9. War of the Magi (conclusion)

Game IX – War of the Magi [conclusion]

19th July, 2019.

Act I

Scene i: Leaving London & A Parish Church outside Scarborough.

On a night prior to their departure for the North, Logan signed his name under a missive he had written for Gabriel, the Seneschal of the London Court. In summary explanation it would inform the elder of their next movements, as he had requested from the Ventrue at their last meeting (Game VIII).

* * *

Focussed on the task of somehow staking the elusive Cecelia Blackwood so he could transport her remains back to his laboratorium in France, Alistair wandered the unhallowed haze of London’s midnight lanes and roads until he chanced upon a wrought iron fence that was holding back the weeds of a neglected property. The length of the finial topped bars were perfect for what he had in mind, wresting away three of them from their brackets to serve as makeshift arms that would help subdue the rebellious elder. Pleased with these new vampire hunting tools, he continued onward to feed and be ready for the coming journey to Ayton House.

* * *

Four days later, a freight coach bearing various cargo including three coffins came to its destination in the far north of England, arriving at the rear storage house of a parish church. Unloading the heavy caskets onto the worktables, one of the labourers signalled back for the coachman to move onward, leaving him to keep vigil until sundown.

As the mantle of night came over the lands, the labourer knocked on the coffin lids to notify the occupants that they had finally reached their destination before leaving them alone in the dark workshop.

Forcing the nails away with the pine board of the lid as he stretched out after the long journey, Johann briefly examined the scene to be sure it was clear, helping the other two arise from their caskets.

Independent from each other, Alistair and Johann had come to a dangerous conclusion during the many hours they had spent in contemplation during the enclosed journey. Pondering on the demon’s riddle, they realized that there was a connection between Mithras and the man who “was a piece of the sun”; the name ‘Mithras’ had once been used by a religion that had been contemporary with early Christianity and was later suppressed by the new Roman Church as a contender to governing the faith of Europe. It had been a solar cult, passing out of history with other heresies like the Gnostics and Albigensians.

Keeping these facts discreet for the nonce, the three vampires murmured in the shadows of the workshed, making a list of likely buildings that an elder would haunt, or any other allied kindred whom might reside near the seaside villages.

Wishing to view the landscape for himself, Johann parted the hinged door to the hollow flute of the night-winds, scented alkali with the brine of the North Sea. Passing through the black profiled avenue of headstones beside the country church, he traced his gaze from the west to the east where the thick tendrils of moorland mists broke against the sea breeze driven over an unseen harbour.

Presently joined by the Ventrue and Tremere, they surmised their options to either go west into the moors of Ayton and hope for a chance discovery of Cecelia’s lair, or follow the road east to Scarborough and ask for any leads that could guide them to the Ayton House mentioned in the letter.

Scene ii: Scarborough Fair.

Since the Middle Ages, a trading fair had been held every autumn in the seaside village of Scarborough, calling merchants and pleasure-seekers across the country and abroad to barter and carouse for over a month of profit.

Laughter and the sweet notes of instruments sang from the beach as the coterie approached the main thoroughfare overlooking the precipice of the bay, where most of the fair-goers had congregated to enjoy the orchestras playing to the sweeping churn of the waves. Further north, Scarborough Castle solidified with the rising headland that entered the sea and formed the defensive harbour under its walls.

Alistair and Logan walked openly amongst the streets, searching for any prominent buildings that could be the abode of a wealthy recluse. Johann, under the cloak of shadow, trailed above them on the pitched slate roofs.

Rising from his crooked posture to spy over the peaked buildings at the distant lights of the garrisoned castle and the abodes of the upper classes built around the cliffs, he hissed at the others to wait, warning them that he had recognized someone from their escape from the burning barn (Game VI-VII).

There, playing a tear-shaped cittern among a trio of gypsy musicians, was Jacob the shape-shifter. Johann remembered the encounter well, having learnt from the traveller in his black wolven form that he was hunting them with four other unseen witches from the demon’s riddle.

