Post by The Mouth on Jul 19, 2014 17:03:13 GMT -8
17 March, 2013
King John’s Castle, Limerick, Ireland
I’m running through the exhibit hall when the pilum catches me between my shoulders.
If the Nosferatu had been at full power I doubt I would have survived; but he was not, so I did.
But now I had a pilum running me through, and very awkwardly at that. The shaft, like they are supposed to do, had curved on impact making it that much harder to pull out. At least it wasn’t barbed; I like a traditionalist. It also means that he is 100 feet or so behind me; accurately casting such a weapon isn’t done at long ranges.
We are in the exhibition hall, so there are suits of armour, local artwork, celtic burial items. The fire alarms are raging now, my little explosion has done terrible things to the sprinklers so they aren’t at tip top shape. Which means the fire is spread; castles have a lot of wood in their interior and the cement holding them together is concrete. Get concrete hot enough and the limestone burns.
Fire and rescue will be here in about ten minutes. The gun shots will slow it all down for the police to arrive, Mike and Yuria didn’t go out the front door and I haven’t seen my girls yet.
Gods. My girls.
Thankfully, due to my gifts, the pilum is a minor wound. I spend my blood to sluggishly heal the damage and turn around. The Nosferatu is there, smoke following us like lost dogs after a sausage.
He is leaning against the display with the Roman weapons racked against it. At least now I know where he got the damned thing. I reach back awkwardly and pull it free, which is no easy feat. “Why did you kill Katherine, you son of a bitch?” Time for some bravado, since actual survival is getting doubtful.
“Katherine?” His face is a twisty mass with tusks jutting out his upper and lower jaws. “Who was Katherine?”
“At your pet Setite’s house… You took her head off!”
He is having a hard time thinking straight. “Oh. Her. Her neck was in the way of the strap. I needed the backpack. So I took it. The back pack and her head.”
Annnnd I realize that I might be able to get something more out of this. “The fucking back pack? What was so important that you had to kill her?”
He straightens. “I am Licinius Paulus, Legate of the 17th Legion; I kill who I need to. I do not have to answer to you boy.”
“No, but you do to Yuria. Who is off retrieving your secrets; saving her ass from the fire with the goods. Leaving you to burn.”
He smiles drunkenly, which I assure is worse than a sober smile. “I can handle you. Besides, the papers are safe; packed them in a truck about six blocks from here… Damn. These drugs make you talkative.”
He draws his spatha, a longer version of the gladius. “I guess I’ll just have to kill you and sober up. Not the first time I’ve fought when under the influence.”
He comes for me, swfitly, sure, cat footed. He’s had over a thousand years of fighting under his belt and it shows. I narrowly dive out of the way of his strike by darting behind a suit of armour in a glass case; the glass pops and shatters and the medieval armour goes flying across the room with a crash.
He swings at me again and I am not so lucky this time. He catches me with a thrust that goes through my kevlar like it was merely a dream, his sword pinning me to the wall.
Once again, I am only minorly wounded, but I am pinned; stuck to the wall like a butterfly. One of his gorilla arms comes up and a hand crushes my throat so I cannot speak.
He looks at me, his small piggish eyes augur into my soul, and I feel his mind probing mine. He nods, “You have no other friends to assist you; nothing you can do will change the inevitable fact of your final death.”
He starts to squeeze, he’s going to pop my head off by brute strength. I scramble trying to remove the bar of iron that is the arm of Licinius Paulus, but fail. I can feel bones grating and only my stamina is keeping me alive; but for how long?
Scrambling my hand feels metal on my vest. I pull it free and stab his arm with it; it’s a charge for my hammer. His arm puffs up as the cold nitrogen inflates his elbow like a leathering balloon.
He screams; lots of nerves right there, and they all say cold.
His grip loosens and I grab the next thing off my vest and I swing it at his arm, swelling and bubbling.
Fun fact; fire is hot. Silly, right? But the stake lit on fire as I swung and I remember that Richter had given me this stake some time ago. The fire hits his arm and the nitrogen vaporizes almost all at once as I expose it the warmth; his arm explodes and his hand drops from my throat, onto the carpet floor, hissing sullenly before turning to dust.
The stake goes out almost immediately as well. Try as I will it won’t re-ignite.
Licinius is clutching his arm and I manage to dislodge myself from the wall. I pull his sword out of me; it is a thing of beauty.
He assesses the situation and decides to run. I’ve just shown I have smarts, equipment, and magic. A smart elder always runs under these conditions.
