Well I was right; Bertram is pissed. Imalia is pissed. Bertram is pissed because I, for all intents and purposes, poached his ghoul. He agrees it would have been better to let him die; then he could have called all of the city Nos to converge and focus on taking Khemintiri down once and for all. For all of his annoying mannerisms, Knox was well liked among the Clan as far as ghouls go, so most of the Clan would have been on board. Imalia is pissed because by embracing Knox without leave of the Prince, I made a mess for her to have to clean and cover up in her capacity as Primogen. To make matters worse, Therese has no love for our Clan and would probably use any excuse she can to make unlife a bitch for us anyway. Lucky for us, Knox no longer looks anything like his old self anymore since I gave him the vitae last night. The issue wasn't going to be explaining his embrace; it was going to be explaining his disappearance. As for the embrace, it never happened, we can say. We keep him down in the Warrens for about a year or so to develop a whole new identity as Kindred, and then maybe he can pop up on the surface. I know it's dicey, but like I said, nobody ever looks too closely at us unless they have reason to. Regardless, I'm basically on the shitlist for everyone except Knox; and he doesn't yet fully understand what I did to him.
Last night, Walker made it back into the Warren just as the sun was rising; I mean, he was actually smoking from the first rays of that shiny bastard kissing his ass. Other than that, he looked like shit; almost as bad as Knox.
Tonight, he tells it like this:
Torching the place was the easy part of his night. He said that before he was a Fed he worked on the arson unit in a medium sized city; he wouldn't say where exactly. Anyway, during his run three he learned a few tricks and so knew how to do a place without getting detected. He said he did it in a way that the cops would almost certainly miss that it was arson at all. He wouldn't say how. I wouldn't be surprised if he still had some Fed stroke or some shit like that.
It was after he had the place going and got clear of the flames that the shit hit the fan.
Just before he reached the sewer manhole that would get him back to the warrens he got totally blindsided; it happened so quick he didn't have a chance. One second he was reaching down to open the cover, and the next second he was flying across the field. Even by the time he landed – badly, he added – his attacker was right on top of him; kicking him in the ribs to turn him on his back hard enough that at least three bones snapped. He was looking up at her and she was morphed in some kind of snake woman form; a hooded head like a cobra, a body still distinctly female but all covered in a tough scaly hide, and a tail that had a rattle. She had overlarge fangs dripping with a golden substance and her eyes were even greener than normal; they had a serpentine quality to them, and when she swayed her head they were mesmerizing. Adam said he had to fight the urge to simply be lulled numb by her eyes, the somehow soothing sound of her barely audible hissing, and the gentle rattling of her tail.
And I thought we Nos had the freakshow appearance market cornered.
She wrapped her tail around his ankle and lifted him off the ground upside down. She examined him for a second.
"You're young," she said before slamming him onto the ground and lifting him up again with her tail. "So young you're still warm." She dropped him roughly and before he could even begin to move she pinned him with her foot on his throat; though in his telling he was certain it had more to do with either her eyes or some kind of Presence trick that only someone her age and with her potency of the Blood would know or be able to do. "How is it that one as young as you is the first one to come this close to catching up with me? How is it that one so warm is the only one I remember ever being able to come so close to blindsiding me? I must be getting careless."
That was when Adam thought he saw his one and only shot to turn this mess around on her. Khemintiri seemed to be lost in moment of self recrimination, so he grabbed her ankle – this was when it occurred to him she was nude under her scales – and yanked as hard as he could. He managed to jar her ankle off of him enough to get to his feet and throw a punch; which she caught in the palm of her hand with contemptuous ease. Then Khemintiri began to squeeze with a grip like a boa constrictor; Adam said he could actually feel the bones in his hand not just break, but more soften like putty. She then twisted his fist with a sharp flick of her wrist so that his hand was literally turned completely around; if she were to let go and allow him to open his hand, the palm would be facing the anatomical opposite direction of the rest of his arm.
"And you're much stronger in the Blood than one your age ought to be in this day and age." She said. "You're a most interesting case, young Walker." She lashed out at him with her tongue, lacerating his face and then kicked him in the jewels hard enough to hoist him off his feet. As he landed, she coiled that tail around his torso, splintering even more of his ribs; he thought for a moment one of them might pierce his heart.
Swaying her head, she gazed into his eyes and rattled, mesmerizing him again. "You have already cost me nearly a century of work." She said. "It will take much longer than you know to replace those soldiers and my pawns amongst Sutekh's sheep will likely never be replaced." She squeezed harder still. "For that alone, and the fact you've already proven far more resourceful than most in your pathetic Ivory Tower, I should simply toss you in the blaze you yourself created and be done with you." She pulled him closer, and licked him. "But I won't. You've taught me something tonight, little one. You've taught me that even I need to be wary of my own hubris. Not only that, but up until now I have started to grow bored; you actually amuse me in funny way. This game might be fun. So I will let you continue to exist, for now." And then she bit him; but instead of taking his blood, she injected him with something that felt like sulphuric acid coursing through his veins. As he howled in pain unlike any he had experienced before, she dropped him like a sack of wheat. Leaning in close to his ear, she whispered: "That is, if you can find your way out of the Sun."
Then she was gone.
