Disclaimer: The characters in the following story, with the exception of "Loral Williams" and a few other auxiliary characters, are owned by Spelling Television Inc. [A subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group Inc.]. Vampire: The Masquerade is owned by Mark Rein*Hagan/White Wolf Publishing. My use is in no way a challenge to their copyrights.
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Cameron slammed his fist into the wall. Mind you, he didn't have anything against walls, but judging form the pool of blood issuing out of Jason's crumbled body, it didn't look like the Childe could take much more, and as he reminded himself he needed every Brujah he had left.
Anger seethed through him and the whole building trembled with his rage. This was not how it was suppose to be. That bastard Prince had savagely killed half of his clan, his sire, and all of his brood mates, and now Luna had crippled the tribe. The Brujah were a noble clan, the truest warriors, the purest minds, and yet here they were, their hunting grounds torn from them, their lineage cut off, pandering to a murdering coward who hid behind the office of prince. Cameron's blood was burning.
"You should have his head on a spike." The verbal echo of Cameron's internal thoughts bounced through the Brujah's spacious uptown office. He shot the far corner a dagger filled glance. A Flash and he was there mercilessly pulling the intruder from the shadows and tossing him across the room. Cameron's Dragon Breath sprang into his hand, which took steady aim at the sniveling lump before him.
"No, wait! I can help you!"
The hapless creature squeezed his eyes shut, and Cameron pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Cursing, Cameron remembered he had forgotten to click off the safety. Honestly, gun control was getting out of hand these days. As Cameron fettled with the safety release, his unwanted guest began to sputter.
"Lo-Look, I know you…"
Cameron didn't even glance at him.
"You want Julian dead," he continued to burble. "To serve justice, of course…" he quickly added.
"Of course" Cameron mimicked the personification of pathetic as he reaimed his weapon.
"Bu- but you have ambi-bitions too, you also want to be a prince, and you want to be more powerful than Cyrus."
At that name Cameron halted in his murderous intentions. It was common knowledge that he wanted Luna dead, and that he would sit on the throne, but he had never told anyone, what he had only dreamed of doing to Cyrus. The Brujah Prince of L.A. was an ignorant bigot of a man who had carved out his domain with the same knife he used to kill off his opposition. He was Eddie Fiori to the tenth power, and more than anything else incredibly successful, for all these reasons Cameron hated him.
"I know, my sire did too. He's dead now. Cyrus killed him.
Look, I want him hurt the way you want Julian's head."
Cameron considered the creature before him. At the very least this could be amusing, and since his previous amusement had managed to scrap himself off the floor, the pool of blood in front of his desk had been vacated by it's last swimmer, it looked like he was going to have to hear the intruder out.
"How interesting," sarcasm dripped off his words.
"My brood mates and I escaped L.A. after our sire's attempt to overthrow Cyrus failed."
"And how exactly is this suppose to make me the prince."
"The Prince has placed a moratorium on embracing new Brujah, he didn't say anything about adding refugees to your clan. You know how much Luna hates Cyrus; he would grant us amnesty without blinking an eye, and we could make your clan stronger. We could be the man power behind your rise to the throne."
"So you and a handful of neonate plan to be the Grand Delivers of the San Francisco Brujah?"
"Me and seven neonates, and we aren't as weak as you might think."
Cameron raised a doubting eyebrow.
"Well, I got in here didn't I?"
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Sasha stared at her hands and tried to erase the image of them drenched in blood. It had been a week since she had killed him, a week of the people who loved her tiptoeing around her, a week of the people who despised her using it to torture her. A week without Cash. A week of lying to Loral. The only even conceivably positive aspect of the last seven days was that it had been a week without Cameron, but even that hadn't lasted.
In front of where she sat in a dengy waiting room stood the rather imposing double doors to the Brujah Primogen's office. She had received a summons earlier that morning in the form of a large Brujah women slamming her against a wall demanding to know why she didn't mix with her own kind. The question posed by the Brujah brute, one of "her own kind", had been just too much for her. Sasha hadn't wanted to cry again, so she laughed, and laughed and laughed, until the heavy was gone and she was left clutching a letter telling her when and where to see her Primogen. Then the tears had come.
The door swung open and Cameron swaggered out, younger Kindred in tow.
"Go introduce yourself to the Prince. If he doesn't nail you to the wall we'll continue to negotiate."
"Of course," the other man said nervously and backed out of the room. Cameron shook his head as the young man disappeared. Slowly his eyes swept the waiting room until they settled on Sasha's pale features.
"Sasha?"
Not surprisingly he seemed to have forgotten the appointment.
"Sasha. Come into the office."
An ardent desire to be numb had also made her docile and she quietly obeyed. It felt like a dream being back here. She hadn't visited the Brujah headquarters since Eddie had been killed. She closed her eyes as unbidden memories flooded her conscious. When she reopened them she was sitting on a couch in front of Cameron's desk.
"Good job with that hunter. You seem to have a real knack for eliminating problems…. that is when you aren't creating them."
"Since Jerry is dead and Jason…is out of commission. I want you to take over the Gruber project. Phillip has been feeling a bit independent lately, started pushing low quality P.C.P. without our go ahead. I want you to show him the error of his ways. His son will be at the Candice Hotel as usual next Wednesday. Make an example of him, Oh and don't forget to be creative. If your recent performance is any indication of your talent, that shouldn't be too hard. I'm sending Jennifer with you, incase there are any unforeseen circumstances."
