"So... who is this you have been brought before me, Mr. Grayson?"
"My name is Angelica Knox, Prince Blanchard, and with respect, I can speak for myself." The redhead who stood beside Ben spoke up. This was her Presentation, as Ben had called it. She couldn't sweat anymore, but if she could... well, she would be right now. She did her best to put on a brave face. She saw Ben in her peripheral vision, standing almost like a statue. He was letting her take point on this, and she wasn't sure if that was comforting or not.
"Very well, Angelica Knox. Present yourself. What Clan has given you it's blood? Ventrue? Toreador? Gangrel?" The blonde Prince stared at her, though Angelica knew that last mention in particular was a pointed remark toward Ben himself.
"I do not know." Angelica said. "I was attacked and found by Ben as I am now."
"I see." Wren had drawn her right hand to her chin, blowing against fingers, the nails of which were tipped with an icy blue polish, looking almost as though each digit was capped with the first snowfall of winter. Her hand lowered once more, resting against the cushioned white armrest. "Well... I see no reason for you to be barred from my city. Or for you or... Benjamin to suffer any undue punishment."
"Your Grace is generous." Angelica nodded her head respectfully. Ben had said airing on the side of brown nosing wouldn't be a terrible thing.
"And you would do well to remember that." Wren said. "Mr. Grayson."
"Yes, Prince Blanchard?" Ben asked.
"This childe may not be of your blood, but she is your responsibility. One that you've taken to with admirable gusto, it seems. The Fourth Tradition applies."
"Fourth?" Angelica asked.
"Ah. A lesson." Wren said, rising from her throne. "There is a reason you have never known that we existed before this night, Miss Knox. That would be our Masquerade, one of our traditions. Six laws which bind us even more tightly than blood. The fourth is the tradition of Accounting. Those thou create are thine own children."
"But he didn't-" Angelica started, but Wren raised a hand with palm out to the younger woman.
"I will forgive the impertinence once, but do not interrupt me again." The Prince warned before getting a silent nod from Angel and lowering her hand. "The fourth tradition tells us that any childe made as a result of the Embrace belongs to their sire. Their sire holds a responsibility to bring them into our world, the world of the Kindred. As your sire is... unknown to us... Mr. Grayson shall serve as your de facto sire. I assume that will not be a problem?"
"Of course not." Ben said.
"Excellent." Wren said, extending her hand to Angelica, knuckles raised. "Welcome to our city, Angelica Knox..." She intended for her to kiss the ring.
The previous night had been... unpleasant for Anthony, to say the least. The day that followed had been no better, unable to enter torpor due to the stake paralyzing him. He had been subjected to various Thaumaturgical rituals, tearing at his mind. They had everything now... or so they believed. Anthony had been doing his best to discipline his mind against their intrusion, feeding them nonsense as much as possible. Some details had gotten out, of course. Brook's plans, the use of the Maleficarum, and the reaching out to Black for help.
It was clear to him that they didn't have all the pieces, but they were working it out. Having Black on a Blood Bond (as he presumed that they had him) was helping them immensely, he was sure. His mind raced as he remained bound in the area. He had to get out, find Marion... find his coterie... find someone... if...
The stake moved in his chest. Unable to move, unable to speak, Anthony focused on the movement of the stake. After a moment, it was pulled away. Anthony's body jerked forward... and a hand clasped around his mouth.
"Don't. Speak." The voice was deathly quiet and the fingers felt to be about the same temperature as the room. And they were...gnarled. Anthony nodded his understanding and the hand retracted. Into his field of vision came a Nosferatu that he wasn't familiar with. "Follow." The Nosferatu, dressed in what appeared to be a t-shirt and jeans, pulled out a glass shard from a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. "Odo."
Anthony watched as part of the wall seemed to warp as if it were some sort of watercolor exposed to too much of the former part of its namesake. The Nosferatu started into it, seeming to disappear within it as if walking into gelatin. Seeing no good alternatives, Anthony quickly followed. The torture chamber changed quickly to what looked to be a trophy room... as well as some sort of computer workstation.
