Marek woke up after about three days worth of lying there like that. The whole time, he just thought about Beckett had told him. He didn't know what it all meant, and the whole situation that he was in was not looking good if what Beckett said was true. If things turned out that way, then fuck all of Lodin's politics and laws; he would do this all on his own if he had to.

It had been a few nights, so Marek thought it best to check his e-mail and see what was going on. His inbox came up on the screen, and he saw that he had two messages. One from Lodin and another from someone named Maria. Of course he remembered her from that night a long time ago, but she said that they would not be in contact. He figured that it was another e-mail about conspiracy, so he saved that one for last. Marek went straight to Lodin's message and opened it.

"Good job with the hunters. So far, we have had no reports of any other kine aware of your deeds that night, which is always good. As appreciation for a job well done, there is a small token of my appreciation in your mailbox. We will be in touch again. –Lodin."

It was another damn thank you note. He was tired of his bullshit fronts, but he paid well, and Marek wasn't going to question a source of income. Now that he was annoyed with Lodin's letter, he was ready to open whatever Maria had sent him. It was sent today, so he figured that the message was urgent.

"If I didn't have such important information to tell you, I would have said this straight out, but your e-mail is being watched. Take the cell phone in your mailbox and I will call you with the location of our meeting. I fear that they have gotten to you already, and there are still many important facts that I know Lodin has left out in all his speeches. Remember to grab the phone and answer it at midnight, sharp. –Sire"

Another damn cryptic message. These people make a living out of being paranoid. He figured he would humor her though, and so he walked out of the door and opened his mailbox. Walking inside, he saw the money clip Lodin left him holding two hundred dollars, and a small black flip cell phone. Marek just set the phone on the table and sat around in his apartment waiting for the phone call. The clock's hands ran past eleven, then half past, and finally to midnight. Then midnight came and went, and still no phone call from Maria.

Finally at fifteen past, the phone rang loudly on the table. Marek contemplated not picking it up, but he walked over and answered the phone on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Marek. Listen to me. You have to get out of the building. They are coming for you."

"Huh? Wait, what do you mean?"

"No time, you must get out, now! We'll talk when you get out of the building. Take everything you need with you."

Then she hung up the phone. He would have thought she was pulling his leg, but she sounded as though she was scared shitless, so he hurried up and grabbed everything. Marek gathered up his cash, now totaling about seventeen hundred bucks, and he put on the trench coat holding his colts and all their ammo. Lastly, he strapped the katana on his back, and that was about everything that he needed from the apartment.

Marek walked outside of his room and headed over to the elevator. He pressed the button, and the elevator started to run, but then suddenly shut off. The light went off on the up button, and he pressed it again and it didn't work again. He was starting to think that the whole thing was real. Turning around, Marek then headed over to the stairway, and as he did the overhead lights in the halls went out one by one. Running now, he entered the stairs and started to walk down, but he heard some other footsteps coming up. He looked down and saw a few dozen men walking up to where he was. Hunters.

Now he was totally fucked. They had the jump on him this time, and he didn't know of any way out but up. So up he went as he climbed the stairs and came out on the roof. Marek searched frantically fro someway off the roof, but on two sides the buildings were too high to reach, and the other was too far away of a jump, even for him. The only way out was to fight his way through the hunters, and there was no guarantee that he would come out of this ordeal still living.

Quickly he pulled out both colts and made sure the magazines were full, and then he just stood on the roof facing the door coming up. Waiting for about two minutes for them to come up, and it felt like an eternity to him. Finally the footsteps in the stairwell became louder as they approached the door. As soon as the door opened, Marek opened fire and the hunters that started to pour out the door were just mown down by the dual colts. He finally clicked out of ammo and had killed about ten of them, but they just kept coming.

Marek dodged to the side while reloading his guns so as to avoid their bullets. Hiding behind an air conditioner on the roof, Marek blindly opened fire of whomever he saw until that magazine was out. Finally the roof was deathly quiet, and Marek just holstered his guns. Looking around, Marek counted fourteen dead bodies, but something registered in the back of his mind that the body count was not high enough for the amount of people that were coming up his stairwell.

