“You want to know how it starts? The same thrice-damned way it always starts. Somebody wants something. Bad. Bad enough to shell out clams, bullets, or blood. Maybe all three.”
Louis Fontaine]], retired NOPD detective

This page contains links to all of Blood & Bourbon’s posted adventure logs. Newcomers to the site often want to know: where should they start reading? There are several places they can:

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Story One

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Amelie I	Fresh off the plane from Canada, Amelie touches down in New Orleans to make a new life in the home of her distant aunt, Christina Roberts.	Aug. 14, 2015	18 p
• Alice Prelude	Alice graples with burgeoning psychic powers after a monster replaces her father.	Oct. 31, 1993	16 p
• Amelie II	Amelie settles in to her new home and makes an auspicious purchase from an antique store.	Aug. 15, 2015	18 p
• Alice I	Alice attempts to answer a college professor’s impossible question and investigates several purported hauntings.	Aug. 24, 2015	11 p
• Amelie III	Amelie attends her first day at McGehee, the so-called “Southern belle West Point,” and sets her eye on a purportedly haunted house for a research project.	Aug. 17, 2015	31 p
• Alice II	Alice fends off a petty thief on her way to work and makes a potentially lucrative sale to a rude new customer.	Aug. 25, 2015	13 p
• Amelie IV	Amelie attempts to fit in among her privileged peers.	Aug. 17, 2015	23 p
• Alice III	Alice attends a strained dinner with her mother.	Aug. 26, 2015	8 p
• Amelie V	Amelie sets out to explore the Big Easy’s historic attractions and gets a taste of its equally storied corruption.	Aug. 21, 2015	25 p
• Alice IV	Alice attempts to help a restless spirit pass on, makes a move on a long-held crush, and deals with an angry vampire.	Aug. 28, 2015	21 p
• Amelie VI	Amelie receives a dire prophecy.	Aug. 21, 2015	25 p
• Alice Epilogue	Alice attempts to keep a candle lit in the dark.	Aug. 28, 2015	3 p
• Amelie VII	Amelie makes plans for an overnight stay in one of New Orleans’ most notorious paranormal hot spots.	Aug. 24, 2015	35 p
• Victoria Prelude I	Victoria gets shuffled through the foster system.	Oct. 24, 1998	21 p
• Caroline Prelude	Caroline claims her birthright.	Dec. 13, 2003	10 p
• Amelie VIII	Amelie eavesdrops upon a cruel truth.	Aug. 26, 2015	25 p
• Victoria Prelude II	Victoria finds her family.	June 13, 2000	19 p
• Amelie IX • Caroline I	Stripped of illusions by her furious aunt, Amelie takes a hard look at the Big Easy’s hidden ugliness. Caroline covers up an embarrassment to her aunt’s alma mater.	Aug. 28, 2015	19 p
• Victoria I	Victoria makes a friend and receives an unusual job offer.	Aug. 27, 2007	27 p
• Amelie X, • Caroline II	Still determined to get ahead in the city, Amelie attends a privileged lunch. Caroline gives a newcomer some helpful advice.	Aug. 28, 2015	19 p
• Victoria II	Victoria finds out just what she’s capable of.	Sep. 19, 2011	25 p
• Amelie XI	Past and future converge as Amelie braves a night in the infamous LaLaurie Mansion.	Aug. 28, 2015	39 p

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Story Two

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• George Prelude	George plots his rise to power.	Apr. 4, 1857	29 p
• Julien Prelude	Julien tries to make a difference in an uncaring world.	Nov. 12, 1912	18 p
• Clea Prelude	Clea pledges her service to the loa.	Mar. 20, 1860	31 p
• Emil I	Emil receives a mysterious package and responds to a distressed phone call.	Aug. 28, 2015	7 p
• George I	George deals with frenzying guests in his hotel and receives an invitation to visit his exiled clanmate John Harley Matheson from the enchanting young Becky Lynne.	Aug. 29, 2015	15 p
• Caroline I	Caroline gets a 3 AM phone call to bail some family friends out of trouble.	Aug. 29, 2015	17 p
• Clea I • George II • Julien I	Clea and Julien compete for their sires’ favor and possession of a mysterious artifact. George cuts a deal with a mambo.	Aug. 29, 2015	23 p
• George III • Julien II	George and Julien pay a visit to the Midnight Bayou and its proprietor Sundown.	Aug. 29, 2015	11 p
• Caroline II	Caroline frantically works to save two lives as new disaster strikes.	Aug. 29, 2015	13 p
• George IV	George searches for companions to entertain Matheson in his exile, but finds not all of the candidates are what they seem.	Aug. 30, 2015	35 p
• Emil II	Emil learns the way things are done among NOPD.	Aug. 29, 2015	17 p
• George V	George violates a new victim, pays his respects to two primogen, and swallows his pride for a miserable trek through Clan Nosferatu’s sewers.	Aug. 31, 2015	26 p
• Victoria I	Victoria helps her best friend through a breakup.	Aug. 27, 2015	15 p
• Julien III	Julien returns to the French Quarter to tie up loose ends, only to receive a lesson in the nature of friendship from Antoine Savoy.	Aug. 30, 2015	16 p
• George VI	George deals with a problematic chauffeur trades truths with an insightful Malkavian.	Sep. 1, 2015	24 p
• Victoria II	Victoria helps out a friend fired from her job.	Aug. 28, 2015	19 p
• Caroline III	Caroline pays a hospital visit to friends old and new.	Aug. 29, 2015	8 p
• George VII	George bears witness to another grim example of Vidal’s justice and smooths over a grudge with the Mafia.	Sep. 3, 2015	17 p
• Victoria III	Victoria locks horns with McGehee’s headmistress negotiating a fired teacher’s severance.	Aug. 31, 2015	16 p
• Caroline IV • Emil III	Caroline deals with an unexpected fly in her family’s ointment. Emil receives an auspicious visitor.	Aug. 30, 2015	14 p
• George VIII	George receives a warning from an old flame and deals with unforeseen trouble on the road to Matheson’s.	Sep. 4, 2015	14 p
• Victoria IV	Victoria tries to save one life and destroy two.	Sep. 20, 2015	22 p
• Julien IV	Julien meets with one of the Baron’s lieutenants to negotiate a truce between their covenants, only for events to spiral far out of control.	Sep. 2, 2015	8 p
• George IX	George races the rising sun back to the Windsor Court, only to face a second foe he cannot so easily avoid: his own Beast.	Sep. 5, 2015	24 p
• Victoria V	Victoria a consumates a years-old love she never knew she had.	Oct. 22, 2015	22 p
• Emil IV	Emil begins a new investigation into an old mystery.	Aug. 30, 2015	11 p
• George X	George convenes a meeting of Clan Ventrue’s elders to flush out a traitor within the ranks.	Sep. 6, 2015	35 p
• Victoria VI	Victoria enjoys time with her new love and tries to get her released fro a draconian employment contract.	Oct. 23, 2015	35 p
• Caroline Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Aug. 30, 2015	2 p
• George XI	George confronts not one traitor, but three—to explosive results.	Sep. 9, 2015	13 p

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Interlude

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Cletus I	Cletus deals with a trespasser on his land.	Sep. 9, 2015	3 p

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Story Three

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Louis I	Lou descends into the Crescent City’s seedy underbelly to find out who is murdering its prostitutes.	Sep. 5, 2015	28 p
• Caroline I	Caroline finds new troubles trying to forget old ones.	Sep. 1, 2015	15 p
• Emmett I	Em picks an ambitious new mark to con.	Sep. 4, 2015	10 p
• Louis II	Lou witnesses a murder through a dead woman’s eyes, reunites with an old failure, and puts a name to a killer.	Sep. 5, 2015	26 p
• Caroline II	Caroline plunges headfirst into her new existence among the Damned.	Sep. 7, 2015	17 p
• Emmett II	Emmett tries to abort a soured heist while making a few bucks.	Sep. 4, 2015	7 p
• Louis III	Lou turns to the Holy Mother of Church for aid and attempts to pawn off an old keepsake.	Sep. 6, 2015	30 p
• Caroline III	Caroline fights for her unlife when an intruder breaches her daytime haven.	Sep. 6, 2015	14 p
• Emmett III	Concerned he’s in over his head, Em chances a meeting with a crooked cop and walks into a trap of his own devising.	Sep. 5, 2015	11 p
• Louis IV	Lou cases a double homicide and calls up an loa to obtain sorely needed answers.	Sep. 7, 2015	13 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline navigates a tense reunion with her mortal family.	Sep. 6, 2015	10 p
• Emmett IV	Em faces truth.	Unknown	10 p
• Louis V	Lou picks up the pieces of a broken world.	Sep. 7, 2015	18 p
• Caroline V	Caroline faces the Lancea et Sanctum’s judgment for her unsanctioned Embrace.	Sep. 6, 2015	18 p
• Emmett V	Em awakens from his nightmares in the hospital and faces a horrifying loss.	Unknown	8 p
• Louis VI	Lou teams up with a new partner.	Sep. 7, 2015	23 p
• Caroline VI • Emmett VI	Caroline attends a tediously necessary social function. Em remembers back to better times.	May 17, 2014	7 p
• Caroline VII • Louis VII	Caroline enlists some desperately needed help in tracking down her sire. Lou takes on a case that makes him question everything he’s ever done.	Sep. 7, 2015	7 p
• Emmett VII	Em gets into further trouble with the NOPD.	Sep. 7, 2015	5 p
• Caroline VIII	Caroline takes a wrong turn in a bad neighborhood.	Sep. 7, 2015	33 p
• Caroline IX • Louis VIII	Caroline covers up an inconvenient sin. Lou offers guidance to a fledgling in need.	Sep. 8, 2015	12 p
• Emmett VIII	Beset with crushing medical and legal debt, Em strikes a devil’s bargain with the Dixie Mafia.	Sep. 10, 2015	7 p
• Louis IX	Lou reunites with an old flame and confronts a wrathful loa.	Sep. 8, 2015	24 p
• Caroline X	Caroline swears a desperate oath and meets a friendly face among the Damned.	Sep. 8, 2015	41 p
• Emmett IX	Em faces sentencing for his latest misdeeds.	Sep. 11, 2015	4 p
• Louis X	Lou races against time to save a stubborn mambo’s life.	Sep. 8, 2015	5 p
• Caroline XI	Caroline deals with a home invasion, learns an abject lesson in how little her pride sells for, and witlessly crosses a perilous boundary.	Sep. 9, 2015	33 p
• Emmett X • Mouse I	Em pins his trust on a desperate hope. Mouse helps out a ‘friend’ in need.	Sep. 13, 2015	6 p
• Louis XI	Lou recovers from his previous night’s ordeals and delivers a soul-wrenching apology.	Sep. 9, 2015	23 p
• Adelais I • Caroline XII	Adelais gives a neonate some lessons in etiquette. Caroline faces a regent’s wrath.	Sep. 10, 2015	21 p
• Emmett XI	A lifetime of lies comes crashing down as Em graples over whether to do the unthinkable: tell the truth.	Sep. 13, 2015	10 p
• Caroline XIII	Caroline frantically tries to stop the Masquerade from unraveling as her mortal loved ones grow too curious for their own good.	Sep. 10, 2015	24 p
• Louis XII	Bereft of allies and options, Lou agrees to a reluctant meeting with the enemies of his enemies.	Sep. 9, 2015	13 p
• Adelais II • Caroline XIV • Lavine I • Rocco I	Caroline acts fast to protect her loved ones from their exposure to the Kindred world, but finds the price of their safety may be all-too high. Adelais and Lavine puts in apearances at Elysium. Rocco cleans up a neonate’s Masquerade breach.	Sep. 11, 2015	22 p
• Emmett XII	Em accepts his fate.	Sep. 13, 2015	3 p
• Louis XIII	Lou seeks out a long-dead fortune teller for counsel over his ominous new affliction.	Sep. 9, 2015	22 p
• Caroline XV • Rocco II	Caroline sacrifices a friendship to save a life. Rocco helps teach a neonate a needed lesson.	Sep. 11, 2015	28 p
• Louis Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Sep. 10, 2015	2 p
• Emmett Epilogue	Em adjusts to his new life behind bars.	Sep. 14, 2015	8 p

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Interlude

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Mouse I	Mouse witlessly crosses a perilous line.	Sep. 13, 2015	14 p
• George I	George shares a devastating secret with Antoine Savoy.	Sep. 10, 2015	16 p

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Story Four

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Micheal Prelude	An accounting of what has come before.	Jan. 26, 1885	48 p
• Caroline I • Louis I	Caroline tempts a witless soul into damnation. Lou tells off a high-profile client.	Sep. 11, 2015	21 p
• Micheal I	Micheal rallies suport against an elder who’s gone too far.	Sep. 10, 2015	12 p
• Caroline II • Louis II	Caroline repeats an awful sin. Lou settles for losing slowly and stalks a witless pawn.	Sep. 12, 2015	23 p
• Micheal II	Micheal barters with Clan Nosferatu for secrets.	Sep. 10, 2015	10 p
• Annabelle I • Caroline III	Annabelle plays hostess to some neonates. Caroline clashes with a rival coterie through mortal proxies and shares a bitter drink with her mortal brother.	Sep. 12, 2015	36 p
• Micheal III	Micheal makes an impossible choice between his family and his ideals.	Sep. 10, 2015	20 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline orchestrates a two-pronged hit to reclaim a kidnaped friend, but finds she may be no less a monster.	Sep. 13, 2015	26 p
• Micheal IV	Micheal attempts to sway an intransigent Malkavian.	Sep. 11, 2015	5 p
• Caroline V	Caroline saves a servant and loses a friend.	Sep. 13, 2015	23 p
• Cletus I • Micheal V	Cletus tests the loyalties of Antoine Savoy’s new ‘ally’. Micheal goes on an alligator hunt with Cletus, only to find his remaining humanity may be the Giovannini’s true quarry.	Sep. 11, 2015	11 p
• Caroline VI	Caroline watches a budding romance bloom full flower.	Sep. 14, 2015	22 p
• Cletus II • Micheal VI	Cletus and Micheal go hunting for the biggest alligator in the swamp: the Great Honky.	Sep. 11, 2015	8 p
• Caroline VII	Caroline clashes with some twice-slighted rivals for a final time—and the hands behind them.	Sep. 14, 2015	21 p
• Cletus III • Micheal VII	Micheal attends a birthday party thrown by Cletus’ cannibalistic redneck descendants. Cletus shows his guest the full measure of Southern hospitality.	Sep. 11, 2015	22 p
• Caroline VIII	Caroline interrogates an unexpected captive and tempts a second soul into damnation.	Sep. 15, 2015	34 p
• Cletus IV • Micheal VIII • Rocco I	Micheal loses more than time at the Boggs’ hands. Cletus celebrates some unexpected nuptials. Rocco issues a warning to a defiant Anarch.	Sep. 13, 2015	15 p
• Caroline IX • Louis III	Caroline severs another tie to her mortal past. Lou sets out to bring a criminal to justice.	Sep. 16, 2015	11 p
• Rocco II	Rocco passes on some unexpected news to an elder Brujah.	Sep. 13, 2015	6 p
• Micheal IX	The Boggs cross a red line with Micheal.	Sep. 13, 2015	15 p
• Caroline X • Louis IV	Caroline gets drawn into a perilous game of cat and mouse with her sire. Lou gambles centuries of anonymity over a secret that could change everything.	Sep. 16, 2015	28 p
• Rocco III	Rocco plays a game of cat and mouse with an intransigent harpy.	Sep. 14, 2015	11 p
• Cletus V • Micheal X	Starving, wounded and out of options, Micheal turns to a seeming friend for aid—only to set and spring a trap of his own making. Cletus exacts vengeance upon a treacherous guest.	Sep. 14, 2015	8 p
• Caroline XI • Louis V	Caroline faces aprehension for her crimes. Lou takes a once-inconceivable risk.	Sep. 16, 2015	12 p
• Cletus Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Sep. 14, 2015	5 p
• Louis VI	Having exposed his centuries-hidden identity on Caroline’s behalf, Lou withdraws deep into hiding and seeks out an old teacher’s aid.	Sep. 16, 2015	33 p
• Caroline Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Sep. 16, 2015	4 p

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Interlude

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Louis I • Rocco I	An old man tries to save a young boy from sin.	Apr. 10, 1888	26 p
• Micheal I	Bested but not broken by his captors, Micheal holds out for as long as he can.	Sep. 14, 2015	4 p
• Cletus I	Cletus disciplines a wayward childe.	Sep. 14, 2015	4 p

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Story Five

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Cletus I • Micheal I	Cletus strikes a new accord with Antoine Savoy. Micheal attempts to make right past wrongs.	Sep. 15, 2015	15 p
• Jacob Prelude I	Jacob suffers for a forbidden love.	June 15, 1873	15 p
• Lavine I	Lavine plumbs the centuries-old journals of Pierre d’Iberville, founder of New Orleans, to uncover an even older mystery.	Sep. 11, 2015	12 p
• Cletus II • Rocco I	Rocco baits a trap to ensare his new foes. Cletus defends his domain from a dangerous intruder.	Sep. 16, 2015	14 p
• Jacob Prelude II	Jacob makes a devil’s deal for vengeance.	Nov. 11, 1880	8 p
• Lavine II	Lavine runs into several unpleasant reminders of her mortal past and butts heads with a dogged cop.	Sep. 12, 2015	22 p
• Cletus III • Rocco II	Cletus interrogates his new prisoner. Rocco holds out for as long as he can.	Sep. 16, 2015	10 p
• Jacob I	Jacob comes to New Orleans and receives an unfriendly welcome.	Nov. 12, 1880	18 p
• Lavine III	Lavine journeys beyond New Orleans to seek the wisdom of kowi anukasha, a native spirit of her people.	Sep. 12, 2015	8 p
• Cletus IV • Rocco III	Cletus continues to enjoy himself. Physically and mentally broken by torture, Rocco entertains a duplicitous offer to yet serve his prince.	Sep. 17, 2015	15 p
• Jacob II	Jacob tries to find a place for himself in a friendless city.	July 8, 1916	24 p
• Lavine IV	Lavine receives a chilling reminder why her race keeps to the cities.	Sep. 12, 2015	5 p
• Cletus V	Cletus prepares a lavish party to host the Camarila’s diplomats, but discovers several flies in his ointment.	Sep. 17, 2015	17 p
• Jacob III	Jacob deals with some hunters.	July 13, 1916	14 p
• Annabelle I	Annabelle aproaches the Ventrue elder John Harley Matheson over a matter of mutual aid, only to find she has struck a devil’s bargain and must immediately pay its price.	Sep. 17, 2015	6 p
• Jacob IV • Lavine V	Lavine faces arrest by mortal authorities and assumes a grave new responsibility. Jacob welcomes a new addition to his ‘family’.	Sep. 13, 2015	6 p
• Cletus VI	Reeling from a series of new disasters, Cletus shows his mortal descendants the terrible price for disobedience.	Sep. 18, 2015	18 p
• Baptiste I • Lavine VI	Baptiste offers succor to a wounded soul. Lavine searches for sacrifices to placate a demanding spirit, only to make one of herself as well.	Sep. 14, 2015	26 p
• Annabelle II • Louis I	Annabelle seeks out an unlikely source of aid. Lou goes against his better judgment to help out a lady in trouble.	Sep. 18, 2015	19 p
• Baptiste II	Baptiste perfects Clan Nosferatu’s underground defenses and trades secrets with his overly affectionate sire.	Sep. 18, 2015	13 p
• Cletus VII • Jacob V • Lavine VII	Seizing advantage of the conflict among the Circle’s Acolytes, Cletus puts his own pawns into play. Jacob gets in over his head rushing to a distressed ally’s rescue. Lavine turns to the despicable Doc Xola for help with a kidnaping, only to rapidly find his monstrosity too much to bear.	Sep. 19, 2015	12 p
• Baptiste III	Baptiste offers salvation and damnation to a wayward soul and commits himself to a grave new mission.	Sep. 18, 2015	11 p
• Jacob VI	Jacob pleas for his wife’s existence before a pitiless judge.	Sep. 19, 2015	4 p
• Annabelle III • Louis II	Annabelle plots revenge against those who have wronged her. Lou cases an old murder for new answers.	Sep. 18, 2015	22 p
• Baptiste IV	Baptiste puts into motion a bold plan: the infiltration of Perdido House, seat of Prince Vidal’s power.	Sep. 19, 2015	9 p
• Cletus VIII • Jacob VII	Cletus receives an early guest to his soiree. Jacob is called upon to provide a sorcerous consultation.	Sep. 19, 2015	10 p
• Baptiste Epilogue	Baptiste faces the consequences of his actions.	Sep. 19, 2015	5 p
• Annabelle IV • Cletus IX • Jacob VIII	Annabelle presents Cletus with an unorthodox gift. Cletus graciously receives his soiree’s guests and shares an enlightening carriage ride with a disembodied elder. Jacob summons a restless spirit to learn of an ominous intrusion.	Sep. 19, 2015	27 p
• Annabelle V • Cletus X • Jacob IX	Annabelle searches for allies among the soiree’s attendees. Cletus plies his charms upon his guests and pits the Camarilla against Clan Giovannini in a game of symbolic egg paquing.	Sep. 20, 2015	30 p
• Annabelle VI • Cletus XI • Jacob X	Annabelle attempts to thwart an assassin’s attack. Cletus moves to conclude his prolix diplomatic deal with the Camarilla, but looming specters threaten to throw all into chaos. Temporarily banished from his domain, Jacob makes provisions for the care of his children and witlessly invites a monster into his home.	Sep. 20, 2015	11 p
• Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Sep. 20, 2015	4 p