Once Logan had understood the Nosferatu’s cautious hiss, he spoke back to the shadows from where his silent partner was hidden above, asking if it be wiser if they were to try and separate the youthful Jacob from his kin and persuade him to reveal more about the unseen threat that was their Damocles’ sword.

* * *

Walking across the length of South Sands beach, the Ventrue was ominous amongst the evening crowd that admired the passionate finesse of the Romany musicians, standing in the background with the grip of his greatsword angled over one of his shoulders. Most of the audience were seated on temporary benches or rugs spread over the sand, clapping modestly as a minor air finished with a sombre drawn-out chord.

Using the lull in the performance to step out from the congregation of listeners, Logan directly approached the three troubadours, waiting for the cold silence to ease before he introduced himself as no one of importance. Without delay, he asked if they would be willing to talk with him at a private Inn, recompensated with a silver half-crown for their time and information.

The singer spoke for the three of them, declining the offer as he warned the Cainite that they were aware of Logan’s true nature, inhuman and cursed as were all vampires by their unholy existence. Alluding to some entity of corruption called the “Wyrm”, the Gypsy advised him to leave them be, even after Logan offered that he himself was a slayer of his own kind, as was his mission that night.

Long fingers stretched out from the umbra and grasped onto Jacob’s shoulders, followed by the limbs and features of a bald man. It was Johann, come to literally squeeze any information he could from the Lupine as he greeted him in the same croaking menace he had used to frighten him before. Now realizing whom they were, Jacob cried out to the others that they were the undead whom had escaped the burning barn, dangerous foes that had been marked for death by their allies, the unknown witches.

Unwilling to break the Masquerade in the open carnival atmosphere of the beach, the Ventrue extended his final invitation to help their ‘friends’ remove the Tremere, whom he assumed to be their true target amongst the cloaks and daggers of the hidden world they all enjoined as the preternatural.

From the road overlooking the bay, Alistair had remained, leaning foppishly on the cliff railings as he watched the figures of Logan and Johann gesticulate with the three Romany until they retired from their attempt, passing from his view as they made for the steps that accessed the beach from the higher esplanade.

There was a delay in their return, as Johann sought for a local Scarborian whom might help direct them toward Ayton House in the fog veiled moors. He chanced upon an old sailor near the cliff-side stairs, whom was happy to speak of his life abroad. Johann had continued his disguise since confronting Jacob, asking the older resident if he knew anything about West Ayton’s history.

Born closer to the coast, he could give them little information about the haunted moors, but he knew of another whom drove a horse dray along those roads, his drinking friend ‘ol Billy’. For a small fee he was sure that Bill would drive them out into the west to find what they were seeking for.

Act II

Scene i: The Moors, West Ayton.

After squeezing the Doctor’s coin purse for a few guineas to pay for the local guide, they were soon trundling along the rural roads in the company of the friendly Bill and his two mop-haired Cyldesdales, Pepper & Apples. Hours passed gradually, like the hills and lowland mist at either side of the open dray.

Their guide obliged them with local ghost stories and rumours, much of it recollected from his youth before he too left as a merchant sailor, as had many of his generation before returning to the region.

Leaning forward as he stared into the void of night, he remembered the legends of the black dog called the ‘Barghest’, a phantom animal that chased lonely travellers and foretold their doom. As for Ayton itself, he knew of no ‘house’ except for the shell remains of abandoned cottages, little more than overgrown ivy heaps. The people that lived there had disappeared, whole families at a time until the remainder had fled for safer hamlets. The cause of the vanishing families had never been explained satisfactorily to his knowledge.

The weird conversations had stirred the old man’s memories, asking the coterie if they were perhaps interested in the remnant brick of an old castle that had been uninhabited for close to a century, for he could think of no other houses that were situated in the bleak region. Agreeing with the suggestion, they continued to pass a rise in the north that gradually sloped back into the white fog glen, revealing the square angles of a Norman fort crumbling in the moonlight on a further hill beyond the road’s reach.

Ol Bill would lead his horses no further, nor wait for them in the gloom after the hours of ghost stories he had served up to their questions along the lonely roads. Stepping down from the frame of the dray with a parting thanks to their guide, they watched the cart rattle away, continuing on foot once they were certain no harm had come upon the old man as he faded from view.