I slump to the floor; might have been hurt more than I let on.
But I have to get to the truck; I have to get the intel. I pull myself up, cloak myself with a moment’s concentration and off I go. I gather my gun and for shits I grab a small throwing spear called a plumbata.
I manage to get out of the Castle, a good chunk is on fire; and the fire crews are just showing up. People are wandering about, a large number of them catering staff. The occaisonal boom-pop of explosives can be heard but that might be construction materials in the Foyer.
It takes me a few minutes to get to the street. I whistle for my dog and a minute later Zenobia comes bounding out of the smoking soon-to-be-ruin of the Castle. A brief inspection tells me my girl is unharmed and ready to go.
She scents on the ash coating my arm and we are off; she gets the trail quickly and waits for me to catch up. She’s a big girl, certainly not a show dog. I wanted a dog that harkened back to pre-world war breeds; took me surprising little time to find a breeder; too bad he’s a white supremacist in Idaho. But for a racist prick he knows his dogs.
I trot along side. I have a cap on that I grabbed from the Visitor center and I’m actively bending the shadows to make my face harder to detect. Zenobia is silent as she tracks the scent, five minutes later I round the corner to find a large hauling truck back up against a warehouse loading dock.
I am approaching the truck when I hear the scream followed by a booming crunch as something his one of the roll ups - From inside the warehouse.
I tell Zenobia “Guard!” and she hunkers down.
Me, I’m up on the dock and looking for the man door. I find it, burst back from the latch, and it leads to an open floor of some kind of packaging center. The loud thump?
That was Hannah getting flung across the room in her full war form.
Looks like the drugs wore off.
Licinius is moving through pallets of shrink wrapped cardboard sheets, bins of some sort of toy are scattered about. Hannah’s arm didn’t look right, like it was out of socket and broken in several places; like someone had picked her up and whip-snapped her across the room.
I was wondering why he hadn’t disappeared when he dodged a glowing arrow; then I saw he had two in him already. He rips one of the arrows out and flings it into the dark; I hear Jory scream with pain and surprise.
He’s hurting my gels. He’ll find Rabbit and he’ll…
Somewhere, inside me, my soul looks at the terrible things I’ve done. My beast shrugs and indicates that it is a dominant predator who really, all things, should be in charge. But I had a connection to these girls. I trained them, I eased their pain, my blood courses in their veins.
They are mine I tell the Beast. They are ours. Some part of the beast, the part all about feeding, dominance, survival, trembles. Because it loves the girls too; Hannah’s savage strength, Rabbit’s cunning, Jory’s hunger. And we conclude that this; the destruction of our pack/family/; it cannot be allowed or tolerated.
For the first time my Beast and I are on the same page. It takes my pain, my wounds heal almost immediately, and I tell it how to assault a cunning foe.
We throw the plumbata.
It is an odd weapon; an iron head with wicked barbs on a small metal shaft about five inches long. Then a lump of lead, and a wooden shaft with feathers on it to stabilize it’s flight. The Roman answer to so many problems. Problems like ‘Shite, we suck as archers and our slingers died of the plague. Wait, we have these plumbata! Fuck you charging cavalry.’
Seriously, they didn’t kill the horse, usually just pinned the rider and the horse together. Back in the fifties someone got the bright idea to re-invent these savage little fuckers as lawn darts.
The toss is good; I’m damned good at throwing things thanks to Selim. The dart plunges down and catches Licinius in the junction of neck and shoulder on his right side.
He howls and his head whips towards me, reptilian and angry. The Beast flees, and I sag with weakness; he just used some Animalism trick on me. Not only is the Beast gone but my wounds reopen.
Fuck.
The Nosferatu was on me before I could really do anything else; he grabbed me and flung me across the warehouse into a piece of machinery. He laughed, a trilling sweet sound. “You children. You think you can defeat me?”
“I think we already have.” Rabbit appears from God damned no where from behind a stack of pallets.
“Oh, mortal witch? Your people are broken; I will get Yuria from here and bring a vengeance upon this pathetic city that your kind haven’t seen for a thousand years.” Licinius is stalking towards Rabbit. I’m desperately trying to get my internal organs in order to get up and fight back.
Rabbit’s eyes are glowing.
“Not all of our people, creature. Not enough by far…”
And Mike comes from behind and wraps himself around the Nosferatu from behind.
