Rian Samhain POV

Iron fills my eyes. My lungs. Its dryness infects my throat. I feel my fingers go to my eyes even as I start coughing. I feel my fingernails start to press against my eyelids.

Damn it.

No.

I’m not going to die that stupid a death.

I fall to my knees.

Iron shouldn’t affect me like this. It shouldn’t affect any of us.

“What,” I hear a female voice shatter the madness, “the ACTUAL FUCK?”

I open one bloodshot eye. Woman. Mortal? Tallish. Long auburn hair. A band T-shirt in something appropriately Scandinavian. Doesn’t give “disappointed librarian” so much as “apocalyptic.” Behind her is a girl in a skirt, clutching a stack of books to her chest.

Well, at least now I know who’s going to die first tonight.

I feel a vine wrap around my wrist. Fluffy pulls me towards him.

Hook Hand covers my escape, slashing and stabbing at the glowing nothing that makes up the Gentry.

The soldiers line the ground, each bleeding. Mary has already come for their eyes.

“You have made a PROFOUND mistake,” bellows the librarian.

The creature from beyond the Hedge makes no noise.

Then all hell exists.

Flesh rips off my back against the asphalt as Fluffy drags me past Michael. I know my best friend hates what he’s doing to me, but what’s important is getting me away from the Gentry that has invited itself into our reality. Lost skin and muscle can heal. What would happen if the Gentry got one of us...

Can’t.

I reach down, grab Michael, and pull him across the asphalt with me.

The librarian points up.

A helicopter. Something with way too many guns. Boeing AH-64 Apache. I made more than one model kit of it as a child. I will always resent having been taken before we got cable.

“That is there. This is here. Those are descriptions. They are not properties. Distance is a relationship.”

Shit. Blame the GATE programs. I can already see where this is going. I open my mouth to scream at her.

Nothing comes out but iron dust and blood.

“Relationships can change.”

The helicopter is gone.

Not gone.

Moved.

Into the same space as She Who You Could Love.

The other mage, the young one, in the fraction of a second before the explosion of the weapons cooking off becomes a holocaust, says, “No, not yet.”

And the concussive blast agrees.

For a moment, the fire just hangs there. Metal hangs with it. Fluffy keeps pulling. I keep hold of Michael.

Then the noise catches up with us.

The heat.

I press my face against the asphalt and wait for the world to finish.

The flames extinguish.

The monstrosity is still standing. One of its arms is missing, ripped off and lying on the street. Even now I can see it dissipating from the asphalt and merging back with its body proper. A rotor is impaled in the fairy’s head.

It turns to look at the librarian, its head bent at a strange angle.

The librarian looks pleased with herself.

I pull on one of Fluffy’s vines. He turns, sees where I’m looking, and hurls himself towards them.

Tendrils wrap around both women just softly enough to not break ribs.

“What are you doing?” the librarian screams. “I hurt it! We need to keep this going!”

“You hurt it, you idiot. You got its attention.”

For the real “Rebecca,” who has no idea what an Acanthus is, but never needed a briefing to tell me when I was being an asshole.

I hope you’re doing well. That has no operational relevance.

CONSILIUM PERSONNEL / OPERATIONAL REFERENCE

Subject: ORPHEUS
Current Shadow Name: ORPHEUS
Path: Acanthus
Order: Free Council
Primary Arcana: Fate, Time
Secondary Competencies: Mind; additional interdisciplinary study
Combat Classification: Support / Control / Counter-Engagement
Prepared By: PALISADE
Status: ACTIVE
Last Major Revision: 2015

Executive Summary

Orpheus is an experienced Acanthus whose principal operational value lies in probabilistic manipulation, situational control, predictive support, sympathetic analysis, and unconventional application of Mind.

He is not a dedicated combat mage.

This statement has repeatedly been interpreted as:

Orpheus is not dangerous in combat.

That is incorrect.

Please stop making that mistake.

He is physically mediocre, has limited formal martial training, and dislikes direct confrontation. His preference for avoiding lethal force should be respected. It should not be relied upon.

His principal strength is identifying a rule everyone else has unconsciously accepted and asking whether it is actually a rule. Unfortunately, he also does this with rules which exist for extremely good reasons.

General Disposition

Orpheus is intelligent, curious, verbose, frequently unserious, and substantially more observant than his presentation suggests.

He likes people. This should be emphasized.

He complains about people constantly. He also likes them.

Personnel unfamiliar with him sometimes interpret his irony, detachment, or theatricality as contempt. This is generally incorrect.

When Orpheus genuinely stops caring what happens to someone, he becomes considerably quieter. That is worse.

Physical Capability

Average. Possibly below average.

He disagrees with this assessment. His objection is not that he considers himself physically capable. His objection is that “below average” requires defining the population.

This discussion lasted eleven minutes. I am leaving the assessment unchanged.

Hand-to-hand: Minimal.
Firearms: Familiarity uncertain.
Athletics: Situational.
Stamina: Better than appearance suggests, worse than he believes.
Pain tolerance: Mediocre.

He would like it recorded that pain tolerance is “a stupid thing to discover empirically.”

I agree.

Magical Methodology

Orpheus does not naturally divide magic into discrete functional categories. He thinks in:

• associations,
• stories,
• coincidences,
• emotional states,
• symbolic relationships,
• possibilities,
• things which would be funny if they happened,
• things which would be beautiful if they happened,
• and, occasionally, things which absolutely should not happen but which he would like to understand theoretically.

The last category requires supervision.

He frequently begins with an effect rather than an Arcanum.

Example:

“Could you make someone nostalgic for something that hasn’t happened yet?”

This was followed by a forty-minute discussion regarding whether nostalgia requires memory. The answer remains unresolved.

No further funding is recommended.

Fate

Excellent. Orpheus’s strongest practical Arcanum. He has an intuitive understanding of probability and consequence that sometimes exceeds his ability to explain what he is doing.

He is particularly effective when working with existing possibilities rather than manufacturing outcomes from nothing.

His preferred Fate workings are subtle. He likes the door someone forgot to lock. The person who happens to look left. The song that comes on at the correct moment. An object landing somewhere useful, or someone taking one additional second before deciding.

He dislikes effects that simply make him “lucky.”

His stated objection:

“Luck is boring. Context is interesting.”

This is pretentious. It is also an accurate description of his practice.

Fate Warning

Do not casually ask Orpheus:

“What are the odds?”

He will attempt to answer.

If the answer interests him, operational priorities may temporarily deteriorate.

Time

Highly competent. Less interested in direct temporal manipulation than might be expected for an Acanthus.

Orpheus is fascinated by experienced time.

Five minutes waiting for medical results. Three hours with someone you have just fallen in love with. The thirty seconds before answering a question which may end a relationship. A song which makes someone twenty years younger for four minutes.

He has described objective chronological time as:

“Useful for trains.”

He nevertheless owns several watches. None reliably display the same time.

