"Oh, bad puns..." Grace groaned. "And I thought you were hot..."
"Hey!" Isaac snapped, raising a brow.
"Oh, hush!" Grace nudged her sire.
"Are we just ignoring the zombies or...?" Hope asked.
"What? You don't like your new clientele, Miss Devereaux?" The man in white asked.
"Dead men don't pay their tab." Hope replied.
"Witty. Very witty." The man in white chuckled as he got off the stage, holding the glowing green light in his hand. "I must say, I'm surprised that Brook caught onto my plot so quickly...the Tremere usually aren't so aware."
"Oh, never you mind that." A hand that had previously been grasping the mic waved dismissively. "Just know that my interests for this city go beyond ruining theater productions and raising the dead. A lot further beyond."
"You're the one who ruined my big night?" Grace's eyes flashed with anger.
"A coincidence, Miss Penderghast. I'm certain you would make a fetching Christine." The man in white said. "It needed to be done."
"Needed to be done?!" Grace bellowed.
"Grace, my dear...relax." Isaac raised a hand to stop her from advancing.
"Who are you, then? You seem to know who in the Hell we are." Hope said.
"Quite correct, Miss Devereaux." The man said. "I have been quite rude. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Aleister." He gave a sweeping bow. "As you can imagine...I've had a lot of work to do..." The walking corpses began to shift about, groaning and wheezing as they did so. The two Toreador and the Brujah began to back away only to find others on approach.
"What's going on?" Ben had gotten a text message from Nathaniel that gave only three words.
Trouble. Come now.
Of course, he'd come along as the Gangrel elder had asked. The few forests in Seattle were the domain of the Clan, both out of the benevolence of Princes past and simple pragmatism. The woods were their lands, the places where the Clan of the Wolf flourished. From the looks on their faces now, though, Ben could see that his fellow Hunters had become prey.
Nathaniel looked worriedly toward the treeline, as did several others. Near them, however, was a fallen one of their number. A young pup, three or so winters under his belt if Ben remembered correctly. He also had something missing at the shoulder, namely most of his arm.
"The pup has a story," Nathaniel said, gesturing to the young Gangrel's bloodied stump.
"Garou?" Ben asked.
"Listen." Nathaniel gestured toward the fallen Gangrel. "Mason. Tell Benjamin your story." The younger Gangrel looked up at Ben with surprise. He was shivering, shaking like a frightened dog that had been beaten by its owner. A human reaction. . .yes, only a few winters were under this one's belt.
"I. . .I was in the woods. The deep woods. With my coterie." Mason stammered through an explanation. "He. . .he came out of nowhere. Nobody saw him until it was too late. He tore Jacob in half. Cut through Michael with that fucking machete...he..."
"He? He who?" Ben's eyes narrowed on the younger Kindred. "Who?"
"J-Jason. Jason Voorhees." Mason stammered out. Ben stared at him blankly. "I told you he wouldn't believe me!"
"That's a way to put it..." Nathaniel muttered.
"Jason Voorhees? As in the fictional serial killer? Are you kidding me?" Ben asked, raising a brow as he looked back over his shoulder to Nathaniel.
"Look at his arm." Nathaniel said, pointing to Mason's bloodied stump. "He was attacked by a bladed weapon, not a fang." Ben looked and he could see there weren't the sharp, jagged angles of teeth coming from a werewolf or the like. It was one slice, clean and surgical. Like a weapon.
"Damn. . ." Ben muttered. "What the hell is going on with tonight?"
"What do you mean?" Nathaniel questioned.
"Nothing." Ben waved it off. Zombies at the theater could be left to the Tremere. Their little mess to clean up. "Have you seen this...whatever the hell it is?"
"Jason Voorhees." Mason piped up.
"I'm not calling it that." Ben said.
"But that's what it is!" Mason insisted. "It's Jaso-"
"We were starting a tracking party. If it's still in the woods, we'll find it." Nathaniel said.
"Who's leading it up?" Ben asked.
"That would be me." A French accent, strong and surprisingly thick, came from behind Ben. The Gangrel turned around to see a familiar face, specifically another Gangrel. The man stood about a head taller than he did, wearing a black trench coat. The man's left eye had been cut out, some had said in nights past and others said in his mortal life. Of course, Ben knew the man as.