* * *

Over the decades of their acquaintance, Logan and the Doctor had often knocked heads about the nature of vampirism, the subject coming easily to their lips again as their progress along the moors opened the curtain fringe of the miasma that enshrouded them. As always, Alistair elaborated on his theory that Cainites were a separate entity from humanity, the true masters of the world even if they were at times at the mercy of those below them, like the shepherd who held the staff. Logan snorted that the truth of the matter was closer to some parasite relationship, like ticks hidden in the fleece, spreading its cursed prize of immortality to survive in the blood of those that accepted the dark gift willingly or otherwise.

The debate was left unfinished for another time, their path coming to the base of a rise that supported the castle remains above the ethereal sea of fog. From the sparse limbs of a wild elm tree a spotted barn owl followed their movements, tilting its face to track them as they paused to survey the ruins of the tower.

Turning from the sight of the stone walls to the elm tree, Alistair opened his gaze to hypnotize the owl, holding out his forearm for a perch as it alighted from the branch to glide downward and meet him. With the bird under his influence, the Tremere withdrew the letter from his inner coat, slowly passing it under its beak to imbibe the faint odour of ambergris left by the author. Imprinted with the scent, he released the feathered beast to seek out anything matching the perfume, the owl winging its way higher to the uppermost window of the Norman fort were it disappeared from view.

A heavy crash resounded from the tower, as though a great heavy weight had fallen against the floor. In the silence that followed the owl had not re-emerged from any of the high windows, leaving the coterie to guess at its fate.

Scene ii: Ruins of Ayton Castle.

Eager to capture the elder and her vitae, Alistair scrambled up the hill, running through the gateless entrance without hesitation. Only yards behind him, Logan had also broken into a charge after the Tremere, ceasing his stride before the weathered stone doorway to see if Alistair would trigger some trap or other defences as he passed under the lintel. Instead, his outline and footsteps had waned into shadow like the rest of the interior view, lost in the angles of empty rooms deeper within.

Adjusting his fingers over the sword hilt in his right hand for assurance of company inside that dark place of echoes and rotting mortar, Logan braced himself for whatever may come, stepping across the threshold of the tower’s entrance.

* * *

Stepping over fallen debris, Alistair had continued from the entrance passage to an empty side room, in a derelict condition as though it had been unoccupied for some time. Testing the walls with an iron stake he had brought for the meeting with Cecelia, he turned again to leave when the blur of another figure startled his attention.

A mousey young woman, dressed in an antiquated servant’s apron and bonnet, froze at the sight of him, carrying an empty tray that she shielded herself with out of instinct before apologizing, asking if he were one of the Lady’s guests.

With his genteel manners, Alistair replied in the affirmative to the maid’s offer, about to ask where he might find her when the heavy thump of moving furniture in a higher room broke his train of thought. Wincing at the sound above their heads, the haggard servant drew back her bonnet and plucked a single strand of hair from her scalp, almost bald but for a few wisps of remaining brittle strands. This act of depilation recomposed the maid’s bland serenity, inviting the Tremere to follow her into the dining room to wait for the mistress as she turned to leave the room...

* * *

Events had not been so comfortable for Logan, whose sense of self and time washed away to place him in the body of a soft-headed child, seated by the purring fireside with a slate board and a rough chip of chalk to write upon it. Unseen, there was a domineering presence somewhere over his shoulder, a cold woman’s threats for the boy to pick up his chalk and write ‘S’, hissing the letter in brooding frustration at the simpleton’s frozen attempt to draw.

Gaining some independence within the dream, he spoke back in the child’s voice, refusing to follow the lesson. Snatching his hand to control its direction, the cruel voice berated him as the board squealed with the pressure of scratching-in the letter like the winter branches on a glass window. By the end of the attempt the word ‘Sheep’ was slapped into his face with the board, smudging the chalk with his tears.

