*.*

LaCroix called the Last Round their 'watering hole'. Whether one was after the truth, hearsay or recent developments this bar (usually) held all three. Offering as a safe haven where ideas and conversation were freely expressed without fear of Camarilla casting its shadow. That was the party line. Kindred had a lot of party lines depending on the situation, person, projected outcome. And, naturally, how best it can be used.

In light of all of that, Sasha had realised quickly enough that she didn't particularly like working with Anarchs. And maybe that was just this group. It wasn't as if she had a 'large sample' at her disposal of what the Anarchs were supposed to be like. Jack seemed alright. He had at least showed her the bare bones of dos and don'ts of this new life she had found herself in. And it was Nines she had to thank for not ending up as a pile of dust on the stage. There was some very, very large dept hanging over her head there.

"A plaguebearer?"

Sasha had found Damsel on the upper floor, her usual haunting ground. Loitering, she'd say, but she had no idea what a 'den mother' did on a nightly basis. The music was going strong on both floors, but she could hear Damsel just fine. When she wanted to be heard, the Brujah was louder than anything coming from the speakers. Supposedly Damsel, and any of the other regulars, could be found in other places around the city, but it had something to do with the recent events, that Kindred everywhere were sticking together. Safety in numbers.

She understood that there was a war – a war between the Anarchs and the Camarilla, and both against... whatever that was she had encountered in Chinatown. Sasha wasn't ashamed to admit that her knowledge of the kindred state of affairs in LA was non-existent beyond the tiny fragments of information various figureheads have supplied her with. She suspected it would be a dangerous admission – were she anything but a three-week-old illegally embraced fledgling who was already being easily exploited by just about everyone in this city.

What she did pick up on was that LA couldn't be the norm for how things usually worked in the long term. It would be in her best interest to figure at least some of this shit out, but she dearly hoped she would be out of town before the unstoppable force collided with the immovable object.

"Yeah. An idiot who doesn't care who they feed from."

"But we can't get sic-"

"No shit Sherlock. Of course we can't – but the kine can. And kindred that feed on them start spreading the disease. Enough get sick, it's an epidemic, CDC's in town as we speak." She gestured sharply with her head at the window, her beret sliding slightly sideways.

Thinking back, Sasha did spot more than a few people in those full-on white suits she had only ever seen in a movie before. And it was mostly in the streets in this area. It didn't cross her mind that vampires might be involved. But apparently, if you want to blame someone for whatever has gone horribly wrong in your life – it's probably the undead's fault. 'Welcome to the paranoia town... where everything is a millennia old conspiracy.' Or something.

"Shouldn't this be a job for a sheriff?" She dared to ask and Damsel growled, visibly irritated. Even her fangs showed as if she was all but ready to rip into her neck. Sasha was briefly reminded of a wild animal but by this point she had learned to stay calm.

"I was thinking you were cute, until you opened your stupid mouth."

Sasha's lips pressed into a thin line. Damsel was in the business of preaching, and she didn't like listening to zealots.

"The masquerade is the one most important thing everyone sticks to. You, and everyone else I've met, keep saying that." Except the ones everyone's all too happy to kill on the nightly basis, and it didn't always involve the Sabbath. "Doesn't this qualify as... I don't know, something Camarilla would concern itself with?"

"It would. If there were halfway sane people around." She spat out and Sasha had to bite her tongue. She wanted to mention Strauss, who seemed to be more than just invested in Camarilla business – but he was Camarilla, and a Tremere, and Sasha had seen how those two things combined would set people off like little else. She didn't know why. It was just another question piled atop of so many others. So far, only Strauss, Beckett and Jack were willing to toss her a bare bone of any sort, but it never seemed to be the right time to ask all of the questions she would've liked. It was clear now that she wouldn't get much in the way of answers anyway.

"But in case you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a shitshow in town, and an even bigger dick than usual sitting in the ivory tower. Does LaCroix look like someone who gives two fucks about what happens on the streets?"

"...He's the only Prince I know of..."

"And how did that work out for you?" That was a loaded question. A provocation. It was as if Damsel thrived on debates – so long as she had the upper hand.

"What kind of answer do you want to hear from me?"

"You finally using common sense would be nice."

"And what counts as 'common sense' for three weeks old undead? Bare survival aside?"

Damsel stared hard at her, crossing her arms, almost in challenge to the younger kindred. "Picking the right side so your chances of survival don't go down the drain the next time a pack of Sabbath shovelheads decide to ambush you while you're leaving a cab."

