Day time. It was just after noon and the vampires were deep in slumber. I had spent my morning tossing and turning as I could find no relief from my many aches. My entire body seemed to turn against me as I throbbed and burned inside and out. My fever was eternal and brought my visions even more to life. All through the dawn I had watched quiet and curious as my fallen sire Alexander stood in a corner of the room watching me with a sorrowful expression.

Romero was still out hunting, continuing what Rob had started. My brother who refused to see me because he couldn't stand to see me so close to death yet again. Rob had lost too many family members already. I understood it but I feared slipping away without a final farewell. I searched the shadows for my deceased niece and nephew as I sensed their spectres in the dark but their forms were faint and grey, they were not quite ready for me yet. I wondered grimly what afterlife they had gone to and if I would follow there.

I wondered what drew me back from my pain and felt a sudden thrill of ice as I spied Kent standing at the window fingering the heavy velvet drapes slowly. I did not even bother to consider how he had gotten in here or why he might be up so early in the day. There were no mortal guards for us, not with Romero away, it was too short notice for Isaac to procure any so we had to rely on the security of the house, courtesy of the Nasty Dude's connections. That and Yukie and Heather had promised to ensure the front door was kept locked.

We had hastened to Downtown unprepared and so few of us had come as Isaac would never leave Hollywood to fall to the Tzimisce. They had moved on at my departure anyway according to V.V but Isaac was not prepared to bring anyone else to him. With little option Isaac had been forced to consent to Beckett's insistence that we welcome help from Bertram.

"Kent you should be with Hypnos, safe from Apollo," I murmured as I staggered out of bed.

"I can't sleep with this poison," he retorted bitterly, "it sickness my mind as well as my body. I think perhaps there might have always been some sickness there, some selfish side of me that corrupted the rest. I took you hand in hand into a nest of disease." He glanced over his left shoulder at me with a dejected expression. "I am so sorry for that Ariadne."

"Kent it wasn't your fault," I said sincerely as I moved towards him. I paused as a moment of nausea seized me and my body began to tremble with chills.

"It is, if I had not taken us there you would not be sick," he retorted firmly. "I've endangered him as well because he had to help me, now Strauss will make an example of him and have his head on pike. Shit, I know he deserves it, he deserves worse but fuck the idea of it hurts too much and I don't know why." He turned back to the curtains and let out a sob.

I looked to the curtains nervously as I wondered at Kent's intentions. "The prince is not enchained yet," I reminded him, "we can still sway Isaac against this."

Kent's grip tightened on the edge of the curtain. "No," he snarled with a shake of his head, "no, there's no time and even if there is I couldn't condemn you to save him, you have more right to life than him."

"Sebastian," I said softly, "say his name Kent."

"God damn it Ariadne don't!" he snapped with a sob.

"How did he help you?" I pried. "Why was he there?"

Kent looked back at me with a wretched expression. "The plague-bearers couldn't sway him to their ways so they ignored him so long as he ignored them too," he explained. "He knows Strauss is too busy trying to claw back the city in the carnage the burned child and his fall from grace left, Strauss doesn't have the resources to spare to deal with the plague-bearers."

He swallowed hard. "She infected me, she spent three nights doing it, starving me and...oh shit." He bowed his head and I saw the telltale sparkle of tears dance down his cheeks. "It doesn't matter how she did it but she infected me and then she turned me out, starving and diseased, I was frenzying, I would have slaughtered so many people and infected so many others."

"He was waiting."

"He knew they'd do it sooner or later," Kent said harshly, "he'd seen them do it to other Kindred. He stopped me from hurting people and risking exposure, he got me away and he had blood packs waiting. It took a couple of nights before I stopped frenzying but it's that much closer now, every night I feel the hunger worse than I ever did." He looked back up at me sharply. "Kid I can't do it, the blood packs aren't sustaining me and I can't hold off much longer. I won't forgive myself if I spread this."

"Kent please," I pleaded.

"I'm sorry kid I just...I had to say goodbye to you first you know, you really are like a little sister to me." He turned back to the curtains.

I moved like a wildcat summoning all the energy I could to jumping at him. At his best Kent would have dodged me in less than a second without spoiling any effort but Kent was at his worst- sick and melodramatic, and he underestimated my own sickness. The curtain fluttered back slightly sending a deadly beam of sunlight into the room as I tackled Kent to the floor.

