The Scion Cycle XLIX: The Hollow Man (Part 2)

---

Seattle, WA
Scion's Haven
Sunday, August 5th, 2006

---

Scion sat silently on the rotting couch in the main room of his haven and contemplated the hole in the air where the balcony had once held lilacs and night-blooming jasmine. Now the balcony was gone, crumbled and fallen into the abyss of shadows that made up the broken city of emeralds. If he tried, for a moment, he could almost smell them. He'd had sense memories like that before, he recalled. There was a time where he could tell if Holly had been in a room hours before by her lingering perfume. It wasn't attributable to his vampiric senses either, the ability to know where she had passed by, as the smell had come unbidden at times, and unwanted at others, but had remained unmistakable. It was his desire for her, to protect her that had attuned him to her. She had gotten under his skin, had penetrated the marble flesh of his body like a hot brand, to spite himself. In a way, she was still there, and like a blind man who could only learn by touch, he had been made to relearn his senses with her, to re-teach those dead cells that she'd awoken in him, confused and full of life unremembered.

Scion closed his eyes to the rot of the world and tried to remember, but another scent interrupted his weak attempt at reverie.

Cordelia.

She sat down next to him on the rusty springs of the broken couch in the ruined room. Scion glimpsed her grey shoulder, mottled with worm-ridden flesh and quickly turned away at the broken-glass maw of the television. The empty box began to shed it's skin slowly like a house in a tornado captured in slow motion, grey wet slats of it's aluminum siding peeling apart from it's edges and floating apart like whisps of smoke. Scion watched the disintegration in a near fugue, doing everything he could not to look at her.

The two sat for a long time in silence before Scion broke it.

"How is Max?" he asked.

"She's doing ok. She says she can still feel him. I mean, she says the bond hasn't broken yet."

"We'll figure out a way to get him back." Scion said, but it sounded hollow. He knew it was a lie, and Cordelia did too. Another silence followed. Dust and cracked paint fell from the shuddering, warped rafters of the grey, ruined apartment.

"Scion," Cordelia asked finally, sliding her moldering hand over his, "Why? Why did you and Gunn go in there?"

Scion shrugged. "There was no reason." he said, almost tiredly. "No reason different than any other thing I've done, that we've done." he said simply.

Cordie knew what he meant. She knew what he had been willing to give up to be able to continue to fight; invulnerability, mortality, the love of his life. He'd been through hell, war, fire and more. He'd given everything he had, and humbly so, for a chance at redemption. Now he'd abandoned another few friends and allies to death.

"What happened to you?"

Scion closed his eyes and drew in a breath through his nose. He thought he could almost smell Cordelia over the rot of the world. Almost.

"Do you really want to know what happened to me?" he asked his voice hoarse. "Where I've been? What I've been through?"

The way the question was asked gave Cordelia pause. She suddenly wasn't completely certain that she wanted to know what Scion had seen, there on the other side of death. But the need to know what had happened to he and Gunn, to the Seneschal and even to the enigmatic Gregor Cronweath prodded her on. She needed answers only slightly more than she feared to ask for them, so she spoke.

"Yes. What happened that night?"

Scion closed his eyes in remembrance.

He had stepped into a private room to think about the games that Goldwin had been playing with his court. They were petty intrigues, the night to night politics of a Camarilla domain, important in their own way, but hardly uncommon.

"It all started with a phone call," he began.

---

Saturday July 29th, 2006
The Federal Building Elysium
Downtown Seattle

---

The broad-shouldered Gangrel slid his hand over the long edge of his jacket and reached into his pocket for the sleek black cell-phone that buzzed there. It slid into his palm and flipped open automatically, a motion practiced again and again. The phone was brought to rest against the Kindred's strong jaw.

"Scion."

The voice on the other end of the device was regal, measured, and almost jovial.

"Ah, Scion, good, this is Albrecht."

"Go ahead Seneschal."

Scion was quintessentially Gangrel. He talked plainly, he got to the point. As an Elder, he worked hard to be ready for any contingency.

"I need warriors for God."

The black-coated Gangrel paused, took the phone away from his head and stared at it as if it had suddenly broken. He checked the caller ID. It showed 'AL'. A muffled query drifted from the speaker, as if the caller had began to wonder if the connection had been lost.