I believe this is intentional. I refuse to ask.

Mind

Unusually creative. Potentially his most ethically concerning field of study.

Orpheus prefers emotional manipulation to physical injury. He has provided extensive arguments for this position. Some are persuasive. Others owe a great deal to the fact that he enjoys Mind magic.

His usual ethical distinction is between changing what someone experiences and changing who someone is. He considers the latter substantially more serious.

Known self-imposed prohibitions include:

• Do not manufacture love.
• Do not manufacture loyalty.
• Do not permanently alter political, religious, or personal beliefs for convenience.
• Do not rewrite childhood.
• Do not remove meaningful relationships.
• Do not make someone perform an action and subsequently alter their memory so they believe it was voluntary.

Temporary emotional manipulation is considered permissible under circumstances where he would otherwise use physical force. This remains ethically controversial.

Orpheus is aware of this. He regards his continued discomfort with the practice as evidence that he should continue examining it.

I regard that as preferable to the alternative.

Music

Yes, this requires its own section.

Music is not necessary for Orpheus to perform magic. It is nevertheless one of his most important symbolic systems. He frequently uses recorded music as a mnemonic, emotional, temporal, or sympathetic framework.

His taste is not as obscure as he believes. Do not tell him I wrote that.

Specific songs may acquire extremely elaborate personal correspondences. These correspondences are not necessarily transferable.

Orpheus understands this intellectually. He did not always understand it.

Around 2009 he stopped saying:

“This is what this song means.”

and began saying:

“This is what happens when I listen to this song.”

I consider this meaningful progress.

Known Music-Associated Workings

Incomplete.

Glycerine, Bush

Personal emotional/temporal association. Autumn. Parking lot. Sodium lighting. Cold air. Anticipation. Unspecified romantic possibility.

He once spent twenty minutes explaining that the important component was not the girl.

It was:

“There was still time.”

I did not understand what he meant then. I think I do now.

Name, Goo Goo Dolls

Identity interference based on cultural association and repetition. Subject retains knowledge of own name but retrieval becomes entangled with musical recall.

He considers this humane.

Debatable.

Various Green Day

Extensive. Do not encourage.

Do not permit him to explain Kerplunk during transportation. This is not an operational concern. It is a quality-of-life recommendation.

Combat Behavior

Orpheus prefers not to initiate violence. Once violence begins, he attempts to redefine the conflict into something he finds more manageable.

This may involve environmental manipulation, probability, misdirection, or emotional disruption. He may make an opponent question the purpose of the engagement, then move on to unrelated decisions from adolescence.

Combat-trained personnel tend to prepare for attacks rather than conversations. He takes advantage of this.

He is extremely difficult to intimidate conventionally. This is not courage. He is afraid of many things. He simply becomes intellectually interested in the mechanism of intimidation and thereby ruins it for himself.

Seriousness Indicator

If Orpheus is joking, talking, complaining, making references nobody understands, or explaining why your tactical doctrine resembles a forgotten television program, the situation is probably manageable.

If Orpheus becomes completely silent:

Pay attention.

He does not become silent because he has lost control. He becomes silent because he is deciding how much control he is willing to exercise.

This distinction is operationally significant.

Nonlethality

Orpheus has stated repeatedly:

“I try not to kill people.”

He refuses to describe this as pacifism. Correctly.

He is capable of considerable cruelty. His restraint is primarily centered upon reversibility. He prefers consequences from which a target can potentially recover.

He is particularly reluctant to cause:

• death;
• permanent neurological injury;
• irreversible physical disability;
• permanent alteration of personality;
• permanent magical alteration of identity.

He has occasionally suggested solutions which violate several of these principles. To date, he has generally rejected those solutions himself.

Known Failure Mode

Curiosity. This is more dangerous than anger.

Orpheus rarely asks:

“How can I hurt this person?”

He does occasionally ask:

“What would happen if...?”

Interrupt this sentence when appropriate. Not always. Sometimes the answer is useful.

Use judgment.

Social Profile

Orpheus maintains a larger number of mundane relationships than many active Awakened. He does not consider Sleepers inherently less interesting than mages. This occasionally causes friction with other personnel.

He has described Awakening as:

“One of the six or seven most interesting things about me.”

When challenged to list the others, he refused. I suspect he could not.

Relationship to Awakened Identity

Unusual. Orpheus does not appear to regard being a mage as the central organizing fact of his identity. He understands the significance of Awakening. He also expects supernatural obligations to accommodate the rest of his life occasionally.

He once declined an occult symposium because he had already promised to attend a cousin’s birthday dinner.

When informed that the symposium involved a potentially significant Supernal manifestation, he asked:

“Did it RSVP first?”

He attended the birthday. The manifestation remained available the following morning. No operational harm resulted.

I am including this because several personnel considered his decision irresponsible.

I did not.

Shadow Name

Orpheus. Yes, he knows how the story ends. Approximately. He claims “Greek mythology was pass/fail.”

His selection appears related to music and to circumstances surrounding his Awakening.

Further details are personal.

Do not ask me. Ask him.

Interpersonal Notes

Orpheus responds well to direct disagreement.

• Do not flatter him unnecessarily. He will notice and become suspicious.
• Do not pretend to understand a reference if you do not. He will test you.
• Do not describe him as brilliant. He likes it too much.
• Do not describe him as harmless. He will regard this as a challenge even if he consciously knows he should not.
• Do not tell him he is “too old” for something, or “too young” to understand it. Both produce unnecessary demonstrations.

If he offers you soup, accepting is generally easier.

Relationship with Palisade

Professional colleagues. Frequent joint assignments over approximately five years. Social contact outside operations: occasional.

No romantic relationship.

I am adding that sentence because three different people have asked. Stop asking.

We have attended one wedding together. This was not a date. I attended under an assumed identity for reasons which were funny at the time. Those reasons ceased being funny after approximately four Jell-O shots.

No operational relevance. Remove this section during next revision.

[Section retained in all subsequent revisions.]

Incident 11-22

Palisade deviated from operational plan. Orpheus was not present.

Supervising officer nevertheless formally reprimanded Orpheus.

This was inappropriate. It was also extremely funny.

Official explanation given:

“If Palisade did it, either you’ve done it before and I didn’t find out, or you were going to.”

Orpheus attempted to defend himself. His defense inadvertently established that he had previously considered a substantially worse version of my deviation.

I bought him dinner.

Personal Assessment

This section should not be distributed outside operational command.

Orpheus is easier to underestimate than he believes. He cultivates some of this deliberately. Some is simply him.

He is vain. He is insecure. He is more compassionate than he likes being caught at. He is considerably more dangerous than he likes admitting.

He is terrified of becoming the kind of mage who views ordinary people as scenery. This fear influences more of his behavior than his stated political or philosophical beliefs. It has served him reasonably well so far. I would prefer that he had something else to rely on.

He needs people around him who will tell him when he is becoming an asshole.

He currently has several. I am one.