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Interlude

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• George I	George dreams.	Sep. 10, 2015	2 p

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Story Six

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• George I	George enlists legal counsel for his upcoming trial.	Sep. 19, 2015	8 p
• Mouse I	Mouse enlists dubious help to navigate New Orleans’ criminal justice system.	Sep. 17, 2015	8 p
• Caroline I	Caroline deals with a truculent prisoner.	Sep. 16, 2015	27 p
• Mouse II	Mouse faces sentence for his inadvertent crimes.	Sep. 17, 2015	11 p
• Caroline II	Caroline deals with a long-postponed threat to her personal Masquerade.	Sep. 17, 2015	29 p
• Mouse III	Mouse finds himself in dire new financial straits.	Sep. 17, 2015	10 p
• Caroline III	Caroline confronts a dangerous intruder in her haven.	Sep. 17, 2015	20 p
• Mouse IV	Mouse becomes a MeVid sensation.	Sep. 17, 2015	11 p
• Caroline IV • Mouse V	Caroline punishes a wayward sinner. Mouse endeavors to prove his innocence before two stone-hearted judges.	Sep. 17, 2015	14 p
• Mouse VI	Less than twenty-four hours after his release from jail, Mouse witlessly lands himself in further trouble with the Big Easy’s police.	Sep. 18, 2015	11 p
• Caroline V	Caroline loses a friend and entertains a cautious offer from a powerful new patron.	Sep. 18, 2015	29 p
• Mouse VII	Mouse faces judgment and sentencing for his newest and even more inadvertent crimes.	Sep. 21, 2015	7 p
• Caroline VI	Caroline receives some sorely-needed lessons in Kindred etiquette.	Sep. 18, 2015	31 p
• Mouse VIII	Mouse arrives in his new home.	Sep. 21, 2015	4 p
• Caroline VII • Louis I	Caroline discovers a damning secret. A wanted man braves too-familiar danger to aid a fledgling in need.	Sep. 19, 2015	25 p
• Mouse IX	Mouse hits rock bottom.	Sep. 21, 2015	11 p
• Caroline VIII	Caroline is called to account for her actions and learns a shattering revelation.	Sep. 19, 2015	56 p
• Mouse X	Mouse makes his final stand.	Sep. 22, 2015	5 p
• Caroline IX	Caroline grants a faithful servant her final reward.	Sep. 20, 2015	43 p
• Mouse Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Sep. 22, 2015	14 p
• Caroline X • Cletus I • George II • Rocco I	Caroline comes face to face with her true maker. Cletus makes a trip out to the big city. George betrays two clanmates. Rocco pulls some strings to acquire a new pawn.	Sep. 20, 2015	38 p
• Caroline XI • Cletus II • George III	Cletus hatches a plan to avenge past slights. George is charged with blasphemy against the Lancea et Sanctum.	Sep. 20, 2015	44 p
• Cletus III • George IV	Cletus develops a newfound apreciation for the arts. George clashes with New Orleans’ dreaded scourge and pledges loyalty to a new cause and patron.	Sep. 20, 2015	45 p
• Caroline XII • Jacob I • Rocco II	Caroline presents herself before her clanmates. Jacob and his fellow accused face Prince Vidal’s final judgment for their crimes. Rocco invites a neonate to a party.	Sep. 21, 2015	34 p

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Story Seven

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline I	Caroline reminisces over what might (and could never) have been.	Sep. 22, 2015	27 p
• Isa Prelude	Isa tries to save two brothers.	May 12, 2001	15 p
• Caroline II	Caroline receives a rude awakening and enjoys the hospitality of a powerful new patron.	Sep. 23, 2015	21 p
• Isa I	Isa dies in a bathroom.	Dec. 3rd, 2011	19 p
• Caroline III • Rocco I	Caroline attends a tediously necessary social function. Rocco entertains a party of neonates.	Sep. 23, 2015	20 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline faces a bitter preview of her Requiem ahead.	Sep. 24, 2015	15 p
• Isa II	Isa walks a social tightrope at Elysium.	Jan. 9, 2012	12 p
• Caroline V	Caroline attends a family funeral.	Sep. 30, 2015	10 p
• Isa III • Rocco II	Rocco raids a lawbreaker’s haven. Isa sells out a faithless ‘benefactor’.	Jan. 9, 2012	13 p
• Caroline VI	Caroline works to engender herself to her discerning clanmates.	Oct. 4, 2015	38 p
• Rocco III	Rocco collects an owed debt and receives a concerning warning about his new tenant.	Sep. 14, 2015	14 p
• Caroline VII	Caroline sees to her mortal affairs and attempts to set right some old wrongs.	Oct. 7, 2015	24 p
• Milo Prelude • Louis I	Milo loses a brother.	July 13, 2002	13 p
• Caroline VIII	Caroline attempts to mend relations with a former adversary.	Oct. 11, 2015	14 p
• Rocco IV	A gathering of old friends goes awry as Rocco plays a game of scopa for answers as to a former coterie-mate’s past.	Sep. 25, 2015	17 p
• Caroline IX • Emmett I	Caroline frames an old patsy for a new crime. Em takes a trip outside the Farm.	Oct. 14, 2015	32 p
• Milo I	Milo deals with a bizarre home invasion.	Dec. 8, 2015	11 p
• Caroline X • Rocco V	Caroline and Rocco look into a missing neonate.	Sep. 25, 2015	88 p
• Milo II	Milo attempts to brighten his spirits among friends and strangers.	Dec. 9, 2015	20 p
• Caroline XI	Caroline attempts to help an amnesiac solve her own disapearance to make inroads with the city’s Anarchs.	Oct. 7, 2015	63 p
• Milo III	Milo pays a visit to what’s left of his father.	Dec. 9, 2015	14 p
• Caroline XII	Caroline investigates the circumstances of her still-mysterious Embrace.	Oct. 13, 2015	42 p
• Caroline XIII	Caroline displays the fruits of her agoge before Clan Ventrue.	Oct. 19, 2015	15 p
• Arthur I • Caroline XIV	Arthur prepares a lavish banquet for some demanding patrons. Caroline attends a celebratory dinner.	Nov. 27, 2015	40 p
• Caroline XV	Caroline receives a mother’s gratitude—and rich rewards long overdue.	Dec. 4, 2015	23 p
• Milo IV	Milo receives a warning from an anonymous benefactor and braves the darkness to take the fight to his tormentors.	Dec. 9, 2015	12 p
• Caroline XVI	Caroline discovers a terrible danger waiting in the wings.	Dec. 4, 2015	39 p
• Caroline XVII • Rocco VI	Caroline navigates a perilous web of diplomacy and deceit. Rocco deals with an attack upon his domain.	Dec. 16, 2015	38 p
• Caroline XVIII	Caroline learns the truth of her Embrace at long last.	Jan. 9, 1815	46 p

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Interlude

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline I	Caroline gets into a bitter family argument.	Dec. 17, 2015	29 p
• Caroline II	Caroline makes some acquintances at Elysium.	Dec. 18, 2015	39 p
• Caroline III	Caroline celebrates a birthday.	Dec. 19, 2015	46 p

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Story Eight

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Arthur I • Emmett I	Arthur dances an evening away. Emmett sets his eye on a new conquest.	Sep. 7, 2007	16 p
• Adelais I	A heartless art critic discovers her true calling.	Jan. 5, 1870	30 p
• Emmett II	Emmett snares the object of his lusts with sweet words—and finds himself ensnared in turn.	Sep. 7, 2007	19 p
• Emmett III	Emmett resolves to make a movie and gets in over his head.	Sep. 10, 2007	14 p
• Arthur II • Emmett IV	Arthur hits on a new acquaintance. Emmett makes a long-planned romantic move.	Sep. 11, 2007	17 p
• Emil I • Emmett V	Emil auditions for a movie. Emmett reviews a script that cuts too close to home.	Sep. 15, 2007	26 p
• Adelais II	Adelais reaches an accord over a prosperous new domain.	Feb. 27, 1975	p
• Emil II	Emil digs up old graves for answers into his father’s past.	Sep. 22, 2007	17 p
• Emmett VI	Emmett meets the girl he deserves.	Sep. 22, 2007	24 p
• Adelais III	An icy-tempered harpy enjoys her Requiem’s spoils.	July 14, 2015	3 p
• Emil III • Emmett VII	Past becomes present as Emil relives a horrific memory. Emmett helps a man in need.	Sep. 26, 2007	19 p
• Emil IV	Emil deals with inquisitive police—and parents—in the hospital.	Sep. 26, 2007	22 p
• Emmett VIII	Emmett gets even like never before.	Sep. 26, 2007	56 p
• Emil V	Emil foretells a dire prophecy.	Sep. 26, 2007	34 p
• Emmett IX	Emmett walks into a lion’s den.	Sep. 27, 2007	39 p
• Emil VI	Emil’s parents try to outrun his past.	Sep. 29, 2007	27 p
• Emmett X	Emmett comes to a final understanding with his parents.	Sep. 28, 2007	18 p
• Emil VII	Emil peers upon a foreboding future.	Sep. 30, 2007	16 p
• Adelais IV	Adelais places a “friendly” wager with her brutal paramour.	Sep. 15, 2015	5 p
• Emil VIII • Emmett XI	Emil places his faith in a faithless man. Emmett gets some much-needed legal representation.	Oct. 6, 2007	17 p
• Emil IX	Emil comes home.	Oct. 6, 2007	35 p
• Emmett Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Oct. 6, 2007	44 p

---

Story Nine

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Jon I	Jon touches down in Vienna and receives a new mission.	Feb. 3, 2016	23 p
• Emmett I	Emmett is executed for his crimes by the state of Louisiana.	Jan. 5, 2016	13 p
• Amelie I	Amelie awakens from a coma into a nightmare.	Unknown	8 p
• Emil I	Emil’s troubles follow him to L.A.	Oct. 16, 2007	21 p
• Jon II	Jon uncovers an alarming security breach among Clan Tremere’s secret police.	Feb. 4, 2016	14 p
• Amelie II • Emmett II	Amelie explores new realms beyond her darkest imaginings. Emmett faces his afterlife.	Unknown	24 p
• Emil II	Emil accepts a devil’s bargain.	Unknown	18 p
• Jon III	Jon plays an unseen game of cat and mouse with a justicar’s agents.	Feb. 5, 2016	11 p
• Emmett III	Emmett faces judgment for his past sins.	Unknown	13 p
• Amelie III	Amelie reunites with an old enemy.	Unknown	16 p
• Emil III	Emil settles in to his aparent new life.	Oct. ?, 2007	21 p
• Jon IV	Jon reminds a long-time servant of her place.	Feb. 6, 2016	19 p
• Emmett IV	Emmett trades a tale for a tale.	Unknown	11 p
• Amelie IV	Amelie gets in trouble with the law over a falsified crime.	Unknown	14 p
• Emil IV	Emil erects the first block in his transyphysical tower.	Oct. 16th	25 p
• Jon V	Dark wings alight upon Jon’s trans-Atlantic plane flight.	Feb. 6, 2016	17 p
• Emmett V	Emmett shares a bitter reunion with his living kin.	Unknown	19 p
• Amelie V	Amelie endures.	Unknown	14 p
• Emil V	Emil journeys into Houston’s labyrinthine underground.	Oct. 17th	23 p
• Jon VI	Jon says a bittersweet farewell.	Feb. 7, 2016	11 p
• Emmett VI	Emmett faces imprisonment by an altogether different manner of gaoler.	Unknown	16 p
• Amelie VI	Amelie begins her jail sentence in Orleans Parish Prison.	Unknown	16 p
• Emil VI	Emil meets a fellow seeker in his quest for knowledge.	Oct. 17th	35 p
• Jon VII	Jon collects his childe and sees to remaining affairs in Seattle.	Feb. 10, 2016	15 p
• Emmett VII	Emmett gets to know his cellmates.	Unknown	18 p
• Amelie VII	Pushed and provoked beyond all endurance, Amelie snaps.	Unknown	18 p
• Emil VII	Emil witensses a hidden wonder.	Oct. 18th	5 p
• Jon VIII • Rocco I	Jon receives a poor welcome in New Orleans. Rocco greets a new arrival to his prince’s city.	Feb. 11, 2016	27 p
• Emmett VIII	Emmett risks all to defy his gaolers.	Unknown	11 p
• Amelie Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass	Unknown	2 p

---

Story Ten

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Celia Prelude I	Celia celebrates the worst birthday ever.	July 17, 1997	24 p
• Celia Prelude II	Celia learns to pretend.	Nov. 16, 2003	27 p
• Celia I	Celia meets a boy and takes her first step outside her father’s control.	June 24, 2008	36 p
• Celia II • Emmett I	Celia tries to introduce her new boyfriend to her dysfunctional family. Em submits to his latest indignity as a prostitute.	Nov. 10, 2008	35 p
• Celia III	Celia resolves to stop suffering in silence.	Nov. 24, 2008	25 p
• Celia IV • Emmett II	Celia trades her dignity to provide for her mother. Em fans a spark of rebellion.	Nov. 26, 2008	28 p
• Celia V	Celia meets her boyfriend’s family and meets her biological father.	Dec. 10, 2008	24 p
• Celia VI	Celia finds some unexpected financial help.	Dec. 16, 2008	35 p
• Celia VII	Celia dares to challenge her father.	Dec. 18, 2008	34 p
• Caroline I • Celia VIII • Emmett III	Caroline helps her father clean up a mess. Celia works to extricate her family from their father’s grasp. Emmett makes a helpful introduction.	Mar. 31, 2009	39 p
• Celia IX • Emmett IV	Celia looks for love in all the wrong places. Em tries to do the right thing without it backfiring.	Mar. 31, 2009	42 p
• Celia X • Emil I • Emmett V	Celia tries to keep her family safe from an abuser. Em tries to give some good advice for once. Emil cultivates an investment.	Apr. 1, 2009	34 p
• Celia XI • Emmett VI	Celia chooses between a mother and friend in need. Em plans to take down a bastard in need of taking down.	Apr. 1, 2009	28 p
• Celia XII • Emmett VII	Celia makes a devil’s bargain. Em finds no good deed goes ununpunished.	Apr. 1, 2009	32 p
• Celia XIII • Emil II • Emmett VIII	Celia watches a loved one pay the price for a fateful choice. Emil and Emmett try to offer what comfort they can.	Apr. 2, 2009	34 p
• Celia XIV	Celia comes face to face with the monster under the bed.	Apr. 2, 2009	18 p
• Emil III • Emmett IX	Emil and Emmett run for their lives with a tape that may decide everything.	Apr. 2, 2009	20 p
• Emil IV	Emil flees from an unstopable foe.	Apr. 2, 2009	2 p
• Celia XV	Celia decides between fortune and family.	Apr. 2, 2009	34 p
• Celia XVI	Celia confronts her sire.	Apr. 3, 2009	34 p
• Celia XVII • Emmett X	Celia reaches a bitter accord. Emmett tries to just go home.	Apr. 2, 2009	30 p

