Author's Note: Sorry for such a short chapter after a long delay, I've had family issues. I also need to address something at this time with a guest reviewer, so here goes.

Dear guest reviewer,

I'm sorry that you feel the antagonist is overpowered. I call it the 'Superman syndrome.' If you make the protagonist overpowered, you have to place other limiters on their powers. I'm sorry you feel as if this detracts from the plot, but the main character can't die before the end of the story. Even movies where the main character dies wait till the end to do that and not the beginning, unless your name is Quentin Tarantino. That man can get away with anything.

As for your argument that it makes no sense for her raise in generation, when does Thaumaturgy ever make sense? You are talking about one of the most powerful disciplines in existence, one that can cause anything to happen, even temporarily lowering your generation with level three Thaumaturgy in the Blood Path. With an actual antediluvian, who knows what they can or can't do, so my having him lower Eliza's generation to three is not out of the question. The reason I settled on fourth generation was thinking it through logically from Caine's perspective. If Eliza had killed Lucian/Lasombra when pressed, she'd take the title of her antediluvian and his generation. Since she allowed him to live, only not in her body, she takes a spot as a Lucian/Lasombra's childe.

As for her attitude, kindred have a thing called the Beast, a living monster within them. As kindred go through their unlife, they have to struggle with this monster within them. The only thing they have to combat it is their humanity. As I'm writing this more as a pen and paper game transcript than the PC game it was, I constantly ask myself what her gain or loss is at this moment in the story. When I wrote that moment in Chapter 36, I decided that her killing of what amounts to an innocent kine caused a brief lapse of her Beast. If it comes up again, she'll likely change her stance, but that has yet to happen in the days since. Yes, I know it was briefly mentioned in Chapter 37, but Eliza didn't latch on to what was said about Dianne/Sugar.

Furthermore, there are many more possibilities for advancing the story ark with Four-Play. This story isn't over yet, and Four-Play is a key player in the immediate future with its many residing characters. I am sorry if you feel you have been cheated out of any time you spent reading this story, and feel sorry that I'm not a better writer to give you a better story, one worthy of the New York Times Best Selling List. THough, if I were, I'd be selling it for money and you might or might not read it.

Please enjoy your free story, and yes, all snark is intended.

Have a nice day...

Chapter 42 – Unexpected Complication

October 5, 2004 = Tuesday

~Eliza Flores~

I headed straight up to Lacroix Tower, parking my Ninja out front on the street. I peaked in the front window, finding Chunk manning the security desk. Rolling my eyes, I walked through the front doors finding he was sitting to a box of donuts, one already stuffed to his face. I would have gladly walked on, calling the elevator myself but upon seeing me, Chunk put the donut back in the box and hastily wiped his hands on a napkin.

"Hey, pudding cake!" he called, and I groaned.

"Hello, Chunk," I said, giving him a wan smile. The security guard ate it up, beaming as if he won the lottery. Poor sod probably never got much of a chance to talk to a woman outside of those that were paid to, so I tolerated it.

"Lotsa crime in the area lately," he told me as I paused to talk with him. "There's now been three mass killings in town. Just had one come in over the radio. Apparently someone slaughtered three dozen men at one of them fancy hotels."

"I'm sure you'll protect me," I said, knowing the poor guy would likely piss himself to know I was the one doing all the slaughtering.

"Sure will," he said, as he hit a button for me. "Elevator should be waiting for ya."

"Thanks, Chunk," I said, walking past the security desk.

"Enjoy yourself!" he called as I walked into the elevator and rode it all the way up.

I came out on the entrance to the Camarilla headquarters, then turned and headed for Walsh's office. The door was closed when I got there, but I could hear voices coming faintly through the wall. I couldn't make anything out, but when the door opened, three people came out, two of them well armed with assault rifles and SWAT-like tactical gear and Walsh's ghoul Rochelle. Rochelle carried a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and the two men took positions in front and behind her. They both seemed to eye me as they passed, but neither said anything as they moved briskly down the hall and down the elevator.

Entering his office, I found Walsh filing some paperwork in a tall cabinet. He frowned at seeing me, but it passed quickly. "How did you get Miss Dare to acquiesce to being your ghoul when most of the city couldn't?"