Cautiously Marek walked over and entered the doorway to go down. He looked down and saw that no one was in the stairs, so he figured that it was safe to go down. Halfway down the stairs, an explosion shook the entire building and Marek almost lost his footing. Then it had just hit him, they were going to burn the building down with him in it, and fire does not mix well with his kind. They were really determined to kill him, even if they got the local law enforcement involved. He guessed that they were really pissed about his raid on their building, but they couldn't know that it was him that did that job, or even where he lived, could they?

He ran as fast as he could down the stairs, so he wouldn't get trapped too high up by the flames. As he got to about the third floor, the building shook violently, and he saw the flames down on the floor below. That was as far as he could get, so he ran through the hallway trying to find a way out. Something on the wall caught his eye, and he stopped and saw that it was a fire exit plan. The map showed that there was a fire escape in the apartment on the far end of the hall.

Marek broke down the door and was confronted by a wall of flames. The whole room was filled with flames, and the fire was also starting to break through the floor below him, which didn't leave him much choice. Marek pulled up his trench coat over his whole body and head and ran as fast as he could using his Celerity through the flames. The fire licked his coat, but didn't burn through, but his feet and legs were getting cooked from running through. He reached the window and didn't bother to open it; he just dove right through and fell down the three stories to the ground below.

His landing wasn't that bad because he had landed on a pile of trash, but it still hurt, and the burns to his legs were pretty severe. Over all though, it wasn't as bad as he thought it could have been, and he was still alive, if to smite those bastards. Marek struggled to stand up a little bit, and he hobbled down the alley to the open streets. It was extremely painful to walk, but that was because fire is something that he shouldn't be playing with. He found a bench on the sidewalk and turned to look at the building. The hunters had all cleared off, and the fire company was already trying to put out the flames.

Then a car pulled in front of Marek and rolled down its window. The car was a fairly new looking Cadillac Deville and the face inside looked very familiar. It was Maria inside driving the car, and she looked out at him sitting there on the bench.

"Nice to see you made it out alive. Sorry I couldn't help, but I was across town when I heard about the hunters attack on you. Come on, get in. It is still not safe here."

Marek hobbled over to the passenger side of the car and got in, and she took off down the streets. He could already feel himself starting to heal a little bit, but the burns still hurt like hell.

"How did you know about this?"

"I had a friend of mine who happens to be a Nosferatu follow you for the past few days. It is funny how they seem to always disappear in the dark."

"Then how did the hunters find me, or even know that I was the one who trashed their last meeting?"

"I don't know, and that scares me. It seems someone may have tipped them off about you, and there are not many of us who know who you are or what you have been doing."

"Where to now? My apartment is trashed."

"We can head over to my haven for the night. There is a lot of information that I need to tell you, and now is not the best time to do so."

"Can you tell me what in the hell is going on here?"

"All in due time my childe."

They drove down the highway for about twenty minutes until they were in the outskirts of the city. She parked the car in front of a small house that didn't have anything special about it. There were no other cars in the driveway and the house was completely dark. They exited the car, and she even gave Marek a hand in walking over to the door. She opened it and there were five other people in the house, either sitting at a table playing cards or just standing around bullshitting with one another. One of them waved his hand and came over.

"Hey Maria, got another one for tonight?"

"No Karl, he's already one of us, and he just survived an attack by a large group of hunters."

Karl looked Marek over and saw the burn marks. "Damn, what the hell did they do to ya kid?"

"They kind of burned the building down with me in it."

"Ouch. Gotta love fire kid."

"That's enough Karl, we have business to discuss, and he'll be staying the day here."

"Sure, fine, whatever you need babe."

They walked away from Karl and headed down the stairs and into the basement. Down here there were two small couches and a table between them, and a whole bunch of cardboard boxes all around. They both sat down and Marek unloaded his questions on her.

"Alright now, can you please tell me just what the hell is going on here?"