2014 Revision

Orpheus has become less interested in active Mystery investigation. He denies this. He is wrong.

Increasingly declines optional assignments. Still responds when specifically needed. Continues personal research. No obvious deterioration in capability.

Appears tired.

When asked whether something was wrong, replied:

“No. I think things have just gotten less interesting.”

Recommend monitoring. Not because I believe he represents a danger.

Because I believe he may leave.

2015 Revision

He is leaving. Not formally. That’s the problem.

There will be no resignation. No dramatic announcement. No ideological break with the Free Council.

He is simply appearing less often.

I have considered asking him directly.

Have not.

This may be a mistake.

2016 Addendum

STATUS: INACTIVE

No formal contact in several months. No indication of coercion, injury, or hostile influence.

Mundane records indicate normal activity.

He appears to be fine.

I am not filing a welfare inquiry. If Orpheus wants to be left alone, he has earned enough goodwill to be left alone.

Someone else should assume responsibility for this file.

Palisade

2025 Addendum

Apparently he is calling himself Anhedon now.

I would like it recorded that changing his name from Orpheus to Anhedon does not constitute answering the question “Are you all right?”

2026 Addendum

The personal assessment states that he needs people around him who will tell him when he is becoming an asshole.

I am still listed among those people.

Apparently I resigned without telling either of us.

I’ve gotten some really great responses and awesome feedback here for my Chronicles of Darkness stories in the past, so I figured let's try some Classic World of Darkness / Vampire: The Masquerade this time around.

The air in the garage smelled like cold ozone, stale dampness, and the faint chemical bite of motor oil.

I slumped into a rusted metal folding chair, trying to make sure my designer heels clicked sharply against the concrete so she’d look at me. I knew I looked hot, but it was a very specific, 2026 kind of hot. It was the sort of beauty that demanded validation like a tax, a calculated arrangement meant to make people tell me I’m gorgeous just so I could sigh and explain exactly how much effort it took to get this way.

Karen didn’t even look up from her workbench. She’d clearly spent an hour and a half doing her own hair today, twisting it into a jagged, utilitarian knot that was supposed to look like she’d just rolled out of bed, though every single strand was weaponized to stay out of her eyes.

As she wiped down her gear, she idly murmured a line of verse under her breath, the words tasting heavy and old in the cold air:

“She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes...”

I blinked, completely baffled. My carefully polished armor cracked for a fraction of a second.

“Wait. Is that Lord Byron? Are you actually quoting romantic poetry right now?”

“I wasn’t Embraced just to kill things,” Karen said, her voice completely flat, devoid of any nostalgia. “I was Embraced and set loose into a technically public library in Oxford. It was a place that was only open to the public for about five minutes a semester because of some weird archaic wording in the Old English from a thousand years ago. I liked the words. I liked the books.”

She stopped wiping down the shaft of her primary ice axe, turning it over in her hand with a slow, almost tender motion.

“They weren't designed to be a weapon, not by any stretch of the imagination. What an ice axe is actually designed to do is to give a flailing person a last chance while they’re falling down a mountain. It lets you swing and punch a hole into frozen granite while your body is hurtling toward an abyss, anchoring you the second your momentum stops. There is probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but whatever. Needless to say, it is pretty much the most effective way I have found to punch a hole in someone and then make their insides their outsides when I pull back.”

She looked over at me, and I felt my sunglasses slide a fraction of an inch down my nose.

“Where was I? Yeah. So the first time I saw a thirty-foot mass of fused-together ghouls doing their whole routine, chanting ‘Your song is not our song, please kill me’... I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation. I picked up a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I threw it at them.”

A dark, dangerous shadow of a smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“And it felt good. It felt so good, Addison. It made my toes curl in a way that I had never felt before my Embrace.”

My throat clicked as I swallowed. I tried desperately to force my voice into its usual, rehearsed posture of absolute boredom, but it came out shaky.

“And you’re telling me this… why?”

“You’ve decided that you want to hang out with Chase,” Karen said, finally standing up. The heavy combat boots she wore anchored her to the concrete with an unsettling immovable mass. She leaned down, bringing her face inches from my oversized lenses.

“That’s fine. I appreciate that Chase needs friends. He needs to keep his little social battery charged.”

She sneered, her sheer proximity forcing me back into the rusted metal of my chair.

“The thing is, I know what your generation, goddamnit, that’s not the right word, is it? It’s that generation. Whatever the freshest batch of Kindred is called. You're so new I can still smell the heartbeat on you. From time to time, the Elders remember what they did to us, and we are asked to do favors to keep the city barely functioning.”

Before I could fire back with a cynical retort, something heavy whipped through the air.

Clang.

A crude dull blade slammed onto the concrete right at my feet, bouncing once before settling near my shoes. The iron hilt and the thick unpolished edge were both the size of my entire arm.

“So Chase,” Karen continued, her voice leveling into something chillingly transactional. “That means you get to pay the tax. Which is where I try to keep our little boo-boo in his sound booth, talking to his ghost that may or may not exist.”

I looked down at the massive slab of iron, the reality of the situation suddenly suffocating me.

“And what’s that mean for tonight?”

“Tonight,” Karen said, her hand reaching into her tactical vest for the second ice axe, “we’re going to non-consensually put some holes in some fleshcrafters. The non-consensual part is relevant. If you ask them beforehand, they’re just gonna find a way to enjoy it.”

“And we’re doing that… why?”

Karen reached behind her head. With a sharp fluid motion, she pulled her dark hair up into a tight high ponytail. The movement exposed the pale skin of her neck and an ugly jagged undercut, and right there at the base of her skull was a horrific dead-white scar carved deep into her flesh after her mortal breath had already left her.

“Because this fleshcrafter works for the guy who has my C5 vertebrae,” she whispered, her eyes burning with thirty years of unadulterated frozen rage. “And I want it back.”

I’ve gotten some really great responses and awesome feedback here for my Chronicles of Darkness stories in the past, so I figured let's try some Classic World of Darkness / Vampire: The Masquerade this time around.

The air in the garage smelled like cold ozone, stale dampness, and the faint chemical bite of motor oil.

I slumped into a rusted metal folding chair, trying to make sure my designer heels clicked sharply against the concrete so she’d look at me. I knew I looked hot, but it was a very specific, 2026 kind of hot. It was the sort of beauty that demanded validation like a tax, a calculated arrangement meant to make people tell me I’m gorgeous just so I could sigh and explain exactly how much effort it took to get this way.

Karen didn’t even look up from her workbench. She’d clearly spent an hour and a half doing her own hair today, twisting it into a jagged, utilitarian knot that was supposed to look like she’d just rolled out of bed, though every single strand was weaponized to stay out of her eyes.

As she wiped down her gear, she idly murmured a line of verse under her breath, the words tasting heavy and old in the cold air:

“She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes...”

I blinked, completely baffled. My carefully polished armor cracked for a fraction of a second.

