Post by The Mouth on Jul 19, 2014 16:38:59 GMT -8
1st November, 2013
Liverpool, England
When I first learned to bend the shadows to my will Selim told me that “You must contemplate the darkness in your self, use that as a portal to the Abyss, the place of Shadows, channel your will and fueled by your vitae you can make the shadows move with this inner connection.”
He then added “And that is complete malarky as they say. You use your vitae to summon and move shadows, that is all. And I will teach you this art because it amuses me that you should have this gift and not be able to use it openly.”
Selim. What a sense of humor.
But now… I’m in Liverpool because I cannot continue to be ignorant of my little ability. And I’m hoping that I can make a bargain that I can live with.
I’ve got an audience with Archbishop Ramirez, at her request. I’ve got a pretty damned good idea what about as well.
I arrive at the meet location, an older building in the better part of town. All around us are the signs of gentrification; clearly a feat given that the Camarilla response to all Sabbat cities is to turn them into pestilent hellholes by some very clever means. Detroit was hollowed out in forty years by building bypasses from the city to the suburbs - The Sabbat there are still scratching their heads as to why that infrastructure was so easy to build and reversing the trend has been so hard.
I suspect the gentrification is a step in a larger game; investors hate historical losers. It is harder to overcome bad press for a neighborhood than it is to rehabilitate a personal bankruptcy. Just ask Trump. Bankruptcy in business is a different thing; streamlining and massive reorganization, ultimately it can make a company healthier. Or it gets sold off in pieces to more profitable interests.
Neighborhoods don’t have that luxury; worthless or hard to value assets are entirely different from companies. I suspect this is a win/win for the Ventrue, and it has to be Ventrue, managing the situation. Gentrification succeeds then feeding get’s hard as people insist on better lighting, police patrols, investigations into disappearances, better jobs, fewer trade unions…
If it fails then it gets a poison pill label; the area becomes not just blighted but a failed project with companies trying to offload the toxic assets through layers of shell corps that make tracking ownership a nightmare. No clear ownership means tax revenues don’t get collected, liens on the property are placed and now the local governments are preventing any resolution as well through their internal bureaucracies.
And that folks is how you Jihad.
Odds are Ramirez knows the trap she is in but is rather unable to fight back. Sabbat are somewhat notorious for not coping with the Jihad on these scale. It pushed the cult out of Europe for the most part and hasn’t done them any favors in the America’s.
I’ve arrived. I asses the situation: She has people stationed across the street, in the house. At least three. One more on the door, he’s a tripwire. Then probably her pack and four more in the inside. No cameras, because cameras can be fooled easier than people, but no dogs which is stupid because they are harder to fool than people.
I always have dogs. The girls love my dogs, they don’t even get all submissive on Hannah; makes them feel like regular teenagers.
I get patted down, hand over my guns, my knives, my garrote. The security goon is a private contractor, and he is a little impressed at my arsenal.
I am lead into the kitchen in the back of the house. It has a porch out to a little plot of grass they called yards. I grew up in a house not too unlike this one, except the plot was a garden that made the difference between Mum and I starving or eating. Made the winters awful lean; worse when Teddy came around. He’d get drunk and fuck around the garden then hit Mum when she couldn’t get a meal on the table. Shortly after that phase of their relationship he moved on to pimping her out.
Then Casterly killed him and sent me to boarding school. Aw,happy memories, that.
Ramirez is wearing jeans and a t-shirt; no bra evident. Nudity and body taboos are something that often go by the wayside with Kindred or they adhere to their mortal structures compulsively. Little middle ground, the Elders know that clothes can be a weapon.
To Elders everything can be a weapon.
She has a couple of security guys out on the back stoop in full tactical gear. Her t-shirt, light blue, has a pink cartoon horse of some kind with ‘Pinky Pie’ laid out in glitter above it. Her hair is bound back in a pony tail and she seems smaller than she was, without all her robes and being relatively at ease with the world.
She’s still a pale looking woman who looks like she left a British colonial possession a generation ago.
“Sit down, Francis,” she asks.
