"Hey…when you make it back from Santa Monica, stop in at the Last Round. I'll fill yah in on the politics – now that's the stuff that'll kill yah."
-
The Last Round was everything I expected it to be – small, dark, dirty, loud – and somehow, that disappointed me. Everything was shiny penny new, this world I had been sucked into, and things were turning out to be less than what they seemed. It was like growing up all over again.
I had a few reasons to visit this small scrap of Anarch territory (though all of L.A. was purported to be their territory): I had a meeting with their leader, Nines Rodriguez: I owed the man a lot more than a five minute chat after he saved my ass twice, but the Prince had me running around like a chicken with my head cut off; and I figured it would be a good idea to keep Jack in touch, since he seemed to be so…helpful, to be blunt. I had to wonder what the hell he wanted out of it, but so far the Anarchs were the only ones who were giving and not expecting any favors in return.
So of course I should've expected the warm welcome when I stepped in the door.
"Sabbat chase you in here, Cammy?" The harsh words came from a short red-head dressed in what looked like store bought army fatigues that hadn't seen much wear. Hands on hips and a sour expression on her face said more than her words ever could. I spread my arms wide, showing no weapons and offering peace.
"Hey, I don't mean anything, I'm just looking for –"
"An ass beating? You're looking in the right place. First thing you've done right so far, and why doesn't that surprise me." I had an inkling of why she was aching for a fight, but I wasn't going to pick enemies when I could have allies.
"What's up your ass?" I replied haughtily. I hadn't been a push-over in life, and I wasn't about to roll out the welcome mat now.
"Excuse me? You getting all tight with nancy-pants LaCroix, and you have to ask what's got my panties in a twist? Licks like you ain't welcome here," she replied, bearing her fangs in a challenge.
"Look, I don't like my situation any better than you do. What would you have me do?" She looked genuinely surprised for a moment, before raising a brow.
"There's no way you'd be able to get what's going on around here."
"I don't have to – I'm just looking to keep my butt out of the fire before I get burned, again. I don't need bitches like you and LaCroix pushing me around to prove how tough their mamas made 'em. I'm just trying to figure out my place in all this chaos." Moving her hands from her hips, she crossed her arms over her ample chest as she considered me for a moment.
"That's not a bad attitude; you might just have an Anarch soul. But don't ever put me and LaCroix in the same sentence again or I'll break something on your scrawny body. Still, it's one thing to say something and another to do something, you get me?" She sighed, letting her arms go limp. Taking a moment to look over our surroundings, she leaned in close to me, speaking in a hushed tone. "I'll apologize this one time – what with the Camarilla suddenly moving in on our turf, plus this plague that's got the CDC in town…it's a little much, yah know?"
"Sure. Hey, I'm Ana."
"Damsel. Den mother of these mothers – but don't let any of 'em know I went soft on you. Someone's got to keep their back straight in this place." I nodded in agreement – the whole girl-bonding thing was never something I had been good at, but I was learning to manage all kinds of new things.
"I'm looking for Nines Rodriguez," I said, finally getting to finish my earlier request.
"Upstairs, should be at one of the tables. I would be careful – they bite harder than I do."
"Thanks for the tip," I replied, moving past her to the staircase that led to the second floor. Again, small, dark, dirty – except it was easier to see the Kindred influence on this floor. People could wander in and out of the first floor, but the second was for the undead only. Some Kindred leaned against walls, others sat around tables. The lights were low, and the subtle smell of something coppery and tangy was apparent like cigarette smoke. Everyone was dressed in either jean or leather material, making it difficult to tell one person from the next; the Brujah sense of style was beyond me. Glances passed over me as I reached the top of the stairs, and another lackey stepped forward to harass me.
"Well if it ain't the poster-child for Camarilla benevolence. What's the Prince got his little bitch doing today?" A tall, bald black man moved into my path, stopping me from reaching the landing. I hated that I had to look up to meet his gaze – despite the fact that I was standing on a step below him, he had at least a foot's length of height on me, even in heels. I bit my tongue for a moment, regarding him. I wanted to make a catty remark, but with the stairs going down behind me and leverage not being on my side, it didn't look like a good idea.
"I'm looking for Nines Rodriguez." He stood as immovable as stone, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Well Nines ain't looking for you. How the hell did you get past college-girl?" I had to assume he was talking about Damsel.
"She realized that all this posturing doesn't get anyone anywhere. And actually, Nines told me to come here. Remember? He is the one who saved my ass at my execution. I just wanted to say thanks."
"Yeah, well I heard he saved your ass again after you blew up that Sabbat factory." What a small world. Restraining the urge to roll my eyes, I put one foot on the landing next to his large boots.
"That too. I've got a lot of thankin' to do, so you gonna let me by, or do you want to take it up with the man himself?" I could see him reconsidering his decision to confront me, and he frowned in annoyance.