---

Story Eleven

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline I	Caroline comes to a reckoning with her mortal family.	Dec. 17, 2015	28 p
• Jon I	Jon reunites with an old friend and colleague.	Feb. 11, 2016	29 p
• Celia I	Celia settles in to her existence among the Damned.	Apr. 8, 2009	26 p
• Caroline II	Caroline deals with her disownment.	Dec. 23, 2015	28 p
• Jon II	Jon and another old friend educate a fledgling.	Feb. 11, 2016	37 p
• Celia II	Celia runs into some unexpected reminders from her old life.	Aug. 29, 2010	23 p
• Caroline III	Caroline celebrates a Christmas Eve unlike any other.	Dec. 24, 2015	21 p
• Amelie I	Free from Orleans Parish Prison, Amelie reckons with her all-too abrupt damnation.	Unknown	25 p
• Celia III	Celia prepares for a child’s birth and celebrates a cheerless Christmas.	Jan. 2, 2015	16 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline sees to her myriad affairs.	Dec. 26, 2015	53 p
• Celia IV	Celia allows herself to be used.	Jan. 1, 2010	53 p
• Adelais I • Caroline V • Isa I • Jon III • Rocco I	The city’s Kindred converge upon Elysium—and find much spectacle in a disorderly guest.	Feb. 11, 2016	67 p
• Celia V	Celia breaks a defiant soul and makes a new ally.	Apr. 6, 2010	63 p
• Rocco II	Rocco nurses his wounds and plots a comeback.	Feb. 13, 2016	15 p
• Caroline VI • Isa II	Caroline looks for a long-found missing person. Isa learns a brother’s fate.	Feb. 16, 2016	22 p
• Celia VI	Celia tries to rekindle an old flame.	July 20, 2012	44 p
• Amelie II • Caroline VII	Amelie makes a grisly sacrifice for a new benefactor. Caroline deals with a disobedient servant.	Feb. 20, 2016	31 p
• Jon IV	Jon investigates a traitorous clanmate’s haven.	Feb. 12, 2016	20 p
• Amelie III • Caroline VIII	Amelie comes to a second rude awakening. Caroline curries favor with a primogen.	Feb. 20, 2016	21 p
• Celia VII	Celia confesses to an old betrayal.	July 26, 2012	42 p
• Jon V	Jon twists a seeming faux pas to his advantage and pays a visit to an old friend’s childer.	Feb. 12, 2016	18 p
• Amelie IV • Caroline IX	Amelie tries to learn more about what she is. Caroline shows a new fledgling the ropes.	Feb. 20, 2016	19 p
• Celia VIII	Celia takes an auspicious spa client.	Sep. 2, 2015	31 p
• Jon VI	Jon plumbs a renegade clanmate’s secret journals.	Feb. 12, 2016	17 p
• Amelie V • Rocco III	Amelie is presented before the seneschal. Rocco takes an interest in an abandoned fledgling.	Feb. 20, 2016	19 p
• Caroline X	Caroline seeks out lost souls and tries to apease an affronted elder.	Feb. 20, 2016	33 p
• Celia IX	Celia seeks out a faerie.	Dec. 7, 2015	39 p
• Amelie Epilogue	A final accounting of what has come to pass.	Feb. 20, 2016	2 p
• Caroline XI	Someone close asks Caroline to cover up an unspeakable crime.	Feb. 29, 2016	55 p
• Jon VII	Jon investigates a clanmate’s attack and a faithful ghoul’s more esoteric discoveries.	Feb. 13, 2016	15 p
• Caroline XII	Caroline prunes a poisoned tree, looks for love where she can find it, and uncovers a primogen’s treachery.	Feb. 29, 2016	62 p
• Jon VIII	Jon agrees to perform the surgery of a lifetime.	Feb. 13, 2016	18 p
• Caroline XIII	Caroline comes to a final reckoning with her mortal mother and a long-hated foe.	Mar. 1, 2016	21 p
• Celia IX • Jon IX	Celia plies her charms upon a potential new patron. Jon tests a promising neonate.	Feb. 13, 2016	17 p
• Caroline XIV	Caroline settles in among her new family.	Mar. 6, 2016	29 p
• Celia X	Estrellado finds a new lover.	Mar. 1, 2016	49 p
• Caroline XV	Caroline crosses her Rubicon.	Mar. 8, 2016	18 p
• Jon Epilogue	Jon is recalled from New Orleans to deal with a new emergency.	Feb. 15, 2016	1 p
• Caroline XVI	Caroline confronts her sire—her true sire—and meets her destiny.	Mar. 7, 2016	40 p

---

Story Twelve

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline I	Caroline brings a dead woman back to life.	Mar. 7, 2016	48 p
• Emmett I	Em gets acquainted with his band of fellow escapees.	Unknown	20 p
• Celia I	Celia reminds her servants of their place.	Mar. 4, 2016	30 p
• Caroline II	Caroline deals with another disobedient servant.	Mar. 7, 2016	25 p
• Emmett II	Em catches up with an old girlfriend.	Unknown	16 p
• Celia II	Celia drinks from the wrong vessel before a poorly-timed family dinner.	Mar. 6, 2016	28 p
• Caroline III	Caroline attempts to enjoy a peaceful day with her new family.	Mar. 7, 2016	72 p
• Emmett III • Lamarck I	Em spies on a vampire and encounters a helpful soul in the Underworld. Lam finds some rubes to con.	Unknown	31 p
• Celia III	Celia takes up the Nosferatu on a dare.	Mar. 6, 2016	18 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline balances her new duties with increasingly unanswerable personal demands.	Mar. 7, 2016	35 p
• Emmett IV	Emmett graples with his Shadow and spies on his ex-lover.	Unknown	18 p
• Celia IV	Celia tries to smooth things over with her mortal family.	Mar. 7, 2016	36 p
• Caroline V	Caroline contends with the sheriff to sway her sire’s increasingly unstable rule.	Mar. 8, 2016	27 p
• Emmett V	Weary of fighting his dark side, Em strikes an accord with an even greater evil.	Unknown	13 p
• Caroline VI	Caroline stages a mother’s death.	Mar. 9, 2016	52 p
• Celia V	Celia wakes up kidnaped.	Mar. 8, 2016	23 p
• Caroline VII • Emmett VI	Caroline evaluates a new asset. Em forgives an old sin.	Mar. 9, 2016	30 p
• Celia VI • Emmett VII	Em and Celia dance through a shared dream.	Mar. 8, 2016	20 p
• Celia VII	Celia interrogates a truculent prisoner.	Mar. 8, 2016	42 p
• Ayame Prelude	Ayame suffers under a cruel domitor.	Nov. 11, 2009	13 p
• Celia VIII	Celia lets her hair down at one of the French Quarter lord’s infamous revels.	Mar. 8, 2016	41 p
• Emmett VIII	Em hunts for souls.	Unknown	15 p
• Celia IX	Celia says a surprisingly easy goodbye.	Mar. 9, 2016	24 p
• Caroline VIII • Celia X	A children’s playdate turns perilous as Celia reveals her true identity to a dangerous party.	Mar. 9, 2016	59 p
• Celia XI	Celia digs into the past with her mortal mother.	Mar. 9, 2016	28 p
• Ayame I • Celia XII	Ayame tries to avert a massacre of the city’s thin-bloods. Celia tries to lure an older lover back into her arms.	Dec. 4, 2011	47 p
• Caroline IX	Caroline travels beyond the Crescent City to meet one of the rare few Kindred to enjoy its seneschal’s trust.	Mar. 9, 2016	36 p
• Celia XIII	Celia reconnects with her one-time paramour.	Mar. 9, 2016	61 p
• Ayame II	Ayame reaches an arrangement with an unexpected contact.	Mar. 10, 2016	p
• Celia XIV	Celia receives a dire mission from her sire.	Mar. 10, 2016	61 p
• Caroline X	Caroline battles a Sabbat pack.	Mar. 9, 2016	23 p
• Celia XV • Emmett IX	Celia deals with some unexpected daytime intruders. Em collects a few more souls.	Mar. 10, 2016	23 p
• Caroline XI	Caroline seals a pact in blood.	Mar. 9, 2016	19 p
• Celia XVI	Celia runs into an unwelcome figure from her past.	Mar. 10, 2016	39 p
• Emmett X	Em hits a potential jackpot.	Unknown	26 p
• Celia XVII	Celia deliberates what to do about hunters and her mother’s new infatuation.	Mar. 10, 2016	55 p
• Caroline XII	Caroline welcomes a visiting elder to Cairo.		12 p
• Celia XVIII • Emmett XI	Celia seeks advice over a soul-eater. Em halfheartedly hopes for forgiveness.	Mar. 10, 2016	51 p
• Celia XIX	Celia puts in an apearance at Elysium.	Mar. 11, 2016	56 p
• Emmett XII • Lamarck II	Emmett commits his greatest transgression yet.	Unknown	35 p
• Caroline XIII	Caroline meets hew new mother’s sister and considers a marriage proposal.	Mar. 11, 2016	29 p
• Celia XX	Celia shepherds a fledgling into the night.	Mar. 11, 2016	55 p
• Caroline XIV	Caroline’s mother teaches her a horrifying lesson.	Mar. 12, 2016	41 p
• Emmett XIII	Emmett prepares to receive his heart’s desire.	Unknown	9 p
• Celia XXI	Celia hears the last words she ever expected to from an estranged relative.	Mar. 12, 2016	64 p
• Emmett XIV	Emmett battles his Shadow to the death for the ultimate prize.	Unknown	27 p
• Caroline XV	Caroline faces an assassination attempt aiding a clanmate in need.	Mar. 12, 2016	58 p
• Celia XXII	Celia breaks some surprising news to her family.	Mar. 12, 2016	45 p
• Emmett XV	Emmett is reborn.	Unknown	9 p
• Caroline XVI	Caroline interrogates a prisoner and attempts to secure new swords in her upcoming battle.	Mar. 13, 2016	40 p
• Celia XXIII	Celia takes a new lover.	Mar. 12, 2016	46 p
• Ayame III	Ayame gets asked for inconvenient help.	Mar. 10, 2016	6 p
• Celia XXIV	Celia weaves new intrigues with her grandsire.	Mar. 13, 2016	37 p
• Celia XXV • Emmett XVI	Emmett gets a new face.	Mar. 13, 2016	19 p
• Caroline XVI • Celia XXVII	Caroline and Celia share a moment with one of the few Kindred to understand them.	Mar. 13, 2016	51 p
• Celia XXVIII	Celia flees a madhouse.	Mar. 13, 2016	21 p
• Emmett XVII	Emmett decides how to spend his new unlife.	Mar. 13, 2016	15 p
• Celia XXIX	Celia her tries to win her sire’s aproval and stop the Masquerade from unraveling around her mortal family.	Mar. 13, 2016	38 p
• Emmett Epilogue	A final accounting of all that has come to pass	Mar. 13, 2016	7 p

---

Story Thirteen

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Celia I	Celia picks up the pieces of a broken Masquerade.	Mar. 13, 2016	41 p
• Genevieve I • Sterling I	Genevieve finds a new domitor. Sterling finds a new conscience.	Feb. 13, 2013	14 p
• Celia II	Celia prepares for possible war.	Mar. 13, 2016	34 p
• Celia III	Celia reunites a brother and sister.	Mar. 13, 2016	59 p
• Genevieve II • Sterling II	Genevieve does her best to please her new master. Sterling rewards and punishes his new conscience.	Feb. 14, 2013	16 p
• Celia IV	Celia breaks in a new ghoul and walks back from a terrible mistake.	Mar. 14, 2016	54 p
• Celia V	Celia attempts to win back an aggrieved friend and cover up a new weakness.	Mar. 14, 2016	55 p
• Genevieve III • Sterling III	Genevieve gets even with an old tormentor. Sterling makes up with his ghoul.	Apr. 17, 2013	14 p
• Celia VI	Celia deals with a spy.	Mar. 15, 2016	43 p
• Celia VII	Celia feeds an alien hunger.	Mar. 15, 2016	89 p
• Genevieve IV • Sterling IV	Genieve urges her domitor to do the right thing. Sterling takes his conscience on a date.	May 15, 2013	13 p
• Celia VIII	Celia prepares to seduce an ex-prince with her new lover.	Mar. 16, 2016	47 p
• Celia IX	Celia meets the luckiest man in New Orleans.	Mar. 16, 2016	36 p
• Genevieve V • Sterling V	Genevieve tries to do the right thing. Sterling pushes the limits of his new conscience.	June 6, 2013	18 p
• Celia X	Celia tries to reconcile two quarreling siblings.	Mar. 16, 2016	65 p
• Celia XI	Celia learns and regrets new truths about her mother and a doll long in her possession.	Mar. 17, 2016	59 p
• Jean-Marc Prelude	Jean-Marc’s sins catch up with him.	Feb. 16, 2016	10 p
• Celia XII	Celia slums it in Rampart Street to question a Quarter rat.	Mar. 17, 2016	53 p
• Celia XIII	Celia takes another lover and gets caught up in a Mafia hit job.	Mar. 18, 2016	52 p
• Jean-Marc I	Jean-Marc entertains an offer to commit his first murder.	Mar. 17, 2016	24 p
• Celia XIV	Celia shatters her paramour’s world with a truth he never wanted to face.	Mar. 18, 2016	38 p
• Celia XV	Celia attempts to comfort a father in his loss.	Mar. 18, 2016	51 p
• Julius I	Julius expels an intruder from his landlord’s domain while grapling with the Beast within.	Feb. 25, 2016	11 p
• Celia XVI	Celia tries to forestall her sire’s wrath with a heart-wrenching sacrifice.	Mar. 18, 2016	41 p
• Celia XVII • Julius II	Celia taunts a sister and seeks out a Malkavian for answers. Julius acquits himself in Elysium despite his clanless blood.	Mar. 18, 2016	61 p
• Louis I	Lou gets back in the game.	Dec. 12, 2015	6 p
• Celia XVIII	Celia’s lover takes charge of their relationship.	Mar. 19, 2016	49 p
• Louis II	Lou torches a vampire and tries to help a weary ghost find peace.	Dec. 12, 2015	21 p
• Celia XIX	Celia searches for answers among licks who can’t or won’t share them.	Mar. 19, 2016	33 p
• Celia XX	Celia dons a familiar mask as she submits to another abuser.	Mar. 19, 2016	57 p
• Louis III	Lou inducts another hunter into the Vigil.	Dec. 12, 2015	14 p
• Celia XXI	Celia helps her mother forgive her other personality’s misdeeds.	Mar. 19, 2016	45 p
• Celia XXII • Cletus I • Julius III	Celia cuts an accord with a Caiiff, reports her findings on some hunters, and enjoys herself at a period party. Cletus spends some time with his famiglia. Julius sells a yacht and makes a fashionable debut to Savoy’s court.	Mar. 19, 2016	56 p
• Louis IV	Lou takes a trip up to the Farm.	Mar. 20, 2016	14 p
• Celia XXIII • Julius IV	Celia reaches an accord with Reynaldo Gui and gets attacked by a vengeful Gangrel. Julius offers some translation help.	Mar. 20, 2016	39 p
• Louis V	Lou asks forgiveness for killing a mother.	Mar. 12, 2015	14 p
• Celia XXIV	Celia faces kidnaping and torture at the Guard de Ville’s hands.	Mar. 20, 2016	45 p
• Caroline I, Celia	Caroline entertains a messenger from her sire’s archrival. Celia makes a cruel point to her other personality’s lover.	Mar. 15, 2016	18 p
• Celia XXV	Celia heals a divided soul.	Mar. 20, 2016	66 p
• Celia XXVI	Celia clashes with the hounds in Elysium to unmask a spy.	Mar. 20, 2016	55 p
• Caroline I • Celia XXVII	Caroline takes an unpleasant phone call. Celia brings another family member in on her secret.	Mar. 21, 2016	69 p
• Celia XXVIII	Roderick gives Celia one last chance to fix their relationship.	Mar. 21, 2016	53 p
• Caroline II	Caroline attempts to reach an accord with her sire’s archrival.	Mar. 17, 2016	21 p
• Celia XXIX	Celia and an ex-lover get even with one another.	Mar. 21, 2016	52 p
• Caroline III	Caroline weighs a marriage proposal in her newfound mission to destroy the sheriff.	Mar. 17, 2016	21 p
• Celia XXX	Celia tempts a once-good man into the blackest of sins.	Mar. 21, 2016	67 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline proves her devotion to her sire’s oldest servant.	Mar. 18, 2016	9 p
• Caroline VI • Celia XXXI	Caroline deigns to help cover up a Masquerade breach. Celia tries to hold her family together against everything tearing their lives apart.	Mar. 22, 2016	62 p
• Celia XXXII	Celia tries to safeguard her sister from exposure to the Kindred world and helps her mother reach an understanding with her other personality.	Mar. 22, 2016	78 p
• Caroline VII • Louis VI	Caroline braves a death trap to retrieve a dead hunter’s secrets. Lou pays an old “friend” an unexpected visit.	Mar. 22, 2016	20 p
• Celia XXXIII	Celia takes out her frustrations on someone weaker after an unfortunate lapse of control.	Mar. 22, 2016	51 p
• Celia XXXIV	Celia tries to patch things up with a furious sister.	Mar. 22, 2016	45 p
• Caroline VIII • Louis VII	Lou and Caroline attempt to reach an accord as a seemingly unstopable foe bears down.	Mar. 23, 2016	36 p
• Celia XXXV	Celia searches for a thin-blooded alchemist.	Mar. 22, 2016	63 p
• Caroline IX • Louis VIII	Lou and Caroline risk all in battle against the deadliest adversary they have yet faced: Donovan, sheriff of New Orleans.	Mar. 23, 2016	33 p
• Celia XXXVI	Celia runs into an old abuser.	Mar. 23, 2016	64 p
• Caroline X	Caroline battles treacherous allies after a fragile coalition crumbles.	Mar. 23, 2016	31 p
• Celia XXXVII	Celia plumbs her sire’s haven for secrets.	Mar. 23, 2016	76 p
• Celia XXXVIII	Celia awakens in a sister’s care and receives a chilly homecoming.	Mar. 23, 2016	23 p
• Epilogue	Seizing advantage of Vidal’s new weakness, Savoy and the Baron launch major offensives into their archrival’s territory.	Mar. 23, 2016	p

---

Story Fourteen

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Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline II • Celia I	Caroline tries to warn a lover away from danger. Celia attends to a battle’s fallen.	Mar. 24, 2016	43 p
• Celia II	Celia searches her father’s house for demonic influence.	Mar. 26, 2016	33 p
• Celia III	Celia exposes an old lie about her paternity.	Mar. 27, 2016	36 p
• Celia IV	Celia operates on her mother’s leg and upholds an unpleasant agreement with an ex.	Mar. 30, 2016	30 p
• Celia V	Celia trains under her sister-in-blood, pays a social call to Pierpont McGinn, and delivers a mother her child’s body.	Mar. 31, 2016	24 p
• Celia VI	Celia takes her mortal sister, disguised as a ghoul, on a “field trip” to experience Kindred society.	Apr. 2, 2016	73 p
• Celia VII	Celia meets a long-estranged aunt and her dead sister’s son.	Apr. 2, 2016	46 p
• Celia VIII		Apr. 5, 2016
• Celia IX	Celia plans her own death.	Apr. 9, 2016	51 p
• Celia X	Celia discovers a group of humans performing blasphemous medical experiments unlike any she’s seen.	Apr. 10, 2016	31 p
• Celia XI	Celia seizes a chance to redeem herself in her grandsire’s eyes by negotiating an accord with a group of hunters.	Apr. 13, 2016	46 p
• Celia XII	Celia seeks out legal counsel from the last person she expected: the spurned ex-lover who was once her everything.	Apr. 15, 2016	55 p
• Celia XIII • Isadora I	Celia smooths over a social worker’s visit to her family. Isadora checks in on a child’s welfare.	Apr. 18, 2016	20 p
• Celia XIV	Celia executes her plot to fake her own death, double-crossing the Guard de Ville in a fradulent hand-off.	Apr. 18, 2016

Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Caroline I	Caroline forges a despicable alliance.	Mar. 23, 2016	15 p
• Caroline II, Celia I	Caroline tries to warn a lover away from danger. Celia attends to a battle’s fallen.
• Caroline III	Caroline buries a casquette girl.		17 p
• Caroline IV	Caroline brings her mortal family under heel.		42 p
• Caroline V	Caroline meets her new confessor and makes inroads with the city’s magi.		22 p
• Caroline VI			18 p
• Caroline VII
• Caroline VIII

Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Jon I	Jon receives a lucrative offer from New Orleans’ seneschal.

Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Nylea Prelude	An accounting of what has come before.		34 p

Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Victoria I	Victoria celebrates Christmas with two families and comes out of the closet to one.	Nov. 23, 2015	14 p
• Victoria II	Victoria plots revenge against the Malveaux family for destroying her partner’s career.	Mar. 14, 2016	23 p
• Victoria III	Victoria purchases a house of sin.	Mar. 29, 2016	26 p
• Victoria IV	Victoria clashes with her mother over her partner’s future.	Apr. 1, 2016	20 p
• Victoria V	Victoria receives a midnight phone call from a client terrified for his life—and soul.	Apr. 4, 2016	16 p
• Victoria VI	Victoria hunts down a lunatic for answers.	Apr. 5, 2016	26 p
• Victoria VII	Victoria deals with a client’s mental breakdown, takes confession with a too-knowing priest, and responds to a home invasion.	Apr. 5, 2016	33 p
• Victoria VIII	Victoria endures a brutal kidnapping and torture.	Apr. 6, 2016	18 p
• Victoria IX	Victoria wakes up a vampire.	Unknown	27 p
• Victoria X	Victoria’s incredulous girlfriend tries to check her in to a psych ward.	Apr. 7, 2016	29 p
• Victoria XI	Victoria learns to hunt on her own and runs into another of her kind.	Apr. 8, 2016	42 p
• Victoria XII	Victoria faces interrogation and imprisonment for her inadvertent crimes.	Apr. 8, 2016	30 p
• Celia IX • Victoria XIII	Celia is called upon to entertain a regent. Victoria is tortured for her transgressions.	Apr. 9, 2016	p

Chapter	Summary	Date	Page Count
• Zoe I	Zoe gets kicked out by her family.	Mar. 30, 2016	26 p
• Zoe II	Zoe finds a place to sleep.	Mar. 30, 2016	34 p
• Zoe III	Zoe finds herself forced into sex work to make ends meet.	Mar. 31, 2016	46 p
• Zoe IV	Zoe gets sent to jail after her doctoral advisor’s demands grow unbearable.	Apr. 1, 2016	42 p
• Celia, Zoe V	Zoe rots in her cell and thinks back to happier times.
• Zoe VI	Starving and dead on her feet after three days in jail, Zoe reunites with her sister.	Apr. 4, 2016

---

Tall Tales & Might-Have-Beens

---

The following logs are not canon. They weren’t played out and are speculative fiction written by the game’s players. Nevertheless, truth may be found in lies, and lies may be found in truth: the “real” logs have misinformation and falsehoods aplenty, while the below logs may contain valid insights into characters’ true selves.

At the end of the night, vampires are a race of liars. Find your version of the truth wherever you can.

By Emily
• Whore: Celia learns her place. Sequel to Celia 10.4.
• Capes: Celia waits for her sire. Sequel to Story Ten.
• Gravestones: Celia pays respects to her lost love. Sequel to Story Ten.
• Monsters and Maidens: Celia’s love takes her as a ghoul. Sequel to Story Ten.
• Wrists: Celia mourns a wedding that can no longer be. Sequel to Story Ten.
• Midnight: Celia celebrates the new year. Sequel to Celia 11.4.
• Rescue: Celia prays for deliverance. Sequel to Celia 12.5.
• Roof: Celia is too late to rescue a loved one. Sequel to Celia 12.14.
• Corrected: Celia’s lover trains out her misbehaviors. Sequel to Celia 13.21.
• The Key: Celia saves herself from an abuser. Sequel to Celia 13.36.

By Sam
• The Tax: Some hapless tourists hope to win big at the casino.

---

“So. Yer the source o’ all this ruckus.”
Pierpont McGinn

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: 4717 St. Charles Avenue is a gigantic 4-story stone mansion with grounds big enough to be a public park. Even on the millionaire’s row that is St. Charles Avenue, the property dwarfs its neighbors. Elevated on an earthen terrace, the two-and-a-half-story house is built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style with warm-hued beige limestone and a red tile roof. The walls themselves are striking, with stones that are coursed but vary in size and surface treatment across the principal facade, whereas the gables, chimneys, and subsidiary walls are laid in random patterns. Across the front, the one-story porch, with a row of wide arches outlined by huge voussoirs and supported on squat columns, provides a deep, shadowy transition from the dazzling marble steps to the interior.

“It’s us,” the still-bleeding man grunts into an intercom. The gate swings open to admit Victoria’s car.

It clangs shut behind.




Grim-looking men lead Victoria through the palatial house. It is easily the most luxuriant property she has ever stepped foot inside. Rare and expensive-looking ‘flame’ mahogany covers the interior, along with antique tapestries, stained glass windows, and mantels that look from the 1700s.


They come to a stop in a luxuriously appointed living room. Richly upholstered, gold-decorated furniture, persian rugs, and classical portraits dominate the surroundings. Two crossed cavalry sabers hang over the empty fireplace, along with the portrait of a dashing, square-jawed, blond-haired man dressed in the gray uniform of a Confederate military officer.

Most prominently displayed is a family tree with names and genealogies that trace all the way back to Caine. It’s a shorter tree than others Victoria has seen, partly because each name only has one rather than two ‘parents’ listed above it. The genealogy (of the house’s master?) proudly traces back,

Pierpont McGinn (e. 1886)
Troy Hansen (e. 1838)
Alejandro Rojas y Batiz (e. 1445, d. 1862)
Decimus Titus Optatus (e. 210 AD, d. 1454)
Etewoklewes (e. 1100 BC, d. 245 AD)
Medon (e. 4000 BC, d. 900 BC)
Ventrue (e. First City, d. Second City)
Enoch (e. First City, d. Second City)
Caine (e. Genesis 4:1)

Victoria: Victoria has known wealth only through her clients. She’s never been to their homes. She’s never met their families. She’s seen their cars; though, only those crass enough to bring their favorite toys to her humble neighborhood.

This?

This is excessive.

It even smells excessive.

The fledgling stops before that family tree, examining it. It only takes her a moment to process the fact that one parent is missing because vampires only require one parents.

Is it pride in his lineage? Or does lineage matter?

Hm.

“Caine… the brother of Abel?”

GM: “I suppose that’s the first thing you haven’t gotten wrong,” says a young woman who strides through the double doors, high heels clicking against the hardwood floors. She’s a slender-figured, blue-eyed strawberry blonde wearing a pale blue dress and pearl necklace. A crow sits perched on her shoulder and caws at Victoria.


Victoria: Her eyes flit to the woman, then the crow, then back. She holds out a hand.

Is that how vampires greet each other?

Is she even a vampire?

GM: The woman stares at Victoria’s hand as if she’s just been offered something dirty.

Victoria’s escorts depart. She is left alone with the woman, who makes no move to speak with her.

Victoria: She drops her hand.

“Are you a vampire?”

GM: The woman inspects her nails.

Victoria: Victoria falls silent, her eyes scraping the walls.

GM: The woman rises and opens the doors. Two figures stride in.

The first is a tall, steel-jawed Southern man with dirty blond hair. His white skin is deathly pale and his chalky blue eyes burn with a predatory intensity. He looks like he smiles a lot, but they feel like hard smiles. Cruel smiles. Smiles like a cobra flaring its hood. He wears an immaculate white seersucker suit and white dress shirt contrasted by a jet black necktie. His gray leather shoes look like the thousand-dollar kind worn by politicians and business executives. A gold Rolex sits snugly around his wrist. He does not walk so much as swagger, lord of all he surveys.

Lots of things give it away. The total lack of heartbeat from his chest, that pumps from the woman’s. The aftershave-like scent of blood. Just the way he looks. The way he carries himself. A wolf among sheep. Those things and a thousand other little things make it instantly apparent to Victoria:

He is… like her.


The other figure, a woman, looks little kinder. She’s just as pale as the man, but with dark hair that makes her deathly complexion stand out all the more. She’s beautiful, with high cheekbones and contemptuous, icy features. Unlike the grinning, swaggering man, the woman’s perfect lips do not look as if they have ever smiled. Her gray eyes survey Victoria like a piece of meat. She wears a slim-fitting but conservative black and gray dress. Jewels, tastefully understated, glint from her throat and ears.


Victoria can instantly tell that the woman, too, is like her.

The man lazily plops down on one of the couches, casually stretching and claiming the entire space. The woman gracefully sits next to him. Very close next to him. She surveys Victoria like the other woman is something unsightly scraped off the bottom of her shoe.

The blonde woman, who Victoria is now positive is not like the other newcomers, stares at her and loftily proclaims,

“Kneel in the presences of the Honorable Lord Pierpont McGinn, earl and regent of Uptown, councilor of the Prima Invicta, commissioner, and fellow of the Most Noble Fellowship of Artemis…"

“…and the Good Lady Adelais Seyrès, viscountess of Magazine Street, councilor of the Prima Invicta, librettist, notary, speaker, harpy, and master of the Guild of Nemesis.”

Victoria: It’s become more apparent to her, that lack of tell-tale thumping in the breast; that herald of warmth and wet and salty-sweet nourishment. One doesn’t often consider a heartbeat. Not beyond close moments with a lover.

The silence is oppressive. She doesn’t need to ask if they’re like her.

Victoria’s eyes flit from the smiling man to a woman who seems to see her as evenly as if she were a smear on her otherwise pristine floor.

She’s like her, too; and yet, nothing like her.

With effort, she keeps her words in check, sealed behind taut lips.

It becomes harder to control at the playwright’s proclamation of a greeting; and yet, they seem quite serious.

They’re just like her; and yet, nothing like her.

This isn’t her New Orleans anymore.

She kneels, dipping her head.

GM: “So,” drawls the man.

Pierpont McGinn, if the woman’s greeting is anything to go by.

“Yer the source o’ all this ruckus.”

The woman—Adelais Seyrès—merely stares at Adelais with a look of icy disdain.

“What’s yer lineage, girl?” asks McGinn.

Victoria: She looks up, but doesn’t rise, meeting his gaze.

“You don’t mean my parents, if I’m to judge by your lineage above.”

A pause.

“I… don’t know.”

GM: Adelais stares at Victoria as if she just confessed that her mother ruts with dogs.

Victoria: She looks to the woman, then back to Pierpont.

“I take it that my current state is usually a more earned, deserved, or otherwise intentional affair.”

GM: Pierpont snickers faintly and shakes his head, as though observing something so pitiful it’s funny.

“Tell us everythin’, darlin’,” he drawls.

“How ya were turned.”

“How ya got here.”

He leans forward.

“All the ruckus you caused along the way.”

“Startin’ with the last thing ya remember alive.”

He makes no move to invite Victoria to sit.

Victoria: She begins with an uncertainty.

“I don’t remember if the last thing I remember alive is a real memory. They were… toying with hallucinations.”

GM: “Then start with those, darlin’. Do kindly start with those.”

Victoria: “I remember… feeling like I was being followed. Almost all of the time. I remember answering the door—and fighting someone; someone impossibly fast.”

She feels stronger, but not quite so blindingly fast.

“I remember waking up. Seeing someone I love tortured in front of me. Being asked questions about me.”

She takes a breath.

“And then… waking up in a hotel room. Like this.”

After a moment of silence, she adds, “I’d been earning the ire of a certain powerful family. I thought they wanted me dead—so I don’t know who did this to me.”

GM: Adelais shoots Pierpont a withering look.

Pierpont drawls, “Bash your head ’gainst the floor ’til ya break yer nose.”

Then Victoria does.

The floor rushes up. Hardwood smashes against her nose. It hurts.

She pulls away. Then the floor rushes back up. She hears a crunch. She feels a crunch. She watches her body, like a marionette dancing to a puppeteer, mindlessly smash its face into the floor again and again, while she helplessly watches, a prisoner in her own flesh.

And she feels a rage, primal and burning and mindless, well up inside her like lava from a volcano. Screaming. Howling. Like a ravenous wolf at the door, snarling and biting and pushing against whatever self-restraint she turns against it.

She feels, too, as her face smashes again and again onto the red-specked hardwood, that she might try to hold it in.

Or let it out.

Pierpont grins from ear to ear.

Victoria: A moment hangs following his words where she considers following his command of her own will. She doesn’t have a chance.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Fire burbles up inside her, and—just as she did when Anna was assaulted so long ago, and just as she wanted to when Anna was threatened with a knife—she wants to let it out; to allow her rage to reign free; to take Pierpont’s head in her hands, and smash his face into the floor over, and over, and over again, until the pool of his life dwarf’s her own.

But she knows better.

She knows that she’s still a small fish in a pond whose bottom she can’t even imagine.

Even if she’s a durable fish.

She holds that rage in check, shaking with the restraint of it. Blood pools down her mouth as she regards him, silent.

GM: Pierpont, Adelais, and the now-seated human woman stare down at her.

“Well, well, well,” drawls Pierpont.

“I s’pose ya ain’t a complete animal.”

“Do not be premature, Lord Pierpont,” Adelais says critically. Her voice sounds every bit as contemptuous as Victoria imagined it would.

“It was still a dull-witted answer so lacking in context as to be useless to a listener.”

“Aye, ’twas still a piss poor answer, Lady Adelais,” the man idly agrees, before shifting his gaze back to Adelais.

“So try ’gain, girl.”

He grins, displaying his fangs.

“Or we can get ta the fun part o’ this early.”

Victoria: The rage burns, but as her mind catches up with her emotion, she begins to feel more: fear.

Why did she do that?

He spoke, she obeyed. No question. No consent. No room for disagreement. Input, output.

He can do it again.

He will do it again.

She begins to tremble.

“Th-that’s the truth! I wanted revenge—revenge on the Malveauxes, for their part in harming people I love,” she half-stammers, half-growls. Emotion tears out of her with that word, more fear than fire.

“They took me at my house—or so I thought. I—I was told that it was all in my head! Honest! My last living memories are of being followed, and exactly what I said.”

She bows her head again, as if it’ll save her.

GM: “Yer gabbin’,” declares Pierpont in an annoyed tone.

“Break e’ry finger in yer right hand.”

Victoria: She tenses, waiting for it to happen.

And then it does.

Her left hand takes her right index finger, snapping it ninety degrees to the right with the nonchalance if she were instructed to pour him a drink.

Her screams fill the hall.

Crack.

Scream.

Crack.

Scream.

“I—I answ—AUGH!”

Crack.

Crack.

Her fingers look like they were slammed in a car door moment’s before a highway pileup.

She wants to puke, but holds it back. She’s durable, but that doesn’t stop the pain.

Or the rage.

Or the fear.

“The last memory I have of being alive is being tied to a chair being interrogated!”

Is that to the point enough?

GM: “Tell us how ya got there, girl,” drawls McGinn, barely looking up as her fingers break. “Tell us the whole story. A ta Z.”

“If I don’t like yer next answer, we’ll be a makin’ a trip downstairs, hear?”

“You won’t like that none too much.”

The human woman smirks.

Adelais just stares contemptuously.

Victoria: And so she recants the story, from start to finish, pausing only to clear the blood from her mouth. She tells them of her plot to take revenge for what happened to Anna and Christina, of the series of meetings to make it a reality, of coaxing Jordan into abducting the priest, of Jordan’s subsequent episodes, and her attempts to save him, and of her strange encounter with Adam Malveaux, and the downhill journey thereafter—leading up to her hallucinations, the encounter at her house, the torturing interrogation, and waking up covered in excrement in her new life.

GM: The three patiently listen. They don’t interrupt with questions. They don’t tell her to break more fingers. Or say she’s coming downstairs.

Victoria supposes that is something.

“See, girl? I knew ya could do it,” Pierpont smiles indulgently.

“Now, let’s have everythin’ that came afterwards.”

Victoria: Still shaking, but not wanting any more fingers broken—or worse—she continues on to describe her adventures as a newborn vampire. She describes her bits of experimentation, her attempts to keep herself reigned in, her wanderings and subsequent murders—which she admits some guilt for, though tempers that with the knowledge that “they weren’t very good people”—finding Anna again, and eventually coming back to their house.

GM: “So,” drawls McGinn when she’s done.

He looks at Adelais.

He smiles, removes an old-fashioned flip phone from his breast pocket, and tosses it into Victoria’s hands.

“Call yer lil’ kine toy and tell ’er to git over here.”

Victoria: “Kine toy meaning… Anna?” she clarifies, flipping open the phone.

GM: “If she’s the one ya told ya were Kindred to, I most surely do, darlin’. I most surely do.”

Victoria: If the color could drain from her face, it would.

She dials the number, if only to show she’s obeying.

“What will you do to her…?”

GM: “A lot worse, if I’ve got ta send someone ta bring ’er over.”

Victoria: She presses the green phone immediately.

GM: “Hello?” asks Anna after picking up on the unfamiliar number.

Victoria: “It’s Vic. Listen, I need you to come somewhere—don’t ask why, don’t ask anything. Just come, okay? And when you come, be very respectful. Understand?”

GM: “Okay,” Anna says slowly. “Where?”

Victoria: “4717 St. Charles Avenue. Be quick.”

GM: “Okay,” says Anna.

A beat.

“I trust you.”

Victoria: “Always.”

She flips the phone closed, handing it out to McGinn.

GM: McGinn offers Victoria one of the coldest, cruelest, most shark-like smiles of her life as he accepts it back.

Victoria: She’s dead. Anna’s dead. In that moment, she knows it.

GM: “Yer future’s gonna depend on somethin’ now, girl,” draws the other vampire.

“Yer lil’ kine’s, too.”

Victoria: She listens intently.

GM: “You’ve left me a great fat stinkin’ mess, see.”

“And ya done left it on ma land.”

Victoria: “How can I make it right?”

Her hand trembles. The pain hasn’t deadened.

GM: “How considerate o’ ya ta ask, girl,” says McGinn.

“How considerate o’ ya indeed. I suppose the last one couldn’t e’en be assed ta ask, now could she, Lady Adelais?”

“No, Lord Pierpont, she could not,” answers the icy-faced woman.

There’s a glint to her warmthless eyes that wasn’t there earlier.

That wasn’t there before the call to Anna.

Victoria: “My lack of understanding does not grant immunity to wrongs on your land. I want to fix it.”

GM: “Well, how could ya fix it,” drawls McGinn.

“I s’pose ya could cover up e’ry one o’ yer killin’s, neat and tidy with no police askin’ questions, pay me fair recompense fer the vessels o’ mine ya killed, and silence e’ry hospital staff member who knows ‘bout that livin’ dead patient they treated.”

“Oh, and ghoul or kill yer lil’ kine.”

“After ya pass the blood test.”

He sounds more amused at the prospect of Victoria doing all of those things than serious.

Victoria: She looks as if he just asked her to speak a dead language and dance a Mesopotamian mating dance.

“Blood… test?”

GM: McGinn snickers.

“I s’pose we’ll do that now. Violet, if ya’ll be so kind?”

The human woman rises and approaches Victoria with a glass.

“Bleed inta that,” says the other vampire.

Victoria: “Is my broken nose blood sufficient?” she asks, taking the glass.

GM: “Only if ya can get it in the glass,” drawls Pierpont.

Victoria: She leans her head over the glass, tipping her nose down toward it such that it flows from the tip.

The pain there hasn’t deadened, either.

GM: Violet takes the glass and passes it to Pierpont.

“Yer unlife’s gonna depend on how yer blood tastes ta me, girl,” smiles the other vampire.

“Yer lil’ kine’s, too.”

Victoria: Lovely. It’s out of her control.

She nods.

GM: He holds the glass for several seconds.

Then he tips it back and drains it.

He’s still afterwards.

Victoria: She stops breathing.

GM: Time stretches.

Pierpont and Adelais look at one another.

“Again,” says the female vampire in that same imperious voice.

Violet passes the glass back to Victoria.

“Fill it,” says Adelais, as if Victoria is too stupid to understand.

Victoria: She does as commanded, without complaint or question, then hands the glass back to Violet. She looks to the two, waiting on continued lack of breath.

The silence in her chest is deafening.

GM: Violet hands the glass to Adelais.

She sips it next.

Then she sets the glass down.