And I’m heading to the front door as fast as I can when the lights in the hallway go out. No, the cloud of shadow made them go out. Icy cold surrounds me, and I know that if I still breathed I would be choking in the darkness. Instead I keep moving in the direction I was when the freezing grip of the first tentacle wrap around my ankle. More join and I feel the floor hit my chin as I’m yanked back.
Into the light.
The table is surrounded by darkness, swirling grades of black with tendrils drifting into the light like smoke then evaporating. The tentacles hold me in the air, then gently set me in my seat across from Ramirez.
“I don’t like being disobeyed, Francis. I said, sit down and I meant it.”
I’m wearing Devon’s face, and I didn’t do anything to give me away, so how would she know my name?
I sit.
“For the sake of my tradecraft, how?” I ask her, shivering in reaction to the touch of the Abyss.
“Francis, dear. I’ve been at this a long time in a hostile land. I had eyes on the Setite nest you took out, Vycheslav told me what you looked like, and I cross referenced you with the patron who let me take Liverpool twenty years ago.”
Twenty years? That was when we started the push to take over the industrial concerns in South England. Part of the shame of that is that it created a distraction that allowed more of Liverpool to held by the Sabbat. And we took that on at the Baron’s request…
Oh fuck shit fuck.
“You taught Selim…”
“I did.”
“Because you made a deal with Baron Casterly.”
“Yes. He got his play at Southern England, I got most of Liverpool. Then he sponsored a lovely little poison pill with economic development and political influence. And now, with you, he’s set me up for a war with Pascek and Yuria.”
“Grigori…”
“Yes. He knew who the people in Ireland were, knew their networks. He’s had Selim playing those fields for centuries; Yuria was in on it the whole way. She was going to inspire Ireland to revolt to challenge the Bowsley doctrine, Yuria has been itching to shake up the Camarilla. Pascek was enough of a fanatic to be swayed by her appeal to force change via outside pressure.”
“But the Baron helped sponsor the Bowsley plan…”
Ramirez smiles. “Of course he did. But what Elder appreciates a more central authority when it isn’t their own?”
“Oh. My god…” I’m reeling. Finding out that the last fifty years of your life was a long con is a little hard to swallow all at once.
“The Jihad continues on. He weakens Bowsley till the others get desperate and call him or an ally of his in. Or he repairs the situation and Bowsley is in his debt.”
I do a lot of math in a hurry.
“Yuria was to strike at you in a demonstration of her military capacity, but only after it looked like Bowsley was impotent to stop you… But why would he set me on Yuria? He would have set me on you directly if he wanted maximum disruption…”
Ramirez leans forward on her elbows and rests her chin in her hands. “Keep going, you’re going to work it out.”
Wait. The Baron was mad at Yuria, and mad enough to scotch the whole plan… No. He wouldn’t act out of anger. Elders don’t flail panicked in anger, but they do in fear.
“Yuria turned on him, followed the plan until she seized Ireland; then she killed MacGooley’s brood to send the message that their arrangement was broken because…”
Because his agents in Seattle hadn’t saved Chase Covington, and in fact worked to get him executed. By their thinking and the ancient codes Yuria followed that meant the Baron owed a blood debt so she murdered his descendants after the Baron refused to help Chase…
And he had to have refused. Because if he had jumped in then their relationship would have become exposed, and Casterly would have blown three kinds of gasket and jumped and down screaming that the Tradition Breaking Fuck Head was getting protection from within the Ventrue Clan.
Wow. Okay, so maybe the Baron was mad. But at Chase Covington.
“And you know all about this because you’re part of the conspiracy… Which you would only be if you were looking to defect.”
She gives a delighted smile and claps her hands. “Excellent work. Except that Yuria, when she followed through with her part of the plan, was supposed to kill my most hardline Ducti and Priests. Instead she murdered my fellow defectors.”
“Leaving you trapped to eventually be exposed, killed, and removed. By Vycheslav, who is unaware of any of this but is a real Sabbat hardliner under his facade.”
