Thicker Than Water

For Sonja Winters, it was a night like any other. She clothed herself in rags, and armed herself with scissors. The audience cheered and hollared as she danced for them, teasingly snipping one garment off her body and then the next. Here, she was the Exotic Dancer "Lullabye," whose dancing talents could entrance many mortals---and once, someone that wasn't quite mortal. With a successful night's earnings in pocket, she left the strip club and hunted.

The taste of blood on her lips had become a regular sensation. She had been a Toreador vampire for ten years, and hunting was now first nature to her. She knew that there were others in the city. She knew that beyond the Rack, her elders played a game that was both a mockery and an evolution of mortal politics. Yet she was content in her Sire's domain, for the bars, clubs, and strip joints offered her all the food and entertainment she would need to survive the eternal nights.

Had she gone home from hunting, perhaps a different fate would have met her. If she had no other Cainite friends, there would have been no story to unfold. But there was Rose, and as any friend would, Lullabye visited her frequently. Rose was of Clan Tremere, and she weaved her magic through tattooing with blood-potion ink. An early breach of the masquerade had cost the African-American neonate much of her profession; her salon little more than a hollow shell within the Rack.

Only after the greeting (and purchasing of a jeweled piercing), did Lullabye finally return home. She expected to find her Sire, one Martia "Ennui" Belle, seated in front of her computer--the elder's newest hobby. Yet what was once secure and safe was now violated; her apartment ransacked, searched, bloodied. Her sire was missing, and upon entering, she became acutely aware that she was not alone.

But Ennui's kidnappers had already left; and after moments lacking of heart-beat, Lullabye was accosted by the sheriff. The Malkavian LeRoy Valentine was an old friend of Ennui, and had been Summoned to the apartment by the elder---probably at first sign of trouble. Valentine and his "bullyboy" ghouls had mistook Lullabye as the culprit, just as she they. In the end, with dawn creeping near the horizon, she was brought to Elysium to weather the day.

Grace Winslow was the Prince of Couer d'Alene, and many suspected that it was her Toreador blood-kinship shared with Ennui that allowed the Sire to hold the Rack in sole dominion. Yet Lullabye soon came to learn that both she and her sire were despised as decadent hedonists within the upper echelons of the city's Kindred. Their isolation from Cainite society had come at the cost of their reputations.

On the exterior, Winslow treated Lullabye as such; nothing more than a neonate spoiled on the heady richness of the Rack. Yet, with a subtle use of Discipline, Winslow expressed far more than she spoke out loud. The Prince claimed that Ennui's disappearance jeapardized Winslow's position as Prince; with Spokane vying for political possession of the city, it had not come at a worse time.

The Prince refused to elaborate, and sent the confused and frightened neonate from the Elysium so that she could pursue a blind and seemingly unaided rescue attempt. Lullabye remembered the violence which had violated her apartment, and recalled how the assailants had overpowered an elder. She knew that she could not face this unseen enemy alone.

With no one else to turn to, Lullabye came to Rose. Together, they mustered the courage to return to the scene where it all began. A body had been left in the apartment. Once a ghoul, now it looked to have been eviscerated by a nearby knife. Forensic observation was enhanced by Thaumaturgy. Rose was able to confirm a separate pool of blood as belonging to another ghoul, thus confirming the idea of multiple assailants. Yet, as Rose tasted this blood, she knew there was something wrong with it.

Rose was no expert on hemotology; that fell in the province of one Doctor Hannelbrecht Ulrich, a Cainite scientist of somewhat dubious morals. While waiting for him to return their calls, Rose took Lullabye back to her salon and performed a divinatory tattoo marking around the Toreador's ankle. The tattoo yielded an ill-omen: the image of both Spokane and Couer d'Alene skyscapes cast in flames.

Hannelbrecht Ulrich's analysis of the blood provided even further distress. He identified the blood as belonging to Jonathan Kent, a former ghoul of the Brujah Prince. Fresh vitae in the system suggested a new regnant, revealing the machinations of an unknown Kindred involved. What Rose tasted as "wrong" was the remains of an experiment Dr. Ulrich had performed on the ghoul months ago. Kent, ever driven to consume vitae to support his immortality, had agreed to be contaminated with Tzimisce blood. The Vicissitude taint within was still present, and now had indubitably infected Rose. Such infection would require Rose to put aside all that remained of her profession, less she inflict others with the same curse.

