Prelude
-------------------------------------------------------
She remembered how it had all begun. It seemed ages
ago though it was in reality only five years. That
night walking home from her practice, she had been
delayed. It was dark out, but she had called her
parents they knew she'd be late. This was the
suburbs, nothing bad ever happened here, and she had
walked home alone before.
Then Katrina ran into Jeffery Driscoll and his
cronies. They were juniors and didn't appreciate the
"foreign" freshman girl surpassing their musical
"abilities." Tonight she had taken Jeffery's spot of
first chair. She was almost sure to get beaten, maybe
worse. There were rumors about them, rumors involving
drugs.
Luckily, or rather unluckily, she knew now that the
danger those boys offered was nothing compared to
Renfield's evils Another boy their age, whom she now
as Renfield, arrived. He was dressed in black and
sported a Metallica t-shirt, but despite his violent
outward appearance actually seemed sensitive and
caring. A lie within a lie.
Renfield turned Jeffery's cronies on their heels and
set them running easily. None of them had ever seen
such a fighter, except maybe in the movies. Of course
Katrina thanked him for his help, but that wasn't
enough for him.
Renfield asked that she follow him, he said he had
something he wanted to show her. Naturally she
refused, saying that she needed to get home to her
family since they were expecting her. This caused
Renfield to fly into a rage, he had actually expected
her to go with him.
Katrina was frightened now, as any reasonable kid
would be of an angry punk. She tried to run from him,
but one command from his lips stopped her with what
felt like supernatural power. She knew that it was
such now, and she had felt that power many times since
she had met Renfield that first night.
Then she remembered being carried away to a car and
not being able to do anything about it. She
remembered her three years as a ghoul chained to a
wall and forcibly injected with heroin while she sat
paralyzed by her captor's gaze.
She remembered the endless assaults on her mind as
Renfield tried to impose the memories he had concocted
over what he thought to be her surprisingly strong
will.
She remembered being drained dry of blood, and then
being wrenched back at the last instant from the
escape death could bring.
She remembered the abortive escape attempts, blood
bond bringing her back to Renfield before she could
get far away.
She remembered the sessions with Renfield and his
ghoul torturer and assassin Mina. Staked and
helpless. she could do nothing but feel her body being
ripped and torn to pieces, then feel the flesh repair
itself. Even growing new limbs, always returning to
the same form she had when she was made a vampire.
She remembered the first time she had referred to
herself in her own thoughts, not as Katrina, but as
Carmilla.
Most of all she remembered two weeks ago, her first
taste of human blood.
She remembered how they had starved her of blood
until she was snatching at insects for the puny juices
they carried.
She remembered how they had thrown the killer in with
her, naked and bleeding from small cuts all over his
body.
She remembered the terror on his face as she leaped
on him without a thought and fangs bared.
She remembered the feeling of unforgiveable ecstacy
as she took his life forces for her own, and she
remembered the guilt and revulsion that followed when
the Beast gave her back control.
Then her day-sleep images slipped out of memory into
possibility and became truly horrifing.
Micheal hung-up the phone slowly, as the sound of the
television created a white noise in the background.
He was trapped, there was no way out of this.
"Ah Mr. Rohan, I was hoping to catch you before you
left," a voice Micheal recognized immeadiatly, and
suscpected the name of its owner, began. "There has
been a change of plans."
'He has my home number,' Micheal thought. 'He knows
who I am.'
"What's the problem?" he asked, calmly.
"We think the police know of this meeting," the voice
calmly explained. "We are going to have a change of
venue. Do you know the old factory on the edge of
town?"
"Yes," he replied. Of course he knew the factory,
some of the records he'd uncovered indicated that the
drug-lord Varney had encouraged its collapse thirty
years ago. Which made him at least sixty, but he
appeared less than forty by all the pictures. So
either he was older than he looked, or there was more
than one Varney over the last few years. An internet
quiry, made as a lark, into the name Varney came up
with a novel from the 1800s called Varney the Vampire.
That was when Micheal had begun to lean toward older
than he looks.
"I suggest we meet there," the voice said.