Reminding the child that he was such a docile animal, Logan felt himself forced from the chair by his earlobe, dragged through a house of Tudor style furnishings before being thrown down a stairwell into the cellar, board and chalk tossed onto the floor beside him. The silhouette in the trapdoor warned him to sit there and think over his stubborn attitude in learning his letters before he would be allowed to leave the cellar...

* * *

Guided by the petite servant toward a doorframe in the flaking stone, the scene within was a modest candlelit hall, a long table with space for ten or more dividing the room. Some inches from Alistair’s crown, naked feet swayed, the ceiling chocked from view with their hanging bodies.

Arranging broken cutlery and fractured pottery bowls in ignorance of the suspended sea of corpses, the little balding servant continued her duties as he entered the eerie room. Looking up into the sleeping faces as they wheeled in the breeze of the afterlife, the Doctor searched the crowded limbs until the visage of his sweet departed sister turned to open her eyes.

Losing his composure, Alistair cursed at the simple maid for playing such a game with him. Unsure of what he was referring to, she neatened a display of crockery before asking aloud:

“Is she pretty?”

Staring at the servant as she obsessed over the utensils, his mask of foolhardy care softened his intense anger, replying that they were both incomparable, truly flowers of beauty with their own unique qualities. Blushing at the compliment, the maid excused herself to help the mistress as ominous banging shook the ceiling (now void of the hanging bodies). Pinching away another strand of hair from under her cap, she shivered in self composure.

* * *

Anxious now that the other two had not replied to his calls when he searched the grounds around the ruins, Johann began to climb the outer walls to find another way in. His efforts brought him to the summit of the remaining crenellations, where he perched momentarily as the shadow of a cat obscured the moonlight.

There was a narrow gap on the other side of the wall, where the timber had rotted out to expose a room below. Easing his way down like a long armed simian into the egress, the Nosferatu landed within a musty chamber, stacked with innumerable books that were succumbing to the worm and mildew. Taking in the panorama of volumes leaning against the walls, the crisp sound of a page turning in the dark drained his courage, fighting the instinct to slowly turn and confront a four poster bed of red stained oak, curtained by moth meal curtains and spiderwebs.

Slipping through the curtains, a black cat mewled in hunger as it looked up toward Johann, a small placard or slate board tied around its neck as it watched him. Rising in an arc of hissing hate as it growled suddenly, a voice called out from behind the curtains, the slow dry voice of an old woman calling her kitty back. Walking past the wailing animosity of the cat, He reached out with his bony fingers to take either side of the curtains, summoning his resolve to throw them aside and reveal the mystery occupant.

Heaped valleys of flesh dominated almost the entire mattress, an obese monstrosity that howled with such rage at being witnessed in its vile form, the face elongated into a screaming tempest of misery.

Then the curtains sealed his sight from further grotesquery, allowing his mind to collect itself and realize that the enormous beast had been sitting in a nest of putrid corpses and poetry books, seemingly dining on both in its seclusion.

The bed had faded to little more than a timber frame, devoid now of a mattress or any other feature.

Alarmed by the shifting illusions of the room, he had almost backed into the form of the maid as she entered the bedroom, yelping in fright before excusing her ill-mannered outburst. Asking the Nosferatu if he were another guest for the Lady’s party whom had become lost like his ‘friend’ downstairs, he nodded in agreement, asking her to please guide him to where he should be waiting.

Trailing her from the bedroom to a passage that lead to the stairwell, he closed in on her smaller stride, clutching violently at her neck to throttle her breath. Reaching nothing but his own hands, the figure had glided smoothly from his grasp, calmly descending the first steps as though he had not acted at all.

Johann followed the servant no further, retracing his steps back into the bedroom to prepare a different trap for Cecelia. Shifting his cadaverous appearance into a more respectable form, he re-emerged as the facsimile of the late Alexander Pope, a disguise he had practiced often in London (Game VIII).