If there were any secrets known in the city, they would be known by Nosferatu Ruperta Haight. Through the Nosferatu Primogen, they contacted her and requested a meeting. While the two neonates ventured towards Black Manor, the home of Rose's Primogen Sire, the encountered a strange personage wrapped thickly in trenchcoat and fedora.

His skin wriggled and writhed and lashed from his bones, like an angry amoebe chained to his skeleton. Assuming this man was Ruperta Haight (or perhaps an ally), Lullabye sent Rose away to discuss secrets.

That action almost costed the Toreador's life. For the man was neither Haight, or an agent of hers. He was Jonathan Kent, and he sought to complete what he had began with Ennui. His fellow ghouls joined him and overpowered Lullabye, forcing her to the ground, staking her, and preparing to decapitate her. She was to be slain, unlike her Sire, Kent explained.

Before paralyzed at the blow, Rose was able to contact Black. Rose came hurrying back, in time to startle the ghouls with her Thaumaturgy, and send them to their heels. Rose rescued her friend, and brought her back to the manor to recuperate.

While seeking sanctuary with Black and his she-ghoul apprentices, Hannelbrecht returned with information on Lullabye's own blood. It seems he had detected an anomaly, and--with further investigation--had made a startling linkage.

No more than two weeks previously, Hannelbrecht had recieved a package stamped with a Primogen seal. Within it was a sample of blood that--once examined--contained an identical anomaly. It held a reoccuring marker which allowed the blood to manipulate the spiritual auras that all vampire's radiating. It was a minute warping, only managing to cloak any tell-tale signs of the black veins created from diablerie. In essence, the owner of the blood could never be identified as a diablerist through aura sight (the most common means of detection).

The marker was uncharacteristically strong in the blood. Not only had Dr. Ulrich predicted that the trait was genetic--capable of being passed from Sire to Childe, but that the trait was noticably more ingrained than the very markers which defined clan kinship. In other words, it was a sign of a new bloodline, an entirely new Clan. It was this information that Hannelbrecht had sent back to a box office address supplied in the original packaging. Hannelbrecht had a final observation, only made after comparing Lullabye's blood to the sample, and realized that the sample was unmistakenably one generation apart: Ennui's.

This knowledge was given at the wrong time; the Tremere Primogen overheard this revelation, and acted "in Camarilla interest." Possessing the typical xenophobic reaction to a new bloodline--particularly one that could hide the worst sort of Vampire villain--Donovan Black branded Lullabye with a Thaumaturgical curse: her blood was replaced with ash. Not only did this keep the neonate from ever being capable of committing diablerie, it also kept her from Embracing (thus continuing the bloodline).

Still recovering from the Curse, Lullabye returned to Elysium, hoping to find some clue of who had sent Ulrich the anonymous sample. This information she did not glean. However, she learned far more intriguing insight. After a brief conversation with Ventrue elder and city Seneschal, Gregory Hammond-Doyle, Lullabye discovered that the Prince was Ennui's childer as well.

They were sisters... yet... Lullabye knew Winslow was one generation older. The only way to decrease generation was through diablerie. No Prince would be allowed to gain the throne if they failed a casual aura sight to detect for it. But of course, if Winslow was Ennui's childe as well, then she possessed the blood marker.

Pieces begin to fall together. Ennui was given control over the Rack to keep her away from politics, so that no one would make the connection that she and the Prince were sire and childe but yet the same generation. The right to sire Lullabye had been given to Ennui to keep her occupied for the same reason.

Lullabye soon began to realize how complex the web of dirty politics had become. She continued her investigation. Trading Winslow's secret for important knowledge, Lullabye learned from Haight that one of the Primogen was Sabbat. One of Kindred closest to the Prince was anathema to the Camarilla. Lullabye made the easy speculation that it was from this Primogen that the sample was given, and from this Primogen that Jonathan Kent recieved his vitae.

Lullabye returned again to Elysium, to continue her detective work. From the Elysium regulars, she began to collect data. Black suggested she show off her new ash tattoo. The curse had once been Sabbat (Black was a collector of Tremere antitribu lore), and any current Sabbat may recognize the marking. Perhaps, once that Primogen realizes she no longer has the blood (and thus the markings) they would protect her.

Hammond-Doyle recognized the tattoo, and suggested that Lullabye be careful. He also indicated that Hannelbrecht was former Sabbat, and not to be trusted fully. He advised her to speak with one of the elusive Ravnos--one of the Spokane gypsies--for full awareness of Hannelbrecht's past.