"And assuming I can't make it?" he asked, knowing
that the hook was coming.
"Then I have an alternative plan for the day
involving a striking young woman of our mutual
acquaintance." Micheal felt his stomach tighten, it
was the obvious answer, but it twisted him in spite of
the expectation.
"Then I have no choice." He did, however, have some
options.
"Good, I'll expect you there shortly, say an hour."
The phone clicked as the one he assumed was Varney,
set the receiver down on his end.
Micheal thought back to the previous month, following
his younger brother to determine where he went at
night. The answer had been terrifying, and Micheal
had stepped up his lectures on responsibility. He had
never confronted Bregan with his knowledge, not
certain of the response.
Micheal picked up the phone again and dialed the
station. Dispatch picked up and in response to his
name, transferred him to Lieutenant Jacobs.
"Your back-up has already been dispatched Detective,"
Jacobs barked. "I suggest you meet with your
suscpects as arranged." He then hung-up before
Micheal could say anything. Micheal tried again to
call the station, but no other lines seemed to be
operating, as absurd as that sounded. A bit more
effective than merely cutting his home lines, but how
could it have been done without arousing some
suscpision?
There was no time to ponder that, and his personal
car hadn't been fitted with a radio. The
circumstances left him with just one option. He
checked his watch, Bregan would be home in an hour,
maybe longer. Too long. He jotted down a quick note
to his brother and ran out the door.
"What's with the death trap bit," he asked himself,
while running to his car. "Why don't they just kill
me and leave it at that?" The television played on,
unnoticed.
Bregan returned home from a night of making the
rounds of the San Francisco bars and nightclubs with
others of his pack. As usual, each of the five Garou
had drunk enough to put ten men under the table, but
they were Garou. What's more, they were of the Fianna
tribe. Fianna didn't get drunk, they just liked to
make people think they did.
He had only recently discovered his Garou heritage,
somehow he had managed to keep the fact hidden from
his older brother. His time away for the rite of
passage had been explained away as a summer vacation.
Of course he had met some new friends on that trip, so
that explained his pack. His brother had some choice
words with him about cutting out in the middle of a
new job, but what was he going to say?
"Hey, Mike, guess what I found out this summer?"
Bregan laughed a little to himself as he waved goodbye
to his packmates and climbed the steps to the
apartment he shared with his brother. Mike should be
home just about now, of course Bregan would catch hell
for waiting until dawn to come home, but that was
nothing he couldn't take.
He'd gone out and had his fun with spirits, both of
the esoteric and the beverage, now was the time to
come back to the real world of a narc's younger
brother just out of college. He could just hear Mike
now: "If you want to be cop, Bregan, you're going to
have to take more responsibility for your actions.
You can't just party the rest of your life, you have
to stand for something..."
He opened the door and walked into the apartment
non-chalantly. The news was on, detailing some story
involving a semi that veered off the road and took
down some phone lines. Citizens were being informed
that a police station was among those cut off, but
that the main dispatch line was fortuitously on
another line, and normal operations could continue.
"Hey, Mike! I'm home, the party just crashed here!"
There was no response, maybe he beat him Mike home
after all. "Mike?" Bregan walked into the kitchen to
get some soda, convinced that he had just barely beat
his older brother home. His eyes caught the note
instantly.
There, stuck to the refridgerator by a magnet, folded
in half and written in big bold letters on the outer
flap.
"I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE."
"Ah, shit," he groaned, then grabbed the note and
started to read it.
"I'm going to a deal today, the suspects called to
change the place. If I don't come back alive today,
avenge me. Remember the name Varney, there's more to
this than just a drug-lord."
"Mike, you've gone overboard with the John Wayne shit
this time."
It was pure coincidence that Jaera saw him as she was
taking her morning jog. Not a bad workout today,
despite the fact that some whacked out thug had tried
to mug her. That was annoying, but he wouldn't bother
anyone now. For some reason his body's resistance to
disease and toxins just dropped as he tried to attack
her. Naturally the drugs in the mugger's system
killed him nearly instantly.
