Chapter 15

THE HAVEN, SAN FRANCISCO

(MICK ST. JOHN'S P.O.V.)

We left the main showroom, and proceeded upstairs to the conference room. Once we had entered it, Sonny closed the doors behind us. This instantly shut out all the music from the showroom. Which indicated, in turn, that the conference room had been just as soundproofed as Daedalus' chambers. Sonny then went over to stand behind the chair at the upper end of the conference table while Daedalus sat down at the bottom left corner of it.

"Lady and gentlemen of the Conclave?" began Sonny, in a ritualistic-sounding fashion: "May I introduce Angel (formerly of the Order of Aurelius). And, Michael St. John of the Los Angeles Toreadors. Angel? Mick? Primogen Daedalus, of the Nosferatu Clan, you've already met. The rest of the Conclave, going clockwise, consist of Primogen Lily Langtry (Toreador Clan); Primogen Cash (Gangrel Clan); Primogen Cameron (Brujah Clan); Primogen Nicole DeBrabant (Ventrue Clan); and Julian Luna. The Prince of San Francisco."

The two of us bowed, like we were meeting the British Royal Family, themselves. After which, Prince Julian asked us what he could do for us. So, Angel went first. His story took a good half-hour, at least. When my turn came, mine wasn't much shorter. During the recitation, however, I kept looking at DeBrabant. Because, I could swear he looked very familiar to me. Like I had met him someplace before.

Then, it hit me.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (1989)

I had been chasing a renegade Tzimice named Anton Voytek. He had awakened from torpor, in San Francisco, ten years earlier. And, an architect named John Rawlins had gotten on his bad side by informing the IRS about a suspicious collection of "family heirlooms" Voytek had commissioned him to design an impenetrable vault for.

The latter had retaliated by totally draining Rawlins' wife! And, he would have done the same to Rawlins, himself, if not for a retired SFPD homicide detective named Harry Kilcoyne.

The two of them became like Holmes and Watson to Voytek's Moriarty, chasing him all over the country for the next decade. When his trail finally led them to L.A., they hired me to be their tour guide. Not knowing, of course, that I was a vamp, myself.

We thought we had cornered him in the bowels of the old Queen Mary. But, he got the drop on us. And, before I could stop him, he had tossed me aside like the proverbial rag doll. Following which, he snapped Harry's neck and turned Rawlins into a paraplegic!

Rawlins did not want to spend the rest of his life like that. So, he made two last requests of me.

"Put me...out of...my misery. Then,...GET THAT SON OF A BITCH!"

Physically, the first part was easy. Emotionally? Not so much. The second part, however, I was more than glad to promise. And, I kept it, too. Trailing that Tzimicean bastard all the way to the Windy City!

There, I made the acquaintance of a black police sergeant named Richard Page. And, his white partner; Officer Nick Knight.

Page knew about Nick being a vampire. It seems the two of them had come across a neo-Nazi street gang vandalizing a Jewish synagogue, one night. And, when they confronted them, the skin-heads turned out to be Fenrir Garou!

It wasn't easy. But, Nick drove them off. Afterwards, when he tried to telepathically induce hypno-amnesia in Page, the poor guy turned out to be naturally immune. It was only by personally vouching for his human partner that Nick managed to dissuade the local Conclave from unleashing the Enforcers on him.

In any event, I was required by the rules of the Masquerade to get the permission of that same group before conducting a glorified bloodhunt on their turf. Considering that Voytek was Tzimice (co-founder of the Sabbat, arch-rival of the Camarilla), it didn't prove all that difficult to get that approval.

Nick and I finally cornered our prey on the roof of the Sears Tower, shortly after midnight, the next night.

"Give it up, Voytek!" Nick yelled: "You have been duly tried, in absentia, and lawfully condemned to Final Death."

"Ventrue scum! I do not recognize your authority over me."

"Who gives a frig what you recognize?" I'd countered: "You're going down for what you did to Harry and Rawlins."

The defiant grin he gave us in response was more like that of a terrible two year-old, rather than a centuries-old aristocrat from Central Europe.

"Give it your best shots."

If he'd been expecting to go out in a blaze of glory, fighting us hand-to-hand in a three-way free-for-all, we severely disappointed him. What we did, instead, was soften the bastard up. First, by my firing Uzi-replica squirt guns, loaded with holy water, right in his face!. Followed by Nick using a wooden stake to paralyze him just long enough to decapitate him. With a meat cleaver, no less!

After that, I went back to Los Angeles, where I only heard one more time from Nick, prior to the turn of the millennium. It was a 1993 letter in which he told me (among other things) that he no longer worked for Chicago's Finest. Instead, he now worked for the night shift of the local police in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As for Richard Page? Not only did CPD eventually make him a detective and promote him to captain. They also made him the head honcho of some elite outfit called "Special Unit 2."

SAN FRANCISCO (1999)

There was a long pause as I finally completed my explanation as to how I'd gotten involved with Angel and his friends. After what seemed like an eternity, Prince Julian looked at the two of us, and cleared his throat before speaking.

"Remarkable stories, to say the least! But, having heard them, I'm in a quandary as to how to proceed next. On the one hand, if I grant your request, Angel, I risk all-out war with the L.A. Kindred. Which would almost certainly destroy the Masquerade for good. On the other hand, if I deny your request, your only other option is virtually permanent exile in Asia. And, it would be an understatement to say that kuei-jin tolerance of immigrant Western Kindred is only _slightly_ higher than zero!"

"I will gladly accept whatever decision best protects Cordelia Chase from any retribution," Angel replied: "Because, primogen or not, one fact doesn't change. Russell Winters did try to forcibly Embrace her."

Prince Julian then turned to his personal sergeant-at-arms.

"Sonny? Why don't you take these gentlemen downstairs for a drink, while the Conclave votes on what to do."

Sonny nodded. Five minutes later, the three of us were in the Haven's cocktail lounge, drinking Bovine Marys. I had finished mine, and was just about to ask (semi-rhetorically) what was taking so long, when it happened. A cacophony of over-turned tables and female screams broke out from the direction of the club's lobby.

"What the frig...?" muttered Sonny, as he ran to discover the source of the disturbance. Angel and I close beside him. Imagine our collective shock at seeing the Haven's Gangrel bouncers duking it out with a another bunch of Kindred...and losing.

"Who the...?" I began to ask.

Sonny identified them as the Hopping Ghosts; a kuei-jin gang from Chinatown. He then added (looking right at Angel): "And, it appears they're here for you."

tbc

Tzimice: vampire clan made up mostly of tyrants from the Dark Ages (like Vlad Tepes, for example). They are greatly feared because they not only have the power to shift their own shapes, but to alter the shapes of others, as well! And, they have been known to use this ability for the sheer sadistic joy of it.

Special Unit 2: a branch of the Chicago Police Department that secretly defends the Windy City from supernatural evil.

Kuei-jin: a portmanteau used by Occidental Kindred for their counterparts in the Far East.