He hit the carpet with a hiss of annoyance whilst I tried to pin him down as bloody coughs racked through me. He might have tossed me off easily but my blood splattered onto his face and had him paralysed in disgust and horror. He let out a groan and shut his eyes with a wince.

There was a loud thumping at the door and I turned to it with alarm.

"Kitten are you alright in there?" Romero's worried voice called out.

"Don't," Kent pleaded hoarsely.

"No!" I yelled. "NO!"

Romero risked disease as I knew he would and kicked the door in though I couldn't imagine why he assumed it was locked. He hurried into the room before pausing with a look of caution. "What in the hell is going on here?" he queried. "Kent why are you awake?"

"He wants to burn," I confessed sombrely as I sat upright. I kept Kent pinned beneath my knees, daring him to throw me off.

"I hate what I am!" Kent shrieked dramatically. "Can't you see how disgusting it is? God the smell alone is driving me mad and I can't stop it! I'm so thirsty and the smell of you two, all the blood, Jesus Christ it's making everything worse!" He opened his bruised eyes and they burned red.

I filled with horror as he moved with great speed.

One moment I was on top of Kent and the next I was on the floor pinned down by both his hands pressing hard enough on my shoulders to bruise. I winced and started to cough again as pain and fear danced through me. I blinked as Kent blurred before me and my head roared with pain.

"Kent," Romero spoke up calmly, "don't hurt her."

"I don't want to," Kent snarled, "but my hunger burns." He glanced away from me to the curtains again. "Let me burn instead."

I reached up with my hands to grasp at Kent's arms, holding him fast to me. "No!" I protested.

"Kent you're sick," Romero continued, "but it will pass. Let's get you cleaned up and find you a blood pack."

Kent let out a bitter laugh. "How the fuck can you be so calm all the time? It won't pass, there's no cure!"

"There will be," Romero insisted. "You're far too stubborn an asshole to let this finish you off and far too proud to have such a shitty end. Come on, don't be like that dickhead Ash, suicidal doesn't suit you." Romero crept closer with every word and reached out a hand to press down on Kent's shoulder.

At Romero's touch Kent let out a scream and fled from us both in a blur. He stopped at a corner in the room where he cowered, pawing at his tangled hair and sobbing. "Don't touch me, don't touch me," he whimpered.

I sat up at last and looked at Kent with concern. "Did you get the choice?" I queried weakly. "The Bishop gave me a choice, frying pan or fire, zombies or sex. He filled me with the disease," I confessed. "I don't know how to tell Isaac that I chose it."

"Shit," Romero grumbled.

"No," Kent retorted hoarsely, "my choice was me or all of you, at least I thought at the time that you were included Ariadne, you, Yukie and Heather. I couldn't let them have you, I was meant to protect you. Once I made the choice she chained me up and...she's a Toreador, our kind can have such a presence, such attraction. Fuck I've never known one powerful enough to...blind me... At least for a time until she thought it was fun for me to be aware, to know what my body was doing and to hate it, to feel it and to be unable to stop it. Shit I've never...even with him...it wasn't like that...I was so weak, I failed everyone."

"No Kent," I argued as I crawled along the floor towards him, "you saved Yukie and Heather. You weren't weak either, everything they put you through for all that time and you survived, you survived it all." I paused, sitting before him with what I hoped was a safe distance. I did not like Kent this way without his cockiness and brazen confidence.

He kept shaking his head. "I want it all to stop, I keep seeing her and I keep feeling this disease shift through me, her disease. It revolts me, I need to be clean kid, I need to be purged!"

"Cured Kent not purged," I said with a weak smile, "just like me." I held out a hand to him but he shrank back from it. "I hurt too but Isaac wants to save us so please give him a chance, we owe him that."

Kent stiffened and shook his head. "He wants LaCroix for that, I can't...if he gets destroyed for helping me then what does it matter if I'm cured? I can't deal with that guilt."

"One thing at a time Kent," Romero remarked tiredly. He came to crouch near me, taking care not to get too close to me. "You both need to rest and I'm in no mood to try and tackle you or attempt some other heroic nonsense to stop you giving yourself a fatal suntan. We both know I'll only fail at it anyway and hurt myself in the process, you're too fast for me."

Kent looked at the grave guardian keenly. "Not always," he said quietly.

I looked at Romero in time to catch the small, private grin he gave Kent before he banished it. "No," he retorted softly with amusement, "not always."

