The soft, fading sunlight burned, it's not enough to be a threat but it's enough to hurt. I have risen early again, no doubt one of the voices in my head felt it was time to party. I am tired, but not mad; I understand the voices must get impatient sometimes. Cold hands wrapped around me and pulled me back from the windowsill, back to the shadows, the safe darkness that only my disturbed kind can truly feel at home in.

"Silly neonate," Isaac scorned in my ear, "you've burned your arm."

I looked at my arm and smiled, red patches lingered amongst the white creating a rather pleasing pattern. I had been getting bored of the same old thing, the change seemed well-timed, perhaps the change has the same clock as me, a wonderful silver trinket with spoons for handles. "I like it," I said merrily.

Isaac tutted in his usual stiff fashion, he is fond of me but his businessman side rarely tolerates those of us who are reckless and childish. I think secretly he wants to burn his arms too but his blazer will not allow for it, pity. He has been awake early and to sleep late a lot these past few nights, I considered it might be me but now I wonder if something or someone else plagues him.

"Does disease play with your mind?" I queried as I smiled at him.

Isaac looked puzzled for a moment as he always does with me, poor baron, his mind is so slow sometimes, it needs roller-skates to keep up with mine. "Disease," he murmured, "ah...I think I understand, strange Malkav daughter, the way you have with words, it's most interesting and yet beautiful, you bring an odd joy to this world. Yes, there are things on my mind; it comes with being in a position of power."

Power, primogens, barons, princes, what is the difference? An anarch baron, how did that even fit in with the anarch's beliefs in equality? I did not know, I did not care, in the lady of the sea's sweet domain I had treaded less than carefully and annoyed the men in masks more than once. So many rules, so many fun things forbidden and so many disturbing figures lingering in the shadows with torches, had they really been there or was it just the blackness of my mind that they hunted in? Yet having so many of my own voices to adhere too I could understand the desire to control all the voices, the need to have law for without it was chaos, ah but chaos was colourful and wonderful though destructive, perhaps not a pleasure for the many. Prince, no prince? Cammy or rebel? My head hurt with these thoughts and I pulled a frown.

"Would you be any less than a baron?" I queried teasingly as I slipped out my warm tongue to lick his cheek.

Isaac recoiled as expected and regarded me with scorn; he's really much too stern to take pleasure in such naughty things. I think it's why I stay with him, I like the challenge and I like the Toreadors, they are just as mad as my kind with their odd desperate, controlling passions, they just do not realise it. "Less?" Isaac shook his head. "No, my position is comfortable and necessary; I would not give it up even if it is stressful at times." He pulled that strained expression of his that comes usually only with matters regarding Ash, his dearly depressed. Ash is the only member of the dead I know who actually acts like the dead, there's no life there, only a pained, exaggerated desire for doom and escape. Ash wants his existence ended but he wants it to be dramatic, another chance for fame I suppose. The darling cigarette spawn is sick for that silver screen he abandoned; well we only ever want something when it's lost. I for example never really desired my sanity until it up and left one day, I always expect to find it under a pillow or in a box but so far no luck.

"So, who causes problems for the baron?" I press for information even though too much of it fills the caverns of my head as it is. Sarah, who was Sarah again? Samantha, is it a thing with the letter S? Did our parents belong to some S loving cult and is that how we came to be together? Did destiny pull the spawn of such cults together?

"There are several problems throughout L.A, though the ones in Hollywood have my attention most I feel perhaps some are linked to the larger problems of L.A. I think La Croix or maybe someone else is pulling dangerous strings that could be disastrous for us all and that of course concerns me. For the moment though I will have to focus on the problems of Hollywood, I will need more proof to tie anything to that simpering prince or another if necessary."

"What other?" I mused curiously.

"Strauss perhaps," Isaac said scornfully, "he's more lenient and certainly a lot wiser than La Croix but he's a Camarilla nonetheless and a Tremere as well and who knows what magic secrets they have? Then of course there's Ming Xiao, those Eastern vampires have always been a mystery, they're not the same as us and it's no secret she wants power. Still, it's all just politics really, those high up the chain will always be up to something I suppose."