“Wait. Is that Lord Byron? Are you actually quoting romantic poetry right now?”

“I wasn’t Embraced just to kill things,” Karen said, her voice completely flat, devoid of any nostalgia. “I was Embraced and set loose into a technically public library in Oxford. It was a place that was only open to the public for about five minutes a semester because of some weird archaic wording in the Old English from a thousand years ago. I liked the words. I liked the books.”

She stopped wiping down the shaft of her primary ice axe, turning it over in her hand with a slow, almost tender motion.

“They weren't designed to be a weapon, not by any stretch of the imagination. What an ice axe is actually designed to do is to give a flailing person a last chance while they’re falling down a mountain. It lets you swing and punch a hole into frozen granite while your body is hurtling toward an abyss, anchoring you the second your momentum stops. There is probably a metaphor in there somewhere, but whatever. Needless to say, it is pretty much the most effective way I have found to punch a hole in someone and then make their insides their outsides when I pull back.”

She looked over at me, and I felt my sunglasses slide a fraction of an inch down my nose.

“Where was I? Yeah. So the first time I saw a thirty-foot mass of fused-together ghouls doing their whole routine, chanting ‘Your song is not our song, please kill me’... I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation. I picked up a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I threw it at them.”

A dark, dangerous shadow of a smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“And it felt good. It felt so good, Addison. It made my toes curl in a way that I had never felt before my Embrace.”

My throat clicked as I swallowed. I tried desperately to force my voice into its usual, rehearsed posture of absolute boredom, but it came out shaky.

“And you’re telling me this… why?”

“You’ve decided that you want to hang out with Chase,” Karen said, finally standing up. The heavy combat boots she wore anchored her to the concrete with an unsettling immovable mass. She leaned down, bringing her face inches from my oversized lenses.

“That’s fine. I appreciate that Chase needs friends. He needs to keep his little social battery charged.”

She sneered, her sheer proximity forcing me back into the rusted metal of my chair.

“The thing is, I know what your generation, goddamnit, that’s not the right word, is it? It’s that generation. Whatever the freshest batch of Kindred is called. You're so new I can still smell the heartbeat on you. From time to time, the Elders remember what they did to us, and we are asked to do favors to keep the city barely functioning.”

Before I could fire back with a cynical retort, something heavy whipped through the air.

Clang.

A crude dull blade slammed onto the concrete right at my feet, bouncing once before settling near my shoes. The iron hilt and the thick unpolished edge were both the size of my entire arm.

“So Chase,” Karen continued, her voice leveling into something chillingly transactional. “That means you get to pay the tax. Which is where I try to keep our little boo-boo in his sound booth, talking to his ghost that may or may not exist.”

I looked down at the massive slab of iron, the reality of the situation suddenly suffocating me.

“And what’s that mean for tonight?”

“Tonight,” Karen said, her hand reaching into her tactical vest for the second ice axe, “we’re going to non-consensually put some holes in some fleshcrafters. The non-consensual part is relevant. If you ask them beforehand, they’re just gonna find a way to enjoy it.”

“And we’re doing that… why?”

Karen reached behind her head. With a sharp fluid motion, she pulled her dark hair up into a tight high ponytail. The movement exposed the pale skin of her neck and an ugly jagged undercut, and right there at the base of her skull was a horrific dead-white scar carved deep into her flesh after her mortal breath had already left her.

“Because this fleshcrafter works for the guy who has my C5 vertebrae,” she whispered, her eyes burning with thirty years of unadulterated frozen rage. “And I want it back.”

&gt;> [LOG_NOTE]: Found myself missing the tab at the Troglodytes; some of us are still bleeding for the right reasons. To the one who held the map: the 'Idiots' haven't forgotten. <<

KD POV / KDog POV / Krime Dawwg POV

Shiori's Note: You’re never going to live that down.

POV continues:

Ultimately, I know that she’s right. That is the problem with it.

What are the reasons I stopped using it a decade ago? The reason I decided to focus on Rebecca and Shiori.

I set my status on the family group chat to “Alive and well in Berlin.”

[Private Chat: Shiori]

(Log time 9Y:3M:18D:9H:15M:17S)

She’s a must.

I’ll be honest: the only thing that gets me through each day is checking her vitals.

The same bump of oxytocin and dopamine.

Her internal temperature spiked by 0.05°C in her face and neck. Her resting heart rate falls to 62 BPM.

You can lie on a Hallmark card; you can’t fake autonomic nervous system responses.

Nathaniel Hale (Halestorm) has been added to the chat.

Subvocal: "Hello Nate, I’m glad to see that you found some professionals for me. Tell me who I’m looking at."

Nate: "Arbeit is your physical compliance officer, focused on the reactions of metahuman subjects. Probably the closest thing Berlin offers to a street samurai. Think Molly Millions, not yours truly.

Master of Savate & The Apache Style. If things go hot, her mission statement is to make it look like someone broke their leg, or fell down an elevator shaft, and that it was entirely their fault.

Then we have Reb, an Orthodox Jewish mage. His trick is gently massaging the world to do what he wants.

You ever read The Oven of Akhnai?"

Me: "Can’t say I have."

Nate: "TLDR: God visits a bunch of rabbis to lay down Divine Wisdom. He's told in a polite but firm way that, objectively right or not, and even if He is the patron of the Jewish people, they would appreciate if He just kind of sat there and kept His mouth shut.

Reb convinces the world that it doesn’t really have a choice other than going along with his suggestions."

Me: "Sounds like someone I know."

Nate: "Yeah, I continued to not take crap from somebody who named himself Krime Dawg.

Broker is the guy on the comm. Right now he’s making sure that the street is shut down, and that the entire block will have a blackout for the 15 minutes you need to get in there, do the job, and get out."

The rest of the team is dressed in formal wear, and casual wear that would get you a new car in Troy.

I’m wearing ill-fitting slacks, a short-sleeve button-down, and a pair of glasses.

It’s gotten some looks from the “ultimate professionals.”

But I do remember what I’m doing.

The power goes out, and exactly 3 minutes and 45 seconds later we enter the premises.

I’m not a man who enjoys stereotypes, but the receptionist is there, sitting with her back straight in a mathematically perfect line.

I walk over to her, making sure I look busy on my AR overlay.

She starts to say something in German.

I make sure to wait for one syllable and then talk over her in English, playing up my Midwestern American accent.

“Hey, I’m from the tech-support center two blocks over. Your corporate overlord called, said you need help with your system. Looks like the entire city block got fried, huh?”

She opens her mouth.

I lean in.

“I’M HERE FOR I.T. HELP! DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH? IT’S BASICALLY GERMAN!”

She rolls her eyes.

A door opens.

Good. This may be easier than I thought it would be.

Or at least that's my thought before I walk face-first into nine feet of unimpressed troll.

Again, dressed to an inch of his life.

I have to admit, I like that everyone dresses better here.