"You get a free pass this once, but that doesn't mean I won't be watching you," he finished, and moved out of my path. He pointed to a figure leaning against one of the walls and I walked away from him without looking back. I moved towards the figure as casually as I could, but my heart – well, if it had been beating, it would've been going a mile a minute. I might've owed LaCroix in public, but really I owed my skin to this man. It was odd not being required to return the favor, so I couldn't help but be a little suspicious.
"Good, you got here. I've only got a few things to say," Rodriguez started immediately as I walked up. It seemed like everyone here was going to get preachy – thus far in my experience, everyone gets preachy in their havens. Give 'em an ounce of power, and they walk all over you.
"If you haven't figured it out already, the Camarilla isn't welcome here. We – the Anarchs – have been handling things fine ever since we settled this side of the country. We've kicked their asses out once before, and we'll do it again." It had been obvious to me that the Anarchs disliked the Camarilla, but this fact hit me like a slap. The Camarilla was the new kid on the block? The surprise must have registered on my face, because Nines plowed forward.
"We've just finished a war with the Kuei-jin – and if you don't know who they are, I suggest you find out immediately – and we're working on fixing what they destroyed. The Camarilla rolled in on the tail end of that dispute, and now we've got another bug problem to control. Just felt you should know the score, so you know what side you're playing for." With that, he leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. Short and simple…sweet, even. No one else had given me information straight from his own pocket, save Jack. What was their deal?
"Why are you helping me?" When in doubt, be frank.
"Because I know what it's like." He looked me dead in the face saying that, face stoic. There was no subterfuge here, nothing to make me think that it was anything than what it was. He was so out of place in this world, where manipulation was bread and butter – and still I had no idea what he was talking about. In the moment of silence, a voice called out his name and a door opened. He looked at me again, nodded, and then stepped away, vanishing inside the door. Confused, and feeling like there was more here than I was getting, I turned back towards where I'd entered when I heard a familiar voice.
"Hey! Kid! Haha, you made it!" Turning to my left, I saw Jack, the same man who had given me pointers before I'd been shoved out of a cab in Santa Monica, completely on my own. For the first time since my Embrace, I felt a grin crease my face. I turned to walk towards him, stopping just in front of where he was seated. The table allowed for a view of the entire room, so he must've seen me walk in. He hadn't come to my rescue with the harasser, or led me to Nines, but that wasn't why he had helped me to begin with. I was a big girl – or at least, I hoped at this point I was.
"So how was sight-seeing in Santa Monica?" I slid onto a stool opposite his, my grin shrinking to a smirk.
"Didn't get to do much of that, I'm afraid." He laughed.
"Yeah – bet you got pushed around by anyone who had a week of age over yah!" I nodded in acknowledgement. My hands rested comfortably on the tabletop, nails rapping against the solid surface. It was just like back in college, meeting with a girlfriend at a coffee shop between classes. If that girl was a couple hundred year old vampire who looked and dressed like a Hell's Angel.
"Well, that's just how it goes. The young get kicked, the old-timers scheme, and it goes on and on."
We lulled into a comfortable silence for a moment, and the excitement of meeting an old friend slipped away. I sobered.
"Jack…why does Nines keep helping me?" He rolled his eyes as though I was asking him what two plus two was. I suppose the more pertinent question would've been why are YOU helping me, but one issue at a time.
"I guess he sees something of himself in you – he was abandoned by his Sire, too." This evening just had more and more surprises in store.
"But I wasn't abandoned…Leonard was…" Jack nodded in agreement.
"Yes, but it's the principle. He sees you the same way he was all those years ago. And since he's a good guy, he doesn't want to see anyone else struggle like he had to." He gave me a stern look, pulling on his beard like some wise monk. "I would show your appreciation, if I was you."
I nodded, casting my eyes down to the tabletop. My hands met on the surface, gently folded as I thought about my predicament – I hadn't meant to owe anyone, and then here I was, making trouble without even meaning to. My mouth opened to ask him the same question of assistance, but he beat me to the punch.
"So what's the story with those?" He asked, pointing to my tattoo sleeves. I was wearing a shirt with cut-off sleeves, letting my tattoos be seen without obstruction. I'm sure with those that I came off as Brujah, but I was a Toreador through and through. You just had to look at what the tats were composed of.
"Oh…I was in art school." I held out my arms to showcase the artwork I'd had done in my sophomore year of school; already those memories seemed ages older than they really were.
"So what? What are the paintings?" he replied, leaning forward to examine the pictures. He took my right hand in his and pulled the arm out straight to look over the sleeve.
"Well, here on the shoulder to the bicep…that's Durga, or Kali…Indian Goddess of Change. A lot of people associate her with death, but that's not really what she's about." Jack laughed.