“And…”
“Then she moves in during the chaos and takes Liverpool. She knows the Cam games better and is an old hand at mortal institutions, so she can flip the entire thing on the Baron. And he can’t do shit because she is blackmailing him… Because she has letters, in his own hand.”
“Excellent. Now you know what I want.”
Oh shit. If she has the letters it gets better and worse for me.
“Right. You want me to betray my clan, my bloodline, and some sketchy political loyalties and deliver to you the materials you need to succeed? And then take the blame when it is all done?”
“You are starting to understand…”
I look around the kitchen again, assessing.
“Yeah, look, no. There is absolutely no upside for me in this. You’re expecting Pascek to wipe Limerick off the map, and you are using Grigori as a foil for me. Have you ever considered Grigori doesn’t work for you?”
“He certainly doesn’t work for you.”
“No, Grigori works for Grigori. I have a better idea, one that gets us both off the hook. You still defect, but you declare that you are an Anarch. I tell you how to stop Baron Casterly’s influence, and you take what’s left of your defectors and lay low. Selim and I will kill the rest; or at least their leadership will be weakened enough that you are good to go. You send feelers to Queen Anne indicating that you are will to swear vassalage to her if she guarantees your status as a free port under the Anarchs. You promise Pascek that all is good and that you are with him all the way, but… You have to pay lip service to Anne.”
“Now why would I…”
“Because it sets the stage. Grigori will pick up any spares like a drunk empties every glass at a table. He’ll sweep them up and then he’ll double cross me after Yuria is dead, I promise you.” I’m in a groove now, plotting out the move/counter move of the next several months.
“And he would do that…” Skeptical doesn’t begin to describe Ramirez.
“Because Pascek won’t risk you being lost as an ally, and Queen Anne can’t afford to scrape you out. You can play both sides against the middle. And Grigori knows it, Cold Warrior that he is. He’ll just set up shop somewhere else, like Limerick. He’ll make noises that his domain is Anarch and he will keep playing the same game he’s always played of free for all mercenary contracting. He’s smart enough to do it.”
“And I will get the correspondence?”
“No. You will get some of the correspondence. Enough to blackmail Pascek for being Yuruia’s dupe and enough for the Baron to pressure Queene Anne to support you. And then I keep enough to get the Baron off my back.”
“And you still will go after Yuria?”
“Yes. I have to, to get the documents, she’ll have those hidden somewhere, but keep them close so the Baron’s agents can’t steal them. They will be on her person, or under the watch of someone close to her. She has at least one subordinate who is absolutely loyal to her, no matter the cost. The Roman, Licinius Paulus.”
“Who?”
“He was the one who killed your men; his agent was that poof Von Graff. He lead the Setites and the others in to kill your men and leave you to eventually hang where you might get desperate enough to try and contact the Baron personally for aid.”
“He would have killed me first; he can’t risk openly supporting me.”
“Exactly. No matter what he would lose his pieces on the board; his advantage eroded, and his triumph a liability. But we can do the one they cannot cope with.”
“And what is that Francis?” I have her complete attention. It’s a bit unnerving, as she is more a predator than anything I’ve ever met.
“Accelerate. Just before Yuria’s solstice gathering in Limerick, we hit the leadership of your enemies. You get your allies together under an appropriate guise. Selim and I will hit Liverpool over three nights, spreading ash and destruction in the shadows, Seattle style.”
“And then?”
“You go dark. Send out your envoys in secret, make your pitches. Go loud and active once you get the word that Yuria is down.” I take a deep breath, the adrenaline that comes with a fubar planning session is washing through me, or at least whatever vampires have for adrenaline.
“And you can do this? Kill Yuria?”
I answer flatly, “Yes.”
“And your price for this aid?”
“The shadows. You will teach me of them as much as I want to know, no bullshit. The powers are good… But I need to understand what they are, where they come from. Selim he is…”
“Too much a pragmatist, it works because it works.” Ramirez regards me with cold eyes, assessing, weighing me. “You are a Ventrue, it is true. But you never reach for the power yourself. Along with my teachings I shall school you in the ways of the Inner Voice, and see how you fare over the next decade.”