He shows me a data screen. It shows another underfed nerd, one that doesn't look unlike me. The feeb whose bonafides I stole.

I look at the troll.

I look at the image in his hand.

And I fall to my knees.

I think back to when my favorite book series ended.

I feel snot start to well up in my nose.

Me “Oh mein Gott! Oh mein Gott! Bitte nicht schießen!”
(Oh my god! Oh my god! Please don't shoot!)

Goon A “Wer ist das?"
(Who is this?)

Me: Das ist mein Mitarbeiter... Oh mein Gott, nicht schießen, ich will nicht sterben! Ich wollte nur die fünfzig Dollar, die er mir versprochen hat!"
(That is my coworker... oh my god, don't shoot, I don't want to die! I just wanted the fifty dollars he said he would give me!)

Goon B “Warum bist du hier?"
(Why are you here?)

Me “Er ist kaputt auf 'Better than Life' Holos und Gras. Das ist ein Geheimnis von dem Deepstate! Bitte, er hat gesagt, went ich komme hier, er gibt mir seine Geld für die Nacht. Bitte nicht töten mich!"
(He’s messed up on 'Better than Life' holos and weed. That’s a Deep State secret! Please, he told me if I came here, he would give me his pay for the night. Please don't kill me!)

Goon One “Machen Sie sich ordentlich, erledigen Sie die Arbeit und verschwinden Sie."
(Clean yourself up, do the job, and get out.)

He pushes me to the server room and closes the door behind me.

I know that my commlink is missing.

I was part of the gamble.

I didn’t even put the relevant programs on it.

I reach behind a mole and pull out two ceramic chips.

One has a series of scripts on it, designed entirely to fix the problem that I started off-site.

It contains hiccups. It contains lines of programming that are wrong and look like I’ll have to go back and correct them.

It should be exactly what the spider expects to see while I go to the second server for the pay data.

Over the course of seconds, I find my way to a high-security data vault.

But I’m KDog. Krime Dawwg.

I may as well live my own legend.

Now let’s see, Bulldog, where do they put you…

[NODE ACCESS: SECURE_VAULT_DE-BER-09]

FILE STATUS: TOP SECRET // EYES ONLY // PROJECT NIGHTWRATH

SUBJECT DESIGNATION: BULLDOG

DATA TYPE: ASSET LOCATION / ARCHIVE

ASSET SUMMARY

• IDENTIFIER: SUBJECT: BULLDOG
• STATUS: ACTIVE / INVOLUNTARY DETENTION
• LOCATION: BLACK SITE N-ATLANTIC-04 (OFFSHORE GRID: 54.3821, -31.7740)
• FACILITY TYPE: RE-EDUCATION & EXFILTRATION HUB (SUBMERGED)

LOGISTICAL NOTES

• TRANSIT RECORD: Subject was moved from the London holding cell to the North Atlantic Black Site via high-speed sub-surface transport. Current containment protocols are at Level 7.

• RESTRICTIONS: No Matrix access permitted within the facility. Subject is under 24-hour physical surveillance. All external communications are intercepted and scrubbed by the on-site Spider.

SECURITY PROTOCOLS

• EXTRADITION STATUS: Pending Executive Review.

• EMERGENCY MEASURES: In the event of a breach, Subject: BULLDOG is flagged for immediate Condition Zero (Terminal Disposal).

[DOWNLOAD PROGRESS: 100%]

[FILE COPIED TO EXTERNAL MEDIA: DRIVE_2]

[ALERT STATUS: GREEN - SYSTEM NORMAL]

Well hello there Mr. Aelo, Giovanni Michelle.

Looks like you’re coming home.

I quick-draw the Nerf gun and shoot it into the Illustrated Man’s stomach. Mr. Dark collapses in upon himself. Typically I would hunt him to whatever Midwestern Gothic hell has dibs on him, but he will be back in a year and a day. I have no doubt of that. For the moment, I am going to have some fun.

I stomp over to the man in the wig and sunglasses who cannot balance in his boots. I reach into his pocket and see a sight that brings me joy: the driver's license of one Friend, Arnold.

I reach into my own pocket and pull out my phone.
"Call Fairest Michael."

It rings once, twice, and then a voice answers.

"Hello, Rian. What do you want, man? It has been a hell of a day. I have three girls in the ICU. I had to deal with Sean and the Prince. She brought me a head in a bag. It was a whole thing."

"Oh Mikey, I have a gift for you. I came to my Fetch’s place to wish him a happy birthday."

"I have explained at length how much I wish you would not taunt him."

"Yes, and I promptly ignored you. But guess who is at his birthday party?"

"I have no way of knowing that, Rian."

"Why, none other than Mister Arnold Friend."

There is a long silence.

"Excuse me?"

"Arnold Friend. Where are you going, where have you been, and so such."

All the warmth drains from the voice of the King of Spring.

"I will be over there as quickly as I possibly can be. Do not let him go anywhere."

"Oh laddie, I need to play with my Fetch, and I would not deny you a hunt."

I press the button and the line goes dead.

Even through the sunglasses, I can see Arnold sweating. I cannot help myself. After all, I am only human, except I am not.

"Run, boyo. The King of Spring is coming, and he does not do thank-you notes."

Arnold launches himself out of a window. It is a good call, really.

I turn to my Fetch, who has a look of shock on his face. I walk over to the record player.

"I know you think I am a right bastard, but I come bringing gifts tonight. Arnold is a gift for Michael, and this is for you."

I put the needle on the record.

People try to put us down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

I see him stare at me. The look in his eyes is colder than any Winter Queen. So satisfying.

I turn back to my Fetch, who represents everything I hate: the sanitization of suburban life. Every ounce of danger has been removed. No more M-80s or lawn darts of my youth. I put the cardboard sleeve on his lap.

"Signed by Keith Moon himself. Now tell me that is not a thoughtful present."

"Fuck you, sanctimonious little shit," my Fetch hisses as he throws the record sleeve on the ground.

I offer myself the chair across from him and sink into it.

"Big word coming from an actual, literal walking pile of trash. But it is our birthday, so I will let it slide."

I lean toward him.

"Damn. I know we did not know about the benefits of sunscreen back in the day, but I thought fifty-five years in Arcadia left me looking strange."

"And you think fifty-five years in the real world was easy? Having to find my place, never knowing who I am, trying to figure out why I had so many conflicting memories?"

"For the love of something I love, you were sixteen. Every sixteen-year-old doubts who they are and cannot remember what happened twenty minutes ago. You were born into this world slightly later than you should have been. You make it sound like you were thirty or fifty. It is not like I had a whole life set up for you. You had to fit in, too."

I stand up and walk toward a bookshelf, leaning in to look at family photos and half a century's worth of tchotchkes.

"Was that Julie Cohan I saw out there?"

"Yes," exhales my Fetch. "Fifty years next spring."

I take a moment to mull it over.

"Respect."

I reach out a fist to him. He pauses, looks at it, and touches his knuckles to mine.

