Cassandra did not take lightly to intruders of her domain. The arcade was a new acquisition of hers; one she'd brought and managed under the Four of Nine for various purposes. For starters, it's location ensured a quick escape from the streets to the connecting back alleys, something invaluable when one needed a way out. Secondly, it operated as a laundering front, where thousands of dollars of coins could be lost in the machines and their upkeep and found elsewhere.
Third; it helped them keep an eye on the younger kine who would enter from time to time, allowing her to keep herself afoot of any and all mortal trends. And fourth, which she found was being abused, was that it was a gift. A gift of a time now passing, to Elizabeth. She knew the woman's true age, her predilection towards the electronic gaming devices, and how little she expressed her appreciation, but Cassandra couldn't imagine her face would be spat in like this.
Someone was looking to be stepped on, it seemed. Though she knew Elizabeth would love that, too.
"Casey West, I presume," she greeted, in a strong, yet gentle voice. She had clad herself in a dark black garb, wearing heavy boots and a mauve coat over shoulders, wrapped loosely around her tall frame.
Casey stuttered at the sheer presence of the goth before him. "Y-You know who I am?"
"The police do," Cassandra clarified, smirking as she saw Casey's eyes widen, his jaw drop. "And I know the police. Not that they're rushing down to incarcerate you, just that, well…"
"...I believe they call me a vagabond," he clarified for her, straightening himself as he stood, clearing his throat. "L-Look, I'm sorry, I'm a big video game guy. I had… A… Huge urge to just start jamming on these machines."
"At midnight?" Cassandra asked, curious as to how he'd spin this lie of his.
"I'm an addict," he faux-confessed, doubling down. "Ripped the door's lock right off the handle and just glided over here. I'll pay for the damages-"
"-Hush," she smiled. "I'll replace the lock. If you're so inclined to pay off your debt, however, then I'd like for you to join me at the local shelter."
"Of course," he agreed, rather than risk some incomprehensibly large fine.
Her smile widened, and she led him. She didn't have to sense Elizabeth was there, she just knew, and as such, texted her with an order to lock the place up. She followed up quickly with another mash of the phone's buttons, swearing an oath to keep their interactions a secret from Gwendolyn as long as Elizabeth gave them a wide berth.
The night was reeling, but she moved calmly, Cassandra did. She kept her level-headed gaze upon the shrinking, shrinking form of Casey, but couldn't find the words to initiate a dialogue with him.
"We're heading to Saint Jude's, right?" he asked. "I got some assistance from there when I first settled in LA... They're good people."
"Mm," Cassandra nodded. "I've been assisting them for quite some time now. Though stifled by bigger forces and ill hands begetting ill fates, they do well to honour Jude's name."
"Lost causes?"
She tittered. "Correct. Were you raised in a catholic school?"
Casey blushed, shaking his head. "N-No, I uh… Read the plaques around the church. Better Jude than Judas, at any rate, right?"
"Saint Jude went by Judas-"
"-Let me rephrase; better Thaddaeus than Iscariot."
Cassandra snickered, and shook her head at him. "I ask that you spend a little time with us, with them, and pay unto others."
"Of course," Casey repeated himself, noticing the church in sight and the food vans waiting nearby. "I mean no offence, but I wouldn't have taken you for a church girl."
"I get that a lot. I'm usually more of a sit-down-and-plot person, despite my looks."
He smiled, "and what is it that you plot, exactly?"
"Young men, such as yourself, and ensnaring them to perform some wicked deeds for me," she jested, "or, if you're more inclined, getting them to meditate on sin."
Cassandra then read a look on Casey's face. A blush, blood swelling to his cheeks, fit with an expression that told her just how much he'd been played with tonight. Both of them loved it, it seemed.
"No praise to God?"
"I'm an atheist, if you must," she snickered, voice dropping to cold depths. "No man holds authority over me, and the notion of some all seeing figure being the driving force of good and evil irks me. I feel it empowers people if they have the knowledge and ability to drag themselves from evil - and to aide others - without a God telling them so."