Not sure what the Inner Voice is, but what the hey.
The shadows start to recede and fade from the walls, the normal world, the mundane world returning.
“This, uh, wasn’t what I was expecting,” I manage to get out.
“Ah, yes. The ductus I sent you. He never made it back.”
“Right. Were you wanting to know why?”
She flat out grins, no, bares her teeth. I find myself leaning back and away from her, hands on the table to flip it up between us if I need to be.
“He was a most loyal Sabbat ductus, the sect could not ask for a more capable Lasombra. As my childe I knew absolutely that he was dedicated to the cause.”
Oh. Cleared that up. She knew I’d kill him, or have him killed. And he was a loyalist. But her own childe…
“Do not judge me Francis. Win me the peace I crave.”
And it becomes clearer to me. She’s tired; Ramirez has struggled and fought her way to the top and is miserable, her ‘inner voice’ is urging her to settle into a more stable power arrangement and endless war isn’t that path. So she will go the path of middleman and intrigue with a more settled air.
“Uh, what about the, uh, more religious aspects of the sect?”
“Francis, long ago I was once part of a delegation that met Mithras. I knew then that fight we must, and we shall, but we will lose. He was ancient, and when he looked at you…” She shudders, in ecstacy or fear, or both. “He was a god made flesh.”
She looks pensively outside, at the men in their military gear. “We are as mortals to them; play things and food.”
We both ponder this idea for a minute. I’m still so young, and I recognize this. My capacity to sift lies from truth applies to myself as much as the rest of the world. It is a cruel gift at times; because I know she believes what she is saying. I know that I believe that I can stop them, except that I don’t.
I really don’t.
And that is why I fled Seattle, because if I went to Vancouver there was the smallest chance that I might have to confront that and I couldn’t… I couldn’t look that in the eye quite yet.
Not even sure I can now. Without another word I collect my weapons and leave.
Time to lose myself in the Great Game once more. I have two plays left, and then the end is nigh.
Lasombra
By Ben Vaughan
Liverpool, England
When I first learned to bend the shadows to my will Selim told me that “You must contemplate the darkness in your self, use that as a portal to the Abyss, the place of Shadows, channel your will and fueled by your vitae you can make the shadows move with this inner connection.”
He then added “And that is complete malarky as they say. You use your vitae to summon and move shadows, that is all. And I will teach you this art because it amuses me that you should have this gift and not be able to use it openly.”
Selim. What a sense of humor.
But now… I’m in Liverpool because I cannot continue to be ignorant of my little ability. And I’m hoping that I can make a bargain that I can live with.
I’ve got an audience with Archbishop Ramirez, at her request. I’ve got a pretty damned good idea what about as well.
I arrive at the meet location, an older building in the better part of town. All around us are the signs of gentrification; clearly a feat given that the Camarilla response to all Sabbat cities is to turn them into pestilent hellholes by some very clever means. Detroit was hollowed out in forty years by building bypasses from the city to the suburbs - The Sabbat there are still scratching their heads as to why that infrastructure was so easy to build and reversing the trend has been so hard.
I suspect the gentrification is a step in a larger game; investors hate historical losers. It is harder to overcome bad press for a neighborhood than it is to rehabilitate a personal bankruptcy. Just ask Trump. Bankruptcy in business is a different thing; streamlining and massive reorganization, ultimately it can make a company healthier. Or it gets sold off in pieces to more profitable interests.
Neighborhoods don’t have that luxury; worthless or hard to value assets are entirely different from companies. I suspect this is a win/win for the Ventrue, and it has to be Ventrue, managing the situation. Gentrification succeeds then feeding get’s hard as people insist on better lighting, police patrols, investigations into disappearances, better jobs, fewer trade unions…
If it fails then it gets a poison pill label; the area becomes not just blighted but a failed project with companies trying to offload the toxic assets through layers of shell corps that make tracking ownership a nightmare. No clear ownership means tax revenues don’t get collected, liens on the property are placed and now the local governments are preventing any resolution as well through their internal bureaucracies.