* * *

Logan was also changes faces, involuntarily moving from the boy at his failed lessons into the shape of some unknown servant, poised at the top of the trapdoor as he waved a candle into the gloom. Curled up in a final attempt for warmth, the child’s unmoving blue form was surrounded by broken chalk and scratched attempts at forming simple words like ‘cat’ on the slateboards. A candleholder had burnt out nearby, the light and warmth of his final companion gone now. Closing the cellar access with the hand of the servant, Logan felt his own sense of self return, finding himself alone in an empty, silent room.

Searching the forlorn apartments for any presence, the broad shouldered Ventrue was admittedly relieved to find Alistair seated at a dust carpeted dining table, reclining in boredom until he recognized his familiar coterie companion. After asking the Tremere dandy why he was waiting in the abandoned room, a commotion began in the higher levels, grinding sounds like furniture that dragged and shuddered over them.

Leaving the Doctor to be done with the madness so he could confront their oppressor, Logan bounded up the winding steps with sword ready to cleave any shadow that moved...

* * *

From behind Johann the bedroom door lurched aside, driven open by the tip of a sword as Logan gained entrance to confront the Nosferatu in his disguise as the poet. Recognizing the illusion of his fellow Cainite immediately, he asked if he had made any progress in leading Cecelia out from hiding.

Suspicious that the figure could be an illusion also like the bloated monster behind the curtains, Johann had not replied immediately, ambulating in a semi-circle around the armed Ventrue to be sure it was no dream. Punching him in the arm to gauge the response, he was soon convinced that it was the none other than the surly Logan.

* * *

Twirling a spoon back and forth along his fingertips as he continued waiting for the host to show herself, soon a prim woman in tutor bodice and heart-shaped headress made an entrance, gaining Alistair’s attention as she glided from the door and left an animated scene of a Tudor themed dinner in her wake, conversing guests around the table and fireside as they shimmered in the halos of candlight. The lady’s tangerine curls were tucked in under the netting of her atifet bonnet, her pale neck almost detached from the lace collar that covered her shoulders.

Rising from his chair to greet her, Alistair offered the lady a seat once she had greeted him, her cold eyes smiling as she enjoyed the Doctor’s affections. Cecelia treated him as though he were someone else, a long-dead suitor perhaps whom had stirred her widow’s heart in mortal life.

A child’s voice mewled from across the crowded room, sobbing in the doorway to be allowed into the party. Screeching at the maidservant to remove the boy from her sight, her twisted rage settled as she laid eyes again on the young nobleman. The maid yanked out a strand of her own hair to keep calm, after which she dragged away the kicking resistance of the pleading child.

Allowing the hard-faced courtier to look into his pupils, the Tremere acolyte forced his will into the tourmaline storms that were Cecelia’s own eyes. He could not steal into her mind, no matter his force of concentration.

The yowling cry of a cat came from under the table, protesting its hunger as the sound broke Alistair from his hypnotic suggestion. Cooing for the slinking ebony pet to rest on her lap, the feline leapt up to the offered seat and pricked its claws at her chest, kneading her vestments for something more.

Obliging the little black beast, the noblewoman exposed her left breast out of the bodice, silencing the protesting cat as it latched onto her teat and suckled contently. Unsure how to immediately react, nor a stranger to some of the more odd behaviours at the fringe of the aristocracy, Alistair could only keep up the conversation to avoid staring at the macabre feeding.

Stroking the coat of her pet as she encouraged it to feed gently and stop biting the tender flesh, the beast lifted its teeth away from her breast, stained red like the mouth of the child that now watched Alistair, an imbecile boy grinning with crimson smeared lips in her lap where the cat had been...

* * *

Arm-in-arm with the Doctor, Cecelia’s teasing laugher echoed ahead of them as they climbed the tower’s stairs toward the bedchamber. Casting the door aside to enter, their coquettish behaviour abruptly finished as they beheld Logan waiting for them, standing beside the hunchbacked Pope. Having memorized a canto from ‘The Rape of the Lock’, Johann spoke the rhyming couplets, the final sentence finished by the startled Cecelia.

As though in a trance, the ancient aristocrat slipped from the embrace of Alistair, stepping closer toward the poet as she praised his blessed arrival after too many long years of her anxious wait. Opening his arms to invite her closer, the Nosferatu poised to strike, whipping his long fingers around her neck as the air whistled with the pass of a heavy sword stroke from Logan.