"I never did have the balls to ask her out."

"Does this mean you are going to be a civilized human being going forward?"

I start to laugh.

"You know for a fact it does not. I am still going to kill you as soon as I get bored with you."

He stands up and walks toward me.

"You are a trespasser here. I could shoot you or call the cops. No one is going to arrest a seventy-year-old man surrounded by his family on his birthday."

"Damn, lad, that is just boring. If you are going to murder me, I will not hold it against you, but come on. I just belly-shot one of Midwestern Gothic's greatest monsters and sent the embodiment of predators running through the streets in terror. You can at least make my murder interesting."

A figure in her twenties enters the room. Her hair is a combination of Julie’s red and my auburn. I look at her and see my eyes. It is like being hit in the face.

"Grandpa Tim? Everything alright in here?"

She holds two bottles of root beer. She hands one to her grandfather and offers me the other.

"I never did get a taste for the hard stuff."

"Rian, this is Samantha. Samantha, this is Rian."

I pull the cap off the beverage and salute her with it.

"Rian Samhain, my dear."

I take a pull.

"Tastes like..."

"A fall night," says my Fetch.

"Heh, you are not wrong."

Samantha looks at me like she is examining a problem.

"I have never heard my grandfather mention you, and with a name like that, I would remember. How do you know him?"

"Oh, Samantha darling, I have known him all his life."

My Fetch laughs until he loses his breath. It is a habit we share.

"Wha..." Samantha begins.

Timothy interjects, "He is not wrong. He is not wrong."

She walks closer, leans in, and I know she has noticed my eyes.

"Grandma Julie said she thought she saw a ghost walk in the study. Are you a ghost, Rian? No, you cannot be a ghost. Are you the Lord of Summer's End? Lord of the Harvest? My Irish is a bit rusty."

I look to Timothy.

"I like her. She is clever. She must get that from her grandmother's side of the family."

I laugh just like my Fetch until I am out of breath.

"We were never clever. Witty, cunning, resourceful, but never clever."

Tim continues to drink his root beer.

"Speak for yourself."

"So let us recap."

She sits on an ottoman, dramatically crosses her legs, and looks me up and down.

"On my grandfather's seventy-second birthday, a ghost appears who calls himself the Lord of the Harvest."

"Actually, love, I always preferred Prince of Halloween."

I quick-draw the Nerf gun and shoot it into the Illustrated Man’s stomach. Mr. Dark collapses in upon himself. Typically I would hunt him to whatever Midwestern Gothic hell has dibs on him, but he will be back in a year and a day. I have no doubt of that. For the moment, I am going to have some fun.

I stomp over to the man in the wig and sunglasses who cannot balance in his boots. I reach into his pocket and see a sight that brings me joy: the driver's license of one Friend, Arnold.

I reach into my own pocket and pull out my phone.
"Call Fairest Michael."

It rings once, twice, and then a voice answers.

"Hello, Rian. What do you want, man? It has been a hell of a day. I have three girls in the ICU. I had to deal with Sean and the Prince. She brought me a head in a bag. It was a whole thing."

"Oh Mikey, I have a gift for you. I came to my Fetch’s place to wish him a happy birthday."

"I have explained at length how much I wish you would not taunt him."

"Yes, and I promptly ignored you. But guess who is at his birthday party?"

"I have no way of knowing that, Rian."

"Why, none other than Mister Arnold Friend."

There is a long silence.

"Excuse me?"

"Arnold Friend. Where are you going, where have you been, and so such."

All the warmth drains from the voice of the King of Spring.

"I will be over there as quickly as I possibly can be. Do not let him go anywhere."

"Oh laddie, I need to play with my Fetch, and I would not deny you a hunt."

I press the button and the line goes dead.

Even through the sunglasses, I can see Arnold sweating. I cannot help myself. After all, I am only human, except I am not.

"Run, boyo. The King of Spring is coming, and he does not do thank-you notes."

Arnold launches himself out of a window. It is a good call, really.

I turn to my Fetch, who has a look of shock on his face. I walk over to the record player.

"I know you think I am a right bastard, but I come bringing gifts tonight. Arnold is a gift for Michael, and this is for you."

I put the needle on the record.

People try to put us down (Talkin' 'bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin' 'bout my generation)

I see him stare at me. The look in his eyes is colder than any Winter Queen. So satisfying.

I turn back to my Fetch, who represents everything I hate: the sanitization of suburban life. Every ounce of danger has been removed. No more M-80s or lawn darts of my youth. I put the cardboard sleeve on his lap.

"Signed by Keith Moon himself. Now tell me that is not a thoughtful present."

"Fuck you, sanctimonious little shit," my Fetch hisses as he throws the record sleeve on the ground.

I offer myself the chair across from him and sink into it.

"Big word coming from an actual, literal walking pile of trash. But it is our birthday, so I will let it slide."

I lean toward him.

"Damn. I know we did not know about the benefits of sunscreen back in the day, but I thought fifty-five years in Arcadia left me looking strange."

"And you think fifty-five years in the real world was easy? Having to find my place, never knowing who I am, trying to figure out why I had so many conflicting memories?"

"For the love of something I love, you were sixteen. Every sixteen-year-old doubts who they are and cannot remember what happened twenty minutes ago. You were born into this world slightly later than you should have been. You make it sound like you were thirty or fifty. It is not like I had a whole life set up for you. You had to fit in, too."

I stand up and walk toward a bookshelf, leaning in to look at family photos and half a century's worth of tchotchkes.

"Was that Julie Cohan I saw out there?"

"Yes," exhales my Fetch. "Fifty years next spring."

I take a moment to mull it over.

"Respect."

I reach out a fist to him. He pauses, looks at it, and touches his knuckles to mine.

"I never did have the balls to ask her out."

"Does this mean you are going to be a civilized human being going forward?"

I start to laugh.

"You know for a fact it does not. I am still going to kill you as soon as I get bored with you."

He stands up and walks toward me.

"You are a trespasser here. I could shoot you or call the cops. No one is going to arrest a seventy-year-old man surrounded by his family on his birthday."

"Damn, lad, that is just boring. If you are going to murder me, I will not hold it against you, but come on. I just belly-shot one of Midwestern Gothic's greatest monsters and sent the embodiment of predators running through the streets in terror. You can at least make my murder interesting."

A figure in her twenties enters the room. Her hair is a combination of Julie’s red and my auburn. I look at her and see my eyes. It is like being hit in the face.

"Grandpa Tim? Everything alright in here?"

She holds two bottles of root beer. She hands one to her grandfather and offers me the other.

"I never did get a taste for the hard stuff."

"Rian, this is Samantha. Samantha, this is Rian."

I pull the cap off the beverage and salute her with it.

"Rian Samhain, my dear."

I take a pull.

"Tastes like..."

"A fall night," says my Fetch.

"Heh, you are not wrong."

Samantha looks at me like she is examining a problem.