"Alright, but you won't like what you are about to hear. You have entered this society in the middle of a war, and one that has been going on for a century. The Sabbat and the Camarilla are the two main sects involved here, and they are fighting over control of the city and even the whole country on a larger scale."

"And which side are we?"

"The people you see here are on neither side, but the ones here who are 'ruled' by Lodin are the Camarilla. They are comprised of the seven clans that you know about, even though the Gangrel usually don't get involved with these things. The Sabbat are a sect who are more open than the Camarilla, and they turn many more humans than the Camarilla do. Their main groups are known as the Tzimisce and the Setites. Both groups are not ones you want to go against in your condition.

Another thing that you need to know is that you are stronger than you know, because that bastard Lodin doesn't want to tell you, damn Ventrue bitch. You are actually very high up in the hierarchy of the bloodlines, and that is all because of me. Each step is known as a generation, and so far the generations number all the way in the teens thanks to these modern times.

Legend says that our bloodlines start with Caine, the biblical brother killer. Then it is said that he himself made two others, known as the second generation. Most believe that these two groups would posses god like powers, but both generations have died long ago. The oldest generation that is acknowledged in these times is the third generation, known as the antediluvians. There were thirteen of them in all, and each one founded each of the clans. Legend says that they have been in a state of torpor, or what humans may refer to as a coma, for a millennia. As each descendant turns another mortal, they become another generation, and with each generation, the powers passed down from the elders are diminished in the blood.

"What does all this have to do with me?"

"You see, I am a fifth generation Toreador, my sire being Helena who herself was fourth generation. This means that you are a sixth generation Toreador and that once your skills are developed you are more powerful than Lodin himself. One thing about him is that he fears those of higher generation than him, and he does what he can to remove them from the society once their job is complete.

He tries whatever methods he can to kill them, and that is why most of us either avoid Lodin or Become so invaluable to him that he can't afford to have us killed. But he also has an egomaniacal fantasy of performing diablerie on an antediluvian, which by kindred laws is punishable by death, but since he is the one who enforces the laws, he would not get punished."

"Diablerie?"

"It means to drink the blood of a kindred who is a higher generation than you until he is dry. In doing so, you gain the powers of the kindred you diablarized."

"Damn, and so you suppose he wants to do that to an antediluvian?"

"It would seem logical, but since no one knows where one is, he will just have to do with where he is."

"Tomorrow night, I'll go back to the mansion and live there. I'll make sure that I am so valuable to him that Lodin can't afford to kill me.

"One more thing you should know. The Sabbat as a whole fear the antediluvians. They would do everything they could to destroy an antediluvian as so as they found one, because of their fanatical superstitions and beliefs."

"What superstitions?"

"The Sabbat as well as many other kindred believes that if an antediluvian awoke and walked the earth again, that it would be the start of Gehenna, or basically kindred word for what the kine call Armageddon, the end of the world, you know."

"Then that is why Beckett was here in the city."

"Beckett? He was here?"

"Yeah, I spoke with him a few nights before you called me. Do you know Beckett?"

"Most every kindred across the country knows Beckett, he is a Gangrel who goes around trying to find information to solve kindred myths. It is strange that he would show up in New York."

"Yeah well, he started to warn me to leave this city as fast as I could and that something major was going to happen. I just thought it was all bull shit, but…"

"Hold on, he told you to leave the city. I wonder what he has found out. Usually he is fairly accurate with his explanations and predictions."

"You think that the end of the world is going to happen?"

"Who knows, other than Beckett himself? Perhaps all that time alone has made him paranoid. It would be a shame, a great intellect like that gone to waste. But you should still take his words very seriously. As for Lodin, keep an eye on him. If he tries to have you killed again, you are always welcome here. It isn't as good as his mansion, but we do fairly well here.

"Thanks, one last question."

"Sure."

"Have anything for these damn burns. They aren't healing very fast and they hurt like shit."

She laughed, "Of course, I'll get the medical supplies. You will find out things like fire, sunlight, and wounds caused by super naturals don't heal very fast. It just comes with the territory."