Her hand was cold in mine. Then again, we were both cold.

"Move, you have to move."

Her voice was panicked as she yanked me along. My legs tingled, weighed down.

"Mama I can't."

I was so hungry, the burn in my throat a physical force. Impatient, Mama lifted me into her arms, dislodging the shawl from my shoulders. It fluttered to the floor and I cried out, the only thing keeping me warm now gone. She ignored me, her pace speeding up. Behind us, I could hear the thump of footsteps.

"Mama," I whispered in lulling breaths, my head resting on her shoulder, seeing the deformed creatures as they scrambled around the

corner.

"MAMA!"

She gripped me tighter, her claws digging into my back.

"I hear them, Chimera," she said, her voice breathy with fear.

My whole name. She rarely used it. This was bad. Why did my body feel so odd? So broken? So cold?

"Chime, are you ready?"

I had walked these streets, many a time, by the light of the full moon and in the dark of night. I knew each twist and turn, each backstreet, every shortcut, alley, pothole. I knew where we were.

"Yes, Mama."

My will to live would kick in. I was owed so much in my undead life that I hadn't had when I was alive. Mama squeezed me to her, her grip offering protection and security as she leapt off the docks. That's when she released me and we plunged into the water. The night was warm and the water equally so. But the shock was enough. Bullets rang out in the night and I knew Mama's allies had arrived, since none of the bullets were aimed at us. A hand seized mine in the water, pulling me deeper into the murky depths, Mama most likely, keeping me safe from any stray bullets. She wrapped me in her arms, tight against her body so that I could feel her powerful legs as she kicked, her dress ghosting against my legs. The year was 1906.

A stage. A dusty stage. No actors though. Odd.

I giggled. As if I was one to talk. Mama looked up from her book, not at all concerned by my giddy nature. She couldn't see what I saw.

"Chime, play with your dolls," she instructed. "And come away from the window."

The sun. She was worried about the chance that its light would stream in as it died, touching my undead flesh. I giggled again.

"Mama, the sun can't hurt what it can't touch."

The drapes she'd nailed over the basement windows were secured, stitched perfectly so that not a glimpse of light would get through. Mama was always good at stitching.

"Chime."
There was warning in her voice, her nature strict. She was a great appreciator of art, of beauty, and she always looked upon me as just that. And I was a work of art, my madness the only downside. I sensed her displeasure, crawling over to her and resting my head in her lap. She'd used her ability, trying to roll my mind, to mold it to her will, forgetting briefly that there wasn't enough of it left in tact to effect. That always frustrated her, her displeasure at having been tricked, having me come out as what I was rather than what she was. She hadn't taught me much in our decades together, hadn't had a chance since we spent much of our time running. Rather than upsetting her further, I scurried away from the window, onto my bed and picked up Duchess, a china doll Mama's gentleman friend had brought me. He'd been human, in decades past when Mama knew him. He'd been her ghoul. And he'd been the first warning we got that something was amiss in our sacred garden, evidence that the snake had slithered its way back in. I laughed, a much louder and husky sound, smiling at Mama who cast a warning look my way. I was breaking so many rules tonight. First the windows and then the laughing. But it had been so long since the voices whispered to me and they always sounded so good. It almost made up for the fact that all they brought was bad things.

"A play's the thing," I decided aloud, speaking only to Duchess.

Mama was use to my mad ramblings, her page turning in her book.

"We need a stage and a snake tongue prince," I went on.

My mind was like a movie, the images playing over and over again, the hint of carnival music adding spice. I'd always loved the carnival. Like that, my mind trailed to fluffy cotton candy, the taste lost on someone who needed no food.

"An audience come to see a show with no actors," I said to Duchess, smiling at her painted on face that was absolute perfection. "And they say I'm crazy."
"You're Malkavian, dear," Mama pointed out gently from her chair. "Of course you are."

She closed her book, rising and walking over to my bed. The mattress sank a bit when she sat, her fingers gathering my ebony hair and running through it.

"Chime, what do you see?" she asked.

Her voice was gentle, the kind she used when she was humoring me. But her eyes, there was no humor there, no amusement. When the visions came, so did trouble. The voices didn't much care about my fondness for the nice places we slept.