"I happened to catch her at an emotionally sensitive time," I said, taking a seat across from his desk. Walsh had yet to sit, and he seemed to tower over me. He mouthed a silent 'oh,' and I shook my head. "Not that emotionally sensitive time. Her payment to the Russian Mafia was up and she didn't have the money to pay."

"Ah," he said, settling himself into his chair. "I take it she was less than thrilled with the alternate payment plans the mafia has?"

"Absolutely thrilled," I said sarcastically, shaking my head. "I managed to convince her that I could solve her problems with the mafia permanently, freeing her of her debt, but in exchange I wanted her. When I killed Boris and his mafia goons, I returned and revealed myself as kindred, telling her she would be my new ghoul. She accepted, more out of fear I think, but I didn't use presence to influence her."

"Which means you won the bet," he said, then reached down and pulled a folder from a drawer of his desk. "The total waged amount in cash was twenty nine million dollars," he said and I whistled. That was plenty, alright, with enough to pay off my mansion with some left over after the four million I had put on the down payment. "The total boons number nineteen, and therein lies a small problem. One of those now belongs to Herr Mueller, the Ventrue primogen."

"Why should he be a problem?" I asked, not knowing of anything besides him being Ventrue for him to hate me.

"He, like most of my clan, believes heavily in the blood feud between our clans," he told me. "I think he believes too heavily in the propaganda of the Third Reich, even in death, and thinks we Ventrue as superior in every way."

"Admitting a fault?" I asked him with a smirk on my face. I so enjoyed watching the Ventrue squirm.

"Each clan, and person, has certain strengths and weaknesses," he responded with a smirk of his own. "Learning them makes it easier to manipulate individuals into doing that which you want. Personally, I'd like to see Herr Mueller taken down a peg, so I'm not above offering the weight of my office to force him into an agreement to settle your boon. As the appointed harpy of the local Camarilla, he is the one whom records such things and makes sure they are enforced."

"And would you like a boon in return if I should have to call on you to force Herr Mueller into settling his boon with me?" I asked him, feeling as if I were walking in circles. It was like paying off credit cards with credit cards. Useful in the short term, but didn't pay off anything long term.

"Yes, I would," he said, making me grimace inwardly even as I forced my face to remain passive.

"Then so be it," I told him, an idea striking me on a way for Mueller to pay his boon in a way that would barely inconvenience him but greatly help me. "I can make it easy for him to pay off, as there is something he has that I don't."

"Money?"

"As you yourself once said, Ventrue are money, treating our economy as if it were all a giant game of Monopoly. I'm just going to ask the banker for a stack of five hundred dollar bills," I told him, letting myself smile at the thought of paying off my bills and having plenty of cash to set myself up for the next millennia.

"That's one way of paying off a boon," he said with a chuckle. "I can vouch that he has almost half a billion in his bank account at the start of the week, so feel free to dig deep in his pocket."

"It sounds as if you want me to take him down a bit in the pocketbook," I told him, getting a chuckle out of my observation.

"I do, actually," he said, steepling his fingers as he got serious. "We are currently polite rivals in a business venture. And though we are money, at our age it's considered, a breach of etiquette to be bailed out by the clan's bank account."

"So, if I were to drain his funds, his pride would keep him broke until he was able to regenerate his lost income on his own," I said, smiling at the clan insight into the Ventrue.

"Very true," he said, smiling as he dipped his head to his steepled hands. "I would gain an advantage, and if he tried to use the clan to bail himself out, it would cost him socially. It would cost him more boons than he can afford to lose to keep face, and would be a boost for me."

"Which is why you're offering me the power of your office to force Herr Mueller into settling his boon with me?"

"Indeed," he said, dropping his hands to his lap. "You are catching on fast to Jyhad."

"I thought Jyhad was a Middle Eastern thing," I said, wondering if it had other connotations.

"Jyhad means literally, a struggle for self-improvement," he told me. "The Camarilla position on it as anything more than that is that it's entirely false. Personally, I don't see it as a world wide conspiracy against the young. The younger kindred will always rally against their elders and vice-versa; there doesn't need to be a conspiracy."

"I'll agree to that," I told him. "I guess many kindred in town are more worried about their blood for the night than getting one up on everyone else."

"For the most part, that's true," he told me. "The younger ones haven't learned to see past the present to the future. The ones that do, can barely see tomorrow. The few that can see weeks or months or years ahead are the ones you need to stay clear of."

