“Coffee?” asked the young woman with an FBI badge dangling from a lanyard around her neck. Growling conflict roiled in his gut; he once would have leapt at the offer, during a time when he didn’t despise himself for his nutritional needs. Now with his flesh in sharp rebellion against him, the thought of anything entering his gullet other than fresh blood was frustratingly nauseating.
“No, thank you,” he replied with a grateful nod, then returned his gaze to the array before him. The room’s main wall was littered with photos, postcards, printouts, etcetera; a dizzying array of suspects and targets. He could hear Julia, huddled in a blanket on the couch on the opposite wall, as she sipped something hot, likely cocoa of some variety; she wasn’t noisy, he just had supernaturally sensitive hearing. Department of Homeland Security agent Davis Macovey’s breathing was slow and rhythmic as he, too, puzzled over something, although Chris could hear the man’s heart was racing; perhaps too much caffeine, or as likely, too much stress.
Dr Kendra Heart, an adorably ironic name for a self-proclaimed necrologist, studied her lab results of Julia’s blood and his vitae. The Federal Bureau agent, Mindy Graves — another ironic name — simply sipped at her own mug of joe while following his gaze. Mark Harrison, a grad student of computer science recruited to this task force from the Central Intelligence Agency’s cyber internship, rapidly hammered away at his keyboard; Chris noticed his heart rate was slower than Davis’, but his breaths were relatively shallow: he was excited.
“So what are we really doing next?” Agent Macovey asked, breaking the semblance of quiet. “Who do we go after?”
Chris stared at the various photos a moment longer. “We go after whoever they send,” he replied at length. Five names and photos were clustered together, crossed out with red lines. Strings and marker-drawn lines connected them in various patterns in a sprawling web to the myriad of other data points. Although dead and eliminated from the active equation, they were nonetheless the quintet that unintentionally started this all.
“So, what, we wait for them to make a move? What makes you think they aren’t waiting for us to do the same thing?” the DHS agent asked skeptically.
“Imagine if the president was a corrupt prick, and staffed his secret service exclusively with his kids, grand kids, and their extended families. Then, have some ‘ungrateful’ mail-order bride rebel against being human-trafficked and fight their way out, taking out several grandkids and cousins in the process. Do you think he’d wait for her to make a move?” Chris explained without breaking his gaze from the mural. Silence descended on the room; even Mark, the master of multitasking, stopped typing in order to process the very dark analogy. Mindy, a former anti-trafficking investigator, shuddered. Julia let silent tears roll down her cheek as she pictured her savior and last remaining friend being put through such a scenario. Davis just simply nodded, and Kendra made no outward reaction other than to sit absolutely still.
Chris, having already plotted and survived his way out simply let his thoughts run ahead with various next steps. He knew that each member of the coterie he had exacted revenge upon had contacts, sires, or childer — offspring of the bite, as he was — that would personally love to hunt him down, and he had an general idea of what resources these malcontents might leverage. There was also the elders, who at best considered his utter departure from their way of existence a significant stain on Prince Malcolm Brown’s otherwise stellar judgement and fitness to rule; at worst considered him an abomination that must be rooted out and put down like a rabid dog. He replayed a litany of dangers, tricks, and resources known of each deceased member in his head; information meticulously copied and recorded by this task force, and displayed on the wall.
At length, Mark brought them back to the original question: “So, what do we do?”599Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4yg477T23X
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It was supposed to have been Chris who was utterly destroyed: his reputation, career, finances, homelife — even his soul. After Lydia determined he was the subject of her premonitions, Malcolm dispatched one of his hunter-enforcer teams. One of a half dozen similarly purposed coteries spaced around the city, these were the visible arm of the prince to enact his will upon the domain. An act to safeguard not just the masquerade but the very unlives of kindred the world over, it was also intended as a demonstration of Malcolm’s complete control of his domain. The coterie leader, Graedon Montreal, suggested making the mortal himself a spectacle. Be it from excessive ego or cruel irony, the regent approved. What ensued was a visceral display of the beast within all kindred.
