Shortly after sundown, we fed to make sure we were both fully satiated and then I led Adam to a small outcropping of rock I knew would give us a perfect view of the Ravnos carnival; it was about a hundred yards east and maybe a dozen yards north of where the master parked his trailer. We could see everything from there; even where Fenris morphed into a wolf and where Mike and a couple of other Gangrels were going into mist form. My rats also had the place well cased. Adam was concerned that the Ravnos, no strangers to the use of Animalism, might be able to turn them against us, but I wasn't too worried; most of the rats I brought along for the party had my blood in them, and I figured blood beats out any skill he might have. We didn't see Imalia, but I knew she was there. Before obfuscating, Adam removed his overcoat and for the first time I noticed the guy had wings! Well, I guess they were more like leathery webbing under his arms, but I could just imagine they made it possible for him to fly...or glide through the air, anyway.
Eventually, the festivities died down, and when the last of the Kine were finally gone, Alexis stepped out of his trailer once his servant boy made sure it was all clear. That was when we saw Fenris make her move. I came out obfuscate to rush in, too, but Adam grabbed my shoulder and stopped me.
"This isn't how it looks." He cautioned. "Look again" he pointed at the trailer and there was Alexis climbing out of the fire hatch on the roof of his trailer just as Fenris made her leap into what was like some kind of hologram of her intended target. It was a bait and switch; they knew we were here. It didn't take a genius detective to know this was about to get ugly in a hurry.
"I'll be damned." I muttered. Fenris took the bait. I almost did, too. Adam didn't, and neither did my pets; they were scurrying off in the direction that Alexis was now fleeing. Before I could say anything more, Adam was leaping off the outcropping and gliding on his wing things after him; he was headed towards what I guessed was supposed to be funhouse or something like that. The outcropping was pretty high, so it took a couple of progressive jumps down to get all the way down. By then, the mist had gotten well into the carnival, and Fenris was scrapping with some muscle man with a hammer. I barely had time to feel sorry for the dude when I heard a shot from inside the cabin just as the mist began advancing on it, too. It looked like the Gangrels had this well in hand, so I ran to the funhouse to help Adam.
The funhouse was a mix between a maze and an obstacle course with a lot of smoke and mirrors. The first part was just getting in; the floor beneath my feet was turning like a conveyor belt going against me. The walls in the foyer hall of this house also shifted, creating the illusion that for every step I took forward the entrance to the next part was actually getting farther away. Since Adam glided in I bet this wasn't even an issue for him, but it was a pain in the ass for me, especially since a lot of my pets got caught up on the treadmill like, well, like rats on a treadmill. It wasn't that difficult to through, just annoying really. On the other side, Adam stood waiting. We had two options; we could go left towards a swinging door, or right along a floor that looked like the material they make trampolines out of. At the other end of the trampoline was a ladder inside a tubular spire. From memory I could tell that this was a spire from the outside, so unless there was a platform along the way, all it really led to was like a lookout window in a tower.
We opted for the left and headed for the door. Adam in the lead, he barely touched the door when we heard a growling noise on the other side. Even a bunch of rats underfoot turned and scurried away. Adam stopped and made a series of hand signals that I guess were a code from his days as a Fed; I didn't know what they actually meant but got the gist of what he was trying to tell me. He was gonna rush in and try to get the jump on whatever was in there and I was supposed to be his back up. Producing the .45 I brought with me out of the waistband of my track pants, I nodded. It sounded like some kind of large animal on the other side; maybe a bear. The .45 wouldn't likely be of much use, but it was something.
Adam rushed the room; I charged in after him. On the way in I heard the growling again and saw Adam get thrown sideways deeper into the room as sure enough, a brown bear lumbered towards him, basically ignoring me. The bear was almost on top of Adam by the time he got to his feet; barely in time to duck under another swipe from its massive front paw. In desperation, Adam reached up and somehow managed to lock his arms around its neck in an awkward headlock type position. It didn't look like that was going to do any good, so I took a shot at the bear, nailing with a slug just to the right of its asshole. The bear growled and glanced at me long enough to but Adam some time to improve his grip and from behind me I heard a laugh. I spun around and saw Alexis standing at the other end of the room, a curtain blocking the entrance into another room. I raised the .45 and aimed it at him and in a blink he tossed a throwing dagger at me, psyching me out just enough to throw off my aim so my shot went wild. Before the dagger even touched me, it exploded into a bright light, blinding me for a second. In that second, Alexis had vanished; presumably deeper into funhouse. I looked over at Adam with the bear.
"I got this!" he shouted. "Go after him!"