The Primogen of the city did not seem to recognize the tattoo for anything other than a piece of art. Elias Cage complimented it and encouraged Lullabye to go to the upcoming Spokane Toreador Ball. Lullabye noticed, before leaving, that Casper Remington--Malkavian Primogen--was no where to be seen. He had left his ghoul, a studious and mousy woman, constantly making notes in a notepad, to document the political schemings of his peers.

Having become intrigued with the Toreador art of Cage's childe, Brett Lancastle, Lullabye later visited his auto-repair and construction garage and laid a deposit on a beautiful motorcycle with Winslow's money. If she was going to the Toreador Ball, she was going to do in style.

While testing the new and beloved cycle, she somehow attracted the attention of Jonathan Kent and his ghouls. A motorcycle chase, with its destination the safety of Black Manor, initiated. Gunfire and grenade explosions echoed their presence across the suburbia of the city.

Kent had pulled ahead, and waited for them in the driveway of Black Manor. Lullabye aimed the bike to strike him, and only when it was too late did she see the flame thrower and the canister of napalm strapped to his back. Lullabye grabbed Rose and threw both of them off the bike, hoping it would hit him and slay him.

Unfortunately, they had not accounted on the ghoul's mastery of the Celerity Discipline. Before they could recover from the fall, Kent had sidestepped the bike and was spewing raging fire across them. Their bodies withering and crumbling from the lethal assault, they struggled up the lawn.

Kent would have followed, but he was repelled back from the door by a thaumaturgical ward Black had placed. He pulled out a firearm and began shooting from a distance, angrily throwing his Vicissitude-twisted body into the ward again and again. His onslaught was abruptly ended when Valentine showed up, placing the sawed-off muzzle of a two-barreled shotgun to his head and firing.

Once again, Rose and Lullabye sought shelter in Black Manor. This time, Lullabye did not want to leave the manor without training. From Valentine, she learned how to use a gun. From Primogen Black, she improved her aim through learning Auspex. She would need good eyes. The nights would only get darker.

Kent and his fellow ghouls was dead. His regnant still lived. Yet Lullabye had no idea where to look. And something more still bothered her: how had Kent known where she was? Both times, he had shown up at random places--places she herself had not known she'd be until the moment she was there.

At first, she thought the periphereal visions were her own imaginations, stirred by her growing paranoia. But again and again, her newly heightened senses continued to inform her that she was never alone. She could not see it, but she soon began to suspect that she was being followed. Constantly.

Only one other person saw what she saw, and he saw it only after she brought it to his attention. When Valentine stood upon the Lake's docks and looked around, straining to see beyond the visible, his jaw slackened. Licking his lips, breathing hard, he muttered only for Rose and Lullabye to run. Firing randomly into the air, obsessively trying to shoot down something he could not see nor understand.

The two neonates returned to the Tattooing Salon, only to realize that they were no more safe there. Mr. Mittens, Rose's beloved cat, tipped them off to an alien presence in the room, one just as invisible as the rest. Knowing that dawn was curtailing their shadows, they fled the Salon. The independent Gangrel elder allowed them haven for the day, locking them in a janitor's closet for the night.The day's slumber could not erase the fear of invisible paranoia.

Taking the motorcycle, Rose and Lullabye fled Couer d'Alene. They hoped that Spokane would both offer them answers and sanctuary from their bodiless pursuers. The first day they hunted and rested and prepared. It would be their last night of calm before the storm struck.

Rose and Lullabye went to a Spokane bar and danceclub to meet their Ravnos contact. The gypsy warned them away from Hannelbrecht, revealing unto them that he was not only ex-Sabbat, but also an ex-Nazi. Worse yet, he had betrayed his own peers to Hitler's regime in return for his life.

Having nothing more to do until the Toreador Ball on the next evening, Lullabye rejoiced in her chance to dance. She whirled and spun for hours, entranced by the lights, the moments, the feel of movement. Her dancing drove her into a meditative state, where her exhaustion gave way to a brief elevation of consciousness.

With Rose's advice, Lullabye knew what she had to do. She had to somehow contact the spirits, deal with them, and exorize them if necessary. And the power to do that rested in only one Tremere Primogen's hands.