"M-My apologies," he stuttered, "I'm pushing a lot of buttons tonight, I didn't mean to-"
She held a hand up. "-It's quite alright. Sanitise yourself and get on the cooking line, Casey."
She watched him, sacrificing his time for Elizabeth's fuckup and taking it on the chin. He worked diligently, and after a few minutes Cassandra felt it became clear that this was no longer punishment to him. When the other cooks and charity workers cleaned up and packed up, still Casey hung around the downtrodden folk he'd helped feed.
He strummed a few notes for a few hours more, until it was becoming dangerous for Cassandra to be out in the night. His music, though not appreciated by all, soothed some sorry souls, sending them to a sweet state they'd rarely see. And he continued in that cool night, until the skin on his fingers began to split, and Cassandra caught a whiff of his blood.
There he laughed, and stopped, and divvied up the dollars to donate he didn't realise he'd been gifted, and it was all too quick that Cassandra abducted him. She took him into that church yard - surrounded by dilapidated stores and ailing businesses, walled off by plastic-poisoned gardens. It was a beautiful place, in a sick way, but one she guarded with a fierce drive.
She cared not for the priests; not for the church. She cared of faith, Cassandara did. That God existed as love within humanity, as a universal force. She pondered as she sequestered their sire-prospect on his form of faith; whether it be art or life itself, but found those questions whittling away as his scent trickled to her nostrils.
"You've hurt yourself," she crooned.
Casey looked indifferent, confused, until he saw what she was looking at. "O-Oh, right. Y-Yeah, I forgot to bring a pick, and it's cold out, and-"
"-Allow me."
She took his finger, there in that churchyard, and licked the blood from it. It was blasphemous in many ways - chief among them the ire it would raise with Gwendolyn. Cassandra, in that heat of passion, cared not. It was only his index finger; only a few meagre drops of blood, and yet, he tasted delectable to her. Keeping a half-lidded gaze on him, Cassandra could tell how deeply he was affected, too - eyes transfixed on hers, body shaking.
"W-What the fuck," Casey uttered, "h-hey, s-stop that. Please."
She removed herself from him, looking scandalised. "Oh. I'm sorry," she said. "I was just-"
"-Are you okay?" Casey asked, backing up a bit. "Do… Look, what the fuck - miss, I don't even know your name. I've been... Accosted, by two other ladies tonight and… This doesn't feel right. Who are you?"
Cassandra swallowed a lump in her throat - his taste still on her tongue - and bowed, in apology. "You're right, and I apologise. That was too far forward of me… My name is Cassandra, Casey, and I…"
He waited for her, to finish that thought, but found himself looking around, confusion mounting and fear spiking. "L-Look, I need to leave now, it's late, and-"
"-Please, allow me to apologise properly. The church can put you up for the night, and-"
"-I'm fine, thank you," Casey assured her. "I've got an apartment, I can walk there."
Cassandra knew that wasn't the case. She cursed to herself, laying a hand on Casey's shoulder before he could bolt from the grounds, exuding her presence. It felt awful to play with him to such a degree, but, she couldn't stand letting him stalk his way home in the cold, alone.
"Let me drive you there, please. I will do you no harm."
He stopped, freezing in place as her powerful hand rested upon his frame, and loosened under her grip. Cassandra allowed herself a polite smile - not one of victory, no, but penance. It was only minutes later that he followed her, thundering down the road in her second-gen Cadillac Calais.
Confident that no Kindred ears could hear them; that gnarled, Nosferatu eyes couldn't see them, Cassandra sighed. Casey stared, sighing in exasperation, exhaustion, exhilaration at the night, watching the streetlight's glow bounce off the car's impossibly black sheen. It was about five minutes of silence before Cassandra calmed herself, truly.
"You are protected," she said. "By faith or by friends, you are protected. I know in these times that's hard to believe, and I don't need to thump any bible to rattle scripture to you, but truly, believe me when I say that."