At first, it seemed a meer home-invasion; the coterie forced their way in, overpowered Christopher, and cowed his wife and children into a corner. Brandon Methadine, the bruiser of the group, personally subdued and locked him in a full-body hold, and held him in place to watch. The other four took turns tormenting, mutilating, and bleeding dry Mary, then Synthia, and lastly Arianna. They bit the girls, their fangs supernaturally triggering ecstasy in their victims that blended disorientingly with the terror of the moment, then gashed and sliced into them, even tearing away noodle-like strips of flesh to be played with, and shoved in his face. While he screamed in agonized rage, they used dismembered limbs as macabre paint brushes to smear walls and broken furniture red with blood, and hung entrails as vile garlands.
Throughout that merciless night, they mocked him, his impotence in light of their seeming omnipotence, and beat him down physically. Once he had witnessed the life vanish from the eyes of his family one by one, and they had reduced him to a barely-conscious whimpering pulp, they finally drank the last of his blood also. Brandon then fed the resultant corpse vampiric blood from his own veins before the body ran cold, making their victim the newest childe of the night.
The following evening Chris awoke, a shell of his former self. Upon seeing the blood sprayed about, he immediately felt an overwhelming need to lap it up, to tear into flesh and drink fresh from the source. Images stabbed into his mind, of Mary and his children one by one begging for their attackers to stop, for him to help, for any explanation or reason for this carnage. He clawed at his head to make the nightmare end; he mauled his gut and torso to silence the bestial hunger trying to gnaw its way out. Then the coterie reappeared; their smug, gloating faces sickened him nearly as much as the turmoil within, but gave him a focus point. He tried again, in irrational rage, to combat the home-invaders; his success, much the same as before. Once he was pinned down, he was fed more of Brandon’s vampiric blood, or vitae; the Hunger quieted, and his mind seemed to clear. Over the next few days, the coterie explained to him the world he had, quite literally, been dragged kicking and screaming into.
There were clans, sets of vampires which shared common traits. There was the feudal organization of the Ivory Tower, as this faction of kindred society called itself. There were the dissident rebels, often collectively called Anarchs. An entire world of darkness and shadow, an like an infant he was woefully unprepared to cope, but the coterie seemed more than eager to teach their new pet everything.
Graeden, the leader of the group, was from clan Ventru. Vampires from that bloodline were most noted for its aristocratic aires; power through absolute control. He served as the liaison between them and the prince, also a Ventru, whom Christopher was taught to both respect and fear.
Sandra Kaine was from clan Tremere. Best known for still possessing mystical arts centuries after magic seemed to have disappeared, the mantra seemed: power through arcane mastery. Referred to as the coterie’s seer or witch, she was in practical terms was the collector and organizer of personal information of whomever they were tasked with hunting; more specifically, with devising the most effective financial, social, or personal pressure points to hit in order to draw out, trap, and kill their assigned prey. She possessed a small collection of spells, as well as the ability to see the aura of a person as clearly as a candle in the dark, either skill enabling her to learn the unlearnable about whomever she wished, within certain limits.
Elizabeth “Liz” Fourzul was from clan Toreador. This bloodline was known for its intense, obsessive adoration for artistic and aesthetic perfection; power through perfect beauty. Charming and alluring, she often played the role of helpless maiden or seductress in order to slip past the defenses of a target. Normally the most demure of them all, this was but a ruse to disarm victims of their guard; she was in fact equal parts seductive, quick, and deadly with her fluid movements.
Then there was Baelo, or so he called himself; clan Nosferatu, masters extraordinaire of sneak and disguise: power through utter undetectability. It was difficult to say whether their trademarked ugliness was the cause of, or was caused by their skill sets. To say this particular one was a stereotypical pale, pockmarked nerd was an insult to pale pockmarked nerds. When not hiding within the folds of sweats and hoodies, and even when he was, he looked the part of his role: the team’s tunnel-rat, a skilled hacker whether hid-away in a basement, crawling through a sewer to a key junction box, or on a laptop in the back of a cargo van.
Lastly was Brandon Methadine from clan Brujah, the one who ultimately sired Chris into their world. An oddity amongst the Ivory Tower, his bloodline was best known for its brute strength, whether for the purpose of breaking down corrupt systems or just simply breaking. Theirs was power through sheer strength. His role was simply the muscle, the fist. Others were the brain, or some type of surgical weapon, while he, in nature with his kin, was a blunt instrument of living iron.