Kent stood up at last and so did we, though I moved tortuously slow, doubling over as I felt vomit creep up my throat. I let out a mouthful of watery yellow sick that splashed onto the carpet before my feet.

"God kid I am sorry," Kent said hoarsely.

I wiped the sleeve of my right arm along my mouth before looking up to face the broken poet, his eyes still burned red with thirst. "It's not your fault," I insisted.

"Let's go," Romero remarked. "Kitten I'll bring you up some water." He glanced at me and I saw sorrow in his olive eyes. "Wish I could do something more," he admitted.

"Like kiss it better," I murmured. "Me too but it would be the kiss of death. The bishop made a black widow out of me." I stepped back from him with a shudder. "Now I am shunned, plague victim to ring a bell and herald disease."

"It won't be for long," Romero assured. He waited for Kent to move first. With reluctance the Toreador exited my room, moving at a normal pace. Romero followed after him.

I headed back to my bed, exhausted and aching and was relieved to pass out from the pain though less impressed to have to do so beside a small patch of my own vomit tainted spittle.

–

Even in chains Sebastian LaCroix still managed to look every inch the regal ruler. Even roughed up with bruises, cuts and a split lip that would all vanish in a few hours, tousled blonde hair and a torn shirt he still maintained an air of arrogance. His ghoul Marcurio had taken the brunt of the beating, a price for his silence over his master's whereabouts. Marcurio was now out of sight getting his wounds tended to with help from an angry Romero. I had learned it had been Rob who had come up with the idea to turn the injured Marcurio loose and track him to his master. I didn't know who had done the beating however- Damsel, Nines, Jack, Skelter? They were all candidates. Only Nines' loyalty to Isaac had stopped them from putting Sebastian's head on a pike when they finally found him.

Now here we were, Sebastian was chained up to a chair in the living room like an exhibition with Nines on his right and Rob on his left, I occupied the chair opposite, exhausted and sagging in it as I struggled to listen to as Isaac scorned him whilst Anatole danced around him chanting over and over again, "he knows to drain and purge."

Beckett lingered near me, a stoic and disapproving form. The scholar was neutral to the feud of power, he just wanted to get going to the land of Pharaohs.

Ever self-preserving Sebastian was now trying to negotiate terms with Isaac that would stop him from being traded off to Strauss.

"I know what you want," Sebastian commented haughtily, "a cure for Kent and presumably her." He gave me a distasteful look with his cool grey-blue eyes. He had asked several times about my mortality now and been denied an explanation, instead he had received a couple of punches from Rob. "And being the good politician and a Tremere Strauss has undoubtedly promised you a cure with blood magic, presumably in exchange for me." He gave Isaac a savage look and queried bitingly, "am I right so far?"

"Are you getting to a point?" Isaac queried tiredly.

"When I was Prince my streets were not overrun with plague-bearers and do you know why?"

"Your streets?" the number man echoed heatedly. He stood, the stereotypical tough in a torn vest top stained with LaCroix's blood, ripped jeans, muscular folded arms and an expression of barely subdued fury. I figured all the rebel really needed was a blood cookie and a hug.

"I assume your wooden foot soldiers beheaded them without trial," Isaac answered frostily.

Sebastian grinned at him with bloodstained fangs. "I always gave a trial but in this case no, it did not come to that for those found to have resisted exposure. You see, much like Kent, some Kindred were turned to plague-bearers against their will and rather than break the Masquerade by spreading the disease to Kine they sought out help."

"Let me guess," Isaac sneered, "you persuaded them to suicide."

Sebastian sighed and drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair impatiently. "You Toreadors have to be so dramatic about everything," he scorned. "The disease infects the blood , it was a matter of eliminating the poisoned blood." His gaze took on a cruel glimmer. "It meant starvation for the infected and a draining of their blood, some alas were driven mad from it and had to be put out of their misery. Blood bags were used to replenish the blood but it was a slow cycle trying to weaken the infection until it was purged." He looked at me again. "Infected Kine go to the hospitals and get treatment in a similar manner, blood transfusions and antibiotics to treat blood poisoning and infection until only clean blood is left."

"Strauss had a similar theory," Isaac said accusingly.

LaCroix gave a taunting laugh and shook his head. "It's no theory, I assure you."

"But it didn't always work, you've said that," Nines snapped. "Now that he's told us Isaac I say you send him to the blood mage anyway and see what he can offer."