Sasha couldn't argue with that. It was both an embarrassment, and a painful lesson for her to learn. But that didn't mean that Damsel and her 'lot' were the right choice. That Sasha hadn't already done the smart thing and wholeheartedly joined them, because they were clearly right on all fronts, seemed to be an issue for the Brujah.

"So yeah, we're doing something about it before it blows up in our faces."

"And what do I do with this plaguebearer when I find him?" Sasha tried to stay still despite all the provocation, and not draw too much attention to the long drafting tube hanging from her shoulder.

It was a sheet container used to store rolled up paper some students would use, but she had found that it was good enough for holding a weapon as well. Which were technically not allowed here (or so she was told), but everyone here carried something – least of all their innate abilities with which they could tear anyone apart with ease. She didn't want a fight with the Anarchs no matter how insufferable one of their own was acting.

"Do I contain him, or-...?"

"You kill it." Damsel said as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

"I don't care how it got started, but the thing needs to be put down. This one's been deliberately going out of his way to spread the sickness." Sasha stared at her.

So it was going to be a 'search and kill' type of night. Not that different from the majority of jobs being handed out to her. "And Alex," Damsel called out and Sasha had to grit her teeth at the bastardization of her name. Too much of a mouthful, apparently. "This goes without me telling you – try not to get bitten while putting the thing out of its misery."

The younger kindred straightened. The implication was clear enough.

"Really? We can shrug off bullet wounds like it's nothing, but we can't flush out a disease out of our system?"

Damsel shrugged, uninterested in the finer points of not using violence as the first, last and only option. "I don't know. Maybe we can. Maybe someone even knows how, but I've found that the baseball bat to the head works just as fine."

No wonder no one wanted to take this chore.

Get infected, get put down.

That there was absolutely no way to be rid of it, she didn't buy. But like with many other things around these parts – no one was telling her a single thing. It was almost like they were getting a kick out of watching her struggle and squirm under the 'great unknown'. Or maybe she was looking too deeply into this and expected the Anarchs to tell her more than they realistically knew, or were willing to share even amongst each other.

As if she didn't feel expendable enough already.

*.*

The scent of rain was welcoming, even here in the city. Although it did little to suppress the stench that was the norm for the city of this size. Even with it, for supposedly late autumn, it was still very warm in LA. But maybe that had more to do with her simply not being used to this weather. And dead – a very important factor to account for. It was still better than nothing, Sasha believed. And it felt nice to know that she was still able to enjoy something other than the smell of blood. It has become something of a constant in this new life. So she welcomed the rain, and was happy beyond measure that she was still able to enjoy it.

Sasha had fed before coming here, even more than usual, and she didn't like that. Every so often she would wake up... hungrier- no, emptier than usual. She didn't know if it was due to the extensive injuries she kept accumulating night after night, or if these were the standard growing pains every fledgling had to go through that no one told her about, but waking up on nights like these had made her... cranky. And Damsel's outbursts concerning 'things that should be obvious' weren't helping her mood improve.

At one point, Nines had told her that Damsel was not above respecting and admiring other people, but only after they prove themselves worthy. The thing was that ever since she had mentioned that she was originally from Eastern Europe and that, no, communism wasn't a utopia delusional idiots in the west dreamed of, Sasha knew that she'll never be anywhere near that list of special individuals. It didn't stop her from taking on the job. If growing up in a slowly decaying socialist country taught her anything, it was to look at things as they really are, judge the risk and see if a job is worth the pain.

Damsel gave her two options – their ghoul, and the locals living in the streets.

She let out a huff and turned towards the meandering back allies. The homeless population around the Last Round was closer, so she made her way there first. If one of the people squatting there saw anything, she might as well figure out what she was dealing with before the bloodbath happened.

She walked back into the dark alley, lit only by fire coming from the barrels. Part of her hissed at the exposed fire, but after Grout's mansion she had learned to curb the fear. It was stranger to think that she was, realistically, the most dangerous thing back here. Things have changed, and all things considered, not for the better.

Asking around the beggar population to find out if anyone saw anything strange was a less tricky, but more unpleasant business. Not because of the money. She didn't like seeing people out in the streets like this, not back home and not here. And now that they've fallen into the category of 'food' (whether she liked it or not) it had gotten all-together much worse. One of them, an old lady who herself was getting ever closer to death's door had, after some initial persuasion that Sasha was not going to so much as touch her aluminium cans, pointed her to the one old Tin Can Bill. He kept insisting that, unlike others, he had gotten sick from some sort of monster.