"Blackjack." Ben muttered.
"Scum." The reply came from the towering figure of Jacques Laurent, the Sheriff of Seattle, as he approached from the treeline.
"Now, boys...let's not caught trouble. We're all on the same side here." Nathaniel said, raising a hand palm out to each of the two men. Ben didn't much care for Laurent, Blackjack as he was sometimes called, but he knew well that the Sheriff had no love at all for him in particular. Hatred burned in the man's one working eye when he gazed at him.
"I did a sweep of the perimeter." Blackjack said. "I have seen no evidence of the individual that the neonate has described."
"So what cut off my arm?" Mason asked, immediately regretting it as Blackjack's one eye turned on him, cowering back from him.
"Perhaps you were being a clumsy idiot." The sheriff sneered at him.
"You'd know something about that, I take it?" Ben asked offhandedly, earning him a one-eyed glare from the older Gangrel.
"Benjamin, enough!" Nathaniel snapped at him, then returned his attention to the sheriff. "Laurent. Please. We can do another sweep of our domain tomorrow night. It will be dawn soon enough. Our ghouls can keep an eye on things in the interim." He gestured for the two others to follow. "Come along, pack...we're burning moonlight."
"Regent, I don't understa-"
"There is nothing to understand." Lilah Brook replied sharply, cutting off the apprentice. "We have been stolen from and the dearest cost will be paid by the thieves in question."
"I understand that, Regent." Anthony replied, following Brook deeper into the Chantry. "What I don't understand is how this could have happened."
"From the looks of the safehouse when I found it, murder." Lilah said. "The warden placed in charge of it had been reduced to a pile of ash and several times had been taken." A vault was not an uncommon thing, though generally the most dangerous items the Tremere had were stored away within the vaults of the Chantry itself and under the highest guard. Every so often, however, an item needed to be spirited away. This had been the case for whatever had been in the vault that had been broken into, it's guardian given the Final Death.
"Do you think it's the Baali?" Anthony asked her.
"With absolute certainty." Lilah said. "They blindsided us here, but I won't make the same mistake twice. We are going to meet force with force and end this now."
"You're serious?" Anthony asked.
"I cannot afford to be otherwise." Lilah replied as she led him into her office with the glass floor. Stepping over to a seemingly innocuous wall, she placed a hand against it and muttered. "Vinitores fructus." The etching of a pentagram appeared under her hand, Lilah pulling it away to reveal the whole thing. The wall receded as if it had become a door opening up into another room, all this in spite of the fact that Anthony knew that outside of that particular wall was the empty space of outside. "Come along, Apprentice Wallace."
"Yes, Regent." Anthony followed her, looking around as they passed through what seemed to be some kind of trophy room. There were artifacts of every shape and size in various cases all around as well as some hanging upon the walls. Everything from ancient tomes to swords to even what appeared to be a miniature doric column. Lilah kept walking past all of it, though, and thus so did he. She eventually came to something that had been covered by a large tarp. She pulled it away, the fabric pooling against the ground, and Anthony saw plainly what it was - a mirror.
It was a tall thing, contained in a golden frame that itself almost reached to the ceiling of the room. The most distinctive thing about it, however, was that its surface was smooth and unblemished save for six points were most definitely not, mostly because they were holes the backing of the frame could be seen through. It was as if shards of the glass had been ripped away from the whole.
"Regent, what...is this?" Anthony asked.
"The Castaneda Mirror." Lilah said, smoothing a hand along the edge of one of the breaks in the reflective surface. "A story for another time." Her hand moved to lay flat against the surface. "Suelta al atrapado!" Anthony watched as the mirror face shimmered like ripples moving through water and Lilah's hand sank into the mirror. After a moment, she pulled her arm back and the mirror rippled further as something large was being pulled from it. Anthony quickly realized that it was a man, and one he knew well. It had not been so many nights that he had forgotten the staked Kindred he had brought to the Chantry, the one who had tried to steal the Malleus Maleficarum from his coterie when they had been sent to retrieve it.