LaCroix smiled. "Isn't it hypocritical of you to deal with the Camarilla through Strauss? Besides, do you think I'm foolish enough to have told you everything with no guarantees for myself? Isaac if you take Strauss' aid you're risking Kent and Ariadne on a baseless theory, you know the Tremere are as likely to kill them with their magic as they are to cure them, if not worse. They do enjoy their experiments but what can one expect from a clan with such a blackened history. What I offer is proven fact."

Isaac shook his head in frustration.

I thought of Kent howling in the basement where he had been sealed up to contain his thirst. He had his blood bags but he wanted fresh blood. LaCroix was right about the madness, it wasn't far from Kent and it had already infected Bishop Vick. Kent didn't want the fallen prince traded to Strauss whether he deserved it or not.

"You must purge the head," Anatole commented impatiently. "Dig out the poisoned root and burn the wasted tree then the land will be green."

"Isaac," I spoke up softly, "can I have a say in this?"

Isaac glanced over his shoulder at me with surprise as if he had forgotten I was there. His gaze filled with sorrow and he nodded.

"I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it," Anatole commented sinisterly.

"I don't want Strauss' help," I said firmly, "not at the price he asks."

Isaac gestured angrily to the now smirking Sebastian. "And you'd pay this fiend's prince?"

"It depends what it is," I murmured quietly as I felt my chest tighten. "Strauss is a Camarilla in power, don't play his politics." I started to cough and blood spatters came up with it. When it subsidised I sensed a few pairs of thirsty eyes upon me including Sebastian's. His fingers gripped the edges on the couch tightly as his gaze sharpened trying not to give anything away.

I winced as I realised Rob was purposely looking away from me, big brother could no longer face his sister's mortality. Too many family members dead and buried, too many ghosts...

Anatole leaned down to Sebastian, pressing his face close to the Ventrue's. "Would the poisoned blood loosen the lips for truth?" he quipped.

Sebastian frowned and pulled back from the Anatole as much as he could. "Damn Malkavians," he grumbled. "Is this one to replace the other?" he queried mockingly as he glanced past Anatole to Isaac.

"I don't know," Nines murmured with a grin, "he has an idea. If we give you some of Ariadne's blood it won't make you sick but it will make you a plague-bearer and then if you want a cure well you'll just have to reveal it to us to help you get it, won't you?"

Sebastian looked horrified at this notion and his wide grey eyes looked my eye. "Isaac that would be beneath you," he remarked hastily.

"Hmm it's a little unoriginal," Isaac mused, "but I think it would be effective."

"Do it to Strauss then!" Sebastian snapped. "Not to me!"

Isaac stepped up beside Anatole, putting Sebastian in his shadow. "He's a Tremere, he would cure himself and turn the Anarch-Camarilla rivalry into a war, no. You however have no blood magic or minions, you would have to sit here and rot like Kent and Ariadne."

"You'll get thirsty sooner or later," Nines taunted, "and when you do I'll make damn sure her blood is waiting for you."

Sebastian squirmed slightly. "Alright," he snapped, "but you have to give me some guarantees! I'm not going to help you if you're going to hand me over to the trumped up wizard anyway!" He gave Nines a dirty look. "Or trade me off to the Anarchs in Downtown."

"We don't want you LaCroix," Nines snapped, "wouldn't want to make a martyr out of you."

"That's probably what Strauss would do," Sebastian snarled, "kill me and frame you all for it, the Camarilla would be quite willing to hunt you down then."

"No," Isaac said calmly, "Max wouldn't want a war. If Ariadne and Kent are cured I won't give you to him but if they're not I will. Now, enough dancing around the truth Sebastian, I grow weary of your grandstanding, what must we do to cure them?"

"You need the source, the originator of the disease. Vampires don't get sick but they can carry disease and spread it to Kine with certain means, then their blood gets infected and any Kindred that feeds on them becomes a plague-bearer and any Kine that has relations with them becomes sick as well. This is different, vampires don't get sick but eventually they burn up from carrying the strain for so long, there comes a point when their thirst is never satisfied and they are consumed by it in the end, except for him, the originator. His strain has a certain immunity to it, not that you would know to look at him."

I wondered at Kent, he was sick but not like me, his sickness came from the complications of being a Toreador, he couldn't cope with being unclean and to him disease was unclean. It wouldn't be long before he burned up with it.

"You keep saying him," Rob grumbled, "you know who it is."

"Bishop Vick," I murmured. I felt his cold hands upon my bare flesh, coaxing me to a moaning of pleasure, it had not all been bad with the bishop which made it all the worse.