I wondered who this Ming Xiao might be, I had never heard of this wonderful lady but with such a name she had to be impressive, an eastern vampire? East, west, north, south? Were we so different, like the penguins and polar bears or were some of us just picky enough to force differentiation? "So what troubles plague the starry land then?" I murmured. If Isaac did not want to share the crimes of the leaders that was alright but he was going to have to amuse me with something or I was going to have to find my own fun. Sweet Sebastian had always been displeased when I did that, I imagine it's why he sent me to the starry land, at least I think...hmm why had he sent me this way again? Perhaps there had been a purpose, hmm well I caused some trouble here, I found a zombie, tried to put it on a leash and walk it about town, Isaac had discovered me then, covered it up by saying it was a film stunt, now had Sebastian asked me to do that? Somehow I did not think my bratty jester prince was the type to have someone take a pet zombie for midnight walkies.

Isaac eyed me warily, which made me think he remembered my last attempts to help out in Hollywood, they had involved turning a would be film starlet hysterical causing her to lose her fabulous starring role and overdose on coke, then of course there had been that case of mass hallucinations I may have caused in Cafe Cavoletti, ah such happy memories. "There have been strange disappearances," he murmured, "now in this place disappearances aren't so unusual, but these ones...well they're getting strangely common, there have been ten so far, male and female, aged between seventeen and thirty, so far they have nothing in common and only one showed up."

"Dead? Undead? Fairy possessed? Guided by a leprechaun?" I questioned eagerly.

Isaac shook his head, his frown deep enough to show some wrinkles reminding me that he had not be so young when changed. Poor Isaac, old then, old now, then again being the Peter Pan of vampires might not be so good, sure I had good skin but I would never get the grey streaks in my hair Isaac had, pity because I thought they would rather suit me. "Mad," he mused, "but not your kind of mad, bloodied, beaten, tortured to the brink of death. They never said where they had been, who had taken them, no clues, they just died on the street where they were found."

"By whom? Oh who was the lucky finder? Perhaps with such a skill they might help me find the lamp fairies? Sneaky things, they evade me but not one who can find things so well!" I enthused.

Isaac sighed, clearly regretting telling me anything but that was his naive way, to doubt, he would change his mind when I became the heroine of this Hollywood tale and found the disappeared. "A man called David Hatter, he's a writer, V.V knows him well."

"A writer? Oh and what a lucky one to find such inspiration, I wonder if this hat maker perhaps has a lucky hat for me?"

"Inspiration?" Isaac shook his head sharply. "Oh no, the Kine suspect enough without needing to know one of the disappeared turned up in such a state, we do not need their police interfering with what I heavily suspect is the work of something supernatural. V.V was instructed to bid him stay silent and to sort things out more permanently if there is any hint of a manuscript based on all this. It was unfortunate that a mortal had to find the victim."

"And who was this victim anyway?" I pondered.

"A female in her twenties, she matched up with the profile of missing college student Gabrielle Bring, she worked in a video store part time for money, studied art at college."

"An art student, how very Toreador," I teased.

"Indeed," Isaac commented darkly.

"Well I shall question the hat man; see if he has better information and maybe a tea party too, oh that would be fun!"

"I can't imagine he held anything back from V.V," Isaac said pointedly, "but I suppose with that sixth sense you Malkavians have maybe you will see something the rest of us can't, even if you don't realise it."

I gave him a wide smile before grasping him with both arms and snuggling my head hard against his chest. He gave an exasperated groan but I knew he loved it really; he would not keep me around if it were different. I released him quickly and left the room wordlessly, hurrying up to the front door as the sun went down.

I walked to that boiling, destructive club Vesuvius where men partied and strippers cried like it was the end of days. Classier than the Sin Bin with a better clientele made the place seem almost tolerable but unlike the Sin Bin it was very much in denial about its purpose. These women called themselves exotic dancers and were as deluded and as much in denial as their mistress Velvet Velour, V.V to friends.

"Greetings Velvet," I purred as I strode up to the busty redhead lingering not far from the main bar on the ground floor. She and I were not friends, sadly she thought I was exploiting Isaac, I knew though that once she had danced for the baron and that obsessive Toreador mind of hers pined for him still. Isaac saw V.V as a daughter and Ash for a son, such a mad collection of family and yet I was the crazy one. All of them vain, obsessive, passionate and tangled up in remorse and love, it was such a strange tangle even to my many webbed mind.