She surveys Victoria with an eye that it would be generous to describe as critical.

Outlandishly generous.

Victoria: She knows better than to so much as think of asking.

GM: Pierpont smiles.

“I suppose ya can think of yer result as… inconclusive fer now, girl.”

Victoria: She swallows the baseball in her throat.

“What does that mean, my… what do I call you?”

GM: “That means we don’t kill ya right now.”

“But we might later.”

Victoria: They can do that whenever they want. ‘Not now’ is as good as anything.

GM: “Ya’ll call me Lord Councilor, and ya’ll call the Lady Adelais, Lady Councilor.”

“Are you capable of using those forms of address?” Adelais asks critically. She sounds genuinely doubtful that Victoria can.

Victoria: “Yes, Lady Councilor.”

GM: “You may still be put to death, of course,” says Adelais. “Your breaches of the Masquerade remain most egregious.”

Victoria: “You have my sincerest apologies, Lady Councilor. I’ll do anything to make it right. I… didn’t know, and that doesn’t excuse my behavior.”

A pause.

“Masquerade?”

GM: “What could an ignorant fledgling like yourself do?” asks Adelais. “Lord Pierpont enumerated your offenses. All you could manage was a dull look that would not have been out of place upon a bovine chewing its cud.”

Victoria: Her face tenses. What leverage does she have?

None.

She looks to the Lord, pleading, then back to the Lady.

“I am a woman of my word.”

GM: “If a child gives its word, does that mean it can reproduce the paintings of the old masters? Your word is worth only what it is capable of delivering us, and you have offered us no reason to believe that is not, in fact, precious little,” says Adelais.

Pierpont just grins and watches.

Victoria: It’s the same as Christina.

Victoria shakes like the last leaf in winter.

“I’m—I’m good at getting people to give me what I want. I’ve made my living off it. I tarnished the Malveaux reputation over it. That’s why they were so upset with me. I’m not sure I can do everything you wanted, but I’ll damn well try. What else can I do?”

GM: “Entertain us,” drawls Pierpont.

“When yer lil’ kine gets here.”

“Yer gonna turn her inta yer slave, darlin’.”

Victoria: It takes more effort than she wants to admit to restrain her smirk.

GM: “We’ll probably kill her too if we kill you,” Pierpont casually continues. “If we can’t find a buyer for ’er.”

“Unlikely, Lord Pierpont. She has not even been broken in,” says Adelais. “What Kindred would pay for an untrained, newly blooded ghoul?”

“True ’nough,” says Pierpont. “Maybe we’ll give ’er away fer free, if ya really beg.”

Victoria: That unsmirked smirk dies in a pit.

“H—how will you know? If we’re to die.”

That’s her answer: better death than slavery to anyone else.

GM: It does not appear lost on either vampire.

Pierpont grins widely.

“Oh? Ya wouldn’t like us ta find ‘er a nice owner, if’n it won’t be you?”

Victoria: “No, Lord Councilor.”

GM: “And why e’er not, darlin’?”

Victoria: “Because she’s mine.”

And just like that, more leverage handed to them.

“She’ll listen to me. She always does.”

Most of the time.

GM: “Ya’d rather kill ‘er than let anyone else touch ’er. Because she’s yers.”

Pierpont lets that hang for a moment.

Then he barks a laugh.

“Well, well, well, girl. I suppose ya ain’t all bad.”

“Yer still gonna pay mightily fer what ya done to me, o’course.”

Victoria: She nods. That much, she knows.

GM: “But if we kill you, yer lil’ ghoul will die too. I give you ma word.”

He smiles magnanimously.

Victoria: “What is a ghoul, Lord?”

“Bash your face ’gainst the floor a few more times,” orders McGinn.

“Then tell me what ya did wrong.”

Victoria: Her face crashes into the floor, this time against her forehead.

The thud is sickening.

The second is worse.

She picks her face up, streaming blood.

“I addressed you with the incorrect title, Lord Councilor.”

“I apologize.”

GM: Pierpont grins widely, showing his fangs.

“Now jus’ look at that. Ya can be taught.”

Victoria: “Yes, Lord Councilor.”

She won’t make that mistake again.

GM: “Am I not generous, ta offer ma word o’er yer ghoul?” he asks. “Ya didn’t sound none too appreciative.”

Victoria: It didn’t click at first. He did give his word.

“That was very kind of you, Lord Councilor. I was… a bit slow on the uptake, with that. It won’t happen again.”

GM: “Would ya like ta kill ’er yerself?” asks McGinn, his fangs again showing.

“Ya could do it by drainin’ ’er.”

“It’s a gentle ‘nough way ta go, if it’s done right.”

“Much gentler than a bullet ta the head.”

“Plenty kine who right enjoy goin’ that way.”

Victoria: “Yes, Lord Councilor. I’d prefer that. Thank you for offering me the choice.”

It’s like she’s joined a world straight out of the Dark Ages.

GM: “How do ya think she’d taste?” grins McGinn.

“You didn’t say if you’d fed on ‘er or not, darlin’. But ya only get the deepest taste when ya kill.”

“Deepest bite.”

“Deepest pull.”

“Deepest taste.”

Victoria: “I haven’t, no, Lord Councilor. Truthfully, I didn’t trust myself not to kill her. I… haven’t quite fully mastered restraint.”

GM: “You don’t say,” Adelais remarks airily.

Pierpont snickers.

“Yer gonna feed ‘er yer blood, darlin’,” says the other vampire.

“That’ll make ’er yer ghoul.”

“Yer slave.”

Victoria: She’s much rather be the Lord Councilor’s, but the tide of displeasure is kept stifled.

She trusts that she won’t be made to walk into traffic, given his demeanor so far.

“Yes, Lord Councilor. How should I…?”

He won’t ask her to bite his wife-assumed, will he?

GM: There’s a buzz from Pierpont’s flip phone. He opens the screen.

“Seems she’s ’ere,” he grins.

“Yer gonna make a lil’ show of it, darlin’.”

“All she done got ta do is drink yer blood. Then the next night, and the next night, then once a month ta reinforce it. Keep the leash taut. But with that first drink, the collar, as the young ones like ta say, is already on.”

Victoria: “Yes, Lord Councilor,” she nods.

Her fingers throb.

“May I ask a question?”

GM: “Ya’ve asked so nicely,” smiles the other vampire, motioning for her to proceed.

Victoria: “When I was shot, the wound healed automatically—so quickly. My fingers, and my nose. They’re not. Why? How can I heal them? Provided I have your permission, when I leave.”

GM: Adelais finally smiles at Victoria.

It’s a faint smile.

It’s crueler than any look she’s leveled yet.

“You presume that you can heal these injuries, fledgling.”

Victoria: “Am I to be left like this, Lady Councilor?”

GM: “Are you complaining?” asks Adelais.

Victoria: “No, Lady Councilor, only asking about the world I don’t yet know.”

GM: “What would you think if you were to be left like this? Forever?”

Victoria: “I would think it’s better than dying, but I’d like to earn being healed, Lady Councilor. I understand that my desires don’t matter, though.”

GM: “Your injuries were suffered under the power of Lord Pierpont’s voice,” says Adelais. “As it was his will that maimed you, only by his will may you be healed. There is no other means.”

Victoria: “I see. Thank you, Lady Councilor.”

That’s her answer, in itself.

When he wants to, he’ll correct her. Until then, asking only delays.

GM: “Look at that good girl, not even askin’,” smiles Pierpont.

“Ya have ma will ta heal your nose.”

Victoria: “Thank you, Lord Councilor.”

A mote of glee even enters her words! She wills her nose to heal, but doesn’t so much as think a thought of trying anything else.

GM: It feels like being a submissive.

It is being a submissive.

Victoria feels an odd sensation. Blood rushing to her face. There’s an odd and rather gruesome sensation of bone growing, shifting, mending, unnaturally fast. Skin smooths over. Cartilage folds back into alignment.

Her nose feels whole.

“A word of caution, fledgling,” says Adelais. “Should you attempt this same process upon your fingers, or any other injury suffered under Lord Pierpont’s voice, the resultant scarification may prove beyond even his power to remove.”

She smiles again.

It does not reach her eyes.

“It it not right and proper, that slaves should suffer terribly for disobedience?”

Victoria: It’s unnerving, despite her knowing it’s healing. The human body doesn’t experience this—but, Victoria Wolf is more wolf than human now, isn’t she?

“I understand, Lady Councilor. I wouldn’t dream of crossing either of your wills.”

“And yes, Lady Councilor. Even though I wasn’t aware of the laws, I’m still to be held to them. I accept that.”

GM: Pierpont opens his phone.

“Billy, bring in the girl.”

He flips his phone closed and smiles at Victoria.

“Do make it good, now.”

“It’s only yer lives ridin’.”

Victoria: “How do I make this entertaining, Lord Councilor…?”

GM: “Do you suppose we also wish to tell actors what lines to say and how to say them?” Adelais asks severely. “Are you this boorish in all aspects of your life, or are you merely too boorish to have ever seen a film or play?”

“You will entertain us. If you fail to entertain us, you will be punished. Your ghoul will be punished. It that sufficiently clear, or should I find words with fewer syllables to use?”

Victoria: She slowly shakes her head.

“Perfectly clear, Lady Councilor.”

GM: The double doors open. Another skinhead strides inside, built like a haystack, and so covered in tattoos and metal studs and piercings that Victoria almost thinks he’s full clothed. Instead he’s merely wearing a pair of cargo pants and black combat boots. He’s dragging along a frightened-looking Anna by her arm, then rudely shoves her towards Victoria.

“Sylvia…!” Anna cries, stumbling into her girlfriend’s arms.

Then she looks at the two.

The vampires.

The vampires, with their deathly pale faces. Their cruel grin and look of icy, complete contempt. Their protruding fangs. The menace that wafts from them like a palpable musk. They stare at Anna like hungry wolves eyeing a tiny rabbit.

Something in those stares seems to make her wilt.

She doesn’t ask who they are.

She doesn’t ask what they want.

She doesn’t say a word.

Just shrinks against Victoria’s side.

It reminds Sylvia of Anna’s first time at a play party.

The sub seeking assurance at her domme’s side.

But Anna was less shy there.

And Victoria was a real domme there.

Victoria: Anna was less shy, because Anna had freedom back then.

As the teacher-no-more shrinks against her side, Victoria shirks her. Her good hand—palm open—crashes into Anna’s cheek, knocking her to the ground.

Her words are ice.

“I gave you clear instructions. Be. Respectful. Were those instructions too complicated for you?”

She kneels, seizing Anna’s cheeks as she would a rebellious child.

“You didn’t even acknowledge our hosts.”

She forces her head to look at them.

“Say, ‘hello, Lord Councilor!’ and ‘hello, Lady Councilor!’.”

GM: The surprise seems to hit Anna as much as as the physical blow.

She doesn’t fight back.

She doesn’t crawl away.

She doesn’t resist.

Something about their hosts—or Victoria—or both?—seems to freeze her in place.

“H-hel-lo, Lord C-Councilor! H-hello, L-lady Council-lor!” she gets out in a high voice.

McGinn grins at her, fangs long and sharp in his mouth.

Adelais looks as if a small dog started yipping.

Victoria: “You don’t listen!”

Slap!

“You never listen!”

Slap!

“You didn’t listen when I told you to trust me! You didn’t listen when I told you not to take me to the hospital!”

No slap. No, Anna has been wounded enough.

“You didn’t listen to me when we were equal, and now? Now we’re not equal. Now you’ll never disobey me again.”

Anna’s face is pinched so hard that she can’t form words, one-third for show, one-third for the very real anger Victoria feels at Anna getting them into this mess—in part—and one-third—the largest third—so Anna can’t say something to get both of them killed.

Victoria’s fangs come forth, and she bites her own wrist. She doesn’t hesitate, despite the foreign feeling of intentionally wounding herself so severely.

She forces her flowing wound against her girlfriend’s mouth.

“If you spit it out, I’ll drown you in it.”

GM: Anna crumples to the floor, red welts bright on her cheeks.

“But I d-” she starts, then weakly trails off.

Something about the watching vampires seems to terrify Anna, beyond all sense and reason. She’s even crawling back to Victoria before the painfully sharp pinch registers. She weakly cries out, then chokes off Victoria’s fangs came out. Sylvia remembers how much those fangs unnerved her.

The bite of her own fangs doesn’t feel that bad, despite how deep they pierce. She’s had worse shots.

Anna makes a sound like protest at first, as Victoria shoved her bleeding wrist into her face.

But she doesn’t spit it out.

Oh no.

Something twists her face for a second.

Then she drinks deeply.

Freely.

She doesn’t stop.

Victoria can feel herself lessening with every sip Anna takes. Like her girlfriend is sucking the food right out of her stomach.

Victoria: She allows her girlfriend to drink, and drink, and drink.

Her eyes flash up to her audience. Will they tell her when to stop?

No, probably not.

She pulls her wrist from Anna’s mouth, shoving her back to the ground.

“I’m disappointed in you.”

GM: Anna swallows and licks her lips.

Then she looks away.

Shame swims in her eyes.

Adelais leans forward.

Anna suddenly looks up.

“More. Please.”

“A true ghoul’s first words!” laughs McGinn.

Victoria: Victoria smiles faintly up to McGinn.

“Apologize to our hosts, Anna.”

GM: “I’m-I’m sorry, Lord Councilor,” says Anna.

She can’t quite meet his eyes.

But that might be because she’s staring at Victoria’s wrist.

Victoria: “Is her rudeness forgiven, Lord Councilor? Lady Councilor?” she asks, gesturing to the heap of a woman.

“I wouldn’t give her more of what she wants, unless she is.”

GM: “I suppose she is,” drawls Pierpont.

“And I suppose it’s yer blood, girl.”

“Yers ta give away.”

“Yer hunger ta live with.”

“’Til ya feed again.”

Pierpont smiles a wide, fanged smile.

“That won’t be so easy fer ya, though, in the future. No sir-ree.”

“So ba all means.” He gestures magnanimously. “Do as ya like with what’s in yer veins.”

Victoria: Victoria presses the sole of her shoe to Anna’s chest, pushing her onto her back.

“Where you belong. You’ll get more when you earn it.”

To McGinn, “We’ll leave her wanting. May I ask another question, Lord Councilor?”

GM: Anna stares up.

She looks between the three vampires.

She lies very still.

“Go ahead,” grins McGinn.

Victoria: “What is the proper way to feed? I’d like not to make more of a mess on your land.”

GM: McGinn laughs again.

“That’s presumin’ a great deal, girl, that ya’d be able to make any more messes on ma land.”

“But ya’ve left me in a generous mood.”

“Ya kill only those who won’t be missed. Ya take care o’ the body yerself. Ya don’t leave it lyin’ in an alley with puncture marks.”

“Ya don’t kill those who will be missed. Ya drink light, not deep. Ya lick yer wounds closed and ya leave them rememberin’ nary a thing.”

Victoria: “We can alter memories, Lord Councilor?”

GM: “Do you consider yourself finished with your slave, fledgling?” Adelais asks critically.

Victoria: She bows her head.

“Unless you’d like to be entertained further, Lady Councilor.”

GM: “I do not consider you finished,” says Adelais.

Victoria: She dips her chin to the lady councilor, and then lowers her gaze to Anna. Oh, poor Anna.

Poor Victoria. She doesn’t allow the pain to eek through.

“They don’t consider you done, dear,” she breathes, her words acridly mirthful.

The fledgling presses her shoe to Anna’s throat, pressing none-too-gently.

“What is it you want? More?”

GM: There’s desire in her eyes, but fear too. And whiteness in her cheeks.

Anna shakes her head.

Victoria: “Do you think that the lord councilor and lady councilor are stupid? That your pitiful lie hides your desire from them?”

GM: Anna shakes her head again.

Victoria: “Say. What. You. Want.”

She presses down more firmly.

GM: “Y… your bloo…” Anna gets out in a small, choked voice.

Victoria: “I don’t think they can hear you, Anna.”

GM: “Y… our… blood!” Anna gets out, louder.

Victoria: “And what does that make you, dear Anna?”

GM: Anna swallows.

“A… slave?”

Victoria: “No, dear. You’d be a slave if you’d listened from the start. Now? Now you’re just a bitch.”

She grinds her heel into Anna’s cheek.

GM: Anna winces under the pressure. Her cheeks redden. But she doesn’t say anything. She remains very, very still.

“This grows tiresome,” declares Adelais.

GM: She looks towards Pierpont. “Get rid of her.”

McGinn effects a yawn. “Ah’m well inclined ta at this point.”

“Such a shame. It started off with promise.”

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: An eyeblink passes.

Victoria’s suddenly in a windowed room that’s empty but for a blanket and bucket. Anna’s next to her, blinking with a confused expression.

The other two vampires are gone.

Victoria: She opens her mouth to talk, and suddenly finds herself face to face with a wall.

She looks around.

Blanket.

Bucket.

Anna.

“What… happened?”

GM: “I don’t know, what did?” Anna gets out.

The question is full of equal parts bewilderment, anger, and hurt.

Victoria: The fledgling glances sideways at her girlfriend.

“…I had to do that, Anna. They’d have killed you if I didn’t. We’d probably be out of here if I’d done worse—but I won’t. I’m not going to kill you just so I can walk away.”

GM: Anna sits down against the wall, wraps her arms around her knees, and starts quietly crying.

Victoria: Sylvia slumps down beside her, wrapping an arm around her.

“Forgive me.”

GM: Anna’s head bolts up.

Her skin feels warm against Sylvia’s. So warm.

“You’re… you’re cold…”

Victoria: “Sorry.”

She pulls her arm back.

“…you know I’d never talk to you like that.”

GM: Well, not technically true.

But always from a place of mutual consent.

So maybe completely true.

“Wh… what happened,” Anna repeats.

Something feels odd about the way her gaze lingers on Sylvia.

Victoria: “They are, I presume, the local royalty of my new life.”

Despite the cold of her words, there’s some curiosity poorly veiled.

“And… they wanted to be entertained. In their way.”

GM: “You were going to the house,” Anna says, numbly. “To get… laptops. Clothes. Things.”

“What happened?”

Victoria: “They were there. I fought them off—most of them. The normal ones.”

The human ones.

“Then… I had them call their boss. I wanted to end this, before it involved you even more than it did already. I thought meeting him would be… right; would give me answers.”

She swallows a lump.

“Clearly not. Not as I’d hoped.”

“I didn’t expect them to have the powers they do. To have any powers at all. Not like this.”

She shakes her head.

GM: There is no lump.

There’s nothing to swallow.

Just more nothing.

Anna looks even more confused. And scared.

“Powers?”

Victoria: “He told me to do something, and I did it. I couldn’t even think of disobeying.”

GM: Anna doesn’t say anything.

She looks at the room’s closed door.

Victoria: “I’m sorry.”

GM: “I don’t understand,” Anna repeats, sniffing again.

“I don’t understand any of this.”

Victoria: She resists the urge to pull her close again.

She resists the urge to be angry, or sad.

She resists the urge to pound on the door she already knows is sealed against their kind.

She resists the urge to wonder what would have happened if she’d sought her ‘friend’.

“I don’t either. Little more than you.”

But Anna is a pebble in an ocean deeper than she can ever fathom. At least Victoria is a fish.

GM: Maybe a pebble can better evade the sharks.

Or maybe it will just get swallowed without thought.