The Nosferatu put the shard into an empty glass case, closing it up again.
"Alright. Now we can talk." He said.
"Not that I'm ungrateful for the rescue, but-" Anthony began.
"Sorry, let me rephrase that. I can talk." The Nosferatu cut him off. "You're Anthony Wallace. I'm Hugo Combs. I work for Black." Anthony began to speak again, Hugo raised a gnarled finger. "Let me finish. I work for Black, he told me to get you out. We need to get to the Malkavian meet."
"What?" Anthony blinked. "He's fighting the Blood Bond?"
"What you don't know about Primogen Black could fill a book." Hugo said. "And you're avoiding the point."
"Why are we going to a Malkavian meet?"
"Do you want to piss off the Malkavian Primogen?" Hugo asked. "She said you were supposed to be there. You, your friend Sybil, and Hope."
"Alright. Fine. What about Ben and Grace?" Anthony asked.
"They're... otherwise occupied, she said. They'll catch up." Hugo said. "I got a truck waiting for us outside. We'd do best to go. Now."
"Why don't you just use the mirror shard again?"
"I have my reasons. Now let's go."
"This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen..."
"You ain't seen nothin' yet, sister." Hope couldn't find herself agreeing with Sybil. The place she had brought her to seemed to be a community center, but obviously after hours. A door had been opened and there were dozens of people wandering about... and marking every visible surface with chalk.
To Hope's eyes, the words were completely random, seemingly with no rhyme or reason to any of them. 'Fire'. 'Snake'. 'Blood.' 'Dragon.' 'Sunlight.' 'Madness.' 'Murder.' None of them seemed to make any sense.
"Mumbo jumbo." Hope muttered.
"That's because your eyes aren't trained to see what they are seeing." Sybil said.
"You don't know what it means either, do you?" Hope asked, giving the Malkavian a look.
"... that's not really the point." Sybil said. One of the Malkavians, a young man, got up and hugged Sybil before handing her a piece of chalk.
"Lady Stantz says to mark it up!"
"Got it!" Sybil said, taking the chalk after the hug and ruffling the younger (appearing) Kindred's hair. "Where is Rowan? That old so and so?"
"I dunno." The man said before heading off and scribbling more words as though nothing had happened.
"Who's Row-" Hope started to ask, but soon saw that Sybil had started scribbling out words in chalk over every surface near her. 'Keys'. 'Madness.' 'Dancing.' 'Servant.' The Brujah just stared in confusion. She didn't have long to consider this before a hand fell on her shoulder.
"Doing alright, pup?" If Hope's heart could have raced, it would have.
"Ox?!" She almost screamed, turning to indeed see the face of her sire right before her, grinning through his bushy, black beard.
"In the rotting flesh, yep." The old Brujah said.
"This is impossible!" Hope gasped, embracing him and letting him go several times, almost as though she were still believing he wasn't really there. "I saw you-"
"You saw me fall into the shadows with one of those mirror-faced motherfuckers. That was it." Ox said. "Had to fake it out, get them off my back."
"You mean because of the-" Hope started, but Ox raised a finger to stop her.
"Yes, that." Ox said. "Don't mention it. The Malkies tend to get antsy when you do."
"Why?" Hope asked.
"It's a long story." Ox said. "But they don't like it. So don't say the k word. You do still have it, right?"
"Got it." Hope said, nodding. "How did you get here?"
"The Malkavian primogen, of all people, was kind enough to give me shelter while I hid out." Ox said. "I wanted to send you a message, but it was too risky. I didn't know who was watching or when. She told me not to worry, though. We were all supposed to meet here again."
"Why?" Hope asked, the endless barrage of questions spurred by the seeming randomness of it all. Before Ox could answer, however, the doors at the far end of the room opened and in walked a man who Hope didn't recognize, but who looked strangely familiar nonetheless.
"Sister!" He called out, looking past the two Brujah and directly at Sybil, who was still busily scribbling words on any surface she could reach.
"Sam, get some chalk and quit being a poose..." Sybil muttered without even looking up, holding up another piece of chalk to him over her shoulder.