Black was intrigued by the dilemma, and spilt the blood of one of his ghoul's infants. From that blood, he wove ritual, lowering the gauntlet between the world of the living and the world of the dead, so that all could be seen and heard. They summoned into the seance any nearby ghosts, and one came.

Summoned to the circle, the others begged him for help and understanding for who he was, why he had done it, and for what cause. He was reluctant to answer. He explained that there were other wraiths--the ones that followed Lullabye around. If he told too much, they would tear him to Oblivion.

Kent had only joined because the Vicissitude was driving him insane. His Primogen Regnant had promised him a way to get over the madness, if Kent would capture Ennui and kill her progeny. Kent had failed, and he was doomed to an afterlife of dementation.

He explained that his regnant worked for a Giovanni in Spokane. The ghosts that spied on Lullabye were controlled by that Necromancer. The Giovanni had come to investigate the demise of his sire, whom Grace Winslow had diablerized decades ago. In his search, he had stumbled upon the blood marker, and realized what power it held.

He had captured Ennui so that he could sell her to the highest bidder. The auctionees, of course, would be Sabbat elders, intrigued at the powerful chance to integrate such a bloodline into their own sect. The Giovanni wanted Ennui's progeny dead, so that Ennui would be unique and more valuable.

But he spoke too candidly, and as he warned, the Giovanni spectres came for him. Black, sensing a sudden and horrible change, attempted to end the seance by casting all the wraiths into Oblivion. As the vortex openned, the Giovanni reached out and grabbed for the Cainites. One of them, Maggie Baker--Black's eldest childe--was pulled into Oblivion with them.

Lullabye and Rose went to Elysium to inform the Prince that one of her subjects was gone. Not just dead, annhilated. There, at the Elysium, they discovered Hannelbrecht waiting for them. His sewer haven had been ransacked; his laboratory rats killed. Rose suddenly feared for her own haven, and particularly for her pet cat, who had kept her company for the last few years (despite the brain damage he had suffered as a kitten).

Alas, they did not reach the salon in time. It had been ransacked and searched as well. Mr. Mittens had been callously slaughtered. Valentine, Ulrich, and Lullabye waited outside as Rose frenzied at her companion's death. In the end, Rose incinerated the remains of Mr. Mittens, with a vow that his feline death would be avenged.

It was then that Lullabye remembered Kent's words. The Giovanni wanted Ennui to be unique. But Lullabye was not the only childe of Ennui's! Hurriedly, they ran back to the Elysium to check up on the Prince.

On the river docks, near sunrise, they found Malkavian Primogen Remington loading barrels on a boat. The normal boat driver ghoul was nowhere to be seen.

When asked to what the bottles contained, Remington told them it was donated blood from Hammond-Doyle's stocks. While talking to the Primogen, Ulrich's contact called him on the cell phone. The contact informed him that they had done a routine check on the Kindred primogen of the city. The only intriguing thing they discovered was that Remington seemed to be part of a Malkavian bloodline of pathological liars.

This was exceedinly important information, for everyone had wrongly believed that Remington's derangement was actually compulsive honesty. His entire identity was a lie!

Unfortunately, Remington's Auspex heard the revelation as well. He single blast from a hidden revolver punctured one of the barrels that Sheriff Valentine was holding. The Napalm inside ignited instantly, obliterating his body and allowing him the cover to begin fighting Rose, Lullabye, and Hannelbrecht.

The fight on the docks began horribly, and it went down from there. He incapacitated Hannelbrecht and inflicted hallucinatory madness on Lullabye. The changing moment was when Rose realized that this was the man who had slain her cat. She stole his blood from him, and then marked him with the same curse that marked Lullabye, branding him so that he could only eat ash.

In hunger desperation, he sought for a quantity of ash to fill his stomach. Rose showed him the remains of Mr. Mittens, throwing it across the docks for him to scurry after. In those precious moments, Lullabye tore away the hallucinations from her reality and turned her weapon to the nearby barrels. In one gunshot, the neonate destroyed Remington and the very docks he stood on.

Rose was thrown off the docks in the explosion, and rescued by Lullabye and Hannelbrecht. With the sun touching the far ends of the lake, they hurriedly swam to Elysium. The Keeper protected them frantically until they were far away from any window or doorway.

