if there was a great void sucking in gallons of blood at a time. This went on for seconds, then it stopped. Edging away from the spot where Zatanna had fallen into, the red lanterns managed to escape the eruption of boiling blood when a massive creature flew out and landed with a crash at the pulpit of the red battery. Standing up on six winged pinions and curling her stinger tail around herself, the strange aberration lifted its head, panting and drooling blood as hot steam billowed off its fur and flesh. Raising its head to blink its sensitive eye and sniff at the air, the creature looked up at all the red lanterns in confusion until it reached out with its wing like it was a hand, only to stop once its many eyes blinked at the sight of it.

“Gnooooh…”

She had lost herself to the thirst. She had gone Strigoi. Her rings, all six of them now sat at the thumb of each of her six wings and burned like hot coals. It was all too much for her undead frame to contain that it broke her mind. Seeing Guy land close to her with an uneasy gaze, his ring up like a weapon just in case she might attack, he was small in comparison to her size, like a mouse looking up at a cat.

“Gnooooaaaagh!” Falling to her stomach, Zatanna brought her forward wings over her face, sobbing in her own failure. It was too much, all too much to try and contain or control, now she was broken, both in mind and flesh. Coiling her tail under herself like a cobra sitting on its coils, the creature Zatanna had become unfurled her wings and took to the sky with such force and intensity, the red lanterns surrounding her had to protect themselves with force fields.

Watching up in shock and confusion at the rainbow-coloured streak of light left their world. Looking to each other for answers and to their leader, the only one who had any sense to speak did so in total disbelief.

“What the fuck just happened?!”