A fish can at least swim under its own power.

A pebble can just sit there.

“Who are they? Why did they want…”

Anna just trails off.

“…that.”

Victoria: “Locals of… my kind.”

Vampires. It still doesn’t feel right to say.

“We broke their laws. I broke their laws.”

GM: Anna looks a little less confused.

A little.

“What laws?”

Victoria: “Like… not feeding and leaving bodies in the street.”

A pause.

“And… not telling you.”

“They’re pretty upset about the last one.”

GM: Anna looks at the closed door.

“So what do we do?”

Victoria: Wordlessly, Victoria turns toward the door, trying it.

GM: Victoria’s arms don’t move.

Victoria: She tries to touch the wall beside it.

GM: She does so.

Victoria: “It seems I’ve been told not to open the door. You’re welcome to try, yourself.”

“…though I think that’d matter little.”

GM: Anna gets up and walks towards the door.

Then she just does nothing.

“I… I can’t…”

Victoria: Her lips part in surprise.

“…their commands work on you, too?”

GM: Anna stares at the door with a look of growing consternation, then finally sits back down.

“I can’t. I can’t open it.”

GM: She looks at Sylvia.

“Why can’t I? What’s going on?”

“They didn’t… command me.”

Victoria: “Do you remember entering this room, Anna?” she finally asks.

GM: “Yes.”

She regards Sylvia like that’s an odd question.

Victoria: Lovely. Now she’s hallucinating again.

…is any of this real, too?

“I don’t.”

GM: Anna doesn’t look sure what to respond to that.

Victoria: Victoria pinches the bridge of her nose.

“They want to be entertained, but if I disobey—when I even have the chance—we’re dead.”

She looks down at her broken fingers.

GM: Anna looks at Sylvia, but doesn’t look at her fingers.

But then, the only light in the unlit room is the moonlight and starlight from the window.

Can her weak human eyes even make out Sylvia’s broken fingers?

“So that’s what that was? With me?”

Victoria: “I told you that that’s all that was,” she answers, her words barren of sympathy.

“You don’t need me to tell you again to know that I’d never talk to you that way without a sound reason.”

GM: Anna doesn’t immediately say anything.

But she scoots over and lies her head against Sylvia’s shoulder.

She feels very warm.

Victoria: Oppressively warm, and she’s still hungry from feeding Anna.

“Do you… feel any different? Drinking my blood.”

GM: “It… it was incredible, Sylvia….” says Anna, wrapping an arm around her girlfriend’s other shoulder.

Some amount of light returns to her eyes.

“I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

Victoria: “What did… it taste like? What did it feel like?”

She doesn’t seem any more magically subservient.

GM: “It was… sweet.”

“Rich. Deep. It’s hard to describe. I’ve never had anything like it.”

“It was like liquid sex.”

“I felt like I could do anything. Run a marathon. Fight a sword duel. Go all night.”

Victoria: Is it no different for a human than a vampire?

She waits for Anna to continue.

GM: Her girlfriend looks away.

“I wish that hadn’t been our first time.”

Victoria: Victoria’s jaw tightens.

“Virginity is lost only when it’s willingly given.”

GM: Anna looks back up.

“Can I have some more, Sylvia? It’d really make me feel better…”

Victoria: Victoria may not be an experienced vampire, but she does learn.

“Anna… I think that may be why they locked us up together. If I give you too much, I’ll get hungrier. If I get too hungry…”

She doesn’t think she needs to explain.

GM: “What if it’s just a little, then,” says Anna.

Victoria: “Then I’ll be just a little bit hungrier, and you’ll be just a little bit closer to death.”

GM: “You’re not going to kill me. You’d never.”

Victoria: “I wouldn’t kill you, Anna, no; but, I… didn’t have a choice. With the last one.”

Or the one before that.

GM: “That was different,” she says, rubbing Sylvia’s shoulder. “They weren’t me.”

“Just a little. Please.”

Victoria: “They weren’t you, and I wouldn’t place any more risk on you,” she answers. It’s like having a child.

“I’ll give you as much as you want when we get home.”

GM: “But what if they don’t let us go home.”

Victoria: “They wouldn’t have us both alive if they didn’t have some intent for us.”

After all, she’d earned some smiles before coming face to face with a wall.

GM: “I hope so.”

“Please just a sip, though. It’d really make me feel good.”

Victoria: Victoria stares at her as if she’s just asked ‘why?’ for the sixth time.

GM: “A little isn’t a big risk,” Anna presses. “I’m okay with that. Every kink has risk. RACK, right? Risk Aware Consensual Kink? I’m okay with this.”

Victoria: “Anna.”

Lord, is she this addicted this quickly?

“We’re locked in a room in a vampire’s estate, who can command us to do what he wants with no room for rebellion. Magic is real. I’m dead, but living. I drink blood. Fairy tales are real. Our lives are completely flipped upside down and turned inside out, and all you can think about is getting your fix?”

She shakes her head.

“Fuck it. Fine. Come here.”

GM: Anna’s already leaning against her.

But she looks away again at Sylvia’s words. Red colors her cheeks.

“N-never mind.”

Victoria: Despite her chilly skin, she pulls Anna against her.

“I’m sorry. I just… I want to get us home.”

GM: “You’re going to miss even more clients,” Anna remarks miserably into the crook of Sylvia’s neck. “They’re going to think you’re unreliable.”

She gives a weak laugh.

“I don’t know why I thought of that.”

“What are clients going to matter now.”

Victoria: “They’ll live. Medical emergencies happen.”

Of which she considers this as one.

“I think they’ll forgive me. All that matters is us.”

---

Previous, by Narrative:
Next, by Narrative:

Previous, by Character: Story Fourteen, Victoria XI
Next, by Character: Story Fourteen, Celia X, Victoria XIII

“I don’t want you to face this alone.”
Anna May Perry

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: Victoria smells Anna’s sweat. Adrenaline. Fear, even.

But she doesn’t smell blood.

She’s confident she’d smell that a million miles away.

“N-no,” Anna answers her earlier question. “I mean. I’m n-not hurt. I…”

She just keeps pointing at Victoria’s mouth.

“W-what the fuck?!”

Victoria: “I don’t KNOW, Anna!”

She doesn’t try to hide her mouth. What’s the point?

Victoria drives around, and around, and around, hoping they’ll go away. They’ll find a room, eventually—but not her looking like a Halloween costume in April.

“Fuck!”

She punches the steering wheel.

“I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know why they attacked me.”

GM: “Th… those are _fangs,”_ Anna says dumbly.

“The… the nurse hit you with a sedative… t-twice!”

She reaches out and presses her hand against Victoria’s chest.

“And y… you… your heart’s not even _beating!”_

Victoria can hear Anna’s. Pounding like a drum from stress and exertion.

Victoria: She closes her eyes, trying to center herself.

“Anna,” she says, only halfway calm.

“I need you to relax.”

“Please. Your heart.”

GM: “My… my heart?” Anna says confusedly.

Victoria: “It’s oppressive.”

“I can barely hear you speak over it.”

GM: “You… hear my heart?”

Victoria: “Like you’re 15 again and playing metal in my ears.”

GM: Anna blinks at that.

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

Her heart rate does not slow.

Victoria: She makes a left.

“Do you love me?”

GM: “Yes,” Anna answers, without hesitation.

Victoria: “Even if this is as real as it seems?”

GM: “You’re still you,” says Anna.

Victoria: “Anna…”

“There was blood on my lips.”

GM: “Whose?”

Victoria: “Not mine.”

“I’m terrified of the thought of hurting you.”

GM: Anna opens her mouth as if to say she knows Sylvia would never do that.

But after the last few days, she looks less than completely sure.

“I don’t know what we do now, Sylvia,” she says, slumping against her seat.

“But I don’t want you to face this alone.”

Victoria: She pulls over into an empty spot on the side of the road, and lays her head against the steering wheel.

“This is a dream.”

GM: Anna rubs her shoulder sadly.

“I wish.”

Victoria: Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her head hits the top of the steering wheel over and over.

At least she hasn’t killed Anna.

Bright side.

“I can’t do that again.”

GM: “Do what again?” Anna asks concernedly.

Victoria: She gestures around.

“This. Losing your trust. Hurting people.”

Killing people.

Eating people.

GM: Anna stares for a moment.

“Your… your fangs are gone.”

Victoria: She fumbles a finger around her mouth.

“What the fuck?”

GM: Her teeth feel flat.

“Sylvia…” says Anna.

“How did this… happen?”

Victoria: She looks at her girlfriend.

“I told you already.”

GM: “It’s been a rollercoaster. I’m having a hard time keeping everything straight.”

“And… I didn’t think you were…”

She trails off, then just says, “the first time.”

Sylvia can hear the unsaid word, dancing on the edge of her girlfriend’s tongue.

Victoria: “Didn’t think I was… serious?”

GM: “No, a… uh….”

Victoria: “Uh…?”

GM: Anna points at her mouth.

Victoria: She lofts a brow, waiting.

GM: “Never mind,” Anna mumbles.

Victoria: “I think we’re past never mind.”

GM: “Look, just… how did this happen?” says Anna.

Victoria: “I meant what I said when I said I told you. It wasn’t all a hallucination. But…”

She touches her teeth again.

“This? This, I don’t know. I woke up, and that woman…”

GM: Her teeth are just as flat as before.

“So you just… woke up like this?” says Anna.

Victoria: She nods.

“That’s it. I woke up, covered in shit, naked in a room I didn’t pay for feeling like I had the flu.”

GM: “How do you think you wound up there?”

Victoria: “I…”

How did she?

“The last thing I remember is talking to your torturer—offering myself to her, if she let you go. Then, the hotel.”

She shudders.

“You don’t think…? It can’t be. The note said she’d kill me if she found us.”

GM: “No one tortured me, Sylvia,” says Anna.

Victoria: “I know! I know. Obviously. It was in my head. She put it in my head.”

She huffs.

“That’s why I asked you what happened after I came home. My reality wasn’t yours—but this? This is real. Something happened to cause this.”

GM: Anna frowns.

“What do you mean she… put it in your head?”

Victoria: “We agree that I was hallucinating, yes? Somehow, I believe she put that hallucination in my head.”

GM: “…how, exactly?” asks Anna.

Victoria: She throws her hands up.

“How, exactly, is any of this happening?”

GM: “I have absolutely no idea,” says Anna.

“I thought doctors maybe would.”

Victoria: “The doctor seemed more interested in restraining me and abducting me than listening to me.”

GM: “I noticed.” Anna’s shoulders slump. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now.”

Victoria: “I would suggest we start with praying that whatever took over me doesn’t take over me again while I’m locked in a car with you.”

GM: “Took over…?”

Victoria: She swallows, and tells her what happened to the cleaning lady.

GM: Anna looks horrified.

“Sylvia, is she… is she dead?!”

Victoria: She stares.

GM: “You… you have to do something…” Anna says numbly.

Victoria: She throws her hands up again.

“Do what? I have no idea what I am doing.”

She tries to will her fangs forward.

GM: Just like that, she feels her canines lengthen in her mouth and taper into wickedly sharp points.

Anna makes a startled sound and pulls back.

Victoria: Victoria yelps.

“I’m not hallucinating, right?! That happened?!”

She pokes them.

“I just… thought about it!”

GM: They feel solid against her finger.

“You can do things,” says Anna. Almost imploringly.

Victoria: “Like, grow teeth? Yeah, obviously. It’s not fucking normal.”

She shudders.

“Thinking things shouldn’t make them happen!”

But is it really so different than a thought making your arm move, or a snake making their fangs slide forward?

GM: “Well, however you did it, you did it,” says Anna.

Her eyes still don’t leave those fangs.

“You can do things,” she repeats. “Don’t you think you should do something for that woman?”

“What if she had a family?”

Victoria: A flare of incredulity sparks, and quickly pivots to something softer.

She reaches out, stroking Anna’s cheek.

“I love you.”

GM: It’s a tired, faint, and fragile smile that Anna returns.

But it’s a smile all the same.

“I love you, too.”

Victoria: “I don’t want that to happen to someone else; someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

She doesn’t need to mention the others.

“Okay? We have to solve this—then we can worry about reparations.”

GM: “What is solving?” says Anna. “Finding a way to… undo this?”

Victoria: “Undo this? Control this? I’ll take either.”

She looks away.

“…it does feel good. Amazing, actually. I’ve never felt this strong.”

GM: “So how do we find out?” says Anna. “How to undo it. Or control it. Whatever stops you from hurting more people.”

Victoria: “You know as much as I do, Anna,” she laments.

GM: “It looks like it,” she nods. “So… what do we do next? How do we find out more?”

Victoria: Victoria closes her eyes, laying back to think. Think, think, think.

“The note says that if we go home, we’re dead. That’s why I was trying to get you to leave the city. I don’t want what ha—what I saw to happen to you, for real.”

She reaches over absently, squeezing Anna’s fingers with the gentle grasp of a mother to their child.

“There are a number of stupid things I could do, but that would only earn the attention of people who probably don’t want me alive.”

Think, think, think.

“I should warn Christina. Is my phone at home? Is any of my—right, we can’t go there.”

“How does one find answers to a phenomenon that’s been kept a secret from the world?”

And then it hits her.

“A book store! New Orleans is famous for its witchy history, right? One of them has to have some information otherwise taken as faux.”

GM: Anna’s fingers are warm in her cold hands.

“You want to go to a bookstore,” she says.

If the words sound dubious, they’re belied by her next ones.

“Okay. What the hell. It’s as good a place to look as any. The Quarter’s full of kooky bookstores.”

She rolls her shoulders.

“It’s… past 3 AM, though. I’m exhausted. We need to go ho… go somewhere, and sleep.”

Victoria: “Hotel?” she offers, as if she hadn’t for half the night.

GM: “Yeah, okay. Hotel.”

“Will you… you know, during the day?”

Victoria: “Explode? I don’t fucking know. I don’t want to try.”

GM: “O-okay. Keep the windows shut.”

“I mean, the shades drawn.”

Victoria: “Both?”

GM: “Yes. Both.”

They’re just figuring this out as they go, aren’t they?

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

Victoria: As they talk, she takes Anna’s phone, looking up a nearby hotel; one far enough away that they won’t run into any errant problems, but close enough that they won’t be driving too long.

Victoria pulls back out into traffic, weaving into the French Quarter. It’s far enough that they shouldn’t be caught.

But were they followed?

She gets Anna’s door, helping her out, and walks the pair into the Inn on St Ann.

GM: If they were, Victoria sees no one.

The tired-looking graveyard shift receptionist checks them in with perfunctory questions of whether they have reservations, and if not, how long they’re staying and how they’re paying.

Victoria: She answers them in a straightforward manner: no, just the night, and she gestures to Anna to pay.

GM: Anna gets out a credit card. Soon the two have a room to themselves. Anna flops down on the bed.

“Oh. Damn. We forgot about clothes.”

Victoria: Victoria flops down beside her, closing her eyes.

“We can worry about clothes tomorrow.”

GM: Victoria doesn’t feel in the least bit tired.

Anna pulls off her shoes and drops them on the floor.

“How do you want to, uh, sleep?”

Victoria: Sylvia kicks her shoes off, too.

“How do… we usually sleep?”

GM: Anna pulls off her clothes next.

“I don’t really think about it. I’m just wondering if it’s different.”

Victoria: She blinks at her girlfriend.

“I… are you asking if I can?”

GM: Anna blinks.

“Oh. No, sorry. I’m exhausted. And… everything. I just don’t want to sleep in my clothes.”

Victoria: She blinks back.

“Well, I’ve never seen you naked before. I… I’m not sure if I should…”

GM: “Don’t worry, I won’t rape you.”

Victoria: She wills her fangs out.

GM: The humor on Anna’s face instantly dies.

Victoria: She pokes her tongue out.

GM: Anna pulls up the blankets around herself.

“Please don… that’s scary.”

Victoria: They sheathe, and Sylvia snuggles her, blankets and all.

“What a night…”

GM: Anna is tense when Sylvia pulls her close. A shiver runs through her body.

“Oh my god, you’re cold…”

Victoria: She frowns.

“I’m not sure what to do about that.”

GM: Anna’s body is still tense against hers.

“I… I don’t know either.”

Victoria: She pulls a blanket from the end of the bed, wrapping Anna again before pulling her close.

“Better?”

GM: Anna nods.

“Thanks.”

Victoria: A brief warmth washes over her heart.

A pinch of normalcy.

“It’ll be okay.”

GM: “I hope so…” Anna murmurs with a sleepy sigh. “I hope so…”

She leans her head against Sylvia, pauses, pulls the blanket around her head, and then leans back again.

She’s out like a light in no time.

Sylvia can hear the steady exhalation of Anna’s breaths as her chest rises and falls. Her rate slows.

She’s there in her lover’s arms.

Warm.

Sleeping.

Helpless.

Right there.

So, so warm.

What would she taste like…?

Victoria: Sylvia swallows.

She tries not to think of Anna that way. Anything but that.

Anyone.

The fat cleaning lady, her blood on the floor.

The husband and wife, their blood laced with love.

The thug, left to die. Is he still there? She could look.

What does hunger feel like to a vampire? Is that what she is? If she ignores it long enough, can she forget hunger until Anna is out?

Anyone but Anna.

Not Anna.

GM: Sylvia doesn’t swallow.

Not on her own. She has to make herself.

It’s not the same, anyway. Her tongue is dry. She tastes no saliva in her mouth. She feels none swallowed down her throat. It’s just a contracting of muscles.

She swallowed when she drank their blood, though. The cleaning lady. The husband and wife. The thug. Three for three. She remembers the sensation lingering on her tongue, but not what consuming it actually felt like. All of the aftertaste of eating, without the actual act.

She could try it here.

Anna sleeps obliviously, blanket-covered head lying against Sylvia. Wrapped up like a present.

A lamb laying down with a wolf.

It would be so easy to just have a taste.

She can already feel her fangs, long and sharp in her mouth.

Victoria: She wills them away. She thinks of nothing but wishing her teeth would shy away so deep that they push out the other side of her skull.

Not Anna.

Not. Anna.

Deep breaths.

Not.

Anna.

She holds the woman close, inhaling her familiar scent.

That was a mistake. Familiar, and mouthwatering; her own forbidden fruit and art all in one.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

GM: Her fangs continue to protrude in her mouth.

Anna smells so good.

Feels so good.

So soft.

So warm.

She’s not really really tasted blood before. She doesn’t remember it. What the actual act of drinking was like.

How would Anna taste?

Victoria: She runs her tongue over her teeth.

Her mouth is so dry; like a desert on a frigid night.

It could be so much hotter and wetter.

In a flash, she tears across the room, pressing herself to the wall as if Anna shoved a knife to her belly.

GM: Anna sleepily stirs and turns over.

Thump-thump, goes her sleeping heart.

Even stressed and exhausted and un-showered, she smells so good.

Victoria: She steals a room key, tosses on her shoes, and tears out into the hallway in a panic unencouraged by a still heart.

Anyone but Anna.

But someone.

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: Anna said it was past 3 AM.

The hotel’s hallways are still and deserted.

There isn’t a soul in sight.

Sound is another matter.

Victoria can hear the steady thump of sleeping heartbeats past room doors.

There are sacks of warm, hot blood past those doors.

Just lying there in their beds.

Victoria: It’s never quiet for her. Not anymore. There’s always thumping, all around her. The world is her pantry.