Once she was gone, Walker told us, it took him until it was just over an hour before dawn to heal enough to move, let alone make an effort to get to the Warren entrance. That was when his real trouble began, the way he told it. It occurred to him almost immediately that he was tossed a lot farther than he originally thought. Next it seemed as if he got the direction he was tossed wrong, too. In short order after that it was evident that his every effort to get his bearings and locate the entrance kept putting him right back where he started.
"That sounds like a mental maze." Bertram explained. All of us were a lot younger than him, so we had no idea what he was talking about. In fact, I don't think any of us in the room other than Bert were embraced any earlier than the late twentieth century. "It's a very old obfuscate ability that confounds the target into disorientation so as they cannot find their way beyond a given amount of space. Most Kindred have forgotten about that one."
Adam nodded pensively. "Then it was something she did to me." He said. "I thought it had something to do with whatever she injected me with. If it really was the maze thing you described, then she damn near killed me even without the beating I took. By the time I finally found the entrance the sky was starting to brighten; I could feel my skin actually start to sizzle as I climbed in."
"That explains the burnt bacon smell." Imalia quipped. "Well, if there's any good in this fucking mess, it's that a bunch of sand snakes are likely reduced to ash as we speak. If we're lucky, maybe even a couple of Hastings Ventrue."
Bertram growled. "There's a problem with that, sweetcakes. Kindred spontaneously combusting who knows where is a big breech of the Masquerade; maybe on a global scale." He said. "While you're right that a bunch of Snakes getting roasted is in itself not a bad thing, the Hastings line is still in very good standing with the Camarilla. That presents a problem of its own."
"Damn it!" Walker exclaimed. "How could I have been so stupid?"
"Torching a place full of Kindred hearts wasn't your best move, fledgling." Bertram agreed. "But you say you covered your tracks, so nobody needs to know your role in it. It will be waved off as another of Khemintiri's crimes. It's not like she would deny it."
For a moment, Walker looked confused; upon realizing that Bert misunderstood him, he said; "No, it's not that. I mean I now see why she's gone about playing a key role in setting up the Hastings Dynasty."
With a raised eyebrow- such as Bertram has, anyway – the elder Nosferatu urged Walker to go on.
"By making sure the Hastings line is both in power and in her pocket, she's got herself a kind of playground." He went on. "All up and down the Coast she's got places to hide and be protected even by those who should be hunting her. The Hastings' don't even need to know they're helping her create a massive haven of sorts."
"There's more to it than that." Mitnick said as he rushed into the room and hastily set a laptop up on the table.
"What do you mean?" Bert asked.
Once finished setting up the laptop, Mitnick spoke, mostly to Imalia. "Remember when you asked me to bug Vesuvius because Walker listed Cammie's squeeze as a suspect? Well, I got something; it's not her directly, but you guys have to hear this." He produced a thumbdrive and stuck into one of the USB ports. "As it turns out, VV left her Club to X if anything happened to her. What I got here is a bit of a conversation between Vega and that rock star buddy of his."
He uploaded the file and played it back for us:
Xavier Vega:
With VV gone and both Tyler and Damsel down, how can you say we're not finished? VV was supposed to be the one who would put us forward as a Libertarian State.
There's a sound like a bottle was being opened followed by the sound of something being poured into a pair of glasses.
Russell Norton:
Listen, I know it looks bad now, but I give you my word this is going to work out.
XV:
You say that, but I don't see how!
RN:
I'm telling you right now! Just drink up, put yourself together and listen for a second, alright?
There's a sound of someone taking a big gulp of someone drinking something.
RN:
You're right that losing VV is a setback, but it's by no means the end. It just means we're going to have to take a couple of extra steps and set up a different Prince. We should still have no problem convincing the Court to vote non- confidence in Therese. All we need is to make sure whoever replaces her will be someone we can work with to set up our ground to stand on to begin with. Actually, it ain't so different from the Valley up north.
XV:
Great; so who's gonna replace Therese?
RN:
Stay with me on this. The guy we want to sit in Praxis for this to work is Cameron Hastings. Now before you freak out, you need to hear me out. You're a smart guy, so think this through, alright? All up and down the Coast the Hastings are in power, right? On the same token, every single Hastings Prince has an arrangement with the Anarch population so they have what boils down to a domain of their own.
XV:
Wait a second. Are you saying the vaunted Hastings Dynasty is basically a puppet regime for the Anarchs?
RN:
I'm not saying anything. Instead, I'm asking you something: What else does every Domain with a Hastings in Praxis have in common?
XV:
The answer is Kaila. She gets in good with a Hastings, gets him in power, and then works him allowing what they think of as satellite baronies. Next thing you know, the Anarchs have themselves ground to stand on.
"THAT BITCH!" Imalia shrieked.
Mitnick shut off the recording.
"We don't have to like her," Bertram said. "But we gotta admit that when she does something, she does it right."
Walker scowled. It was quite apparent that he saw all too clearly how bad it was for everyone that his mark was playing both sides.
"The real question we have to ask now is just how much does this Norton guy know? Is he in on her play, or is he a pawn just like the Hastings line?"
"That's a good question." Bertram agreed. "Either way, it looks like Khemintiri is well on her way to being the one who really runs the coast."
"I'm in pretty good with Xavier," I offered. "I'll look into the Toreador."
"No you won't!" Imalia countered. "You fucked up, so now you're on babysitting duty. Hollywood is my walk, I'll check it out."
Like I said, everybody is pretty pissed off with me.