For reasons he couldn’t initially quite place, Chris considered his vampiric sire to be the most reliable source amongst the coterie for information about kindred society. It wasn’t until months later that he learned of something called a blood-bond. In his infantile state as a fledgling kindred, he had accepted blood from any source to quiet the Beast within, without question; now he realized how stupid he’d been. By drinking nightly from a single vampire, that being — that blood source — gained power over him. He also discovered that his newfound rage, so sensitive and irrational at times, was a telltale marker of his clan.
He hated himself for falling into their mold so easily; he hated the coterie even more for shoving him into it. They had taken his family, his home, his life, and even his mind from him. He vowed to reign in his feral instincts; to take back what was left of his soul; to destroy those who had tried to destroy him; to keep his lust for revenge completely hidden until it was already complete.
He also learned during his introductory lessons that although it was possible to learn new kindred abilities by tasting the blood of one who possessed the ability he wished to learn, the easiest way to obtain such talents, as well as possibly increase the overall potency of the power within his own blood, was to drain another vampire completely dry: an act called diablerie. Such a practice, however, was highly taboo — and left telltale marks in a practitioner’s aura that could last a year or more before fading. In addition to those unsightly scars on one’s soul, the Ivory Tower did not look favorably on the resultant shift in power amongst its rigid rank and file. In fact, only a Blood Hunt — a sort of “execution by mob” — was tolerated as a reason to commit such cannibalism.
Even before he discovered the full extent of all afflictions heaped upon him, he ordered the coterie by threat from greatest to least; a necessary exercise, simply to survive the oft-literal backbiting of kindred society. Because of this, he determined that Sandra would need to be eliminated first. If he enacted portions of his plan beforehand, her ability to see the preternatural would either expose him before he was ready, or give her blackmail leverage over him, in addition to what she already had. As a bonus, stealing these abilities for himself would be invaluable as he navigated the dangerous web of immortal politics.
As far as anyone in Prince Malcolm’s court was concerned, she became trapped in a derelict building as it burned, with only Liz and Chris making it out alive. In reality, he had actually taken advantage of the two years worth of trust-building with the the coterie during his. The three of them approached the building separately to trap within the dissident kindred and destroy them. Instead, he stalked and surprised her inside with a wooden stake to the heart, a tactic he had learned and practiced many times on kindred they had been ordered to capture rather than kill. He then fed until every last drop of her vitae was gone. Once that was done, he set the blaze himself by overloading a circuit. Of the dozen squatters holed up in the building, none perished or were the anarchs destined for elimination; in fact, the targets had never been present. Although the wayward vampires were real, the “evidence” of their habitation had been a carefully laid ploy by him in order to facilitate this opportunity.
Less than a month later, the hunt for the anarch cell brought the coterie to a marijuana grow-house, used as a lair. Liz had gotten her claws into the loins of a fugitive, which she used to guide the plan for the assault. Although they succeeded in staking or killing most of their targets, Brandon died during the melee inside, allegedly felled by a machete-wielding pothead mortal caught in the crossfire. In reality, Chris had come upon him, and the anarch his sire had been wrestling, and decapitated both for good measure. Afterward, he implied to Graeden that Liz and her pillow-talk information gathering tactics may have inadvertently, but unforgivably, compromised the operation by tipping off the anarchs, allowing them and residents time to prepare. The mere suggestion was sufficient evidence to have her tried in Elysium, which condemned her to the final death.
She was sentenced to be subject to the blood-hunt: if she could survive the fangs of her fellow kindred as she fled the Denver domain, she would be free to roam in exile wherever she could find safety. This time without the stigma of unauthorized diablerie, Chris brazenly made it a point to be the one to take her down. With stains to his aura from both acts blended as one, he finally had plausible deniability for anyone who saw and questioned it.