Passing from the harm of either attempt, her trans-material form was as insubstantial as the fog of the moors without the ruins. In the flash of a second her shadow had melded with the far wall, beside the headboard of the poster bed.

Spreading themselves about the room for her immanent riposte, the three Cainites quickly formulated a plan through knowing looks as they passed each other.

Scratching a circle into the floor near the entrance, Alistair called out the incantation his sire had demonstrated during the voyage to England, warding them from any subtle malevolence.

Turning his stance to keep all sides of the room in check, the Ventrue’s sword was poised to drop its weight on the elder once she stirred from the empty darkness.

Investigating the tenebrous surfaces, Johann fell back from the maidservant as ice cold fingers began to squeeze his brain, emanating from her being. Burning with the old fury from his witch-hunter past, Johann snarled as he dug his talons around the maid’s swan neck to throttle her, gritting his shark-like teeth as she tore at his face with her free hands until none of the upper dermal layers remained.

Having caught the sudden movement in his peripheral, Logan’s sword had swung again and missed the maid before Johan had caught her in his iron grip. Manoeuvring to adjust as the Nosferatu struggled against her wild flailing limbs, Logan’s blade passed through flesh and spine to bisect her, the halves now independently thrashing out in a final desperate defence.

Tortured, crying babble fractured the air, Cecelia’s anguished face staring in horror at the death of her servant as her lips quivered in upset panic. Flying out from the shadows as a mad banshee, her focused rage narrowed onto Logan.

Her path of vengeance was knocked aside, Johann throwing the tortured bleeding mass of the maid’s upper torso directly into Cecelia, the collision gifting them with enough time to deliver the final act. Three diagonal threads no wider than a sword edge emblazoned Cecelia’s body before the blur of Logan’s limbs returned to their natural speed. On her next step, gravity pulled her aside into three sliding segments, along the throat, thorax, and hips.

Centuries of decay reduced the remains of Cecelia into dust where her body fell, heaped over a handful of porous thin bones amongst the debris of the bedchamber.

Having slowed in vigour as the blood drained from the severed halves, the maidservant’s body had shrivelled into torpor, her face still arched in torment as though she still fought for her unlife.

Outside the circle of banishment Alistair had drawn, footprints disturbed the dust from unseen forms that walked around the circumference. Alerting the others to the new danger, Johann leapt at one of the invisible figures, as did Logan also, attempting to catch their legs. Smudging the edge of the chalk barrier without breaking the ring, electrical energy jumped in arching flashes before the room settled to peace.

Joining the Doctor within the temporal protection of the circle and its Tremere sorcery, the coterie waited until the final hours before dawn to be sure they were alone. Collecting the dust and bones in a coat, and taking up the two pieces of the maidservant’s remains, they left the nightmare of Ayton House, its staggered ruins fading back into the ephemeral shroud of the moors.

Act III, scene i: Westminster Palace, London.

A month later at the end of autumn, Logan, Johann, and Alistair presented themselves to the Red Court of London, kneeling before the highbacked throne of Prince Mithras of London, the Ruling Baron of the Fiefs of Avalon. Observing them from the galleries and hidden vestibules, the vampires of the city traced each interaction between the foreigners and the Prince with their cruel cunning eyes.

Upon request, Alistair rose from the floor and offered a small silver casket embossed with death’s head motifs into the hands of Joseph-Maria, one of the many sheriffs employed by Mithras to enforce the Camarilla’s laws. Passed into the hands of the Seneschal, Gabriel, the silver plate lid was opened to show its contents of mummy dust and bone fragments, the sifted remains of Cecelia.

An elder amongst the entourage of the throne, whose features where hidden by the black lace veil of a mourning widow, licked the tip of her finger to dip it into the ashes, bringing the sample under the veiling to taste it. With a single nod from this unknown being, the Prince and the Court of London were satisfied that the coterie of three had vanquished the rebel, Cecelia Blackwood.