He heard her, eyes blearily on his watch for a moment, reeling.
"What do you know, Cassandra? Please, for the love of God, tell me. I-I get the feeling that-"
"-You're being told a quarter of a story," she enlightened him. "That events are being orchestrated around you, for you, and, confusingly, not for you."
He sighed, again, blinking, feeling sleep overtake him for a moment then finding out miles had passed him by. "What do you know, Cassandra?"
"I know your name. I know you play the guitar, from what I've seen. I know you were lying, in the arcade, and that you were playing cover-up," she told him, gently. "I know you've been out all night, and that you won't give up this line of questioning."
He blinked again. It was all too late that he realised he hadn't told her where he lived, and yet, she knew where to go. "Why is it so hard to feel safe?"
"Because the rats are looking for you."
Blink. Near his suburb. It was getting harder and harder to keep those heavy lids open…
"Cassandra, what do you know?"
"I know you're going to be something special. I know that you'll shake this city's pillars and build it anew. I know you'll die, Casey."
Blink. His street. Cassandra knew it. She'd parked out front of it and scoped his room for so long that it felt like second nature to be here. She was also in talks to purchase the apartment block he occupied, but, not even the Four knew that.
"I don't wanna die…"
Blink. And he was in bed, staring at the wondrous, pale image of the woman in the moonlight. Cassandra appeared ethereal to him, a ghost in his bedroom, guarding him as he slept. Casey expected fear at his own words, and Cassandra could see the dream-like state he was in, how he filtered from reality to unreality.
She was guilty of a premeditated murder that had yet to come, and yet, seeing the peaceful sleep Casey put himself under, and seeing how he entrenched himself in his bedsheets after days of paranoia… She felt that guilt abate, if only slightly.
"Don't worry. You'll come back to us."
(...)
Morning hit, and Casey awoke to the sound of his best friend, rattling about in their apartment. Checking his watch, trying desperately to recollect the events of the night prior, he groaned awake and stumbled down to their kitchen, cramped and cuddly. He fiddled about through crusty eyes, fingering for a bowl of cereal and giving up on the task with a certain malaised expediency.
"Bit early for you, Case," he heard. He looked up, found Samantha staring back at him, and settled. She was dressed for work - some temp job at an accounting firm - tearing into some buttered toast.
"Sorry for the mess," he mumbled.
"What mess?"
"I don't know," he clarified. "I just assumed I trailed one in from last night. Was at the beach, got paid," Casey patted himself down, producing a mass of scrunched bills, "whatver the fuck this is… Broke into an arcade…"
"Broke into an arcade? What are you, eight?"
"And the star of my very own coming-of-age kids movie, thank you very much," Casey defended himself, in a foppish tone. Samantha snickered, and he desperately tried to collect the events thereafter. "Found myself at Saint Jude's after that, and…"
"...Sounds like a profitable night," she laughed. "Good news is that this covers rent for one, two… Two weeks! See, what did I tell ya? LA's not a 'soul-sucking firepit of despair and torment', plus, looks like one of your clients left a note."
"I've told you time and time again that I put the stripper's life behind me," Casey sobered up, staring at Samantha with a grim defiance, before instantly giggling to himself. "Oh, shit, you weren't kidding."
Having picked apart the mass of the mess of bills, Samantha uncovered a letter, written on some tarot-inspired sheeting. Unfolding it, Casey read the message quietly to himself and squinted, in deep confusion.
"What's it say?"
"Old note from the Empress," he answered her. "Says, 'you're always welcome back'. Must've kept it from when we went out there last time."
Samantha shrugged her shoulders, looking a bit reserved at the memory of the place. "You're always welcome back to get a fucking bottle in the face, apparently. Christ, what a dive… And, still, sorry you had to come to my defence there-"
"-Pfft," he pfft'd, shaking his head, tossing the note in the trash. "It's nothing. I'd rather die than head back there."