She remembered how it had all begun. It seemed ages ago though it was in reality
only five years. That night walking home from her practice, she had been delayed.
It was dark out, but she had called her parents they knew she'd be late. This was the
suburbs, nothing bad ever happened here, and she had walked home alone before. Then Katrina ran into Jeffery Driscoll and his cronies. They were juniors and
didn't appreciate the "foreign" freshman girl surpassing their musical "abilities."
Tonight she had taken Jeffery's spot of first chair. She was almost sure to get
beaten, maybe worse. There were rumors about them, rumors involving drugs. Luckily, or rather unluckily, she knew now that the danger those boys offered was
nothing compared to Renfield's evils Another boy their age, whom she now as
Renfield, arrived. He was dressed in black and sported a Metallica t-shirt, but
despite his violent outward appearance actually seemed sensitive and caring. A lie
within a lie. Renfield turned Jeffery's cronies on their heels and set them running easily. None
of them had ever seen such a fighter, except maybe in the movies. Of course
Katrina thanked him for his help, but that wasn't enough for him. Renfield asked that she follow him, he said he had something he wanted to show
her. Naturally she refused, saying that she needed to get home to her family since
they were expecting her. This caused Renfield to fly into a rage, he had actually
expected her to go with him. Katrina was frightened now, as any reasonable kid would be of an angry punk.
She tried to run from him, but one command from his lips stopped her with what felt
like supernatural power. She knew that it was such now, and she had felt that
power many times since she had met Renfield that first night. Then she remembered being carried away to a car and not being able to do
anything about it. She remembered her three years as a ghoul chained to a wall and
forcibly injected with heroin while she sat paralyzed by her captor's gaze. She remembered the endless assaults on her mind as Renfield tried to impose the
memories he had concocted over what he thought to be her surprisingly strong will. She remembered being drained dry of blood, and then being wrenched back at the
last instant from the escape death could bring. She remembered the abortive escape attempts, blood bond bringing her back to
Renfield before she could get far away. She remembered the sessions with Renfield and his ghoul torturer and assassin
Mina. Staked and helpless. she could do nothing but feel her body being ripped and
torn to pieces, then feel the flesh repair itself. Even growing new limbs, always
returning to the same form she had when she was made a vampire. She remembered the first time she had referred to herself in her own thoughts, not
as Katrina, but as Carmilla. Most of all she remembered two weeks ago, her first taste of human blood. She remembered how they had starved her of blood until she was snatching at
insects for the puny juices they carried. She remembered how they had thrown the killer in with her, naked and bleeding
from small cuts all over his body. She remembered the terror on his face as she leaped on him without a thought and
fangs bared. She remembered the feeling of unforgiveable ecstacy as she took his life forces for
her own, and she remembered the guilt and revulsion that followed when the Beast
gave her back control. Then her day-sleep images slipped out of memory into possibility and became truly
horrifing.
Micheal hung-up the phone slowly, as the sound of the television created a white
noise in the background. He was trapped, there was no way out of this. "Ah Mr. Rohan, I was hoping to catch you before you left," a voice Micheal
recognized immeadiatly, and suscpected the name of its owner, began. "There has
been a change of plans." 'He has my home number,' Micheal thought. 'He knows who I am.' "What's the problem?" he asked, calmly. "We think the police know of this meeting," the voice calmly explained. "We are
going to have a change of venue. Do you know the old factory on the edge of
town?" "Yes," he replied. Of course he knew the factory, some of the records he'd
uncovered indicated that the drug-lord Varney had encouraged its collapse thirty
years ago. Which made him at least sixty, but he appeared less than forty by all the
pictures. So either he was older than he looked, or there was more than one Varney
over the last few years. An internet quiry, made as a lark, into the name Varney
came up with a novel from the 1800s called Varney the Vampire. That was when
Micheal had begun to lean toward older than he looks. "I suggest we meet there," the voice said. "And assuming I can't make it?" he asked, knowing that the hook was coming. "Then I have an alternative plan for the day involving a striking young woman of
our mutual acquaintance." Micheal felt his stomach tighten, it was the obvious
answer, but it twisted him in spite of the expectation. "Then I have no choice." He did, however, have some options. "Good, I'll expect you there shortly, say an hour." The phone clicked as the one he
assumed was Varney, set the receiver down on his end. Micheal thought back to the previous month, following his younger brother to
determine where he went at night. The answer had been terrifying, and Micheal had
stepped up his lectures on responsibility. He had never confronted Bregan with his
knowledge, not certain of the response. Micheal picked up the phone again and dialed the station. Dispatch picked up and
in response to his name, transferred him to Lieutenant Jacobs. "Your back-up has already been dispatched Detective," Jacobs barked. "I suggest
you meet with your suscpects as arranged." He then hung-up before Micheal could
say anything. Micheal tried again to call the station, but no other lines seemed to be
operating, as absurd as that sounded. A bit more effective than merely cutting his
home lines, but how could it have been done without arousing some suscpision? There was no time to ponder that, and his personal car hadn't been fitted with a
radio. The circumstances left him with just one option. He checked his watch,
Bregan would be home in an hour, maybe longer. Too long. He jotted down a
quick note to his brother and ran out the door. "What's with the death trap bit," he asked himself, while running to his car. "Why
don't they just kill me and leave it at that?" The television played on, unnoticed.