"Wait, Sister?" Hope asked.
"Yes. She's my sister." Sam said, taking the chalk from Sybil's hand. "She's embarrassed by me."
"I'm not." Sybil replied, scribbling out more words.
"Really? I know you never mention me..." Sam snorted. "Anyway...Samuel Langtry. Pleased to meet you." He extended a hand out to Hope.
"Wait... so you're... actually her brother?" Hope asked. She raised a brow at the outstretched hand. "I'm not really a handshake person..."
"In reverse order - oooh, feisty! And yes, I am actually Sybil's brother from her breathing days. We got Embraced together. It was magical."
"No, we got Embraced by the same person." Sybil said. "I've been dead for about a month longer than you have."
"Semantics."
"As thrilling as that all is." Ox said. "It doesn't explain-" He stopped as soon as Sam seemed to do what the rest of the Malkavians were doing... scribbling down nonsense words in chalk on every surface they could reach. "...never mind."
"That's the best approach, yes."
"Hugo!" Hope exclaimed as the Nosferatu made himself known, heading in from one of the side doors into the room, along with him a certain Tremere.
"Yes, Hugo is here. We're all here. Delightful." Anthony said.
"Oh, don't be such a gloomy Gus!" Hope said as she gave a friendly pat to Anthony's arm, getting a look from the Tremere.
"Give him credit, he just got out of a Tremere torture chamber." Hugo said. "With help."
"What?!"
"Not now." Anthony said. "We have other things to tend to, or so I'm told."
"Unfortunately." Hugo said. "And I think they're starting..." The Malkavians had all stopped writing frantically on every surface and stood stock still on whatever spot they happened to be standing on. Then, all at once, every one of them began to talk. Hope couldn't pick out anything more than a few individual words from any one individual at any given time. They were nonsense, though, not complete sentences or even fragments. Word after word came out with no rhyme or reason.
At last, they all stopped and stood stock still.
"Are... are they-?" Hope finally broke the silence after a minute or so of it, getting increasingly tense.
"Wait for it." Ox said. "We're watching Malkavian Time in action."
"The devils rise with new flesh taken," The Malkavians all chanted in unison, "they will raze the Tower White. From beneath them, He shall rise! His throat is dry and his hunger deep! He comes! He comes! He comes!"
The doors at the far end of the room burst open with a massive gust of wind. The non-Malkavians in the room reacted by getting out of the way, but not a single of the childer of Malkav moved... all standing still as the November wind whipped through the room, sending anything that wasn't nailed down to the floor either moving over or flying away.
"Look, the words!" Anthony's outburst caused Hope to look and see that the words written in chalk on every surface were being blown again... no, not every word, only certain ones. As Hugo and Ox got the doors closed, Anthony and Hope went to survey the damage.
"The angel will die, and the wolf will live again." Anthony said, once they'd taken the time to find the words that remained and they endeavored to put them into some kind of order. "... I don't understand."
"Nor do I." Ox said, seeming somewhat troubled by the message and the one they had received previously. "But I have a feeling things are about to get very, very bad..."
"What news do you have for me?" Wren looked to Jenkins, who had approached her.
"Auspex revealed no lie in the words of either Miss Knox or Mr. Grayson." Her seneschal said. "However, they are not revealing the whole truth."
"As expected." Wren said, slumping a bit in her chair and wearing a sour expression. "Do we believe it was the Baali who turned her?"
"The Seeing revealed nothing to confirm or deny it." Jenkins said. "It is possible, but we can't know without some of her vitae."
"So it could have just been a Caitiff..." Wren's nose wrinkled in disdain. "We must know. If she has infiltrated their coterie-"
"It is possible that the girl does not even know that she-"
"It's irrelevant." Wren said. "We have to know for certain. If she is Baali... it must be handled. Promptly."
"Understood. But how will we get her vitae?" Jenkins asked. "I cannot imagine she will voluntarily give it?"
"No, she will not," The prince said, "but you of all people should know... I have my ways..."
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