"I have never heard my grandfather mention you, and with a name like that, I would remember. How do you know him?"

"Oh, Samantha darling, I have known him all his life."

My Fetch laughs until he loses his breath. It is a habit we share.

"Wha..." Samantha begins.

Timothy interjects, "He is not wrong. He is not wrong."

She walks closer, leans in, and I know she has noticed my eyes.

"Grandma Julie said she thought she saw a ghost walk in the study. Are you a ghost, Rian? No, you cannot be a ghost. Are you the Lord of Summer's End? Lord of the Harvest? My Irish is a bit rusty."

I look to Timothy.

"I like her. She is clever. She must get that from her grandmother's side of the family."

I laugh just like my Fetch until I am out of breath.

"We were never clever. Witty, cunning, resourceful, but never clever."

Tim continues to drink his root beer.

"Speak for yourself."

"So let us recap."

She sits on an ottoman, dramatically crosses her legs, and looks me up and down.

"On my grandfather's seventy-second birthday, a ghost appears who calls himself the Lord of the Harvest."

"Actually, love, I always preferred Prince of Halloween."

I heard my Vans crunch on gravel provided by the lowest safe bidder. A cheap flashlight was in my hand as I walked through the lot behind the high school. Monitoring the PTA group chat was tedious, but sometimes it told you exactly what you needed. It told me about Suzie Rodriguez and her little cadre of monsters. Well, they were not monsters. They were good kids. They really were.

As the Fairest Prince and King of the Spring Court, it was my job to make sure they stayed safe. I had to admit that I was always shocked more of the Lost did not end up in education. What Dante and Rían spent an entire season traumatizing the town into not taking candy from strangers, I got done in a single semester.

The glamour here was incomparable. You could not find a better spread of Desire, Wrath, Sorrow, and Fear than a public high school. I saw the splatters of blood on the ground and moved with purpose behind the bleachers. There, I saw exactly what I did not want to see. Suzie and a half dozen of her cronies were there with glazed eyes and mumbling. Three vampires with shit-eating grins sat with their backs against the wall.

"Do I," I enunciated, letting my bass voice echo in the confined walls, "do I not come across as seriously as I would like?" I stalked toward the vampires.

The leader smirked and began to open her mouth. She tried to use her fleeting Majesty to give her words more impact.

"You ignorant leech," I said. "You have the table scraps of charisma. I made a contract with the concept itself."

I felt the glamour rush through my soul. My Mask dropped. The human facade was gone. What was visible now was what the Gentry made me. I invoked the land beyond the hedge. The light of Arcadia would slice open your cornea. The sound of Arcadia would destroy your ears and drive you to madness. The air of Arcadia would crush your lungs and boil your blood. I felt the words bubbling up. The ancient, reptilian part of my throat wanted to roar about the sun and the stars and the absolute futility of their tiny, blood-drinking lives. It wanted to tell them to kneel until their knees cracked.

Instead, I thought about the fact that Suzie Rodriguez still needed to pass her algebra midterm. I swallowed the gold and the fire, and I settled for a sigh that sounded like a closing tomb. She stood up and pressed her back against the chain-link fence. The other two leeches did the same as I was wrapped in the Splendor of the Envoy’s Protection. I took another step forward. More glamour glistened off my skin as the beauty and terror of my soul mixed together into a Mantle of Terrible Beauty.

Then came the Bedlam. I released all the remaining glamour in my system in one great burst. One of the vampires turned into a flock of ravens and shot past me. Another broke his fingers pulling open a hole in the chain-link fence, cutting himself to ribbons as he pushed himself through the smallest possible opening.

The leader just looked at me while crying tears of blood.

"What... what even are you?" she asked.

"I am Michael. I am disappointed. Now go tell your Prince I need to talk to her."

She took that chance to run past me so fast that I could not even see her move.

An hour later, I was sitting on a swing when I heard the very distinct sound of someone with perfect posture and perfect grace walking on asphalt in breakneck heels. Listen, I was designed to know fashion. I was literally built, scraped, and reformed, but anything fancier than Kohl’s is lost on me. Blame the American Midwest. I know that I do.

“Ya ok, so Mikey...” I heard a thick Irish brogue break the silence.

She had brought Sean as her second. It made sense. Everyone fucking loves Sean. He was a vampire, but he was also Detroit’s resident disaster. I had no idea how old he was or what his credentials were, but he was always either getting into or out of something that would leave a lesser being dead and broken on the floor. You still always felt the need to give him a bowl of soup, a blanket, and tell him it was all going to be alright.

There was a distinct clearing of the throat and he started again. “Michael, fairest prince of The Triple-Point Basin and heir to the hope Spring brings. May I present She with the highest of heels and juiciest of booties, Prince...” His volume dropped. “What is your name other than ‘Prince’? I just realized you’ve never brought it up.”

“Sean, I swear to Christ...”

“Whatever. Prince Princington. Wherever she sets foot, there her law holds sway... except here, I guess, because this is where Mike's law holds sway?”

Listen, if you want to employ the safety blanket known as Sean, you also have to deal with Sean.

She stood in front of me. She was maybe five feet tall and somewhere between fifty and three thousand years old. I had heard various explanations for how old she must be, but none of them seemed quite right.

“Well now,” she said. “Imagine my surprise when a trio of my least impressive vampires, most of whom looked like they survived a fight with a cat, came to me. They told me that the Fairest Prince politely but firmly requested an audience with me because they had decided to snack on some of his students. Students who are not pledged to him and not a glamour by him. Just a little cheerleading squad that he decided he had to keep safe. Very cute. Very ‘daddy,’ as the kids would say. Or would have said. I’m sure at some point some kid said it.”

I looked up at her. “The school is my territory. That means that the safety of everyone who is supposed to be on it is my responsibility. At least I have the common decency to write a letter every year and not go around pissing on everything like wolves do.”

“What am I supposed to do, Michael? You want me to tell the Kindred that there was once a graduate student who was taken from this realm by an eldritch toddler because they liked the color of his eyes? And, well, neither here nor there, he was resculpted to be a paragon of glory, charisma, and fair play. Now that he’s back in the room of the immortals, he can rend your mind with his glory, despite the fact that his entire wardrobe cost less than my thong?”

“I mean, I would probably make it a bit more flowery than that,” I replied.

She tossed a head at my feet. It was the leader of the vampires from earlier this evening. The face had begun to bloat but had not yet started to rot or turn to ash. She was definitely fresh out of the grave.

The Prince poked at it. “Here, you can have this. I assumed that this will put us back to even?”

“Oh, just her? Not the others?”

“Well, Fairest Prince, I am well aware that you dislike more bloodshed than you find appropriate, which is a number that is annoyingly low. And frankly, one of the Kindred whose brain you melted is still sitting in Elysium trying to recall their name. Another can’t look up from the ground because he’s afraid his retinas will be shredded. But this one was able to absorb your attempt to turn her brain to tapioca. That means she inevitably would have been inconvenient for me one day. So, you know, two birds with one stone.”