"Like the prince?"

Walsh didn't immediately answer my question, and I read volumes into his silence. The prince was not well liked it seemed. When he did speak, I knew he had been carefully weighing his words.

"He has shown some ability to plan, but his strengths are more in his adaptability and deals," he told me. "He, like I have, has chosen to embrace new and differing ideas to further his own goals. Yourself, for example."

"Like increasing the size of the payments for upholding the masquerade to make it seem as if I had more income potential than I really had?" I asked, and he chuckled.

"So I get caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Yes, it was my intention to ensnare you in debt, a snare I must say you've slipped quite handily."

I smiled at Walsh, thinking that with half a billion dollars I could afford half a dozen places on the beach with no problem. Maybe I should get a financial adviser. I shook my head, I had to get it first.

"So where do I meet Herr Mueller to discuss his boon?" I asked of Walsh.

"It might be best if you met here," Walsh told me after thinking on it for a bit. "Meeting the man on his own turf might not be best for your health."

"Would I be in trouble if during such an encounter against my being if I killed him?" I asked and Walsh shook his head.

"Not from us, officially, but you might earn the ire of any friends and associates he has," he told me. "I know that Mueller and Lacroix have agreements that go back to World War Two, when Germany had successfully invaded France. What you may never have learned is that the kindred in those countries gained and lost as well. Many of the older kindred had to suddenly deal with their young counterparts who were backed by a victorious kine army."

"At least no one turned Hitler," I muttered, and Walsh looked down. "They didn't?"

"Near the end," he said, shaking his head. "It was a last ditch attempt to salvage the war effort. He was suffering from a mental disease, making so many bad choices the German's were losing the war. It was decided that he would be turned, hoping the disease would be stopped and he could return to leading a successful military campaign."

"But we stopped him," I said, remembering that much from history.

"Before he could turn things around, the Allied forces were knocking on the bunker's doors," he confirmed. "Knowing that if he were captured or his body were acquired, it would be very public and a huge masquerade violation, he committed suicide by lighting himself on fire."

"And his wife?" I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer.

"Became his ghoul in the time preceding his death, and followed him in the same gruesome manner," he told me. "His generals and top aides were mostly ghouls, or otherwise knowing of Hitler's newfound identity as a kindred, and helped hide his body in the aftermath by hiding the bunker where he was killed. It's lost to history now. Only the surviving kindred Nazis of Germany, like Mueller, might know where it is."

"Not much point in looking them up now, I guess," I said, shelving the knowledge Welsh was giving and wondering how kindred figured into history. Maybe I should dig up Beckett sometime and see if there were some sort of written addendum to what the kine knew as history for the last two hundred years. "If you would be so kind as to schedule a meeting with Herr Mueller, you can let me know when I need to return."

"It will likely be a few hours before morning," he told me, as he straightened in his chair. "I'll ring you on your cellular phone when I have a firm time for the meeting."

"Thank you, Walsh," I said, standing up as he handed me a list of people's names.

"That's a list of those who now owe you a boon," he said as I scanned the list. I recognized a few names, such as VV and Barker, but most of them didn't ring any bells. "I'll also alert them that the bet has been resolved and that you were the winner. Look for them to start calling by the time you leave this building."

"I'll probably arrange to meet them at my house," I said absently, wondering briefly if I should invest in some sort of upscale eatery. I was on the verge of having money and status, and meeting people in my Great Room didn't fit with that, to me anyway. Maybe I should get an office.

"I'll speak with you later, then," Walsh said as I left his office.

I decided to leave the building, as I had nothing left to take care of and head back to Four-Play. The strip club was currently the only place I could go that I could consider a social spot, and I definitely needed to think on a place that could be considered a polite social attraction, like a restaurant.

'God,' I thought as I reached that conclusion while dropping through the tower. 'I'm turning into a mafioso.'

Addendum: Per Darkladyevanstar's review, let me clarify something. I don't hate ANY reviews. Call me every bad name in the book, I don't care. In fact, I've actually been thinking of holding the next chapter hostage till I get at least five reviews of the current chapter. I love my reviews, even check my email for notices about new reviews days after a chapter is uploaded. That's why I can respond so fast to your inquiries and reviews.

So please, keep those reviews coming.