Yeah, that checked out.

When she did find him, Tin Can Bill didn't look too good. Even with the rain she could smell the sickness, and she didn't think modern medicine could cure whatever this poor man was infected with.

"I-is that you, Fred?" came a weak voice from the barely lit corner, spasming into coughs as if his lungs were running out of air. "I ain't got no booze tonight, so you may as well get the hell out of here."

"It's not Fred, Bill." She tried not to sound, not to appear threatening as she approached the old man.

"I heard that you can tell me why everyone's getting sick." He was all but gone.

At best, she could remove feelings of pain from him, for what it was worth – it wasn't something she did often and she had no idea how effective it would be.

"Yeah... I might be able to. But I'm awful thirsty tonight, lady. Could you spare five bucks for a man who's been down on his luck?" Clouded eyes showed just a tiniest hint of a spark at the prospect.

Or that.

He was very happy about it. Waved a musty, paper bag with 'hootch' in it in front of her face in gratitude. The smell of it practically burrowing through her nose and straight into her dead sinuses. But it worked. Tin Can Bill told her about a monster that took him into the sewers and spread the disease to him through a bite to the neck. He was excited to tell his story to someone who might believe him, but each word, each breath took more life out of him. He slumped back, against the wall – dirt, trash and piss surrounding him, and Sasha followed, keeping to his eye level as he told her all that he could remember.

"Don't let the monster come back and take me there..." Bill's voice quivered with fear and desperation. Sasha watched his body shut down, life leaving him. She could perceive it, and it frightened her. Her forehead itched, throbbed almost pleading for her to act before it was too late... but she didn't dare. She couldn't risk it, and she already knew she couldn't do anything for him. Something in her told her that... she wasn't there yet.

He died on the spot, with the final plea to not go back there.

The raw scent of decay, even more pungent than the nightmare that was Andrei's lair. Because this was more real. It didn't take for a vampire acting up for a man to die in some dark back alley like this. Alone and forgotten.

Sasha reached over and closed the man's eyes.

And then she was back on her feet, holding the tube with the blade close.

If the old man knew it was the bite that did this to him, if he still had memories, nightmares of being forcefully hauled into the sewers, then this vampire was clearly not trying to be subtle. Quite the opposite – the creature had to be flaunting its nature.

Continuing down the very same alley, she reached a manhole. Her eyes narrowed at the entrance to the sewers. She'd say it was one of those nights, but lately every night was like that. She quickly climbed down and waded into the water. This access to the sewers seemed like any other, the lights worked for the most part and there were no bodies... that she could see. Or smell.

She was memorising quite a lot of the city's map as of late – above and below ground – but Sasha never thought that she would become intimately familiar with sewers of any kind. The time spent, when she was first looking for the Nosferatu warrens, showed her that the legendary Cretan labyrinth had nothing on the kind of madness that was hiding under the city. How deep would the lair of the plaguebearer go, she had no way of knowing. There wasn't a drop of blood she could follow, or a scent that would be out of place for the sewers.

She didn't get much information from Damsel, so much she had to go on from was her own reasoning and dedication. But if she were to follow the simple logic, this plaguebearer has been preying on the homeless people in this area of downtown – which while large, still narrowed it down enough to consider only the tunnels underneath this section of the city. The problem being – she really was clueless as to how many layers of tunnels there were.

She spent some more moments looking around, pondering, and even using some of her abilities to scout out the potential path...

Ok. No. She was not going to be able to get away with it this time. Following the trail of mindless, fleshy monstrosities was one thing. Finding someone who was literally stalking and hunting people, using sewers to get around... Yeah, that's not going to happen. Not without litres of blood sprayed on the walls for her to follow. There was no way this plaguebearer would want a run in with the Nosferatu, and realistically, he couldn't have made a deal with the entire warren. Its access to swears, the surface and the main street in relation to his lair should be limited.

Maybe she could ask Bertram about some of the less used sections in the area. It was going to cost her. Unlife was expensive like that. She had learned not to expect anything from him, or anyone else, for free.

Still, it was too early for him to be up and about, and with the spare time, she might as well check out the other place. Going back and forth across the city enough times now had her figure out when she could reach him. And she was aware of even that much only because he allowed it. It was the 'kid was useful' thing all over again. Sometimes, it was all it took for her to get what she needed. And at this point, dangerous in the long run or not, she would take it.

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Thank you for reading!