Sasha sat and blinked. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. He wanted her to kill again. What kind of monster..? The answer to the unfinished question flew before her minds eye in reds and violence. She had torn that man apart, ripped out his heart, felt the blood run down her hands and pool at her feet. The beast that killed Cory Tan, that was the kind of monster Cameron was, that was what he wanted her to be. How could this be happening?
"Do you understand?"
"No."
Cameron considered the women sitting in front of him. She was still a fledgling, unable to defend herself, or hunt on her own, and yet even without a sire to look after her she had survived the most turbulent period of San Francisco Camirille history since the last clan war. Weak, but gifted, naïve, but intelligent, innocent, but brutal. Eddie hadn't done Cameron many favors, but granting him Sasha Luna to mold and make had been one of them. Inwardly he smiled.
"Sasha, look at me. You did what you had to do. The beast in you would not have let you done other wise."
He sighed hopping he was getting through to her.
You have to move on now. Phillip Gruber is a threat to our business …"
Sasha was shaking. She didn't want to hear this, she didn't want to be here. Cameron saw that he obviously might as well be talking to a wall. He took a vanilla envelope form his desks and pulled out the photographs it held. He had hoped that Sasha had grown beyond her fears, but since she hadn't he was prepared to force her too.
"If you care so much about the kine look what Gruber's drugs are doing to them."
Sasha stopped shaking and took hold of the photos. Cameron backed of and let them do their work. One had a group of teenagers thrashing and bleeding form the mouth, their eyes turned up in their heads. Another showed a street man who had died of a seizure brought on by an over dose, and the last was of a smashed body of a young women with curly dark hair, who had been run over by a truck. Slowly anger began to seep into her heart. She welcomed any emotion that would replace her present darkness. Her eyes began to teng with red.
Cameron was well aware of the change.
"Let the beast out, and you could save them." He smiled and walked her over to the exit.
"Don't forget. Next Wednesday. I'll send Jennifer to pick you up…if you need me…" he opened the door and gently pushed her through. The door closes quietly behind the seemingly shell shocked women.
Her mind felt like a newly drilled cavity, and the effort it would take to think through what had just happened, was well past the limits of her will power. Autopilot set in and she walked out of the building. Only a pair of eyes hidden deep in the recesses of a shadowy corridor saw the trail of red footprints she left in her wake.
"Hold on Sasha." Came an inaudible whisper.
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The indoor amphitheater echoed with the sounds of heated debate, but the arguments that rang out through the San Francisco Historical Courthouse were superficial at best. All the real politicking had been conducted the previous week, as both candidates had pulled in favors, offered boons, made promises, intimidated, and otherwise coerced their constituencies. The night's proceedings were merely the obligatory actions of Venture electoral machinery.
Still, it was a night that never should have come about Julian thought to himself as he watched Sonny conclude his closing remarks, and take a seat several tiers below him. Although he wasn't adverse to his Childe taking the role of the Venture's new Primogen, the fact that it was vacated in the first place was a source of unending grief. The unsettling waves of sorrow and betrayal that had characterized his life these past two weeks welled up in his heart. Julian had loved his sire as much as any childe ever had, and when he was killed, Julian had mourned with passion, but nothing could change the fact that the Archon had used him, had lied to him, had made him a killer.
For years he had been haunted by his actions that night at Manzanita. Involuntarily the shadows of that nightmare arose around him blocking out the debate below. Darkness descended as his mind's eye brought him back to the scene of his worst crime. Even now he could feel the heat of the flames, hear the dying screams and pleas for mercy, as his hands slick with blood of countless kindred clutched a knife and a gun with all their might. His own body ached with wounds long healed, and trembled with the power of the beast. Past the fire past the blood at the core of his memory there was a presence in his mind, in his soul that had guided the berserker slashes he laid into victims, The Archon Rane.
"My Prince?"
Julian snapped back to the present, and turned his full gaze on the young man who had interrupted his private pain. What he saw baffled him. Jeffery's eyes widened with terror, and his skin went from pale to white. Self-consciously Julian touched his face. The memory had brought on the Change unintentionally. Twin orbs of burning blue gold and razor sharp fangs looked into the fearful face his most trusted aid. 'So this is what it is to be Julian Luna' he thought. His eyes returned to their natural deep brown, and a mask of superiority covered his inner turmoil.
"Yes, Jeffery?"
Jeffery swallowed hard, hoping that his prince had regained control. "The time to cast votes has come, my Prince."
"Thank you, Jeffery"
Julian rose walked over to the ballot keeper, handed her the ballot, and returned to his seat. It had been his wish not to preside over the election of the new Primogen. As the most powerful Venture in the Domain it was his right to, but he wanted to insure that the opposition could not contest the election of his Childe, so he declined the honor. A silent smile spread across his face as he watched the progress of his clan to the ballot box. Here in this room was order, peace, and civility. Here he could leave his nightmares behind, and concentrate on the health of his subjects. Below him representatives of both candidates counted out the number of ballots. There seemed to be some commotion surrounding it, but there always was in these forms of elections.
The Ballot keeper listened to the reported numbers for each candidate, and stood quietly. The entire chamber went silent.
"After three counts of the vote, the Kindred, united under
their loyalty to the Venture Clan, have chosen their representative to the
Prince's Council.