Scion put a knuckle to his lips in thought and brought the phone back to his ear.

"You know," he said, "For the record, I hate it when you talk like that. What exactly does that even mean?"

Scion had to keep himself from staring at the phone while he spoke as if it were going to somehow display a funny hat or sprout wings and fly away.

"I have a situation at the Gaslight Lounge," The vampire was instantly still, alert as the Seneschal continued, "The haunt that dwells beneath the Smith Tower in downtown Seattle."

Scion began to pace like an impatient wolf, his jaw tightening to whipcord strength.

"You mean that place that's chock full of elder ghosts that I told you not to mess with?" Scion's tone was deadpan. it wasn't the tone you'd expect from an elder speaking to his superior. The two had an understanding, or so Scion had thought.

His mind raced with concerns about the elder Ventrue's behavior of late, seeming capricious and almost careless with his unlife. Scion feared that the Seneschal had lost purpose in the Long Nights, and replaced lost purpose with a lost cause.

"Yes." As always, Albrecht Massovia took Scion's acerbic tone in stride.

"And just exactly how do you expect me to deal with this situation?"

Scion was no ghost hunter. What little he knew of the disembodied dead had come from small hauntings he'd heard of, Phantom Dennis at Cordelia's old apartment in LA and the young girl that had haunted him for months, hungry for revenge. If he couldn't even deal with a fourteen year-old girl ghost, how did Albrecht expect him to handle the shades of the Emerald Domain's founding fathers, whose lore of Kindred was not only extensive, but knew also of the lands of the dead, and likely were capable of wielding powers in concert that would make Phantom Dennis look like Casper. Albrecht’s answer to this came soon enough, and only added to Scion's fears.

"I have procured a priest with the ability to cleanse this evil taint." said the Crusader.

"A what?!" Scion nearly shouted into the phone.

"A man of the cloth." replied the Seneschal.

Scion took the phone away from his ear again and glared at it, all the while concentrating on not crushing it.

"I know what a priest is Massovia," he said gritting his teeth like the stones of a mill.

Images of being hunted throughout Europe by the madman VonHolst flashed through his mind. He had employed priests and men of faith to kill vampires, as well as mercenaries and other fanatics. The man had reordered Scion's whole world, terrorized him and his offspring into the modern nights before he had finally killed himself solely to cause the betrayal of someone Scion held dear. Albrecht wasn't listless, he was insane.

"Are you aware that priests like the one you 'procured' with the ability to banish the supernatural tend to be associated with organizations like, oh, say, for example, the Inquisition, you know the one that hunts down and kills vampires like us?"

Scion half whispered the last. Speaking the name of that organization in a Kindred establishment was an invitation to scorn.

"Yes." Said Massovia, his tone never changing, it was still amused, detached. He was enjoying the wordplay. He was enjoying listening to Scion's wheels turn. The Gangrel did his best to make the Ventrue see the folly of his plan.

"And I suppose you also remember that the Gaslight Lounge holds the ghosts of the Kindred Founders of the Domain who most likely know pretty much the entirety of the Emerald Domain's history from the inception of the Domain to present?"

"Ye..."

"And that if the Inquisition should use their powers to question them successfully every Kindred in this Domain is as good as ashes, so even if we do cleanse the place we're opening ourselves up to an onslaught of hunters and a major breach?"

"Yes." Albrecht said, a frown in his voice. "Time is short. We go now. Are you coming?"

Scion paused a moment, considering. There would be no way to contain the Masquerade breach if the priest discovered their natures and ran to the church, and there was no telling this priest’s affiliations, knowledge, powers or anything else concrete. The more Kindred that came into contact with him, the more would be exposed, but the only way to determine the threat to the Domain was to investigate. The Domain had no Sheriff and no Scourge. It was the Seneschal on the phone. Scion wished for just a moment that all of those things mattered to him. The bottom line was, Albrecht needed his help and crazy or not, with the information alone that he’d just been given, Scion was already in up to his eyeballs in this.

"I'll get my sword." He said. The phone clicked closed, the door to the Elysium hall swung open, and the vampire was gone.

---

Suggested Listening: Darling Violetta - Sanctuary