She just needs to pick what to eat.

She pauses, leaning her head against the cool glass of a vending machine.

Don’t give in. Don’t give in. Don’t give in.

But she knows, deep down, that there is no ‘not giving in’. Can any human choose not to eat? Can any wolf choose not to hunt?

She swallows, dry as paper and stiff as cardboard.

It’ll happen eventually.

GM: Thump-thump-thump-thump go those faint and distant sleepy beats.

So much blood.

Sitting there in those rooms.

How long can she go without?

What happens to starving creatures like her?

Victoria: She’ll never find out. She knows that, too. Her body won’t let her.

She crumples the paper in her throat again.

Not here. Not so close.

She wanders the halls, listening to the music of life. One musician won’t make it to the morning.

Eventually, she comes out to the front desk.

GM: She finds it empty, but for the desk bell.

Victoria: She rings it.

GM: The graveyard shift employee emerges. He’s a clean-shaven 20something black man with short hair.

“Can I help you?”

Victoria: “Sorry,” she answers. “I was wondering if anyone was here this late.”

An awkward pause hangs, before she continues.

“What’s your name?”

GM: “Devon,” he answers. He looks tired. “And yeah, usually. Graveyard shift.”

Victoria: “How did you come into this job, Devon?”

GM: He shrugs.

“Was looking around. Saw they were hiring, filled out an application. Did retail before this.”

Victoria: She sucks on her lip, suddenly aware that her fangs went home. He wouldn’t be so calm otherwise.

“Plan on going to college? Or a trade?”

GM: “Nope,” answers Devon.

Victoria: “No dreams?”

GM: “College and trades ain’t dreams.”

Victoria: “No, dreams are dreams. I asked if you had any.”

GM: “Look, lady, it’s 4 AM. Why you askin’ this?”

Victoria: “Can’t sleep. Too hungry.”

GM: Devon grunts.

“Lotta 24-hour places.”

Victoria: He’s beginning to annoy her. Maybe he won’t be too much to miss, despite her attempts to trigger her own guilt.

“No one good is up at 4AM.”

GM: “Krystal’s pretty good.”

Devon rubs his eyes.

“Look, lady, I’m still gettin’ used to night shift, and my girl hates it. I’m gonna go back to sleep if there’s nothin’ else.”

Victoria: “Who is Krystal?” she asks.

He has a girl. There’s that guilt.

It doesn’t overpower the thirst.

“Would you… show me where a 24 hour place is? I’m not from around here. It’s late.”

GM: “Krystal’s a 24 hour place,” says Devon. “Fast food, look it up on your phone. I can’t leave work.”

Victoria: She sighs.

Never easy.

She wonders how Krystal tastes.

“Where is it?”

GM: “Bourbon Street.”

Devon doesn’t sound as if he particularly wants to leave work to show her around anyway.

Victoria: Not far. Maybe dangerous.

Not for her.

“Okay. Thank you.”

She turns to leave.

GM: Devon grunts and heads back off.

Victoria: If he hadn’t mentioned his girl, she might have gave in.

She might still.

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

Victoria: The muggy air of an early morning hits her like a steam room compared to the air conditioned hotel. Gross.

She stalks off toward Bourbon Street, glancing left and right for anyone at all. Any poor soul.

Nothing good is out at 4AM.

She breathes in a deep drag of morning air. She can hear heartbeats. Can she smell prey?

GM: It’s still more night than morning. And Thursday night, or technically Friday night, along Bourbon Street. Every night is a party along the Big Easy’s most famous street from dusk to dawn. Crowds of drunken tourists and college students sway along with open containers of alcohol. No cars drive through the fenced-off street. Music still blares from clubs. It’s a playground.

Victoria: No doors block the staccato of heartbeats here. The chorus is blaring, oppressive in her ears.

They’re all faceless. Nameless. None of the people around her are a poor man at a desk, or a family safe behind a door.

She steps out onto the street, turning right, and stops behind a man. Until he has a face, he isn’t a person.

He doesn’t matter.

Right?

No.

She slides past him, scurrying along the street and into the crowd.

Now she’s justifying murder.

She swallows, the paper turned to cardboard.

Someone dies every night in the Big Easy. What’s one more?

No.

Stop.

But even wolves need to eat eventually.

She recalls the granola bar; that sticky mass of glue and refuse.

She recalls the sweet scent of the cleaning lady.

She recalls Anna.

Mouth closed, she runs her tongue over her teeth.

Would they think she’s just in costume?

GM: 4 AM might see fewer souls on the streets than earlier, but Bourbon Street’s party continues uninterrupted.

The man doesn’t look at her.

No one looks at her.

Anna doesn’t know she’s here.

Devon seemed like he could give a rat’s ass.

Victoria might as well be a ghost.

Fangs or no fangs, she’s just another face in the crowd.

Victoria: Victoria is a recovering food addict in the most enticing, exquisite buffet in the world. She sniffs a sample of everything, of every single delicacy that Bourbon Street has to offer, but resists tasting any of it. She can’t. She knows that she’ll only be able to resist for so long, as if the world itself is edging her.

“Fuck,” she says cupping her hands over her eyes.

GM: Foot traffic continues to flow around her.

Victoria: Creole.

French.

Latin.

Italian.

Polish.

German.

“Fuck.”

She smacks her forehead.

Stop being such a fucking pussy. This is going to happen, one way or another. The longer you act like a little bitch, the more likely it is that you’ll tear someone’s fucking head off in the middle of the street, and then who will watch Anna?"

She unveils her eyes, looking ahead and around, then drunkenly stumbles down the block.

GM: It’s not overlong before she finds a ‘date’.

A man staggers up to her. He’s slightly shorter than Victoria, Caucasian, in maybe his 40s, with a short graying beard and slightly receding hair. Out-of-season Mardi Gras beads hang from his neck over a t-shirt and jeans.

He looks and smells drunk.

“Yoo hoo,” laughs the man, slinging an arm around her.

Victoria: Her ‘date’ is the furthest creature from who she’d choose, and exactly what she wants.

She tries to shy away from him, only a feather of her strength exercised, and slurs her words.

“S—shtop… boyfriend…”

GM: “S’okay, I go’ a wife,” the laughing man hiccups, dragging Victoria after him through the crowd.

Victoria: She faux-struggles against him.

“B—bu’… I don’t wanna…”

GM: “Gimme a smoochie!” grins the man, wetly plastering his mouth over Victoria’s.

Victoria: She kisses him, biting back an urge to vomit an empty stomach.

“O—kay! D—do y’ have a place? Or—or!”

She points to a side street.

GM: “Uhh. Go’ a hotel,” says the man.

Victoria: “’kayyyyyy!”

“Where is it?”

GM: “Wayba’,” the man mumbles. “Nee’ a cab.”

Victoria: She tugs his shirt, wrapping her nails into the fabric.

“Can w’ ge’ a closer oooone?”

GM: “No,” he mumbles, waving his arm. “Canal Stree’.”

“Ish.”

Victoria: She whines up to him.

“Bu’ I waaaan’ i’!”

She cups his balls.

GM: The man gives her another sloppy kiss and gropes her breasts.

Victoria: “‘kayyyyyy! But y’—”

She hiccups.

“Y’ better be nice t’ me!”

GM: The man grins and sticks a hand down her pants, then a finger up her pussy.

He might as well be groping her stomach for all the sensation she feels.

Victoria: She yelps, but forces a smile as genuine as a lawyer at a car accident.

She presses her hands to his chest, stepping up on her toes to whisper, “Where is it?”

GM: “Call a cab,” he mumbles, “I don’ wanna walk.”

Victoria: She harumphs indignantly.

“Wha’ a gentleman.”

GM: “Come ooonnnnnn!”

Victoria: “Mmmnn… Nope! I’m findin’ someone else.”

She doesn’t immediately turn away.

GM: “The fuck you wan’!” the man complains.

Victoria: She sends her knee into his balls, new strength unabated.

GM: The man gives a strangled shriek, clutches his scrotum, and sinks to the street.

Victoria: Revenge for the non-consentual finger.

She half expects to smell blood.

Victoria snorts, pointing and laughing at the man’s misfortune.

“Oopsie! You grabbed me! I grabbed you!”

She feels bad—a little—but it’s better this way. She isn’t going to get into a cab with him, and she just needs him off the main road. A few blocks will do.

She stumbles backward, catching herself on the brick facade behind her, her eyes locked on her victim.

GM: “Fuck—you!” the man yells, staggering to his feet and running after her.

Victoria: She springs the remaining quarter block to Orleans St, skidding into a turn as she sprints—fast enough to keep her distance, slow enough that she doesn’t lose him—down the street.

Three buildings in, she turns down a narrow space between buildings, waiting.

GM: The overweight, out of shape man does not look thrilled to be literally chasing after her. Sloth seems to war with lust on his face.

In the end, lust wins out. He’s wheezing by the time he catches up.

Victoria: Lust, and anger. They share that anger—that heat. Victoria imbued him with it by an unwanted knee, just as he imbued her with an unwanted hand.

She prepares for him, nestled 20 feet down the pathway, ready to take him.

It’s a necessity. It’ll be a choice out of her hands if she doesn’t—an innocent. This way, at least she knows he’s not the kindest person in the world.

GM: “Youh—owe me!” wheezes the man with a distinctly half-aroused, half-pissed expression as he staggers up to her.

Victoria: She snickers, her laughter bells against the distant life of Bourbon Street.

“C’mere, then.”

She flicks her eyes downward, surprised she hasn’t cracked his pelvis.

GM: He grabs her tits and fumbles at her pants.

He sure doesn’t seem like he has anything broken down there.

Victoria: She bites back the sick that wells up in her throat, taking his wrist in her hands. Her touch is gentle as an angel, her intent just as set, as she brings it to her lips. She wills her fangs forward, but only kisses it to start.

The unwelcome touching is a gift, isn’t it? It’s okay—because she’s taking something from him, too.

GM: The man doesn’t seem at all into the wrist kissing. He pushes back against the wall, squeezing her breasts like he’s trying to pop them, and slips a fat finger up her pussy.

“Aw, you like that, dontcha?”

Victoria: She yelps, and clamps her jaw around his wrist. Hard.

GM: Victoria feels her fangs pierce skin. Bliss rolls over her tongue. Hot and sweet with lust, salty with irritation, and… something else, too. The man gives a yell, and after that she doesn’t hear him. She doesn’t hear anything.

It’s a rack of lamb. It’s champagne. It’s heroin. It’s eating and fucking and getting high all rolled into one. She is empty and it fills her. She is cold and it warms her. It feels like the most right, natural thing in all the world.

She feels strong. She feels giddy. She feels alive.

Victoria: Every woe. Every ache. Every bit of pain and suffering she’s ever been victim to. None of it matters anymore, because against this tide of infinite bliss, they’re all as trivial as the woes of an astronaut looking down on the Earth.

They’re all trifling.

Her eyes fall closed of their own volition, and the world falls to a backdrop as his life ebbs into her mouth, a pulsing waterfall of warmth running down her throat.

It goes.

And goes.

And goes.

And goes.

She isn’t sure how long she’s there, or how much she’s taken.

She doesn’t really care anymore, either.

She did, moments ago.

Or was it minutes?

Hours?

Does it matter?

The guilt is gone.

That’s trifling, too.

GM: It fills her up. It makes her giddy. It makes her feel buzzed and energized and calm. Everything feels so much funnier and more interesting than it was mere moments ago, and the world full of new best friends waiting to be made.

It ends, though.

There’s no warning. No transition. She’s drinking from a full keg, and suddenly, it’s an empty keg.

The man’s pale, white-faced corpse silently slumps to the ground.

Two red fang-shaped incisions stare up from his neck.

Victoria: Is there even a reason for her to be worried? Why should anything at all matter when she can have this again tomorrow night?

Schlump! Clink!

The man’s body falls to the pavement, knocking over a cluster of empty bottles.

The vampire looks down at him, appraising not him, but herself. She expects the tide of guilt to come creeping back in, now that her source of euphoria is empty.

Think, think, think.

But it doesn’t come. Not naturally. If she has to think about it, is it guilt at all? If she expects to feel guilty, is that enough?

Though she thought to leave the main road, and though it’s the middle of the night, someone is sure to wander by soon. Victoria covers the man with a series of damp, cardboard boxes, and turns back toward Orleans, this time making a right away from Bourbon.

GM: The man’s corpse mutely lies there.

It looks very large.

It looks very noticeable underneath the cardboard.

There are so many people passing by the main streets.

It was dark. He didn’t scream. That has to be enough.

Doesn’t it?

Victoria: She wipes her mouth, checking for blood.

That can’t have been clean.

But make up fits right into Bourbon Street, doesn’t it?

Victoria makes a 3/4 loop of a few blocks, re-entering Bourbon several blocks down from where she left, and walking back toward Anna.

GM: It’s completely clean. She didn’t let a drop go to waste.

She feels full. She feels like she’s basking in an orgasm’s afterglow after pigging out. That feral instinct in the back of her mind, growling ceaselessly to feed, is silent.

Victoria: She looks as wonderful as she feels! She passes the empty desk with a smile that could light up the night; a smile that would have been turned on the night worker, if he deigned to be at his post.

Oh well.

Clearly, she found her 24-hour meal.

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: It’s a short enough walk back to the hotel. Victoria arrives without apparent incident.

Victoria: She wanders through the halls, swipes her card at the door, and re-enters her room.

GM: Anna lies sleeping in bed, her slowed heart steadily beating. She looks the picture of innocence, next to the vampire approaching her. A lamb lying down in the wolf’s den.

The dead man’s blood sits warmly in Victoria’s veins.

Victoria: The entire city feels like the wolf’s den tonight.

But there are other wolves out there.

She curls up beside her girlfriend, and tries to sleep.

GM: Sleep does not come. Even full and satiated, Victoria feels just as wide awake as she did after killing the man.

Victoria: She checks the time.

GM: A few shy of 4:30.

Victoria: She tries.

And tries.

And tries.

And tries.

It feels like hours.

Several, amazing, post-orgasmic hours.

4:36.

“Psst… Anna.”

GM: She still feels just as awake.

Anna remains fast asleep.

Victoria: She kisses Anna on the mouth, tugging her closer.

“Annaaaa…”

GM: “Mmmff…” Anna murmurs, groggily stirring awake at the contact. Her eyes are crusted with sleep and miss Victoria’s in the dark room.

“Sylv… mmm…?”

Victoria: “I can’t sleep.”

GM: Anna’s response comes after a moment of squinting.

“Me… neither… now,” she mumbles wryly.

She blindly gropes for the beside lamp that Victoria can see as plain as day.

Victoria: She takes the hand that reaches for the lamp, gently moves it to her mouth, and kisses it.

“Oopsie.”

She doesn’t sound apologetic.

GM: Anna smiles tiredly in the dark, rubbing her eyes with her other hand.

“Wha… timezit?”

Victoria: “A bit before 5.”

GM: “Ha’ you… been up all night…?”

Victoria: “I’m starting to wonder if the downsides of…”

She gestures to herself.

“…this are coming to light. I can’t sleep.”

For the six minutes she’s tried.

GM: “Oh,” says Anna.

“Di’… Dracula sleep? Long time since I read the book…”

Victoria: “I don’t know. I’ve never read Dracula.”

Is she like Dracula? Maybe she should read it.

Did she really just kill a man?

Does her logic justify the murder?

GM: Anna, at least, does not answer.

She yawns into her hand, then pauses.

“Oh. D’you have clients…?”

Victoria: She shakes her head.

“No… not this early in the morning.”

“Do you?”

GM: Anna laughs faintly and rubs her eyes.

“I meant. Earlier.”

She fumbles around for the light and finally switches it on.

Victoria: “Nope…”

She elects not to explain further.

“I don’t like not being able to sleep.”

GM: “It’s probably just stress, over… everything. You’ll konk out.”

Anna plants a soft kiss on her lips.

“Oh. You’re warm.”

Victoria: “I am?”

She rests the back of her hand against her own forehead.

“I guess I am.”

GM: She feels almost as warm as Anna does.

“You were so cold earlier. That’s weird.”

Victoria: There’s so much they both have to learn, and not a soul in the world from whom to learn.

For an hour, Victoria forgot the dire situation they’re in.

“I wonder how long it’ll last.”

GM: Anna pauses.

“You want to bang?”

Victoria: Sylvia stares.

“Take advantage of the warmth? Sure.”

GM: “I mean, 4 AM and you can’t sleep…”

Victoria: “And you’re horny 24 hours a day…”

GM: “I think you’re usually the hornier one, Dark Mistress Dominatrix.”

Victoria: “It’s a shame we don’t have your costumes here…”

GM: “It is,” Anna agrees. “Or yours.”

Victoria: “Or a yard stick…”

GM: Anna laughs and plants a rather steamier kiss on her girlfriend’s lips.

Victoria: Sylvia grins into that kiss, pulling her closer.

GM: Anna’s always loved foreplay and kissing as the lead-up to sex. She pulls Sylvia down onto the bed with her. The kisses steadily come, hot and heavy as they hug one another close, pressing their breasts together. Anna’s still naked. Sylvia isn’t. “Clothed dominant, naked submissive” is a request that Victoria’s gotten more than once, and Anna makes no effort to remove her partner’s clothes, instead rubbing and squeezing Sylvia’s nipples through them. Anna’s breath is hot and her heart beats quickly in Sylvia’s ears. Her nipples are stiff under her girlfriend’s touch.

However, a problem soon becomes evident.

Sylvia doesn’t feel at all wet.

What she does feel is… not hungry. More like the memory of hunger. She feels glutted and full, like someone is pressing another dish at her when she’s already had enough. But she still notices the way her partner’s jugular throbs in the light.

What would Anna taste like?

Victoria: It’s a request she all too happily complies with. There’s little more joy in the world for her than teasing—and denying—the love of her life.

How would Anna taste?

Coppery?

Sweet?

Delicious.

Definitely delicious.

She would orgasm from that alone.

And then she’d die.

Sylvia pulls back in the lamplight, looking down at her love.

GM: Anna looks tired. Most of the sleep is gone from her eyes, but the stress of the past few days definitely shows. Her eyes look darker and have bags.

But for all that, those brown eyes still warmly sparkle up at Sylvia. Her black hair spills out over the pillow she leans against. Her cheeks are rosy with color. Her chest steadily rises and falls with each of her breaths.

“Like what you see?” she smiles.

Victoria: “A little too much. I need a moment.”

One moment.

Two.

Three.

She closes her eyes, and inhales.

Don’t kill her.

Don’t kill her.

Don’t kill her.

GM: “Too much?” says Anna with a slight frown.

Thump-thump, goes her lover’s heart.

Sylvia can imagine how it would slow, as she drank.

How she could take from Anna.

Hold her life in her hands.

Hold her life in her mouth.

Swirl it around.

Savor it.

Drink it.

It was all just play acting before, wasn’t it, the D/s stuff?

This is real.

Sylvia could drink her and kill her.

How would it taste?

Victoria: She could edge her.

She could slow her heart, little by little, bringing her ever closer to the edge, but stopping just short of that fall into the void.

She could sa—

Sylvia flies across the room, pressing herself to the wall.

“Just… a moment!”

GM: “Sylvie?” Anna says, worriedly. “Are you okay?”

Thump-thump.

