Chapter 7 – Leo’s Wake
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16th April, 2021.
Act 1
Scene i: Point Defiance Park, Tacoma.
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Eight years after the alliance between the Burien Coterie, Anarchs, and Tacoma Court (1993 AD), Ed was among the attendants of Leo’s anniversary on the pebble beaches of Point Defiance Park, acknowledging those he recognized among the crowd with a subtle nod as they waited for the service to begin.
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As the eulogy of Leo’s deeds was read aloud by a figure near the lapping tide, Ed reminisced about the Tacoma Prince’s fate and its ripple effect across Washington State. The accepted story of his demise was attributed to the Lupines that hunted in the wilds outside the cities and occasionally venturing into man’s domain when the moon was full. On such a night Leo and his bodyguard had been torn apart, forcing the remainder of his court to choose either the rule of Seattle or leave the major cities along the coast of Puget Sound.
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The Anarchs had retreated to Olympia, and the Gangrel clan left within Washington State had retired from the Camarilla altogether, making their own way to the west to haunt the rural villages along the highways. Ed, however, had remained close to Burien to initially sabotage the development of Holly Park before ensuring that his mortal family could find a new home once the bulldozers had set to work razing the old neighbourhoods.
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After the service, he mingled briefly with the gathered kindred and met with his Sire, Michael. A dishevelled figure in layers of rags like a homeless man, Michael’s outward appearance belied the Gangrel elder’s potential as he spoke with his childer about the Clan’s recent movements in the west.
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Drifting back along the park road once the memorial had ended, the reunion of Leo’s former vassals has stirred other memories from Ed’s past: the death of Zeb Taylor in St Anne hospital, and the growth of his granddaughter from cherub to the petulant teen she had now become.
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The decision to let Zeb fade had been the right choice, Ed felt, the risk of sustaining him as a ghoul would also have been a lie, breaking the man’s lion-hearted spirit with his vitae’s narcotic side effects. Elwin had worked hard to find the cure in the projector slides and notes recovered from Kaiser-Permanente, and continued to do so to this very night, but the research also needed time, something that Zeb had run out of.
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Travelling through the mist carpet of the parkland night with his faithful bloodhound waddling beside his stride, Ed left the scene as his eyes drifted northward to the distant glow of civilization. Somewhere within its lantern flame would be Seattle, drawing him in again like a moth to Prince Oran... or worse.
Scene ii: “The Boathouse” Restaurant, Ballard.
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After the death of Leo, Mikhail had become occupied with the management of various restaurants owned by the Prince, particularly The Boathouse in northern Seattle. A renovated wharf building with views of Shilshole Bay, the fine dining venue was a popular evening for those that could comfortably afford its seafood menu.
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Management of the restaurant had been a “reward” shortly after Leo’s end, but Mikhail sometimes wondered if it were just an excuse to keep him close to Oran’s influence. One of the regular diners, a Mr Roschester, was known to be not only a talented attorney; Roschester was one of the Prince’s ghouls, and Mikhail questioned himself if it was really the food that brought him back to The Boathouse as a frequent customer.
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Greeting Mr Roschester at his preferred table at the corner window, Mikhail engaged in small talk with the gentleman as he personally took his order, recommending certain menu items until the smartly dressed customer came to a final decision.
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Leaving the order with the kitchen, Mikhail had returned to the office to review the night’s earnings when the phone rang. At the other end of the call, a familiar nasal voice wrinkled his composure, as the corporate mole working for him knew that it was forbidden to call him at any of the restaurants he managed.
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Chuck, the mole, seemed eager to renegotiate the amount he was being payed to smuggle out secrets from Boeing, due to the security around one of the recent projects. Chuck’s “autonomy” had become more pronounced over the last year, often avoiding Mikhail for months at a time as though to deliberately weaken the bond he felt as the Ventrue’s ghoul.
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Unwilling to negotiate over the phone, Mikhail suggested they meet at their usual rendezvous in a few nights to discuss the price. Privately, Mikhail hoped the meeting would also be an opportunity to discover how Chuck had been able to ween himself from the control of his vitae.
Scene iii: Myth Nightclub, Columbia City.
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The intervening years had also been busy for Aurore, her social life suddenly occupied with new friends among the kindred as they gathered at the nightclub she owned by way of her unearthly presence.
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In the year after Leo’s death, she had become entangled with Snake in their vampiric relationship until it inevitably drove them apart. For a time the company of the Toreador had sufficed, until an upset at court over her Sire (Blake) drove a wedge further between them and her reputation. The Tremere Primogen, Isiah Walker, had diffused this insubordination and embarrassment to the Clan by binding her with his blood to comply from then on.
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Avoiding Isiah and the Seattle Court shortly after these events, Aurore soon found herself the subject of Krystal’s advances. Krystal had assumed the Brujah seat at Court after the demise of Leo, and her bloodline had come to control large swathes of the city. Aurore had confessed to the Brujah elder about the Prince’s offer (Chap 4, 2:ii) before the supposed Lupine attack, a story she had doubted ever since.
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Drip by drip Krystal had fed her and many other young Cainites the venom doctrine of her secret beliefs, organizing the impressionable youth into a vampire church, preaching the end of the Earth as prophesied in Gehenna, when the Methuselah progenitors of the Clans would rise with Caine to drink all life from the planet. Aurore had offered one of the back rooms as a temple, the black mass attended by selected kine and kindred.
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As she looked over the dance floor through the vertical blinds of the office, she waited for Krystal and her entourage to pass through the crowd, parting the sea of bodies under the strobe light filters. Waiting for them to find her, she studied the amethyst ring on her pale finger until a series of knocks on the office door summoned her to join them.