Sebastian sighed and nodded. "In this case yes, he caused the disease in the Toreador Jezebel who infected Kent, a Nosferatu that preys on the homeless and you as well apparently." He narrowed his gaze at me. "Not often he infects Kine personally."

"You know a lot about this," Nines complained, "funny how these plague-bearers are still among us even with all your knowledge."

Sebastian shrugged. "I had more important things to deal with, keeping their numbers down was all I had time for. If you Anarchs weren't a thorn in my side I might have had time to obliterate them."

"Prince in armour on a white horse to save the day," Anatole mocked, "but the white horse is disease. Keeps down the numbers, it encourages the fear."

"He has a point," Isaac said calmly, "when people are afraid they're more inclined to follow. You benefited from their presence, the Kindred would have looked to you to keep them safe from the disease. Would it be too much to wonder how many of your potential foes fell victim to the taint?"

"Isaac do we have time for this speculation?" Beckett queried tiredly. "Politics won't help Ariadne or Kent. She grows weaker and more immune to the healing of my blood."

"Your blood?" Sebastian interrupted with a look of disgust. "You made her a ghoul? I thought better of you Beckett," he lamented, "you could have had a much better Kine for a servant."

"She is not my servant," Beckett retorted calmly.

"We need to find this bishop then," Rob muttered.

Isaac nodded. "Indeed and then what?" He looked to Sebastian.

"As I said, you need to drain the blood of them and replace it with clean blood but you need to add this Vick's blood to them as well."

"That doesn't make sense, isn't that what got them sick?" Nines demanded.

I tensed as I felt the truth of the matter at hand.

Sebastian gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. "No, it is only when Kindred bite the Kine that they get tainted through the blood and the disease goes from Kine to Kindred. The Kine spread it amongst themselves as they do any disease. The infected Kindred however taint the Kine and each other another way."

I thought of what Sebastian was going to say of how Jezebel spread the disease from herself to Kent to make him a plague-bearer and how Bishop Vick had passed it to me in the hopes that other Kindred might feed on me and be cursed as plague-bearers by my blood.

"Intercourse got them sick," Sebastian said with disgust, "a lowly thing for a Kindred to do. Why bother with sex when the feeding is that much more. I said the taint was in the blood but when it comes from the Kindred it comes from the intercourse first, the disease is spread that way to infect the blood. Yes, Vick's blood is diseased too and will make them sick first but it will give them the strain of immunity to begin the fight. When you remove the tainted blood the strain of immunity should stay. Perhaps if you were so inclined you could cure this bishop too and stop his taint, personally I would turn him to ash for his crimes."

I felt Isaac's wondering stare upon me and knew he wondered at my suffering. I couldn't admit that it hadn't all been bad, that he had used his Presence to seduce me. The Bishop had been gentle until the biting had begun, there was a sense of care in his evil and I wondered at the vampire before the taint or the poor man turned against his will to be a creature of the night. What of his flock? The Toreador Jezebel and the Nosferatu who was condemned to the sewers for his looks and lonelier than the rest of his kind for his taint, a man who had only homeless victims come for company. Yes I could see how the madness had taken him. Was it why the Bishop spread his disease? Anger at his fate, loneliness? What was this Ninth Circle he made murmurings of? Violence and blood to get you closer to it, yes through the violence they ascended, through bloodshed and diabelere one climbed the ranks.

"The ascending in the afterlife," I murmured, "the afterlife of a mortal- a vampire, climbing the ranks through bloody violence, getting notice from the elders, stealing their followers whilst in torpor, absorbing their power, ever growing with diseased followers. Each time you get noticed you ascend through a circle of court, closer and closer to the dark lord and his inner circle."

I remembered his bare chest, chalk white with veins of blue and a tattoo in blood red ink of a fanged skull in a fiery red star. "Bloody skull in the star," I mumbled.

My coughing began anew only this time the blood almost choked me it was so thick. It came up reluctantly, a large, sticky, blackened blood that told of the rot in my lungs. As I forced it up I fell to my knees and screamed in pain. My head burned and sweat soaked me as I heaved and heaved again in an effort to expel it.

"A symbol of death and hope," Anatole mused, "the fallen star, Lucifer."

When the blood came up I sagged in exhaustion and mewled in pain, shutting my eyes to the sting of the light.

"We need to find this bishop," Rob snarled. It was the last I heard before I passed out from pain.