Victoria: “Just… stay there, okay? Just a moment.”

She covers her ears.

It does little to stifle Anna’s heartbeat.

GM: “Okay…” Anna says, slowly.

It does nothing.

Nothing is how so much of her feels.

Not sore. Not tired. Not sleepy.

It feels like she could just… exist forever.

Victoria: It doesn’t get any softer, but her control becomes stronger.

“Okay.”

It’s not okay, but it’s easier to deal with.

“I don’t like thinking of you how I was.”

GM: “How were you thinking of me?” asks Anna.

Victoria: She stares at her.

GM: “Am I missing something…?”

Victoria: “Your heart. I can hear it. It’s… enticing.”

That’s the understatement of the year.

GM: “En… ticing?” asks Anna.

She pulls up the blankets a little higher.

Victoria: She shakes her head.

“Don’t worry! Don’t panic! I just needed to… break the spell, as it were.”

GM: “Was this because we were going to have sex…?”

Victoria: “N-no! Just, being so close. It’s not bad b—”

Better not to tell her what she did right before.

“It’s not bad. It’s just new. I need to get used to this.”

How normal it becomes so quickly.

GM: Killing?

Lying?

“Okay, it’s new,” repeats Anna.

“I hope we can find some answers at a bookstore.”

“And get a better idea of how to navigate all… this.”

Victoria: She forces a faint smile.

She doubts that; but, if it quells Anna’s concerns, it’s a fair path forward.

“Continue?”

GM: “Well. Actually. What do we want to do today? Besides look around bookstores.”

Victoria: She nods.

“Little by little.”

GM: “We need to go home at some point.”

Victoria: “I… don’t know. We can’t go home. I’m not sure.”

GM: “But how are you going to see clients? All the information’s on our laptops.”

Victoria: She furrows her brow.

They can’t avoid going home forever, and she’s not about to send Anna to do it.

GM: “Also, our clothes are there.”

Victoria: “You don’t need those.”

GM: Anna sticks out her tongue.

Victoria: “I’d bite that if I wouldn’t take it off.”

GM: Anna’s tongue disappears.

Victoria: She blows a kiss to her.

“…we’ll need to go back eventually. Not you.”

GM: Anna manages a smile at the kiss.

“Okay, so both of us. When?”

Victoria: “Not. You. Probably sooner than later.”

Right now?

“I don’t like not knowing who did this—and who did what they did to me last night. We don’t have allies; or, if we do, we don’t know who they are.”

GM: “I don’t want you going somewhere alone, if you’re scared,” says Anna.

Victoria: She shakes her head.

“I’m a little more durable than you are, Anna.”

GM: “But the note said we’re dead, didn’t it? Two is safer.”

Victoria: “If you get shot, I have to care for you. If I get shot, it’s like you flicking my arm. I don’t have to protect you if you’re safe somewhere.”

GM: Anna pauses.

“…did you get shot?”

Victoria: “Didn’t I… tell you? I could swear I told you.”

Oops.

GM: “I hope I’d remember, but everything’s just been…”

Anna makes a little motion.

“Also, are you gonna sit down?”

Victoria: She sits, as commanded.

“I think there are a few bullets left inside me.”

GM: Anna blinks.

“Are you… sure?”

“And what do you mean, getting shot is like flicking your arm?”

Victoria: She shrugs.

“It pinched. I thought they punched me, but I found holes in my shirt, and… the wound closed quickly.”

GM: “Uh, who shot you?”

Victoria: “A few thugs in Central City.”

GM: “Oh my god!” exclaims Anna. “Why didn’t you say anything?!” She looks Victoria over as if inspecting her for wounds, then pulls off her shirt.

Victoria: She allows her shirt to be unceremoniously removed, waiting.

GM: “Oh my god,” repeats Anna. “There are holes in your back!”

“There’s no blood, though.”

“How are you… how are you feeling?”

Victoria: “Holes?”

She winces.

“Is it… bad?”

GM: “Uh. You haven’t seemed impaired.”

“And there’s absolutely no blood.”

Victoria: She shrugs, flexing the muscles of her back.

“I… don’t know what to do. Do you think it’ll heal on its own? Should we try to take the bullets out?”

GM: “Sylvia, I have absolutely no idea if this is going to heal on its own or what the rules are.”

“But I do know always needing to take the bullet out is just Hollywood. My dad has a co-worker who’s had a bullet in his arm for 28 years. Doctors said it wasn’t dangerous where it was, and removing it was likely to be.”

“Bullets only need to come out if they’re lodged somewhere they’ll cause more problems.”

GM: “But I’m not a doctor. I don’t know if that’s the case here. Or what’s normal here.”

Victoria: “O-oh.”

She’s never been shot before.

“I don’t think they’re causing any problems.”

Whether they’ll heal or not is a greater concern.

“Can I… put my shirt back on?”

GM: “Look at the domme asking permission.”

The teasing in Anna’s tone is light, though. Her gaze feels like it’s lingering on Sylvia’s back.

“I… I guess. I don’t know what else to do here. We already tried a hospital.”

Victoria: She shudders.

“There’s no way whoever did this doesn’t know…”

GM: Anna’s silent for a moment.

“Why would someone do this?” she asks, helplessly.

Victoria: “I… I think they did it to help me. Why else would they?”

She doesn’t sound convinced.

GM: “I don’t know,” says Anna. “But I know this hasn’t helped us.”

Victoria: She shakes her head.

“The situation hasn’t.”

But this? Her strength? Her invulnerability?

GM: “All right. So what do we do?”

Victoria: “You find another hotel. I go back to the house.”

GM: “Is something wrong with this one?”

Victoria: “I don’t like the thought of remaining in one place for too long. Not with the people who… did this. I find it hard to believe they aren’t trying to find me, especially after we caused such a commotion at the hospital.”

GM: “Oh. Yeah.” Worry crosses Anna’s face. “Better safe than sorry.”

Victoria: She won’t be able to carry everything they need in just her arms.

She can’t just go get her car, either. They’ll track that.

She picks up the note and reads it again.

Some friend.

“What do you need most from the house?”

GM: “More clothes,” says Anna. “Laptop. Toothbrush, paste, deodorant.”

“Anything else you can think of.”

Victoria: She closes her eyes.

Toothbrush. Clothes. Laptop. Etcetera. Her laptop, too. Phones? If the phones are in their house. Keys. She may as well take the car back, too.

Is it safe to leave Anna alone?

“I’m going to take you to the next hotel first.”

GM: “Okay. I’ll look one up.”

Anna rummages around her clothes and purse before pulling out her phone to scroll through.

Victoria: Sylvia misses her phone.

Victoria needs her phone.

She moves to sit beside her girlfriend, watching.

GM: They search for a few minutes before Victoria points out Maison Tremé?é.

“What do you like about this one?” asks Anna.

Victoria: “It’s simple.”

Cheap.

“It’s off Bourbon, but close. We’ll choose a more upscale one next, and vary from there. Maybe go across the city.”

She pauses, appraising her girlfriend.

“I’m sorry, Anna. I don’t want to leave you vulnerable until we figure this out.”

GM: “I’m more worried about you than me, honestly, if I’m staying in a hotel,” says Anna.

“I’m worried about you for so many reasons anyway.”

Victoria: “Me? Why are you worried about me? You’re the breakable one.”

GM: “Because you’re the one all of this has happened to, with bullets in her back!”

Victoria: “With bullets in her back, who feels fine.”

GM: “There are lots of sick or hurt people who’ve felt fine, then gotten worse.”

Victoria: “You don’t generally feel fine with bullets in your back. Not this long after.”

GM: Anna gives a helpless-sounding sigh.

Victoria: “Point taken, Anna. I’ll be careful.”

GM: “Thanks. We’re still booked for a day here. Do we want to stay until then?”

GM: Anna blinks dully as if realizing how little sleep she got.

“We’ve only been here a few hours.”

Victoria: Victoria nods.

“Only a few hours; so… I don’t think they’d let us stay another day, unless we want to pay for it.”

Which they can.

Unless they’ve emptied her bank, too.

And then, it occurs to her.

“Hey, Anna? You don’t think I…”

She waves her hands, miming an explosion.

“…in sunlight, do you?”

GM: “Uh.” Anna pauses. “I don’t know.”

“That’s how it is in the movies.”

“But in Dracula he isn’t hurt by the sun.”

“He just can’t turn into a wolf, or use his other powers.”

Victoria: “I was going to suggest a few hours more sleep, but…”

GM: “What do you want to do?”

Victoria: She hesitates.

“We should get to the next hotel before sunrise. Just in case. We can… Test that another time.”

GM: “I paid through the day for this one. Not for just a few hours.” Anna blinks dully. “I thought I’d be sleeping longer than that.”

Victoria: She bites her lip.

“But not the next night?”

GM: “No, just the normal check-out time. But I guess we should reserve through the next night, if we want you to stay here all day.”

Victoria: “I just… I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want to explode next to you. If it’s like most stories.”

She mentally tries to turn into a bat.

GM: Nothing happens.

“So what do we do?”

“Just keep the shades drawn?”

Victoria: Curses.

Or not curses?

“Stay here. You need your rest. Can you call the front desk and extend in the morning?”

GM: “Sure,” says Anna. “And you’re going back to the house.”

Victoria: “The sun will be up soon. I’d have to be up soon.”

GM: Anna scrolls through her phone.

“It says sunrise is at 6:34. So that’s about two hours.”

Victoria: Doable. For bare essentials.

“Okay. I’ll be fast.”

GM: Anna taps into her phone again.

“The drive’s about 40 minutes, both ways. So that’s still a fair bit of time.”

Victoria: “40 minutes to throw shit in a car.”

Or die. Maybe.

“Wait here. Don’t answer the door unless it’s me.”

GM: “80 minutes,” Anna corrects.

“Okay. Please be careful.”

She plants a tender kiss on Sylvia’s lips.

Victoria: “Right. Both ways.”

She returns the kiss and departs.

---

Friday night, 8 April 2016, AM

GM: It’s about a 20-minute drive back to the two’s apartment. Next to the always-partying French Quarter, East Riverside is silent neighborhood residentia. Victoria’s car feels like the only one on the road between the rows of raised shotgun houses.

She arrives at 4018 Constance St. without incident.

Victoria: She’s surprised that she makes it without being stopped or accosted, but she settles into park in the street a few houses down from her place, and around a corner.

The vampire steps outside, taking in her surroundings. It feels like she’s being watched—even alone for most of the drive. The hackles on her back rise.

GM: No bumps erupt on her skin that she can see. It remains as dead as the rest of her.

The rows of shotgun house appear quiet and still.

Can it be that easy?

Victoria: She sets her jaw, and walks around her house, peering in the windows.

GM: The lights are off. Victoria isn’t bothered. The interior might as well be lit up like noon.

She sees nothing out of place.

Victoria: It can’t be this easy.

She circles back around to the front, slips her keys in and opens the door, and as quietly—and quickly—as she can, she grabs a suitcase from their closet, and moves to collect their things in order of importance.

The laptops are on the living room table, last she remembers.

GM: She’s collecting the suitcase from their bedroom when she hears it.

From the living room.

A door creaking open.

Victoria: Fuck.

And she didn’t bring their gun.

Victoria becomes still as a statue, waiting and listening.

GM: Footsteps sound.

Multiple pairs.

Drawing closer to the bedroom.

Victoria: Fuck this.

But if she runs, they’ll just go after Anna eventually.

She’s more durable now, right?

And no more smart.

She wields the suitcase, ready to strike.

GM: The lights spill on.

Heartbeats accompany the footsteps.

The bedroom door swings open.

Victoria: She’s pressed near the wall, behind where the door swings with enough room to swing. The moment the figure passes halfway in—unless she recognizes them—she slams the door on them to stun, then yanks them into the room, ready to disable more permanently.

GM: There’s a strangled yell as the door smashes into the face of a large man. His gun drops from slackened fingers. Victoria grabs it smashes it over his head, knocking him out cold. She has it drawn and pointed at the second man as his hand hovers over his belt holster.

Both of men are ugly. They’re dressed in jeans and wifebeaters. They’re bald, muscled, with metal piercings and hard faces that look accustomed to violence. The knocked-out man has tattoos that depict winged skull and a screeching eagle perched on a swastika. The other one has SS lightning bolts along his neck and pentagrams along his arms. Swords crossed behind a shield with a swastika decorate his chest.

Victoria: She keeps the weapon leveled at him.

“Talk. Don’t move.”

“Don’t you normally save this kind of thing for niggers?”

She nods, referencing his tattoo.

GM: The man stares at her, his jugular throbbing.

“You’re just making things worse, cunt.”

Victoria: “Who sent you?”

GM: He glares.

“The boss.”

Victoria: She shoots him in the shoulder.

“Name?”

GM: The man’s mouth opens. Victoria can’t hear his scream over the gunshot’s explosively loud roar. It’s like a bomb going off in the close quarters.

Victoria smells the blood, though, rich and hot as he collapses to the floor, clutching his arm. Red oozes from between his fingers.

“Cedric… B…. McGinn!” he gasps out.

Victoria: She feels that familiar pull, dragging her toward his gaping wound, but resists. Not now. Not yet.

“Next one is the knee. Why are you after me?”

GM: The man grits his teeth.

Red continues to ooze down his arm.

“Said to watch… your house.”

Victoria: “For?”

GM: “Case you… came back.”

Victoria: “To do what with me? If you make me ask another obvious question, you’re going to live life as a pirate.”

GM: “I don’t know!” the man grits out. The veins in his neck throb.

“He’s the… boss. He wants… you. That’s all I know.”

Victoria: “Dial him. Put it on speaker.”

“Toss your gun away.”

GM: The man clenches his teeth, then tosses it. The firearm hits the wall with a clatter.

Victoria: Weapon and eyes trained on him, she sidesteps to collect the weapon.

GM: The man gingerly pulls out a phone and dials it. He’s slower with one hand.

Ring.

Ring.

Victoria: She waits with all the patience of the NOPD.

GM: “Ya caught me a wolf, son?” greets a man’s lazy Southern drawl.

It’s a confident-sounding voice.

The kind from a man used to getting what he wants.

It’s a dangerous-sounding voice.

The kind from a man used to taking what he wants.

Victoria: “You know what they say about hunting a wolf on their own territory, don’t they, Cedric?” she purrs.

GM: Laughter rings from the phone.

It’s cold laughter, the kind that could ring at someone’s death.

It’s rich and belly-deep, and feels almost like a parody of how laughter is supposed to sound.

“I’da said someone fucked up.”

“But it done seems more like three someones.”

Victoria: Three. There’s another.

She glances around.

“Good thing I have a big freezer, and an industrial blender,” she answers in frosty reply.

“What have I done to you, dear Cedric?”

GM: She sees no one.

“Oh, darlin’, darlin’,” chuckles Cedric’s voice.

“More than yer pretty lil’ head’s done e’er imagined.”

“We should talk. Come swing ba ma place. I’ll open yer eyes ta a few things.”

“4717 St. Charles Avenue.”

Victoria: “Three sheep break into my house, weapons drawn? And you expect me to meet you? You could have sent a card.”

GM: There’s another peal of simultaneously cold and belly-deep laughter.

“I said there was three someones who fucked up.”

“I didn’t say nothin’ ’bout three sheep.”

“But I assure you, Miss Wolf, ya’ll find stoppin’ by a sight more pleasant than the alternative.”

“Might e’en be there’s a few things I can right open yer eyes to.”

Victoria: She grunts.

“In what way have I fucked up?”

GM: The man’s tongue clucks.

“That’s not the sort o’ thing ta chit-chat about o’er phones, darlin’.”

“That there’s one way.”

Victoria: “It wouldn’t be overly smart to meet you in your den. Why don’t we meet somewhere neutral?”

GM: The man’s tongue clucks again.

“Miss Wolf, there is a way things are done.”

Victoria: “Cordiality does wonders for trust. I have negative trust right now.”

GM: There’s another peal of that same, parody-like laughter.

“Tell me somethin’, darlin’. How thirsty are ya, rightaboutnow?”

Victoria: "Moreso than before I put a bullet in the pretty one; but, alcoholics tend to cave around alcoho—”

And then it clicks.

“You know.”

GM: Victoria can hear the man’s grin.

“Do I e’er.”

Victoria: “That doesn’t mean you’re an ally.”

GM: “Miss Wolf, right now, I am yer only hope in a dark and unforgivin’ world.”

“You got no idea what manner o’ shit storm ya set off.”

Victoria: “What the fuck did I do?”

“Exist?”

GM: “Ya’ve made a lot o’ folks like us mad, darlin’. Real mad. Madder’n a box o’ frogs.”

“Yer days are numbered ’fore they find ya.”

“The longer that takes, the madder they will be.”

Victoria: “And if they find me? What? They kill me?”

GM: “Let’s just say, Miss Wolf, you will dearly regret not havin’ me as yer friend.”

Victoria: “Why do you want to help me?”

GM: “Self-interest, o’ course. Ya’ll owe me.”

“I could give two shits ’bout ya otherwise.”

Victoria: “Fine.”

It’s her only link to the world she’s only otherwise guessing about.

A bookstore isn’t quite so good.

“I’ll owe you one. I suppose I could have your remaining employee take me there?”

GM: The man’s tongue clucks.

“I certainly hope so, Miss Wolf. I do certainly hope so.”

Victoria: “Very well then. I’ll see you soon.”

GM: “Oh, ya certainly will, darlin’.”

“Ya certainly will.”

The line clicks.

Victoria: One way or another, she’s getting answers.

“Can you drive?” she asks the goon.

GM: “With one fucking arm?” growls the man, still clutching his bleeding shoulder.

Victoria: “I suppose I’ll be carrying your inept compatriot to the car, too?”

GM: “I got one fuckin’ arm,” the man snarls.

Victoria: She breathes a sigh.

“Use your one fuckin’ arm and help keep the doors open.”

She turns on heel, a stowing both weapons in her waistband, and moves to drag the other man out the front door.

GM: Limp bodies are extremely heavy. The man is a big man. Victoria finds her progress glacially slow.

She doesn’t get at all fatigued, though.

That’s when she hears the wail of approaching police sirens.

“You dumb fucking cunt,” mutters the man.

Victoria: “You help me get him in right now or he’s going to jail.”

GM: “Fuck that!”

The man runs for the door.

Victoria: Burglary charge it is.

She drops the disabled one and charges after him.

GM: The man runs towards Victoria’s car.

The wailing sirens grow louder.

Victoria: She rips open the driver’s door, sliding into the seat and unlocking the other side.

GM: She sees a note lying on the passenger seat.


Victoria: She pockets the note. What the fuck is going on?

GM: “Drive, cunt!” yells the man.

Victoria: She pulls out, speeding away before the police make line of sight. Without any flowing traffic, they’ll be a beacon to the police if they’re seen, and in Anna’s old car, they’d be lucky to make it to the end of the block before they’re cut off.

Vic turns the next corner, navigates two more blocks down, then turns back around to run parallel to her block.

With the police now elsewhere, she redirects toward her new ‘friend’.

80 spare minutes. Simple in, simple out. Grab the laptops. Grab the clothes. Grab the toothbrush and paste.

Simple, right?

It’s never simple. Anna will see it on the news: Shots fired. Man found unconscious. No Vic.

She pulls out her phone and shoots her girlfriend a text.

I’ll be a little late.

---

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