Velvet Velour was a strange one even to me; she reeked of confidence and yet inside there was a sense of fear and denial, like she had some child locked up in her mind. Nothing abnormal I suppose since I have at least four people locked up in mind but still it did make her rather baffling.

"What do you want mad Malkav child?" she queried in that husky voice of hers that makes so many people and vampires cave to her every command. Velvet has a wonderful knack for persuasion that I envied in those moments when I failed to persuade Isaac that leaving out carrots for the dust bunnies was a good idea.

"A hatter, a hare and a dormouse," I retorted brightly, "so we can all have a tea party. I hear you know the hatter."

Velvet's delicious clear grey eyes widened slightly and she glanced about the busy room before nodding back to the neon pink sign that read VIP ROOM with a finger below it pointing towards the stairs lit up in lime green. "That way," she said reluctantly before turning and leading the way up.

I followed, skipping up each step as I did, taking in a passing fanged dancer with a smirk that she did not seem to appreciate. "I thought about being a dancer," I mused when we entered her humble dancing quarters, "but the elves were against it."

"Elves, yes," she dismissed in a murmur.

I frowned, Velvet never appreciated my stories, it was almost like she didn't believe them but I knew she had to, after all there were elves living right here, hiding in the fake magma pools she had downstairs, besides she was a part of the S cult too, so she had to believe. Susan, it was a name that echoed dimly through me every time I visited Velvet, I had mentioned it once and she had become upset and that denial her child captive possessed was suddenly out. The mentioning of Susan had not helped her attitude towards me alas.

She leaned against a desk, her waist pressed up against the edge and her palms resting on either side of her as she regarded me coldly. It might have seemed more ferocious if she had not been clad in a barely there black lace negligee with thin black straps and red silk trim, a red thong with an adorable matching choker, transparent black stockings and towering black heels, the kind that always made me wobble and wonder if giants found it just as difficult to walk.

"Why do you want David Hatter?" she demanded.

"He's a lucky finder," I said with a smile, "one who brushes with death, though I can't imagine that's a fair meeting since Death has a scythe that can probably slice a brush pretty easily," I murmured as I considered how unfair it was always that people only ever had a brush when they acquainted with Death.

Velvet frowned, she never appreciated my ponderings. "I don't know why Isaac bothers with you," she remarked in disgust, "if you weren't a Malkavian I would think you were a Tremere who had used a spell on him."

"A spell? Hmm I don't think I've had to spell for him," I said sincerely as I tried to remember if Isaac had asked for my spelling talents.

"Idiotic annoyance," she hissed, showing a flash of anger that only seemed reserved for me. With everyone else Velvet was as nice of pie, although I've never considered pie nice, I preferred cake personally, now blood is all there is but it is all I desire, at least when the voices are quiet.

"Where is the hat maker?" I pried. "Isaac is troubled with the merry corpses."

"Hmm," she pursued her plump red lips together as she seemed to consider the matter at last. "So Isaac sent you then as opposed to this being one of your random fancies?"

I nodded. "The Hatter might have information."

"He told me everything he knew about that sad incident," she replied with a sorrowful look on her face. "Poor girl, an aspiring art student they said, such a waste of talent. David is already scarred over the matter, you shouldn't upset him more."

"I won't," I assured, "I'm not the upsetting kind; we'll have a nice, fun tea party, promise. I've a gift for getting information Susan."

She visibly bristled at the name and frowned. "I told you not to say that name," she hissed hatefully.

I shrugged. "Names with the letter S are suspicious," I admitted, "but they have some meaning." Some hidden truth that almost came to me when I fed, a reality just one bite away.

"Alright you've made your point, maybe that crazy insight of yours will drag out some clue we Toreadors are too sane to find," she snapped. "He's a hotel manager at the Luckee Star motel."

"Ah so the source of his luck is a motel!" I marvelled. "Perhaps if I lick the walls then I will be a lucky finder too!"