"I have to tell yah, that's what I would've thought. And down here?" He pointed to my fore arm, which was really two paintings in one.
"Brulloff's Last Day of Pompeii, with Goya's Saturn in the volcano – Saturn being the Roman name for-"
"The Greek titan who ate all his kids; I might act dumb, kid, but don't treat me that way," he replied, cracking a grin as his fingers traced over the scene. He had a strong fascination for the images, and he turned my arm over, back and forth, for a few minutes before he reached for my left arm.
"And here?"
"Bouguereau's Evening Mood, being reached by William Blake's Jacob's Ladder," I answered smoothly, letting him perform the same routine as he had done with the other arm. For a moment I thought on the symbolism – the right, destruction, end of days, devouring, death. Change, of the kind we had no control over. The left, hope, light, serenity, heaven. Ambition, our desires and wishes. I had no idea what Jack was seeing in them, but that was my meaning behind the art I had decided to permanently attach to my body.
His hand held my wrist with a quiet strength, the fingers brushing the skin were calloused. I vaguely wondered who he had been in life – Rosa, one of the thin-bloods I had met back in Santa Monica, had named him Smiling Jack. I had to agree with the moniker: it seemed all he did was laugh at everything. He seemed to have more of a jester's role than LaCroix – the true kind of jester, the ones who were intelligent and able to speak the truth behind jabs only they were allowed to make. There was a lot going on in his mind, and I wondered if he would let me in on the joke. He'd seemed eager to help before.
"Jack…what do you know about the Ankaran Sarcophagus?" He didn't even flinch at the name, still looking over my tattoos. He had pulled both arms together to look at them side by side. I kept talking, to see if he would spill even a little information.
"The Prince is willing to let heads roll to get his hands on it. The ship it was on…it was covered in blood, and…I got a look at the coffin itself. It had been opened." My voice was dropping by the moment, less out of secrecy and more out of fear. The Elizabeth Dane had been drenched in sailors' blood, and the Sarcophagus was supposedly the pinpoint of the destruction. I might now be a blood-sucking leech who couldn't bear the touch of the sun, but that kind of thing still disgusted and scared me. Jack cleared his voice, finally looking up. He didn't release my arms.
"You have any idea where we come from, kid?" I quirked a brow and shook my head.
"The old ones, duh. A short line of bloodsuckers who saw fit to beget their own legions to do their dirty work for them. 'Course, it didn't work out the way they wanted, and here we are today." I tried to make my brain work at it, but I still felt like I was grasping at straws. Jack's fingers traced over the picture of Pompeii and of Saturn devouring the Child.
"It's believed that the old ones will return, and devour their young for sustenance. Mainly they talk about Cain in those kinds of legends, but who believes in that nonsense?" He grinned, and my eyes grew wide.
"What does that have to do with LaCroix?"
"You ever heard of diablerie?"
"No."
His voice took on a serious tone. "It's a vampire eating another vampire, drinkin' 'em dry for power. Sabbat vampires commit it a lot to gain power quickly." The lights bulb went off in my head.
"Are you saying that LaCroix wants the Sarcophagus to eat…what's…inside?"
"I always liked the quick learners." He released my wrist, and I pulled my arms back across the table slowly as I thought about what Jack had surmised. If the Sarcophagus contained an old one, an Antediluvian, and LaCroix was going to use it to become more powerful…
"What if he's trying to guard it to stop others from doing that? The diablerie-thingy?"
"You really think he'd let that much power just sit there under his hand?" I bit my lip, eyes unfocusing, wanting to think well of the man who had spared my life. My death. My unlife? But he had killed Leonard, but Leonard had broken the rules of the Masquerade. But the Masquerade was only put forth by the Camarilla, who, according to Jack, pushed everyone into believing their ways were right. According to Jack, LaCroix was the enemy. According to Jack. My mind was spinning in squares, completely confused.
"I've got to…go. LaCroix wants me to steal the Sarcophagus from the museum, for…safety reasons." I stood up from the table, and Jack reached out to grab my wrist, my right wrist, once more.
"Look – you square yourself with him, as quick as you can. And then you don't give that asshole the time of night, you hear me?" I froze, staring at him. Everyone liked to get preachy when you were in their haven. Give 'em one ounce of power…but it was Jack. I smirked at him, flipping my wrist so he'd let go.
"Thanks, Dad." He grinned back at me, but I wasn't sure where we stood now.
"Someone's gotta watch your ass." I took a few steps back from the table and crossed my arms over my chest. Transformation meets aspiration. It was about time I started making these work for me, instead of how wildly out of hand things had become.
"I can watch it myself, don't you worry." And I walked out of there, without looking back. I might not have known why he was helping me, but for some reason I couldn't believe Jack would ever be the bad guy in my story.
But I was pretty sure he knew what the punch line was.