Rabbit must have made Mike harder to sense; or something. I don’t know how her magic works… But Mike is savagely biting Licinius; the Nosferatu is strong but Mike is strong too…
Rabbit is chanting, “Hungry, so hungry. Strong, stay strong, hungry, stay hungry…”
“Rabbit, no…” I manage to whisper.
Mike’s attack shifts from mauling to drinking, drinking, drinking. The Nosferatu collapses, then shrinks, his attempts to defend growing feeble from the Kiss.
Seconds later the Nosferatu us crumbling to dust and ash; Mike howls, his perfect face lit with blackened veins as the Diablerie takes him.
Rabbit screams with Mike; then sobs, falling to her knees. Mike jerks to his feet, in full thrall to the Beast; moving to Rabbit.
I focus my will; forcing my wounds away. “Mike” I put the full power of my Presence into my voice. “Over here…”
Mike turns to me and I look deep into his eyes. “Be calm Mike. Rest, take a load off…”
I loaded Mike’s cup with vodka, GHB, and Scopolamine. He won’t remember the last week much less what he just did.
My soothing mellows him out; a close thing. Mike sinks to his knees. Behind him Hannah approaches, a walking wolf creature, something that has haunted my nightmares since Everett some three years gone.
Her arm has sorted itself out, and she has Jory, who looks pained and pale and sweating from the arrow in his shoulder. Jory murmurs; “His blood; it is awful,” then she collapses.
I climb to my feet and walk to Hannah. “Stake him,” I whisper in her ear. She rips a pallet apart, hacks a crude stake then jams it into Mike’s ribs.
I stumble out of the ware house. Zenobia looks at me and gives a bark, then returns to her guard position.
The truck has a roll up back door, a little diesel engine in the front. The door is wide open, and on a narrow bed is Yuria; staked.
On her chest is a note: Let us see what you do with this, Apprentice. - Selim.
I close my eyes. A plan forms.
***
Thirty minutes later I have Clete Dunsirn, Gooley, now MacGooley, and Ira at the warehouse. The Castle is pretty thoroughly involved and is already being presented as an armed robbery that went horribly wrong when some construction gear exploded.
I present the three with a bloody gown, blood and soot and ash cover. It lies in the warehouse in a pile of dust.
“Yuria is dead. Consumed by her grandchilde, Mike. This was his design and it is what he paid me to arrange.”
Ira looks panicked, “But she had my childe! My lovely girl, please, if we don’t find her she will die…”
“Aye, and the Nosferatu. There were three of em.” Clete adds.
Kevin MacGooley, for his part, has a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Fair. I shall find them. I shall bring them to you. But I need a few things…”
Kevin’s head snaps around, his spine unbending from years of torture and degradation. “Ah. Terms. What are they?”
I’m blunt. “First, you will declare yourselves a barony subordinate to Pascek. Scream as loud, and as long, as you need to, that Mike did everything. He hired mercenaries, arranged with Clete to attack, everything. Ira, you fed the intel on the local wolves and fairies to Yuria…”
“But she had my childe!” Ira wails.
“They don’t give two fucks. You have peace for a year, after that you are fair game. I got you that much…”
They look at me with wide and wary eyes, the implications of my statement aren’t lost.
“Kevin, your Grandsire was Mike’s back bench supporter and bank. He’d like a letter from you as soon as possible. He’s the one who brought me in after Mike pitched the plan…”
I stagger. Clete looks a little contemptuous, but the others are scared.
“Mr. Phillips,” Clete gives me a sly little twinge, “What ever happened to your accent?”
“I left it in your mother’s twat when I went looking for my car keys after playing the echo game between her cunt and her arse you slaggy little Scots fuck.” My voice is a flat monotone.
My profound use of the insult hits him with shock. “Good gods, man, you could almost be a Scot!” He pauses. “Almost.”
“Why have you betrayed your own cause, Brujah?” Kevin MacGooley asks. Gods, I love a sharp fucker.
I shrug. “Yuria was starting a war for her own benefit, trying to leverage Ireland to her own goals against the Ventrue of London. She was about as Anarch as Queen Anne.”
I can see MacGooley’s face and the the little crinkle in his eyes as the other two nod sagely. Internal politics, explains it all. “And Mike?” MacGooley presses on.
I shrug. “She didn’t save his sire, Chase Covington. And he’s already gone. Sorry to leave you gentlemen with the bill, but you do what you need to so that you can reclaim your city.”
And with that I left them, clutching a bloody rag of silk.