However he was not the individual whose presence had
her so interested now. When she reached home, a small
sanctum for Akashic Brotherhood mages, she immeadiatly
rushed to her desk and retrieved a photograph from a
drawer. She looked at it long and hard, activating
some minor mind magick to picture than man she had
seen early.
Yes, there was no doubt about it. Nathan Coleridge,
the ghoul of the Sabbat Brujah who had killed her
older sister and mentor, was in town. That meant that
Jared Mason was here as well. She had found her
original quarry, as unlikely as that seemed. Now she
could put her knowledge of the Kindred to the test.
She heard her avatar's voice calling to her, urging
her to take the offensive, swoop upon her prey like
the hawk that she was in her soul. She never imagined
that she would find him again so soon, but it seemed
fitting somehow that he be her first vampiric kill.
"Jared Mason, you're about to be called to order for
your crimes in the past."
She laughed at the picture of two confederate
soldiers, one a teenager and the other a middle-aged
man.
Jaera wasn't thinking about how much power a Sabbat
must have to live for nearly one hundred years among
their sworn enemies, the Camirilla, she was too
overjoyed at having found him.
Three nights a week, Jenny Simon performed at the
Shadowspot nightclub. It wasn't the sleazy sort of
place most people would associate with a big city
nightclub. By the standards of most of the town it
wasn't even a true nightclub. After all, high
schoolers were allowed in, and the ownership as strict
about its rules.
"You want a strip joint, go to a strip joint,"
insisted Marcus Karkoff the owner. "You want to watch
some talented people perform their acts, or maybe meet
somebody, then your in the right place."
Jenny's act was a sing and dance number performed to
one of her own songs, though nobody ever noticed and
appreciated that. The men were too busy watching her
sleek, ebony twenty-four year old body move, and most
of the women were too busy watching their men.
It wasn't that she was truly great yet at either
singing or dancing, it was that she knew how to do
more than that. She knew how to express herself on
stage and through music, knew how to act according to
the audience's mood, and knew what to emphasize and
what not to emphasize.
She couldn't remember when he first arrived at the
club, he didn't seem out of the ordinary for the type
that came. High school kid wanting a taste of the
real nightclubs, invariably they drifted back to the
arcade to play what ever the latest game fad was.
This kid was different though, and he soon revealed
himself as a true pick-up artist. He came in alone
each time, and always left with some attractive young
girl. A different one everytime it seemed.
Jenny almost felt disgusted by the thought of another
use 'em and lose 'em character roaming the streets,
but he was a kid yet and he could still change. Jenny
never noticed that sometimes the girls never came
back, and she never had the chance to learn that the
girls that did come back had very little knowledge of
what had happened on those particular nights.
Mina waited for her target, she knew he was coming,
an unrefusable invitation had been delivered. Now all
that remained was to remove Lt. Rohan.
Mina watched from a rooftop as Micheal Rohan pulled
up at the factory, as he had been ordered, but nobody
was there yet. He waited, and he waited, finally
another car pulled up next to him. The driver stopped
and exited the car.
"Michael?" the driver asked. "What are you doing
here?" The speaker was Marie Alvarez, a very lovely
and talented computer programmer Micheal had fallen
for a couple of years back. They were planning to get
married early next spring, and there was already a
child on the way. His parents would have thrown him
out of the family for such a thing, they weren't the
most tolerent people in the world about either
pre-marital sex or inter-racial marriages.
Michael felt a stone begin to grow in his chest.
"Marie," he started calmly. "Who told you to come
here?"
"I was just on my way home from a job and saw your
car..." she looked to the briefcase sitting on Mike's
car hood. "Mike, what's going on?"
"I knew you were cheating on me, bitch!" The yell
came from behind them, there was Marie's ex-husband
Lawrence Jenson, grasping an automatic pistol in his
hand. "Who's the bastard? Some delivery guy?"
=====
"Caffeinated Kender? What's that, a berserk spell?" -
Tribble, Kender Warrior of the Celestial Kingdom
Signed
He of Too Many Names (Thrythlind/Thryth/Luke/Hyperbole/Pika/Pooka)
http://members.aol.com/thrythlind/snake.html
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