The man looked panicked, but shaken. Blood-starved by the look of him. Lilah saw to an end of that, pulling a knife from her belt and slitting her wrist just enough to draw blood. The starved, crazed vampire she had pulled from the mirror immediately leaped at her, the hunger of his Beast drawing him to her blood. Anthony moved to assist her, but Lilah raised her hand to him and allowed the prisoner to drink.
After a minute or so, the Tremere primogen slammed her fist into the man's chest, sending him flying back onto the floor.
"Feeling better?" She asked. The man did not answer, wiping the blood from his lip as he did so, sucking it off of his fingers. "Speak."
"P-Please...please don't send me back there! Please!" His faculties were back, and he was seemingly very consciously aware of where he was and who he was in the company of. "I'll do anything! Anything!"
"You're right, you will." Lilah replied coldly. "Whether or not you go back is completely independent of that fact."
"Oh, God..."
"You were an agent of the Baali within our ranks. What plans did they have for Samhain?"
"S-Samhain?" The man stammered, earning him a smack across the face that sent him reeling too the floor once again.
"Yes. Samhain. What were the Baali planning?" Lilah demanded of him. The man opened his mouth to speak, then suddenly seemed to suffer a seizure. His body jerked spasmodically on the floor for a few seconds.
"Regent, I-" Anthony began.
"Wait." Lilah held up a hand to keep him at distance, eyes unmoving from the Kindred on the floor. Eventually, the jerking about stopped and the man was still. His eyes snapped open, focusing upon the world around him, and flickered toward Lilah.
"Lilah, oh Lilah..." He said. "If only you knew how...delicious...your vitae tastes..." The man gave a wry chuckle.
"Apprentice, you will address me as-"
"Apprentice? This body's just a shell now...he's given his life's blood to our cause. A cause that will see you meeting the Final Death." The man got to his feet. "We have been festering, deep within the unbeating heart of the Tremere for years now."
"I'm going to kill every last one of you." Lilah said, her face showing no change in expression. The response she got was laughter.
"They tried in the Second City. They tried in Carthage. You cannot defeat us. We are legion. We are forever. We are the serpent with one hundred heads!" His laughter suddenly stopped as Lilah raised her hand and the body once more began to jerk about, although this time it was as if breath had returned to his unfeeling lungs. He coughed, blood leaking out of his mouth as his body began to bubble and smoke. Eventually, he fell back...his body reducing itself to useless ash that smoldered on the ground.
"Ninety-nine heads to go." Lilah said, lowering her hand. Anthony looked upon her with abject terror, even his normal stoicism having been pulled into the gravity she had created.
Back at the Moon and Star, Grace had brandished a stool as the zombies approached, Isaac had done much the same. Hope, though, swung her legs over the bar and got behind it.
"Sorry, Phil." Hope muttered as she pushed around the slow moving zombie that had once been the bartender on duty that night. She grabbed a pair of bottles of booze and slammed them against the bar.
"Hope! That's expensive!"
"You wanna be broke or do you wanna be dead?!" Hope asked, pulling out a lighter and flicking it. Pressing it into the trail of liquid, the flames leaped up along the bar.
"Oh, gods!" Isaac groaned in disdain.
"What an interesting approach..." Aleister said, looking somewhat amused...at least until the trail of flaming booze reached nearer to him, the flames lashing out toward the woodwork around. ". . .and I believe that is my cue to leave..." He closed his hand around the glowing green object. "Sorry to cut this short, but-"
"Cut this short!" Hope spat, tossing a bottle of whiskey that crashed right into the head of the man. He howled in pain, dropping the object, which turned out to be an orb made of some kind of emerald stone. Jade, perhaps? The exact instant that he did so, the zombies stopped in their lumbering and collapsed, their bodies reducing to dust much like a vampire would upon meeting the Final Death. Hope charged after him while Grace went to pull the fire alarm. The sprinkles activated, putting out the fire and leaving a gale of smoke in its wake.
Isaac bent over, picking the orb up from the floor within a handkerchief.
"What the hell is that?" Grace asked.
"If we're lucky, a tool." Isaac said, not looking away from the artifact in question as the flames that had threatened to engulf his bar died out from the sprinkling water.
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