"So...trap?" Sybil asked Ben.
"Not a trap, but she knows more than she's letting on." Ben said. He'd seen more than enough of the Camarilla to know that it was smart to not let anyone know everything that you knew. Always another knife to be pulled in case of an emergency. Perhaps he was simply following the stereotypes of his clan, but the Gangrel had next to no use for politics or patience for this kind of puppet mastering. "A test. Not a trap." He reaffirmed his point.
"Testing us? How delightful..." Grace muttered, and Ben couldn't argue with the Toreador. Being catspawed was the way of the Camarilla, it could not be avoided. It was basically the Kindred word for "Tuesday". Ben noticed that Anthony was keeping quiet. The usual Tremere stoicism was apparently something the Kindred wasn't practiced at, Ben could tell something was on his mind. As before, however, he said nothing to him. "Well, I believe we should start looking for names on the list." Grace said. "Residences, places of business, and-"
"No." Ben replied.
"...I'm sorry?" Grace intoned, indignant at being cut off so tersely.
"I know someone who might be able to help. He owes me a favor." Ben explained. "Are you driving?"
"Martin shall be driving, yes." Grace corrected. "Provided you avoid putting someone with an exploding head in my backseat."
"No promises." Ben replied. If someone didn't know him, they might have assumed he was joking. The clock on the dashboard of Grace's town car read "9:15" as they arrived at the place that Ben had described. It looked like a simple freeway overpass, at least to Grace's eyes.
"This is where your contact is?" Grace's brow was raised as she looked to Ben.
"Somewhere around here, likely, yes." Ben said, opening the car and getting out.
"Likely?!" Grace huffed, but Ben wasn't listening. Instead, he stepped out onto the rocky ground of the parking lot, walking over to a utility building used by the city. As Grace told Martin and Mortimer to wait here and moved to follow, Ben reached the sealed door, knocking once...twice...three times in a rhythmic pattern. Knock...Knock...Knock...and nothing appeared to happen. "...really?"
Sybil shushed her. "Open Sesame." The Malkavian pointed and, as she did, the door opened from within, swinging out from the building. Ben stepped in without a second thought, heading down some stairs. Anthony was quick to follow, Grace taking to the path before Sybil did. The darkness was dealt with by a flashlight Anthony had on him, illuminating their path downward along the stairs. Eventually, the rather awful smell of overripe meat met her nostrils. She drew a cloth from within her gown and pressed it against her nose to block out the smell.
"Where in the Hell are we?" She hissed.
"Sewer access." Ben told her.
"...what?! Why?"
"...because my contact is here." Ben said as though there could be no other answer.
"Wait...you mean...oh, no..." Grace groaned.
"Oh, yes, Princess." A voice that wasn't one of the others spoke up, echoing through the large chamber they'd come into. A place that looked like a storage room before accessing the sewer system proper. "Step into my parlor, said the spider to the flies..."
"Drop the act, Harold." Ben said, looking rather annoyed. "We're here on business."
"Oh, you are no fun, Benjamin..."
"It's Ben."
"Right, right...of course." The voice spoke again, and then Grace heard it in her ear. "My, my, my...aren't you a lovely little thing?" She screamed and almost leaped forward from whatever was behind her...turning around and screaming again as she looked upon the horrific visage. It was a human race, or what had once been a human face. The skin seemed pulled toward the top of the head, as it had been stretched over the skull. The top of the head had been changed somewhat, the skin having taken on a dull, gray sheen. The eyes were sunken and blood red with only tiny flecks of black as any sign of pupils. The nose was distinctly inhuman, a pair of nostrils protruding slightly more like a snout than a nose. Beneath that was a mouth that seemed to be filled with jagged daggers, the fans of a Kindred fully extended.
This was a Nosferatu.
"Hello, Harold." Ben crossed his arms over his chest, still looking rather annoyed.
"You have no appreciation for the theatrical, my friend." The Nosferatu ran a hand of lengthy, gnarled fingers over its smooth, bald head. "And your friend here is quite loud...and rather rude to scream at her host."
"Most hosts don't scare their guests for a cheap thrill." Grace retorted. If she'd had a heartbeat, it would have only started slowing just then.
"Oh, I'm sorry that I couldn't give you the Hamptons in January, Princess...blame the city of Seattle for that one." Harold said. "Or Virgil Bogue."
"Who?" Grace asked.
"One of his conspiracy theories." Ben answered.
"Hey! The CIA invented the term conspiracy theorist in the Sixties to discourage critical thinking." Harold raised a gnarled finger in protest. "Besides...we all know a little paranoia isn't unhealthy."
"Speaking of paranoia, I'm calling in a favor." Ben said. He half-turned to Sybil. "The list?"
"Oh, right." Sybil nodded, digging it out of her coat pocket and handing it over to the Nosferatu. The Kindred took list in its fingers and started examining it.
"Ahhhhhh, the missing Kindred." Harold clicked his tongue. "Yes, yes. Word through the grapevine was Prince Blanchard was wanting this taken care of."
"Figured that you'd might know a little something about that." Ben said.
"I'm Nosferatu. I know a little something about everything." Harold retorted. "But yes, this I can help you with...I'm assuming this is for what happened on Pier 62, yes?"
"Harold..." Ben started with a warning tone.
"Alright, alright." Harold said, waving this off. "The first one of these to go missing was Dr. Julian Crane. Malkavian. Surgeon in his breathing days. Now he consults. Or he did, anyway."
"He was the first one?" Grace asked. "You're sure?"
"Sure as I can be, Princess." Harold scoffed, handing the list back to Sybil after scribbling the address on it. "He disappeared on that first night. Hasn't been seen since."