"Perhaps," Velvet repeated dryly. "Look DO NOT harm him, he's an innocent soul," her expression softened slightly, "and he's already troubled by what he saw."

"I shan't," I vowed, holding up two fingers to my chest.

"You Malkavians are too fond of spreading your insanity," she said darkly, "DO NOT be doing it to him.

"To the motel of luck then!" I retorted enthusiastically before turning from her and skipping back down those delightfully lit up steps. I ignored the curious and occasionally lustful stares I received as I hurried out of Velvet's molten den, eager to reach this hotel. I wondered if perhaps it was at the end of a rainbow with leprechauns for guests, perhaps that was how it had its luck.

It stood a dirty block of brown buildings with long, dirty, rectangular windows divided up into black outlined square panes. The only clue to its luck was a fortuitous star that glowed from the side of it with the pink name above it in an arch. Ah so a wishing star had crashed into the building and given it luck then, that made sense.

I stepped through the entrance and found a lone man standing by the desk, his attention on some pages sitting before him. There was not much to the desk, it had a single black phone, a coffee machine with just one paper cup beside it and two closed black files. There was no computer, no sense of this being a modern motel.

The man looked up at me, he was middle aged, his dark hair streaked with grey, wrinkles marring his plain face and dragging down his bright brown eyes. It was only when I looked to his eyes that I saw he was not another dull dud of Hollywood, there was a passion still blazing in there, a lively flames sparkling around his pupils, lighting up his irises. This man, despite the trauma he had witnessed, had not yet been claimed and ruined by the bleak society he lived in.

"Sorry I've no vacancies," he said as he looked at me. Now why did I find that hard to believe? This place surely could not be hot for business unless of course people came for the luck, yes of course that would make sense.

"I've none either," I retorted brightly. "Are you the hat lover?"

"Hat lover?" He gave me that look, that look being one I was long accustomed to, vampires and kine all seemed to give me that look more often than not. "Well...I'm David Hatter if that's what you're asking."

I grinned and turned on my crazier persuasive side. Some vampires used charm, some used forcefulness but I preferred those words that came to my mind bright and tinged with green, the sort that only the truly insane could come up with. "You saw something hat man, something dark, bloody and terrible, something you want to repress," I spoke to him in a low, deep voice I rarely used and imagined belong to my third personality or was it my fourth? "I need the details, all of them, tell me, see it now as it was and tell me."

He shuddered as he attempted to repress those memories despite my words and his eyes widened in fear but then he gave in, his weak kine mind folding to my several vampiric ones. "She was young," he whispered as he turned pale and gaunt, "not more than twenty, so young, the blood was everywhere, I mean I actually thought it was paint there was so much of it. I thought it was a prank you know?" he babbled to himself rather than me. "It was so bizarre, she was naked, lying in the middle of the street, things like that don't just happen, people don't just show up in that state and...and die!" He froze up, caught in the memory, desperate to reject it.

"Tell me hat maker," I hissed, "tell me what this woman looked like, all the details now."

"She had wounds all over her, when she moved I had to go for a closer look, see if I could help. I knew it was all real then, I could see her bones poking out, her chest, her knees, it was horrible, just these hard, white bits, they didn't look right. You could see her intestines showing a little too, her flesh had ripped, it was like looking through ripped curtains or something, it just wasn't normal. It was like...I don't know, it was like someone had sliced her up good with a nice, cut her in random places just for the hell of it."

"A knife hatter? Not claws?"

He shook his head. "No they weren't like that, at least I don't think, no animal would do it, would they? I don't think so." He shook his head again. "But then what human could?" He swallowed hard, the revulsion clear on his face. "I remember a mark on her waist, oh God yeah, I'd forgotten that for a while, put it out of my head, it was just too damn weird."

"What was it?"

"A rose, someone had carved into her, I don't know how, it was small and so detailed, it was just sick really the time they must have spent marking that into her."

"I see."

David shook his head in a mad protest, swallowed hard again and then blinked twice before staring blankly at me; he had rejected any further memories. "Look I...why do you want to know all that?" he demanded, unnerved and uneasy.