Bregan returned home from a night of making the rounds of the San Francisco bars
and nightclubs with others of his pack. As usual, each of the five Garou had drunk
enough to put ten men under the table, but they were Garou. What's more, they
were of the Fianna tribe. Fianna didn't get drunk, they just liked to make people
think they did. He had only recently discovered his Garou heritage, somehow he had managed to
keep the fact hidden from his older brother. His time away for the rite of passage
had been explained away as a summer vacation. Of course he had met some new
friends on that trip, so that explained his pack. His brother had some choice words
with him about cutting out in the middle of a new job, but what was he going to
say? "Hey, Mike, guess what I found out this summer?" Bregan laughed a little to
himself as he waved goodbye to his packmates and climbed the steps to the
apartment he shared with his brother. Mike should be home just about now, of
course Bregan would catch hell for waiting until dawn to come home, but that was
nothing he couldn't take. He'd gone out and had his fun with spirits, both of the esoteric and the beverage,
now was the time to come back to the real world of a narc's younger brother just
out of college. He could just hear Mike now: "If you want to be cop, Bregan,
you're going to have to take more responsibility for your actions. You can't just
party the rest of your life, you have to stand for something..." He opened the door and walked into the apartment non-chalantly. The news was
on, detailing some story involving a semi that veered off the road and took down
some phone lines. Citizens were being informed that a police station was among
those cut off, but that the main dispatch line was fortuitously on another line, and
normal operations could continue. "Hey, Mike! I'm home, the party just crashed here!" There was no response,
maybe he beat him Mike home after all. "Mike?" Bregan walked into the kitchen to
get some soda, convinced that he had just barely beat his older brother home. His
eyes caught the note instantly. There, stuck to the refridgerator by a magnet, folded in half and written in big bold
letters on the outer flap. "I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE." "Ah, shit," he groaned, then grabbed the note and started to read it. "I'm going to a deal today, the suspects called to change the place. If I don't come
back alive today, avenge me. Remember the name Varney, there's more to this than
just a drug-lord." "Mike, you've gone overboard with the John Wayne shit this time."
It was pure coincidence that Jaera saw him as she was taking her morning jog.
Not a bad workout today, despite the fact that some whacked out thug had tried to
mug her. That was annoying, but he wouldn't bother anyone now. For some reason
his body's resistance to disease and toxins just dropped as he tried to attack her.
Naturally the drugs in the mugger's system killed him nearly instantly. However he was not the individual whose presence had her so interested now.
When she reached home, a small sanctum for Akashic Brotherhood mages, she
immeadiatly rushed to her desk and retrieved a photograph from a drawer. She
looked at it long and hard, activating some minor mind magick to picture than man
she had seen early. Yes, there was no doubt about it. Nathan Coleridge, the ghoul of the Sabbat
Brujah who had killed her older sister and mentor, was in town. That meant that
Jared Mason was here as well. She had found her original quarry, as unlikely as that
seemed. Now she could put her knowledge of the Kindred to the test. She heard her avatar's voice calling to her, urging her to take the offensive, swoop
upon her prey like the hawk that she was in her soul. She never imagined that she
would find him again so soon, but it seemed fitting somehow that he be her first
vampiric kill. "Jared Mason, you're about to be called to order for your crimes in the past." She laughed at the picture of two confederate soldiers, one a teenager and the
other a middle-aged man. Jaera wasn't thinking about how much power a Sabbat must have to live for nearly
one hundred years among their sworn enemies, the Camirilla, she was too overjoyed
at having found him.
Three nights a week, Jenny Simon performed at the Shadowspot nightclub. It
wasn't the sleazy sort of place most people would associate with a big city nightclub.
By the standards of most of the town it wasn't even a true nightclub. After all, high
schoolers were allowed in, and the ownership as strict about its rules. "You want a strip joint, go to a strip joint," insisted Marcus Karkoff the owner.
"You want to watch some talented people perform their acts, or maybe meet
somebody, then your in the right place." Jenny's act was a sing and dance number performed to one of her own songs,
though nobody ever noticed and appreciated that. The men were too busy watching
her sleek, ebony twenty-four year old body move, and most of the women were too
busy watching their men. It wasn't that she was truly great yet at either singing or dancing, it was that she
knew how to do more than that. She knew how to express herself on stage and
through music, knew how to act according to the audience's mood, and knew what
to emphasize and what not to emphasize. She couldn't remember when he first arrived at the club, he didn't seem out of the
ordinary for the type that came. High school kid wanting a taste of the real
nightclubs, invariably they drifted back to the arcade to play what ever the latest
game fad was. This kid was different though, and he soon revealed himself as a true pick-up
artist. He came in alone each time, and always left with some attractive young girl.
A different one everytime it seemed. Jenny almost felt disgusted by the thought of another use 'em and lose 'em
character roaming the streets, but he was a kid yet and he could still change. Jenny
never noticed that sometimes the girls never came back, and she never had the
chance to learn that the girls that did come back had very little knowledge of what
had happened on those particular nights.
Mina waited for her target, she knew he was coming, an unrefusable invitation had
been delivered. Now all that remained was to remove Lt. Rohan. Mina watched from a rooftop as Micheal Rohan pulled up at the factory, as he had
been ordered, but nobody was there yet. He waited, and he waited, finally another
car pulled up next to him. The driver stopped and exited the car. "Michael?" the driver asked. "What are you doing here?" The speaker was Marie
Alvarez, a very lovely and talented computer programmer Micheal had fallen for a
couple of years back. They were planning to get married early next spring, and
there was already a child on the way. His parents would have thrown him out of the
family for such a thing, they weren't the most tolerent people in the world about
either pre-marital sex or inter-racial marriages. Michael felt a stone begin to grow in his chest. "Marie," he started calmly. "Who
told you to come here?" "I was just on my way home from a job and saw your car..." she looked to the
briefcase sitting on Mike's car hood. "Mike, what's going on?" "I knew you were cheating on me, bitch!" The yell came from behind them, there
was Marie's ex-husband Lawrence Jenson, grasping an automatic pistol in his hand.
"Who's the bastard? Some delivery guy?"
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