And that folks is how you Jihad.
Odds are Ramirez knows the trap she is in but is rather unable to fight back. Sabbat are somewhat notorious for not coping with the Jihad on these scale. It pushed the cult out of Europe for the most part and hasn’t done them any favors in the America’s.
I’ve arrived. I asses the situation: She has people stationed across the street, in the house. At least three. One more on the door, he’s a tripwire. Then probably her pack and four more in the inside. No cameras, because cameras can be fooled easier than people, but no dogs which is stupid because they are harder to fool than people.
I always have dogs. The girls love my dogs, they don’t even get all submissive on Hannah; makes them feel like regular teenagers.
I get patted down, hand over my guns, my knives, my garrote. The security goon is a private contractor, and he is a little impressed at my arsenal.
I am lead into the kitchen in the back of the house. It has a porch out to a little plot of grass they called yards. I grew up in a house not too unlike this one, except the plot was a garden that made the difference between Mum and I starving or eating. Made the winters awful lean; worse when Teddy came around. He’d get drunk and fuck around the garden then hit Mum when she couldn’t get a meal on the table. Shortly after that phase of their relationship he moved on to pimping her out.
Then Casterly killed him and sent me to boarding school. Aw,happy memories, that.
Ramirez is wearing jeans and a t-shirt; no bra evident. Nudity and body taboos are something that often go by the wayside with Kindred or they adhere to their mortal structures compulsively. Little middle ground, the Elders know that clothes can be a weapon.
To Elders everything can be a weapon.
She has a couple of security guys out on the back stoop in full tactical gear. Her t-shirt, light blue, has a pink cartoon horse of some kind with ‘Pinky Pie’ laid out in glitter above it. Her hair is bound back in a pony tail and she seems smaller than she was, without all her robes and being relatively at ease with the world.
She’s still a pale looking woman who looks like she left a British colonial possession a generation ago.
“Sit down, Francis,” she asks.
And I’m heading to the front door as fast as I can when the lights in the hallway go out. No, the cloud of shadow made them go out. Icy cold surrounds me, and I know that if I still breathed I would be choking in the darkness. Instead I keep moving in the direction I was when the freezing grip of the first tentacle wrap around my ankle. More join and I feel the floor hit my chin as I’m yanked back.
Into the light.
The table is surrounded by darkness, swirling grades of black with tendrils drifting into the light like smoke then evaporating. The tentacles hold me in the air, then gently set me in my seat across from Ramirez.
“I don’t like being disobeyed, Francis. I said, sit down and I meant it.”
I’m wearing Devon’s face, and I didn’t do anything to give me away, so how would she know my name?
I sit.
“For the sake of my tradecraft, how?” I ask her, shivering in reaction to the touch of the Abyss.
“Francis, dear. I’ve been at this a long time in a hostile land. I had eyes on the Setite nest you took out, Vycheslav told me what you looked like, and I cross referenced you with the patron who let me take Liverpool twenty years ago.”
Twenty years? That was when we started the push to take over the industrial concerns in South England. Part of the shame of that is that it created a distraction that allowed more of Liverpool to held by the Sabbat. And we took that on at the Baron’s request…
Oh fuck shit fuck.
“You taught Selim…”
“I did.”
“Because you made a deal with Baron Casterly.”
“Yes. He got his play at Southern England, I got most of Liverpool. Then he sponsored a lovely little poison pill with economic development and political influence. And now, with you, he’s set me up for a war with Pascek and Yuria.”
“Grigori…”
“Yes. He knew who the people in Ireland were, knew their networks. He’s had Selim playing those fields for centuries; Yuria was in on it the whole way. She was going to inspire Ireland to revolt to challenge the Bowsley doctrine, Yuria has been itching to shake up the Camarilla. Pascek was enough of a fanatic to be swayed by her appeal to force change via outside pressure.”
“But the Baron helped sponsor the Bowsley plan…”
Ramirez smiles. “Of course he did. But what Elder appreciates a more central authority when it isn’t their own?”