I charged after Alexis through the curtain and got hit with the worst sensation of vertigo I had ever encountered in my life. Initially the room I entered appeared to be a twisted and warped chamber that turned over on itself with an endless series of corridors and curtains that stretched into an eternity. The ceiling and the floor were interchangeable. I lost my balance for a second, and I could hear Alexis laughing. Once I got my equilibrium back, I could see that son of a bitch everywhere all at once. He was laughing as he shuffled a deck of cards. That's when I clued into what was going on; the room was wall to wall and top to bottom mirrors. Even the ceiling and floors were mirrors. The only apparent break was the curtain I passed through and another exit somewhere else in the room; and Alexis was apparently standing just in front of it.
I aimed and fired where I thought he was with the .45 and the spot he was standing exploded into a thousand tiny shards he responded with a smirk of contempt before tossing one of his playing cards at me; it flared up into a ball of light inches from my face, blinding me a moment. The effect magnified by being in such a highly reflective room. In anguish and frustration I dropped the gun to cover my eyes. In that moment I felt his fist plant itself into my gut. I swung blind and my fist slammed into glass as a flurry of those damned playing cards fluttered around me like a bunch of bats, flowed up by the Ravnos ramming into me with his bulk and forcing me into a wall to pin me there.
Now I got you, dumbass.
As I grabbed him by the throat with one hand and rabbit-punched him in that laughing mouth of his, I called as many of my rats to swarm him as I could. Still blinded I could feel him struggle to get free from my grip, making gurgling squeals of revulsion all the while; my pets must have arrived in force. As my vision started to return, I could see just how right I was; Alexis was covered to the point only his face was visible. He was a flailing man made of vermin. I lifted him off the floor and ordered my pets to depart before tossing back out of the mirror room through the curtain. He landed on the other side of the curtain onto the wooden floor with a sickening thump. Even though I wasted no time in going after him, I heard him cry out in pain following the unmistakable sound of bones grinding and cracking. It wasn't hard to figure out that Adam got his bear issue sorted; I'd have to ask him about that later. I got past the curtain just as Adam was releasing his right arm, which was nearly twisted into a pretzel and pushing him in my general direction. I nailed him with another sucker punch across the jaw, dropping him. Then I picked him up by his stupid looking ponytail to let him get a good at my ever so pleasant face before head-butting him for good measure. By then he was barely conscious.
"You got sonority in this town, partner." Adam growled through his bowling-ball nads. "It's your call who gets to do the honors."
"Alexis of Clan Ravnos," I said, "you are under arrest by order of her highness Prince Therese Vooreman of the Domain of Los Angeles on the grounds of entering her Domain without even so much as an effort to seek her acknowledgement."
"What..." he started to protest weakly. I pushed him into the nearest wall; not hard enough to hurt him, just enough to shut him up.
"You best shut up, asshole." Adam warned.
"Under her authority, I and my associate here will bring you before the court of this city to determine what will happen to you next."
"Wait," he protested again. "I was under the impression Los Angeles was a Free State."
"Save it for the court." I countered, grabbing his bad arm to pull him towards the exit of his fun house. Adam grabbed his other arm, warning him not to try anything stupid as we led him back to the outskirts of the carnival. We got there to see that Imalia, Fenris, and the Gangrels had the situation there well under control. It wasn't quite as pretty as it could have been, but overall Fenris' strategy worked out about as clean as could be expected. The strongman was out cold and face down in the sand, but he looked like he would live. Besides that it was a clean collar; not pretty, but clean.
We waited a second as Fenris made the appropriate reports and arrangements.
"So where do we take this piece of crap to meet Therese?" I asked.
A grin of malice that I wouldn't have thought possible on the Gangrel girl's cutesy teen aged face crossed her lips; making her look more psychotic than Marko.
"Even better," she almost snarled. "The Prince is indisposed at the moment. We have to take him to the Seneschal." The look of sadistic glee in her eyes managed to give me the creeps a little. It was the kind of look that only a teenage girl bully can ever get really right. "From the sound of his voice, he's not in the best of moods as it is..." she let her voice trail off and flashed me a quick wink.
"Oh, boy," I said with mock worry; playing along with what Fenris was doing here to keep this guy off balance. "That's not too good for your chances, pal." I said right in Alexis' ear. "Cameron's a hard-line Camarilla supporter and has the kind of resources that could pretty much buy Long Beach end to end if he wanted to. Whatever excuse you have for flouting the Tradition of Domain you have had better be good; or you're basically fucked."
Fenris picked up a pointed stick. She motioned Adam and I to hold Alexis still, and staked him into torpor.
"I trust you have a route to the Museum." She more stated than asked. She didn't specify, but it was clear she was talking to Imalia and I. We said we did. Fenris told us which conference room Cameron would be in.
Imalia produced a burlap sack and placed it over the Ravnos' head to serve as a blindfold in case he was aware of his surroundings, and we took our cargo to the museum via our sewer routes.