"A stage with no actors and the looming shadow of death," I said, my voice a whisper as I leaned into her touch.

I yipped when her hand tightened in my locks, leaping from her grasp and losing hair in the process. I sped to the other side of the room in seconds, staring at her in surprise. Mama had never hurt me, not even in such a small manner.

"When did you start having these visions?" she demanded and there was something below that that I'd never seen before.

And with that realization, came another voice. A strange voice. One more informed than the others.

'Fear,' it whispered, a sickening glee at its core, as if it fed off Mama's fear.

Above our heads, I could hear footsteps, footsteps that were unfamiliar. And the coldness returned. Mama heard them too and she rose, knowing something I did not. Which just wasn't possible. She crossed the room at near lightning speed, wrapping me in her arms.

"Remember everything I taught you," she whispered, her grip as tight as they day she'd dragged us to the depths of the ocean.

As well as every other time our hunters got too close. I dropped Duchess, sliding my hands around Mama's waist, my grip tighter than hers as more visions danced before my eyes, before my mind, slipping out of my sight before I could comprehend them. I was lost again, the only thing keeping me aware of the world around me Mama's solid grip, her fingers clutching the back of my head, wrapped in my hair in a soul crushing hug that told me how close to the end we were.

"Mama," I whispered.

I felt the chill of bloody tears on my face, the coldness, I realized, the fear infecting me as well as some part of me comprehended the situation at hand.

"Two weeks," I went on.

The footsteps were drawing closer and I was shaking.

"The visions came back two weeks ago."

Plenty of time to have gotten away if I'd only opened my mouth.

"When we returned to this God forsaken city," Mama spat, the fact that she still held me proof that she wasn't completely mad at me.

But she was right. The return to California had brought the whispers. The return to L.A. the visions.

"Good evening."

The voice was an echo, bouncing from wall to wall. I did not fight as they dragged me down the hallway, ever closer to the voice. I had lost time, again, without Mama to ground me, to be the guiding hand. But the voices has stepped up, making the dismal conditions of my imprisonment a bit better. They'd taken my pretty clothes, ones Mama had changed, every few decades to match the latest fashions while still staying true to our roots. My corset was gone and some female vampire had instructed me into something called a bra. To be honest, it was much more comfortable than a corset. I had liked the female vampire. She had called me Doll, had helped me into the white dress I wore now and had merely smiled and relented when I insisted on keeping my stockings. They were patched carefully by Mama, so long ago, and with my original dress taken, with Mama not at my side, I needed something to hold onto. Double doors opened and I was dragged through them. My eyes fell upon the stage first, the odd stage that had circled my mind for weeks. There were no actors but there, on her knees, held by two vampires was Mama. I grinned, locking onto her immediately.

"Mama!" I cried.

I shook off the vampires holding me, much to their surprise, running towards her.

"Chime!" Mama cried.

She was too late, her unvoiced warning coming a second after the flat end of a sword, the force behind it sending me flying back, hitting the carpeted floor with great force. I'd been hit before, the force itself was not the problem. No, that problem came from the element of surprise. As I regained my bearings, my original guards recaptured me, gripping me tighter as they dragged me to my feet.

"Sebastian, get your dog under control!" Mama snarled, her fangs flashing.

Her outburst drew my attention to the well dressed vampire on the stage.

"As you wish," he said.

His eyes flashed towards me and I recoiled from him, my guards taking that as a second attempt to shake them off. Sebastian reached down, his men offering me to him, like some virgin to a god. He, though, offered only his hand. I looked to Mama as one of the guards dropped my wrist so I could accept. Mama shook her head, briefly, before one of the vampires holding her shoved her head down. I looked back at Sebastian's hand.

"No thank you," I said, using my manners and feeling pretty darn proud of myself.

His eyes were so cold and he had to hurry and suppress a look of disgust that flashed across his face before he turned away.

"As I was saying," he said, adjusting his tie.

He gestured to Mama.

"Lilith is a known Sabbat sympathizer," he announced.

"Ridiculous!" Mama argued.

Sebastian ignored her, addressing the audience that I was just now becoming aware of.