“Oh. My god…” I’m reeling. Finding out that the last fifty years of your life was a long con is a little hard to swallow all at once.
“The Jihad continues on. He weakens Bowsley till the others get desperate and call him or an ally of his in. Or he repairs the situation and Bowsley is in his debt.”
I do a lot of math in a hurry.
“Yuria was to strike at you in a demonstration of her military capacity, but only after it looked like Bowsley was impotent to stop you… But why would he set me on Yuria? He would have set me on you directly if he wanted maximum disruption…”
Ramirez leans forward on her elbows and rests her chin in her hands. “Keep going, you’re going to work it out.”
Wait. The Baron was mad at Yuria, and mad enough to scotch the whole plan… No. He wouldn’t act out of anger. Elders don’t flail panicked in anger, but they do in fear.
“Yuria turned on him, followed the plan until she seized Ireland; then she killed MacGooley’s brood to send the message that their arrangement was broken because…”
Because his agents in Seattle hadn’t saved Chase Covington, and in fact worked to get him executed. By their thinking and the ancient codes Yuria followed that meant the Baron owed a blood debt so she murdered his descendants after the Baron refused to help Chase…
And he had to have refused. Because if he had jumped in then their relationship would have become exposed, and Casterly would have blown three kinds of gasket and jumped and down screaming that the Tradition Breaking Fuck Head was getting protection from within the Ventrue Clan.
Wow. Okay, so maybe the Baron was mad. But at Chase Covington.
“And you know all about this because you’re part of the conspiracy… Which you would only be if you were looking to defect.”
She gives a delighted smile and claps her hands. “Excellent work. Except that Yuria, when she followed through with her part of the plan, was supposed to kill my most hardline Ducti and Priests. Instead she murdered my fellow defectors.”
“Leaving you trapped to eventually be exposed, killed, and removed. By Vycheslav, who is unaware of any of this but is a real Sabbat hardliner under his facade.”
“And…”
“Then she moves in during the chaos and takes Liverpool. She knows the Cam games better and is an old hand at mortal institutions, so she can flip the entire thing on the Baron. And he can’t do shit because she is blackmailing him… Because she has letters, in his own hand.”
“Excellent. Now you know what I want.”
Oh shit. If she has the letters it gets better and worse for me.
“Right. You want me to betray my clan, my bloodline, and some sketchy political loyalties and deliver to you the materials you need to succeed? And then take the blame when it is all done?”
“You are starting to understand…”
I look around the kitchen again, assessing.
“Yeah, look, no. There is absolutely no upside for me in this. You’re expecting Pascek to wipe Limerick off the map, and you are using Grigori as a foil for me. Have you ever considered Grigori doesn’t work for you?”
“He certainly doesn’t work for you.”
“No, Grigori works for Grigori. I have a better idea, one that gets us both off the hook. You still defect, but you declare that you are an Anarch. I tell you how to stop Baron Casterly’s influence, and you take what’s left of your defectors and lay low. Selim and I will kill the rest; or at least their leadership will be weakened enough that you are good to go. You send feelers to Queen Anne indicating that you are will to swear vassalage to her if she guarantees your status as a free port under the Anarchs. You promise Pascek that all is good and that you are with him all the way, but… You have to pay lip service to Anne.”
“Now why would I…”
“Because it sets the stage. Grigori will pick up any spares like a drunk empties every glass at a table. He’ll sweep them up and then he’ll double cross me after Yuria is dead, I promise you.” I’m in a groove now, plotting out the move/counter move of the next several months.
“And he would do that…” Skeptical doesn’t begin to describe Ramirez.
“Because Pascek won’t risk you being lost as an ally, and Queen Anne can’t afford to scrape you out. You can play both sides against the middle. And Grigori knows it, Cold Warrior that he is. He’ll just set up shop somewhere else, like Limerick. He’ll make noises that his domain is Anarch and he will keep playing the same game he’s always played of free for all mercenary contracting. He’s smart enough to do it.”
“And I will get the correspondence?”