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Flames shimmered on tapered candles, framing the altar in their myriad light as the attendants admired its iconography from the cowled robes they wore, entranced by the spoken passages from the Book of Nod (supposedly) that warned of the end times for the immortals.
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A “Blood-Doll” (mortals addicted to the kiss of a vampire) began to sway in trance, shaking with nervous energy as they spoke with the tongue of the possessed, proclaiming that there was an agent of the sleeping progenitors in their city: Vincent. Gesticulating loudly as the spirit rode them, the mortal seer beseeched them to destroy this Cainite to save them from the influence of an ancient whom slumbered in Washington State.
Scene iv: West Seattle Pathology, Fairmount Park.
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The derelict veterinarian’s that Elwin had haunted since the late 80’s had been altered with a new facade and signage. Borrowing some capital from Mikhail and finding a mortal partner to share the business, Elwin had reopened the building as a pathology lab taking contracts from local hospitals and medical practitioners to cover his feeding habits and research.
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Working late that night, Elwin took a break from the microscope lens to enjoy the privacy of the room until his eyes aligned with a letter from the Monroe Correctional Facility he had received the week before. His friend Shaun had been incarcerated for the break & enter and theft of blood supplies around Seattle, taking the fall for Elwin’s own nocturnal activities by the Detective who had been responsible for the case; Winslow.
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Elwin had been a suspect early in the investigation, until the discovery of his death certificate in the county records led Det. Winslow to pin the crimes on Shaun. Shaun had never mentioned Elwin’s real involvement in the subsequent years, but his attitude had changed in the succession of letters he sent, hinting that he had ‘figured out’ Elwin’s hidden identity during his sentence, and would be expecting compensation after his release.
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Concerned that Shaun might be close to guessing his true being, Elwin could only wait for now, occupied with his research into the vaccine Lymphogene-H. Experimenting with his own vitae to try and replicate the formulae, he was certain that it had been filtered through a process that was unknown to him to remove the potent side effects (Ghouldom, blood bonds etc). Since the death of Dr Clayton there had been no other leads into the company that had manufactured it, MediLaz US, except for the address of an abandoned chemical plant near the Columbia River.
Act 2
Scene i: Starter Catering & Supplies, Burien.
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Some night later, the Burien coterie were reunited at their old meeting place above 152nd St, the restaurant having been replaced with a catering supply business years prior. The office, however, remained the same as it had since Mikhail’s early ownership.
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Having been divided for twelve months or more in their own occupations around South Seattle & SeaTac, the four Cainites discussed their recent unlives before the evening’s main agenda was addressed. Through Aurore’s connection with the faceless ‘Spider’, an agent from the Vancouver Court had extended a request to meet with the coterie. The request had intrigued Aurore enough to ask the other three, and thus they had come together an hour before the agent’s schedule to prepare for any number of outcomes.
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As they waited, the background noise of a television report drew their attention as the reporter mentioned a second murder in Des Moines where the body had been ritually mutilated and drained of blood. This last fact concerned those watching the screen, wondering if it were a breach of the Masquerade or just another mortal killer driven by a fixation on vampire pop culture.
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Shortly after, the purr of an engine behind the catering business alerted Mikhail and the others that their guest had arrived. Flanked by two bodyguards, the diminutive Porzia Carrera of Clan Giovanni was shown to their office by Sascha, introducing herself with polished European manners to the four kindred. Accepting a seat at their table, she asked the coterie where their loyalties were amongst the Washington state Camarilla before she was willing to reveal the nature of her visit.
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After the coterie explained their position as loyal to the current Prince (Oran), Porzia relaxed her tongue and spoke about the concerns of Prince Silas, whom had sent her from Vancouver. Silas believed that there was a ‘snake’ among the Seattle court, undermining Oran’s leadership of the city. Oran had dismissed the warning as another perverse rumour, dismissing Silas’s convictions that it was a real threat to the stability of their partnership as the Iron Dukes (Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland), a partnership that had kept the North-West coast in peace for close to a century.
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To avoid embarrassing Oran, Silas had been looking for a coterie like theirs, loyal but ‘distant’ enough from the Seattle court to remain discreet and look for the evidence he needed to prove his suspicions: a cargo ship known as the “Storm Breaker” was docked at Harbour Island for the next four nights, and Silas wanted any written manifests and the captain’s logbook. If the coterie could retrieve this information, he would reward each of them with a minor boon to compensate the dangerous task.
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Harbour Island was known to be Brujah territory, belonging now to Krystal’s bloodline after the collapse of Tacoma. Many in the room suspected that Krystal was involved in Leo’s final death, and to cross her would be dangerous to their longevity.
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Mikhail asked their guest if they might have a night to think about the offer, to which she agreed and left them with a restaurant address near Columbia City, to join her once they had come to a decision.
Scene ii: Harbour Island, West Seattle.
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After the meeting with Porzia, Ed had volunteered to make an initial surveillance of the island later that night, so as to help inform their decision about whether to aid the Vancouver Prince.
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Adopting the guise of a labouring dockhand, Ed wandered the perimeter of the island where cargo ships were at bay, reading the bold stencil titles of each vessel until he came across the “Rompe Tormentas”, the Storm Breaker he was looking for.
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Avoiding the road directly leading up to the ship, Ed kept to the avenues of stacked shipping crates nearby to hide his position, stealing a glance from the edge of the crate wall to study any activity near the sea vessel. Three figures were in conversation on the dock, standing around the rear boot of a car. Focusing his feline-like eyes onto their faces, he recognized one of them instantly...
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