Nosferatu
By Ben Vaughan
King John’s Castle, Limerick, Ireland
I’m running through the exhibit hall when the pilum catches me between my shoulders.
If the Nosferatu had been at full power I doubt I would have survived; but he was not, so I did.
But now I had a pilum running me through, and very awkwardly at that. The shaft, like they are supposed to do, had curved on impact making it that much harder to pull out. At least it wasn’t barbed; I like a traditionalist. It also means that he is 100 feet or so behind me; accurately casting such a weapon isn’t done at long ranges.
We are in the exhibition hall, so there are suits of armour, local artwork, celtic burial items. The fire alarms are raging now, my little explosion has done terrible things to the sprinklers so they aren’t at tip top shape. Which means the fire is spread; castles have a lot of wood in their interior and the cement holding them together is concrete. Get concrete hot enough and the limestone burns.
Fire and rescue will be here in about ten minutes. The gun shots will slow it all down for the police to arrive, Mike and Yuria didn’t go out the front door and I haven’t seen my girls yet.
Gods. My girls.
Thankfully, due to my gifts, the pilum is a minor wound. I spend my blood to sluggishly heal the damage and turn around. The Nosferatu is there, smoke following us like lost dogs after a sausage.
He is leaning against the display with the Roman weapons racked against it. At least now I know where he got the damned thing. I reach back awkwardly and pull it free, which is no easy feat. “Why did you kill Katherine, you son of a bitch?” Time for some bravado, since actual survival is getting doubtful.
“Katherine?” His face is a twisty mass with tusks jutting out his upper and lower jaws. “Who was Katherine?”
“At your pet Setite’s house… You took her head off!”
He is having a hard time thinking straight. “Oh. Her. Her neck was in the way of the strap. I needed the backpack. So I took it. The back pack and her head.”
Annnnd I realize that I might be able to get something more out of this. “The fucking back pack? What was so important that you had to kill her?”
He straightens. “I am Licinius Paulus, Legate of the 17th Legion; I kill who I need to. I do not have to answer to you boy.”
“No, but you do to Yuria. Who is off retrieving your secrets; saving her ass from the fire with the goods. Leaving you to burn.”
He smiles drunkenly, which I assure is worse than a sober smile. “I can handle you. Besides, the papers are safe; packed them in a truck about six blocks from here… Damn. These drugs make you talkative.”
He draws his spatha, a longer version of the gladius. “I guess I’ll just have to kill you and sober up. Not the first time I’ve fought when under the influence.”
He comes for me, swfitly, sure, cat footed. He’s had over a thousand years of fighting under his belt and it shows. I narrowly dive out of the way of his strike by darting behind a suit of armour in a glass case; the glass pops and shatters and the medieval armour goes flying across the room with a crash.
He swings at me again and I am not so lucky this time. He catches me with a thrust that goes through my kevlar like it was merely a dream, his sword pinning me to the wall.
Once again, I am only minorly wounded, but I am pinned; stuck to the wall like a butterfly. One of his gorilla arms comes up and a hand crushes my throat so I cannot speak.
He looks at me, his small piggish eyes augur into my soul, and I feel his mind probing mine. He nods, “You have no other friends to assist you; nothing you can do will change the inevitable fact of your final death.”
He starts to squeeze, he’s going to pop my head off by brute strength. I scramble trying to remove the bar of iron that is the arm of Licinius Paulus, but fail. I can feel bones grating and only my stamina is keeping me alive; but for how long?
Scrambling my hand feels metal on my vest. I pull it free and stab his arm with it; it’s a charge for my hammer. His arm puffs up as the cold nitrogen inflates his elbow like a leathering balloon.
He screams; lots of nerves right there, and they all say cold.
His grip loosens and I grab the next thing off my vest and I swing it at his arm, swelling and bubbling.
Fun fact; fire is hot. Silly, right? But the stake lit on fire as I swung and I remember that Richter had given me this stake some time ago. The fire hits his arm and the nitrogen vaporizes almost all at once as I expose it the warmth; his arm explodes and his hand drops from my throat, onto the carpet floor, hissing sullenly before turning to dust.
The stake goes out almost immediately as well. Try as I will it won’t re-ignite.
Licinius is clutching his arm and I manage to dislodge myself from the wall. I pull his sword out of me; it is a thing of beauty.
He assesses the situation and decides to run. I’ve just shown I have smarts, equipment, and magic. A smart elder always runs under these conditions.