“No. You will get some of the correspondence. Enough to blackmail Pascek for being Yuruia’s dupe and enough for the Baron to pressure Queene Anne to support you. And then I keep enough to get the Baron off my back.”
“And you still will go after Yuria?”
“Yes. I have to, to get the documents, she’ll have those hidden somewhere, but keep them close so the Baron’s agents can’t steal them. They will be on her person, or under the watch of someone close to her. She has at least one subordinate who is absolutely loyal to her, no matter the cost. The Roman, Licinius Paulus.”
“Who?”
“He was the one who killed your men; his agent was that poof Von Graff. He lead the Setites and the others in to kill your men and leave you to eventually hang where you might get desperate enough to try and contact the Baron personally for aid.”
“He would have killed me first; he can’t risk openly supporting me.”
“Exactly. No matter what he would lose his pieces on the board; his advantage eroded, and his triumph a liability. But we can do the one they cannot cope with.”
“And what is that Francis?” I have her complete attention. It’s a bit unnerving, as she is more a predator than anything I’ve ever met.
“Accelerate. Just before Yuria’s solstice gathering in Limerick, we hit the leadership of your enemies. You get your allies together under an appropriate guise. Selim and I will hit Liverpool over three nights, spreading ash and destruction in the shadows, Seattle style.”
“And then?”
“You go dark. Send out your envoys in secret, make your pitches. Go loud and active once you get the word that Yuria is down.” I take a deep breath, the adrenaline that comes with a fubar planning session is washing through me, or at least whatever vampires have for adrenaline.
“And you can do this? Kill Yuria?”
I answer flatly, “Yes.”
“And your price for this aid?”
“The shadows. You will teach me of them as much as I want to know, no bullshit. The powers are good… But I need to understand what they are, where they come from. Selim he is…”
“Too much a pragmatist, it works because it works.” Ramirez regards me with cold eyes, assessing, weighing me. “You are a Ventrue, it is true. But you never reach for the power yourself. Along with my teachings I shall school you in the ways of the Inner Voice, and see how you fare over the next decade.”
Not sure what the Inner Voice is, but what the hey.
The shadows start to recede and fade from the walls, the normal world, the mundane world returning.
“This, uh, wasn’t what I was expecting,” I manage to get out.
“Ah, yes. The ductus I sent you. He never made it back.”
“Right. Were you wanting to know why?”
She flat out grins, no, bares her teeth. I find myself leaning back and away from her, hands on the table to flip it up between us if I need to be.
“He was a most loyal Sabbat ductus, the sect could not ask for a more capable Lasombra. As my childe I knew absolutely that he was dedicated to the cause.”
Oh. Cleared that up. She knew I’d kill him, or have him killed. And he was a loyalist. But her own childe…
“Do not judge me Francis. Win me the peace I crave.”
And it becomes clearer to me. She’s tired; Ramirez has struggled and fought her way to the top and is miserable, her ‘inner voice’ is urging her to settle into a more stable power arrangement and endless war isn’t that path. So she will go the path of middleman and intrigue with a more settled air.
“Uh, what about the, uh, more religious aspects of the sect?”
“Francis, long ago I was once part of a delegation that met Mithras. I knew then that fight we must, and we shall, but we will lose. He was ancient, and when he looked at you…” She shudders, in ecstacy or fear, or both. “He was a god made flesh.”
She looks pensively outside, at the men in their military gear. “We are as mortals to them; play things and food.”
We both ponder this idea for a minute. I’m still so young, and I recognize this. My capacity to sift lies from truth applies to myself as much as the rest of the world. It is a cruel gift at times; because I know she believes what she is saying. I know that I believe that I can stop them, except that I don’t.
I really don’t.
And that is why I fled Seattle, because if I went to Vancouver there was the smallest chance that I might have to confront that and I couldn’t… I couldn’t look that in the eye quite yet.
Not even sure I can now. Without another word I collect my weapons and leave.
Time to lose myself in the Great Game once more. I have two plays left, and then the end is nigh.
Lasombra
By Ben Vaughan