I grinned at him and giggled, suddenly he was giggling to. Done with him, I escaped out of his lucky dwelling and began prancing down the streets of Hollywood. I would return to Isaac soon with this news but first I had to feed, that delicious hunger was upon me again.

I wandered for close to an hour before I came across a familiar spot; there in the neon lights all too common to Hollywood was spelled in bold red- Asp Hole. Isaac's apology gift to Ash for turning him. Ash had overdosed on heroin and Isaac, too attached to let him die so young as so many others had, had turned him and Ash eternally resented him. Silly firespawn would have preferred to go young, handsome and famous than fade into a half life in obscurity, humiliated as everyone thought he had been stupid enough to spurn Hollywood at his peak, shunning fame for the humble life of club owner.

I entered just because I knew it would annoy him. Inside was a club sombre and classy, a mixture of the modern and the day of the popular blues it was purple everywhere, wonderful, dark purple walls, carpet and lights, showing off Ash's eternally grim mood without going for the typical blue. The walls were decorated with painted black snakes that I knew came to life when they were stroked right and every table had purple and white chairs and a candle flickering in the centre. It was packed as usual, busy with the rich clientele of Hollywood, the children of rich businessmen, young men and women enhanced with surgery, dye and make-up who hoped to make it big in Hollywood off their parents' money without a scrap of talent between them. These people were a comfort to Ash because they were more depressed and pathetic than him I supposed, hard as that was to believe.

I spotted Ash up on the top floor, which was made of metal so you could hear you feet bang all the louder as you danced, he loved to brood up there, it gave him a good lookout spot of the degenerates clustered round the bar below.

I did not care to talk him yet, the bodies pulsing around me filled my own with longing, I could smell the salty sweat, taste it even, their despair called out to me, begging me to come and make it better. Their hearts were beating so fast, working overtime to keep up with the drinking and dancing and above all those wonderful nerves as they denied the truth of their existence, forced up a feigned confidence and tried to seek a partner to console them in their loneliness. I would be that partner for someone, oh yes; I would take them out into the soft dark, lull them away from their cold realities and send them into a more peaceful place.

"Tut, tut," a familiar voice scorned in my ear. I turned and saw Alex looking at me even as he cradled the chin of a gorgeous blonde. She looked at him with genuine lust, not yet under any vampire powers her attraction to him was sincere. "Becky," he purred as his sharp, green gaze flickered to her. "This is my beautiful friend Ariadne." He gestured to me.

The blonde regarded me coldly, just like in the animal world so too do humans and vampires perceive one another as a threat, a challenge to their position of dominion. "Hi," she greeted frostily.

Alex let out a chuckle. "Becky," he murmured, "be nice, Ariadne needs company, she is afraid to go outside in the dark alone, she's scared, keep her company, please, do this for me." It did not take a genius to tell Alex was using his own undead gifts on the woman but genius Becky was not and she willing extended a hand to me as she looked to me with vacant eyes.

I accepted her hand, taking her as the gift she was, and led her outside a side door to an alleyway where a couple of smokers loitered. "Come little Becky," I said mockingly, guiding further down the alleyway. Down, down, into the darkness, down to solitude, must not break that damned Masquerade. So thirsty though, starving, her heart pumping all that precious blood, just one bite to stave off the hunger, one little nip, no one would notice that. My vision went red, the hunger exploded within me and I pounced tearing her throat apart with a snarl. That delicious hot vintage that was stronger and sweeter than any wine flooded through my mouth and I drank it quickly, savouring every drop.

There were screams and yells but I paid no attention.

"You damn bitch!"

Someone tore me off, away from the blood, away from that elixir I so desperately needed. I turned with a snarl, scratched out angrily at the intruder. My nails met flesh and I was tossed backwards with an angry yell.

"Bitch! I'll tell him, I'll tell the lot of them and you'll be executed hopefully!"

"Calm down Ash." Hands upon me, someone shaking me. "Well you may as well finish her now, she's fading fast." Someone pressed me back to that blood, its scent filled my nostrils, burning through them and calling back the hunger and I immediately plunged my face down, opening my mouth to suck the nectar in. Sarah, there she was again, an image on the edge of my mind, a silhouette staring at me, calling me back, back to them, back to that night, back to the past.