"You think the Prince knows anything about it?" Anthony asked.
"Pretty sure you're an idiot if you think she doesn't," Harold replied. "There's a reason she's been holding Seattle for ninety years. She is this city."
"So it is a test, then." Ben muttered, thinking aloud.
"I'd say so, yes. If you were to start looking, I'd imagine that there would be the best place." Harold said, giving the quartet a toothy grin. "Let's hope you pass, Benjamin, I enjoy our chats..." It wasn't long after this that the group left the area.
"Alright, so...Dr. Crane's?" Grace asked, more than happy to be out of the sewer and back to her car. Immediately getting a bottle of hand sanitizer from Martin.
"Most likely." Ben said. "His haven was the last place he was said to have been going to. The other was Kindred Hospital for a consult."
"I have a friend who works there," Grace suggested, "we could call her and-"
"He left from there." Ben cut her off. "He'd said he was heading back home afterward. If he wasn't taken from there, then there still might be some clue to where he went."
"If we can even discern anything he might have left behind." Anthony said as the car took off into the night. "After all, he is a Malkavian." His glasses-covered eyes flickered over to Sybil for a moment. "No offense."
"The changing man dances with the empty people," was Sybil's only reply as she stared out the window to watch the street lights as they passed them. Anthony just shook his head.
"Either way, it's the best lead we have at the moment." Ben said. "If all else fails, we'll just keep going down the list." The car drove on.
When they arrived, they found Crane Manor was a still and quiet as the grave, save for a single light being on in a window of the second floor.
"Nice digs." Sybil commented as the car parked before the large gate.
"I've seen better." Grace quipped as they all got out. "Martin, Mortimer. Stay with the car."
"Yes, ma'am." Both of the ghouls said in unison.
"Alright, so somebody's home." Ben said, walking over to an intercomm panel and pressing a button. "We're here to see Dr. Crane." He said. No reply came. After a few seconds, that second floor light went out. "Okay, let's move."
"I'm on it." Sybil said, heading over to the gatehouse and pulling out a pack from within her coat, rolling it out on the floor before the group. It was a set of lockpicks. She started picking the lock to get in. "Bummed these off of a guy trying to break into a pawn shop last week...guy was a-" There was a gust of wind. Looking back, she saw Grace and Anthony looking confused and Ben nowhere to be found. Looking past the gate, they found Ben landing on his feet on the other side of the gate.
"I'll scout ahead." He said, walking off into the grounds.
"...drama queen." Sybil muttered as she got the door open and stepped in, reaching over to flip the light switch. The lights did not come on. "Someone's been fucking with the power lines..." She clicked her tongue as she reached into her coat and pulled out a flashlight, turning it on and shining it around. "Sorry, didn't bring enough for everybody."
"Didn't need you to." Anthony said, holding up a smaller flashlight of his own, having handed another one to Grace.
"Charming." Sybil said as she swept the light across the room, looking for a fuse box. The other two likewise doing the same.
"I found it." Grace called to the other two after they'd been searching for less than a minute, drawing their attention to the very fuse box they'd been looking for. It had been stuck behind a metal shelf, which Sybil and Anthony were able to push aside with a joint effort. Examining it, they found it undamaged, save for a few of the lines from it having been... "Cut."
"That's not a good sign." Sybil said, looking over the damage. The cuts seemed to have been made deliberately, if the fact that the box had been hidden behind a shelf weren't an indication. "Anthony. Think you have any Tremere hijinks that could fix this up?" She asked.
"...give me a minute." Anthony said, digging into his pocket for a book, flipping through lines upon lines of formula.
Ben crept along the shadows of the manor house away from the ankle-height lamps, the moon blocked partially by the clouds above him. His eyes glimmered a soft red in the darkness, not inhibited by it in the slightest. His hearing, too, was enhanced ever so slightly. A predator astride the darkness, looking for its prey. That was how it had been, years ago, but now he found no prey. The grounds were clean. No sign of anything, Kindred, Kine, or animal.
He supposed he should have expected that, looking over the unkempt lawn. No, it was clear that no one had been here in at least a week, perhaps two. Longer than the disappearances had been going on, at any rate. Thinking how something wasn't adding up, Ben's eyes caught something among the shaggy field of grass. Approaching it, he got a clearer look at a single rose that had grown immaculately amid the chaos around it. In the center of its pedals, staring up at him, was a single black eye.
It blinked. A spark of realization shot through Ben's mind.
"Shit..." Ben said, a Protean claw slashing through the stem of the rose before he bolted to rejoin the others.
They were watching as Anthony worked some form of Thaumaturgy to reconnect the strands that had been cut. The building's lights came back on and Sybil went over to press the button that opened the gate. The three walked in, only to be almost immediately met by Ben running back up.
"Well, you took your time, then." Sybil said. "Sorry, figured I'd say it before you-"
"You need to leave. Now." Ben said.
"-did." Sybil finished.
"Leave? Why do we need to leave?" Grace asked with a skeptical brow raise.
"Not me. You." Ben said.
"Explain what you mean." Anthony said, a brow raised as he cast his gaze upon the Gangrel.
"There's no time for that." Ben said. "Get back in Grace's car and go."
"Why? What did you find?" Grace demanded, arms folded.
"A rose." Ben said.
"...what?" Grace asked.
"With an eye in its pedals." Ben added. The other three Kindred stared at him for a long moment. "I'm not making this up."
"Why would a rose have an eye in its pedals?" Anthony finally asked.
"Because someone made it." Ben answered. "Someone who knows Vicissitude..."
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