Grace Winslow listened tersely as Lullabye explained the events of the previous week. Winslow then made a decision that startled many in its brashness: she would confront the Giovanni Inspector herself, armed with her bodyguard ghouls and aided with Lullabye and her allies. Her reason for placing herself in danger was to minimalize the political outburst which would arise if others learned of the bloodline and--in particular--Winslow's past. In later days, her decision was commonly placed upon her inherent bloodline flaw, which would become more apparent among Lullabye and her kin.

The Giovanni's activities had to be located, and this required a Spokane contact. Winslow led the troupe to the Toreador Ball being held that night, and from the Spokane Toreador Primogen Tabernacle, gathered the information they needed on the elusive Lorenzo Giovanni.

At his Manor, the strike force reconvened. It would be a two pronged attack; Lullabye and her allies (Rose and Hannelbrecht) would attack from a skylight above. Winslow and her ghouls would strike from the main entrance. The assault would be triggered when Lullabye fired the first gun.

From the skylight, Lullabye observed the auction preceedings. Lorenzo Giovanni addressed five Sabbat representatives. Ennui stood behind the Necromancer, chained and staked to a cross. Lullabye sighted her weapon upon the Necromancer, and fired.

The skylights shattered, and the three jumped down to gain better angles. Meanwhile, Winslow's force made their entrance, fighting past the Giovanni's own ghouls, and the bodyguards brought by the Sabbat. Rose managed to remove Ennui's stake, but not free her from the chains. Lorenzo Giovanni and his auctionees proved to be too powerful for both forces.

With minimal casualties to the Sabbat, the Couer d'Alene vampires were staked and subdued. The Keeper and the Elysium ghouls were slain. As the gunsmoke cleared. Lorenzo attempted to continue where he had left off.

He brought forth a girl-child, Dominated vastly into submission. Lorenzo drained the girl's blood, and forced Ennui to sire the childe. Then, the Inspector allowed the fledgeling to diablerize Winslow. These actions were undertaken to prove that Ennui's bloodline did not show the black veins of Amaranth on their aura. Lorenzo had intended to encourage his auctionees to use Aura Sight and percieve this trait.

However, their was one more force that no one had counted upon. Freed from paralysis, Ennui had silently Summoned the only other individual she felt could save them: Valentine. She had sent out the Summoning not knowing he was deceased, and not realizing that she stirred his ghost from the other side.

Fueled by his Malkavian derangement of Overcompensation, Valentine awoke and answered the Summons with flair. He possessed the body of a truck driver hauling Conoco gas, and drove the semi straight into Lorenzo Manor. From the explosion and the chaos that ensued, the Sabbat auctionees were destroyed.

Lorenzo, his manor ever equipped as both home and lab, activated a hidden elevator, speeding him down to his sewer haven. Those on the dais, the staked vampires and the frenzying fledgeling, were also brought down with him. The explosions continued, sending the above manor to ruins.

Unwilling to spend the time eliminating them one by one with fang, Lorenzo Giovanni invoked a ritual. With a candle and a few arcane words, he opened a vortex into Oblivion. The vortex pulled at the souls of the staked vampires, sucking them closer and closer to a final end.

Rose's and Lullabye's stakes had been ripped from them by the fall, and they struggled against the vortex. With her last ounce of strength, Rose modified the ash-tattoo. What was once a moth of ash born from an extinguished candle was suddenly altered to be a moth valiantly unaffected by the attraction of a candle.

The change created a subtle yet important influence. Lullabye was suddenly immune to the pull of the candle, and she exuviated her ash in one massive surge of breath. Her body suddenly empty, she frenzied for blood; Lorenzo's blood. The Giovanni tried to flee, but Lullabye's passioned charge made retreat futile. He was tackled and ripped open, his blood and soul drank. The candle was tossed aside in the struggle, the vortex closing.

Giovanni was ash, and Lullabye had devoured his soul. As she stood, she turned to her friends. Rose and Hannelbrecht were still alive, but Winslow was gone too far... her body was crumbling to ash. The girl had succumbed to the vortex, and was an empty shell.

In her dying words, Winslow warned Lullabye that the Sabbat would seek vengeance for their fallen representatives. She begged Lullabye to spread the news to the Couer d'Alene vampires, that a mass embrace must begin to create an army to resist that vindication.

Lullabye rose the dais back to ground level, to behold the ruins of the manor. From through the shattered pillars and walls, flames lept, burning off the oil. Through the flames, the skyline of Spokane and Couer d'Alene could be seen, identical to the image on her tattoo. Rose's prophesy had been completed.