"It is not her only crime," Sebastian went on.

"Lies!" I yelled. "Lies from the serpents tongue! You chase us from our Eden!"

This was the snake tongue prince. His glare went to me.

"My predecessor," he said, his eyes locked on me. "The former Prince did not grant Lilith permission to embrace this childe."

He motioned my way, just in case someone didn't grasp that he was talking about me.

"In fact, she never asked for permission at all."
He looked over his shoulder at Mama. I looked as well, surprised at the desperation I saw in her face. Mama had never begged, never had to. She was very proud and she had every reason to be.

"Sebastian, don't do this," she begged, fighting at the vampires holding her. "She is innocent, she did not know what she was getting into."
"Neither did your Malkavian associate," Sebastian retorted.

He returned his attention back to the crowd.

"We have hunted Lilith for decades, so that she may pay for her many crimes, her continued association with the Sabbat-"
"You would not help us!" Mama argued. "And we had to get away."

Terms I didn't understand, events I was not aware off, that's what they flung back and forth at each other.

"Doll," I heard, the whisper gentle.

I glanced over my shoulder, a smile coming to my lips as I beheld the nice woman who'd helped me to dress. She waved, sneakily, at me. I would have waved back if I'd been free to.

"What drove you to our enemies is not important. No, the fact that you went to them at all is. And it is a heavy crime. You are lucky my men did not kill you on sight."

Sebastian's anger was choking the air. Good thing I didn't need to breathe or else I'd absorb the anger.

"In the face of not one but two heavy crimes, I'm afraid that the only possible sentence is," he paused for dramatic effect. "Death."

I held back a giggle. The fool. Didn't he know Mama had already died? I looked to her to see if she found this as funny as I did. She looked defeated, her head bowed. When she felt my eyes on her, she lifted her eyes, staring into my eyes and attempting a smile.

"Be safe," she bade me.

With that, a heavy blade came down, slicing her head from her shoulders, her entire body disintegrating in front of my face. I had a second where the voices in my brain ceased, everything ceased. All that I saw and heard was just white and white noise. Except Mama as she vanished before my eyes. When my senses returned, I could hear an ungodly wail, a scream so full of raw emotion that I wanted to stop it. Until I realized that that scream was mine. I went limp in the hands of my captors and, surprise, they let me go. I had to avenge Mama, had to rip out the throat of Sebastian and his lacky but I was quickly losing any anger in the face of a hopeless sort of sadness, my body folding in on itself as I dropped into a sobbing, shrieking mess on the carpeted floor. I had never been without Mama, she would leave, on errands, but always when I was asleep or in the care of someone she trusted to handle me. And now, she was gone.

"Cease that infernal noise," I heard Sebastian command.

I felt him try to drive the command home, his will pressing down on the pieces of my mind. There was enough of me that he forced me to fall silent. Somewhere in my grief, I couldn't help being impressed, the feeling gone when my mind remembered that Mama was dead.

"Now, in the case of this... childe," Sebastian went on, able to speak without a shrieking accompaniment. "

'Want to know a secret?'

The voice was back and I desperately wanted to ignore it. It had relished in Mama's fear before.

"As we are aware, few fledglings last long without a sire, and I believe that to be the case here. It seems only right that-"

"This is bullshit!" I heard yelled from the audience.

I'd almost forgotten about them and with that exclamation, the room got colder. Sebastian's expression grew darker. He was clearly not fond of the vampire making the exclamation but there was nothing he could do about it. Whispers had risen in the crowd and the wrong move would undermine both his power and his position.

"If Mister Rodriguez would let me finish," Sebastian said. "I have decided to let this Kindred live."

I lifted my head to him, surprised at his verdict.

"You might as well kill me, snake," I said. "Because I-"

'Be silent.'

The voice was back once more, a sort of familiarity to it and I automatically shut my mouth, aware now that I'd been very ready to threaten the life of the Prince. He seemed to know as well, everything in the way he stood saying that he wanted me to finish that threat. I looked up at him, innocently, and when he realized I wasn't going to finish my threat, he waved his hand, dismissing me.

"Take her away," he ordered. "I am finished with her.

That's what he thought.