Forgiven their past transgressions for disturbing the peace of London, the three neonates were welcome again within the Prince’s domain. As for Dietmar’s request for a chantry to be established on English soil, Mithras politely smiled as he gave his answer that it were now possible, once the decision had been cleared with the private council.

* * *

After the formal gathering and recognition of the elder’s demise, another meeting took place inside one of the many clerical offices of the palace complex. Gabriel personally thanked Logan for his efforts in slaying the Cainite, unaware of the existence of the ‘maidservant’. The coterie had withheld any mention of the mysterious kindred that had seemingly served as Miss Blackwood’s aide, as the Doctor hoped to use her corpse for his research back in France without the wider Camarilla’s knowledge.

As promised, Gabriel agreed to see that the Ventrue neonate would receive a title within the newly reformed court of York. At the conclusion of their meeting, Logan asked freely if the Seneschal would be adverse to a tragedy befalling Dietmar. Hesitant as he studied the younger Cainite, Gabriel asked if the Ventrue might hand over his sword as a test of faith in the deeper conspiracy against the Tremere.

Assuring Logan that it would be returned in due course before he reached the shores of France, the Seneschal invited him to meet again at a discreet club outside the city, where all could be explained...

Scene ii, English Channel & Villa de Blanche, France.

Travelling by merchant ship over the obsidian waves of the night’s reflection, the coterie and Alistair’s sire was en route toward northern France after their trials in England. Leaning on the gunwale rim, Logan was contemplating the conspiracy against the Tremere, amongst the other revelations that Gabriel had imparted to him in the weeks before their departure.

Intruding on his ruminations, Dietmar joined him at the side of the vessel to watch the prow turn aside the foaming motion of the wake as it parted. He had not yet had any opportunity to speak with Logan alone, hoping to debrief the scowling Ventrue and learn of any damning evidence he might have learnt during the weeks they were apart, especially in the company of his childer, Alistair.

Leading the conversation to prick out any hints he might find, the elder’s words abruptly fell to a choking gasp, reaching for his own throat to feel for some obstruction whilst Logan watched on in suspense. Bleeding from every orifice as his body gyrated in agonizing tremors, Dietmar tried to hold his innards as they bulged away from him, burning light escaping from his ears and mouth as it opened in a final crescendo of terror before a sword tip punctured his belly from within, sawing its way out as the mass of another man split out, bursting through pink sheets of viscera.

Still troubled by the sight, Logan numbly accepted his own sword back from the dripping red figure, a mask of gore sloughing away from the face to reveal an identity to the Ventrue before he was once again alone, save for the bifurcated mess that had been Dietmar a minute earlier.

Rushing across the decks after the Ventrue had called aloud for aid, Johann and Alistair paused at the sight of the broken body, transitioning from flesh into dust and brittle bones. In Logan’s hand was a sword, smeared in a red fat that too was fading to grey like the rest of Dietmar.

Howling with laughter, Alistair’s exultations sung out to the heavens over the sea, gloating over the early demise of his sire as a small part of his freedom being returned. Whilst Johann stared at the innocent Logan in silent judgement, the cackling Tremere raked at the corpse dust, catching the gold chains of the topaz jewel Dietmar had once worn about his neck.

* * *

Reaching the Villa de Blanche some nights later, after he had parted ways with Alistair and Johann, there were no servants to greet Logan’s arrival at the courtyard, nor any signs of activity about the grounds of the closed estate. Troubled by the growing silence he turned to the main house, where a feminine outline waiting for him in the frame of the main entrance.

Warily climbing the shallow steps to meet her, he was not surprised to see Liana posed there with folded arms. Greeting each other quickly, Logan asked why there seemed to be no one else but the two of them in the villa. With a sigh that opened the dammed waters of her own guilt, she confessed that they were all gone; the staff and confidants of Lord Christie had been turned out after his tragic double ‘suidice’.

She had been working for Mithras all along, given the task of seeing the troublesome Lord and his close friend Jotham extinguished once the neonates had left for England. There had never truly been any offers of freedom for the doomed Ventrue on the table, other than the manner of his own death...