I slump to the floor; might have been hurt more than I let on.
But I have to get to the truck; I have to get the intel. I pull myself up, cloak myself with a moment’s concentration and off I go. I gather my gun and for shits I grab a small throwing spear called a plumbata.
I manage to get out of the Castle, a good chunk is on fire; and the fire crews are just showing up. People are wandering about, a large number of them catering staff. The occaisonal boom-pop of explosives can be heard but that might be construction materials in the Foyer.
It takes me a few minutes to get to the street. I whistle for my dog and a minute later Zenobia comes bounding out of the smoking soon-to-be-ruin of the Castle. A brief inspection tells me my girl is unharmed and ready to go.
She scents on the ash coating my arm and we are off; she gets the trail quickly and waits for me to catch up. She’s a big girl, certainly not a show dog. I wanted a dog that harkened back to pre-world war breeds; took me surprising little time to find a breeder; too bad he’s a white supremacist in Idaho. But for a racist prick he knows his dogs.
I trot along side. I have a cap on that I grabbed from the Visitor center and I’m actively bending the shadows to make my face harder to detect. Zenobia is silent as she tracks the scent, five minutes later I round the corner to find a large hauling truck back up against a warehouse loading dock.
I am approaching the truck when I hear the scream followed by a booming crunch as something his one of the roll ups - From inside the warehouse.
I tell Zenobia “Guard!” and she hunkers down.
Me, I’m up on the dock and looking for the man door. I find it, burst back from the latch, and it leads to an open floor of some kind of packaging center. The loud thump?
That was Hannah getting flung across the room in her full war form.
Looks like the drugs wore off.
Licinius is moving through pallets of shrink wrapped cardboard sheets, bins of some sort of toy are scattered about. Hannah’s arm didn’t look right, like it was out of socket and broken in several places; like someone had picked her up and whip-snapped her across the room.
I was wondering why he hadn’t disappeared when he dodged a glowing arrow; then I saw he had two in him already. He rips one of the arrows out and flings it into the dark; I hear Jory scream with pain and surprise.
He’s hurting my gels. He’ll find Rabbit and he’ll…
Somewhere, inside me, my soul looks at the terrible things I’ve done. My beast shrugs and indicates that it is a dominant predator who really, all things, should be in charge. But I had a connection to these girls. I trained them, I eased their pain, my blood courses in their veins.
They are mine I tell the Beast. They are ours. Some part of the beast, the part all about feeding, dominance, survival, trembles. Because it loves the girls too; Hannah’s savage strength, Rabbit’s cunning, Jory’s hunger. And we conclude that this; the destruction of our pack/family/; it cannot be allowed or tolerated.
For the first time my Beast and I are on the same page. It takes my pain, my wounds heal almost immediately, and I tell it how to assault a cunning foe.
We throw the plumbata.
It is an odd weapon; an iron head with wicked barbs on a small metal shaft about five inches long. Then a lump of lead, and a wooden shaft with feathers on it to stabilize it’s flight. The Roman answer to so many problems. Problems like ‘Shite, we suck as archers and our slingers died of the plague. Wait, we have these plumbata! Fuck you charging cavalry.’
Seriously, they didn’t kill the horse, usually just pinned the rider and the horse together. Back in the fifties someone got the bright idea to re-invent these savage little fuckers as lawn darts.
The toss is good; I’m damned good at throwing things thanks to Selim. The dart plunges down and catches Licinius in the junction of neck and shoulder on his right side.
He howls and his head whips towards me, reptilian and angry. The Beast flees, and I sag with weakness; he just used some Animalism trick on me. Not only is the Beast gone but my wounds reopen.
Fuck.
The Nosferatu was on me before I could really do anything else; he grabbed me and flung me across the warehouse into a piece of machinery. He laughed, a trilling sweet sound. “You children. You think you can defeat me?”
“I think we already have.” Rabbit appears from God damned no where from behind a stack of pallets.
“Oh, mortal witch? Your people are broken; I will get Yuria from here and bring a vengeance upon this pathetic city that your kind haven’t seen for a thousand years.” Licinius is stalking towards Rabbit. I’m desperately trying to get my internal organs in order to get up and fight back.
Rabbit’s eyes are glowing.
“Not all of our people, creature. Not enough by far…”
And Mike comes from behind and wraps himself around the Nosferatu from behind.