Over the next year, the coterie was bolstered by a pair of new members, Lacen and Bonn. Respectively, they were a tremere blood-sorcerer and toreador who posed as a modeling photographer; neither, however, were of concern to Chris beyond their potential rivalry as kindred. Meanwhile, they were tasked by the prince to place wiretaps in a newly hotel in anticipation of several powerful elders arriving on diplomatic visits. Baelo entered the service tunnels to plant the devices, only to find himself caught in the literal trap set by the Second Inquisition: multiple spring-loaded spikes lined a wall that closed against the opposite side and impaled him inside the crawl space, one through the heart. Mortal law enforcement had been able to set up the death box courtesy of an “anonymous tip.” He had of course, used the skills taught him by his coterie to evade digital tracking and detection to obtain a throw-away phone with which to call hotlines and eventually begin an information exchange with federal agencies.
The final loss to the coterie came two months later when the Graeden, original leader, was overpowered, staked through the heart, and left in the sun to burn. He had stayed behind in a safe house to coordinate a complicated strike against a powerful target. A ranking member of Prince Malcolm’s court had earned his ire; to make an example, he ordered that they be killed in their own haven to be made an example of. The rest of the coterie besides Chris were all new members at this point, and succeeded in their assigned task despite the confusion when their dispatch fell silent. It was this chaos he used as cover under which to disappear.
Over the next year, various havens around Denver began falling to raids by police, FBI, and even Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The heightened danger was infuriating to the domain elders by itself, but the suddenness, precision, and frequency turned that anger to fear. Then came word from other domains that arrests and disappearances of kindred were on the rise there as well.
However, what most drove Prince Malcolm into a rage over these losses was when his sheriff plotted on a map and timeline all the strikes, and highlighted ones with a unique commonality: a card, scrap of paper, or other marking with the words inscribed, “Blake of night. Black oblivion.” The pattern created showed the sporadic path of an informant traveling with the Inquisition hunters and providing them with information, as well as personally attending to some of the raids they helped create. Gaspard’s contacts had also intercepted chatter between American law enforcement agencies speaking of a new asset, codenamed Priest, that had provided invaluable information and assistance in locating and eliminating dangerous kindred, which these agencies labeled as “blank bodies” or “blanks.” The slang was due to the way they generally showed up on infrared cameras, or rather, didn’t.
Chris of course was not present in those circles as storm of fallout gathered, but he was granted access to the interagency reports as a part of the agreement for his continued cooperation, so he was not fully unaware. However, when he was allowed to interview a particularly uncooperative kindred in an ICE holding cell, the sight of him made something within snap and the launched a into tirade. The interaction filled him with a sense of smug vindication and power over the captive, but not so much he couldn’t ring useful information from them.
He then insisted to the agents in charge that they take this opportunity: as long as vampires thought the Inquisition was merely getting lucky or even good, they would go into hiding just as they had done in centuries prior. The threat would become dormant until once again raising its head when no living mortals remembered the threat. But once they knew one of their own had turned traitor, and was supplying hunters with intimate understanding of their society and how to hunt them, with no motive other than the eradication of their own kind, they would be forced to act in order to remove that threat. Chris vehemently encouraged the ICE agents with him to release the individual in a lightly populated area, preferably industrial, with only an hour or two before sunrise. The rage of witnessing betrayal-incarnate and the panic of survival would surely cement in their mind the need to report back to their elders; they may even convince themselves they would be rewarded for delivering such news. Whether or not such illusions of gratitude proved fatal to the messenger, he didn’t care: he wanted the message itself spread — he wanted a fire lit under all kindred everywhere. Hiding might provide them an advantage over hapless mortals, but would leave them vulnerable to a self-made boogie-man who knew how to find and kill them.599Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzsUn358KYn
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“Chris?” the familiar voice asked; like the click of a light switch, the scene of his mind changed from the film reel of memories to the room around him. Looking down just a few degrees, he saw Julia looking up at him with deeply concerned eyes. “Are you back?” she whispered. With one hand she still clutched the blanket around her shoulders, clearly needing to be in bed but unable to sleep; with the other, she gently reached up and stroked his cold cheek. With a soft smile, he willed his heart to beat in a semblance of life, and the blood to flow into his skin. She smiled back as she felt his physical warmth return in parallel to the melting of ice in his eyes.
“C’mon, ‘subject matter expert;’ SME,” goaded agent Macovey. What do we do next?”
Christopher’s eyes continue to heat until they smoldered as embers as he held his dear Julia close in a protective double-arm embrace.
“We set a trap.”
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