Rabbit must have made Mike harder to sense; or something. I don’t know how her magic works… But Mike is savagely biting Licinius; the Nosferatu is strong but Mike is strong too…
Rabbit is chanting, “Hungry, so hungry. Strong, stay strong, hungry, stay hungry…”
“Rabbit, no…” I manage to whisper.
Mike’s attack shifts from mauling to drinking, drinking, drinking. The Nosferatu collapses, then shrinks, his attempts to defend growing feeble from the Kiss.
Seconds later the Nosferatu us crumbling to dust and ash; Mike howls, his perfect face lit with blackened veins as the Diablerie takes him.
Rabbit screams with Mike; then sobs, falling to her knees. Mike jerks to his feet, in full thrall to the Beast; moving to Rabbit.
I focus my will; forcing my wounds away. “Mike” I put the full power of my Presence into my voice. “Over here…”
Mike turns to me and I look deep into his eyes. “Be calm Mike. Rest, take a load off…”
I loaded Mike’s cup with vodka, GHB, and Scopolamine. He won’t remember the last week much less what he just did.
My soothing mellows him out; a close thing. Mike sinks to his knees. Behind him Hannah approaches, a walking wolf creature, something that has haunted my nightmares since Everett some three years gone.
Her arm has sorted itself out, and she has Jory, who looks pained and pale and sweating from the arrow in his shoulder. Jory murmurs; “His blood; it is awful,” then she collapses.
I climb to my feet and walk to Hannah. “Stake him,” I whisper in her ear. She rips a pallet apart, hacks a crude stake then jams it into Mike’s ribs.
I stumble out of the ware house. Zenobia looks at me and gives a bark, then returns to her guard position.
The truck has a roll up back door, a little diesel engine in the front. The door is wide open, and on a narrow bed is Yuria; staked.
On her chest is a note: Let us see what you do with this, Apprentice. - Selim.
I close my eyes. A plan forms.
***
Thirty minutes later I have Clete Dunsirn, Gooley, now MacGooley, and Ira at the warehouse. The Castle is pretty thoroughly involved and is already being presented as an armed robbery that went horribly wrong when some construction gear exploded.
I present the three with a bloody gown, blood and soot and ash cover. It lies in the warehouse in a pile of dust.
“Yuria is dead. Consumed by her grandchilde, Mike. This was his design and it is what he paid me to arrange.”
Ira looks panicked, “But she had my childe! My lovely girl, please, if we don’t find her she will die…”
“Aye, and the Nosferatu. There were three of em.” Clete adds.
Kevin MacGooley, for his part, has a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Fair. I shall find them. I shall bring them to you. But I need a few things…”
Kevin’s head snaps around, his spine unbending from years of torture and degradation. “Ah. Terms. What are they?”
I’m blunt. “First, you will declare yourselves a barony subordinate to Pascek. Scream as loud, and as long, as you need to, that Mike did everything. He hired mercenaries, arranged with Clete to attack, everything. Ira, you fed the intel on the local wolves and fairies to Yuria…”
“But she had my childe!” Ira wails.
“They don’t give two fucks. You have peace for a year, after that you are fair game. I got you that much…”
They look at me with wide and wary eyes, the implications of my statement aren’t lost.
“Kevin, your Grandsire was Mike’s back bench supporter and bank. He’d like a letter from you as soon as possible. He’s the one who brought me in after Mike pitched the plan…”
I stagger. Clete looks a little contemptuous, but the others are scared.
“Mr. Phillips,” Clete gives me a sly little twinge, “What ever happened to your accent?”
“I left it in your mother’s twat when I went looking for my car keys after playing the echo game between her cunt and her arse you slaggy little Scots fuck.” My voice is a flat monotone.
My profound use of the insult hits him with shock. “Good gods, man, you could almost be a Scot!” He pauses. “Almost.”
“Why have you betrayed your own cause, Brujah?” Kevin MacGooley asks. Gods, I love a sharp fucker.
I shrug. “Yuria was starting a war for her own benefit, trying to leverage Ireland to her own goals against the Ventrue of London. She was about as Anarch as Queen Anne.”
I can see MacGooley’s face and the the little crinkle in his eyes as the other two nod sagely. Internal politics, explains it all. “And Mike?” MacGooley presses on.
I shrug. “She didn’t save his sire, Chase Covington. And he’s already gone. Sorry to leave you gentlemen with the bill, but you do what you need to so that you can reclaim your city.”
And with that I left them, clutching a bloody rag of silk.
Nosferatu
By Ben Vaughan