Halloween 2026

It’s a very special birthday party. I knock on the door and look at the little moppet who answers door. 

“Who the heck are you?” He says a mischievous look on his face. There is a resemblance… oh another life in another world. 

I squat down to his level “Well son, I’m Rían Samhain, I’m here to see Timothy Ferguson, I hear he’s having a party today. Is that true? I have some gifts for him right here.” I show him two wrapped boxes.

“Well I’m Timothy Ferguson…”

“Really? I recall him being a wee bit older than you.” 

“Timothy Ferguson III, they call me Trip.” 

Oh, I will admit, that one hits me like a punch to the gut. I know I’ve been gone for a while. Part of me expected kids. But grandkids I feel like that choice was a bit dramatic. 

 “Well Timmy I’d love to give something important to your grandfather can you show me where he is?”

Timmy walks me through the house, 55 years worth of family and friends. 55 years worth of tedious. As we walk to the back of the house I see children, grand children, I get eye contact, nods, waves. I know what they’re thinking, he looks his like grandpa did as a child. It’s word we have a cousin I’ve never met before me, and one woman, somewhere near my age, we make eye contact, and she drops her plate. The wife? I have a feeling she knew Timmy when he still looked just like me…

We reach a closed door. Timmy telling me Grandpa is right behind it with his important friends, I thank him, and I let myself in. 

I open the door with a smile in my face. And my eyes automatically center on the other me in the room. I know, deep down in my bespoke soul, but all my changeling eyes see is what he’s made of. 

Public safety notices wrapped around the frame of a high quality bmx bike. Chain-link fills out his frame. Inside his chest is a Walkman playing public service announcements. 

I take my eyes off him in disgust. The other men in the room. One stands in a tuxedo, gloves and a walking cane. He seems to tall for the room, like he should stretch beyond it. His skin the color of a legal document. I tilt my head. Along his collar and sleeves patterns of primordial darkness spiral. 

The other.. honestly he’s dressed like me, but instrrd of eternal youth offered by the hedge, it’s manufactured. His hair is too thick, like carpeting stapled to his head. Sunglasses indoors, a sin I’m guilty of tonight, but his are high end,  it’s the boots that grab my attention though. He stands in them… wrong. Readjusting his stance, always on the verge of falling over. He looks past my shoulder in to the party leering at someone… I turn my head to follow his eyes.. he is  fixated on someone to young for the attention. 

My fetch looks at me and offers me the smallest of smiles “I’ve been wondering when you would visit, how kind do you to pick a day when my friends and family are hear.. how interesting of you to have come without your toys…”

I do my best impression of Kyle Reese pulling the left side of my coat open. Under my coat, a well made, hand crafted leather holster. Inside of it, a heavy foam blaster. I look down at my fetch … “oh Timmy, you know I come correct.”

Dante Thoughts

God, I hate this city. It is the middle of urban decay, the part of the city only the monsters go to. I do not even mean the Capital-M horrors type of monsters. Sure, there are Vampires and Lost, but I mean the ones who should know better. I mean the ones who should be holding on to something of themselves.

But as always, it is time for me to clean these things up. If people knew what I did for this city, they would know just how much of my night is spent making sure that this city does not burn down again. You will note that this city has not burnt down since 1805. Somehow they would frame it as me maipulating them.

I lean into a window and look myself up and down. God, it is annoying. Look at all those beautiful bastards in court. Tim, Kimmy, and Art were all people who were embraced in their 20s. Art is maybe in his 30s. Liv has been flawless since before I was born.

I lean in and look at myself carefully. I will blood through my veins, the thick, congealed ichor, as I slap my face in an attempt to get a bit of blush back in them.

The hair, just starting to thin, is still thicker than most men will ever have. The skin on my square jaw is starting to sag. The fact that I will spend forever just past my prime eats at a very specific part of me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see my little red friend. He has horns, cloven feet, and skin and hair the color of blood as he scampers behind me. He never talks to me anymore. We had a chat one time. I took his advice, I listened to what he had to say, and I thanked him for his time. He seemed slightly disappointed. Some part of cosmic karma prevents him from doing his worst when people give a respectful "thank you."

I turn around. “Yo! Rouge, sup bro?”

He flips me off as he scampers away.

It is too bad. It was nice to have a distraction. Now I need to turn the corner, and I need to accept the way I am going to spend the night.

Down alley after alley, through twist after turn, you will find a door that just has a neon sign reading HOLE flickering above it. God, the name makes me want to heave. It makes me slightly sad I cannot gag anymore. It is somehow monotropic, misogynist, and misandrist all at once.

Omnitropic?

It is organic and industrial. I love how much I hate it.

Okay. I am letting myself get distracted, and we cannot do that, at least not tonight. I rap my knuckles on the rusting steel door. The second I see the door start to move, I summon supernatural charisma and supernatural anonymity. It is a combination that has a lovely effect on the brain of sentient creatures.

A waif of a thing who should be at home resting on a school night looks up at me. “What the fuck do yo,” she starts. Then she looks at me, and confusion fills her eyes. It is a nasty little trick. It masks me in a very specific way. I do not become someone you know, and I do not become someone you love. Your brain reaches in low and pulls forth the memory of someone who once did you a favor. Then, the magic makes me remind you of them.

Somewhere, there is a werewolf who is still in therapy because it bothered him so much.

“What I want you to do is let me in.” I look her up and down. She could be 19, or she could be 1900. Honestly, the way the living, the dead, and the damned age at slightly different rates really is enough to give you a headache. “And then, go to sleep. Take a nap, whatever it is that you do, and when you wake up, find a less shitty job.”

Table, diner, and a tuxedo who was at least seven feet tall, three hundred, maybe four hundred pounds, dining on human flesh while the camera records everything. I almost start to vomit before my brain reminds my body that I do not have to. I remind myself it is not just about my personal distaste for this disgusting act. It is about how bullshit like this manages to make my life more difficult.

I walk through the studio doors. The fiend is deep in his meal to the point where I need to clear my throat. He looks up at me. He stands. Sweet shit, I keep forgetting how tall seven feet is. Anyone who is five feet tall must live through the world in a constant state of fear.

I pull the ridiculous piece of German engineering out of my pocket. H&K Model 23. Sixteen inches from the tip of the silencer to the hammer. No matter how much gun you thought you were going to need, this is too much. I honestly do not know how people can carry it around without using actual magic to hide it.

I pull the trigger twice, putting one bullet in each knee. I go to put the firearm away, and then it registers. I should have heard seven feet and four hundred pounds of gristle fall to the ground. I did not.

I look to the knees of his pants. There are definitely two holes, although he does not seem particularly bothered by them. I look up. We make eye contact. I look back down at his knees, then back up to his eyes.

He brings his massive size twenty foot down on the table and starts to charge me, the solid oak table fracturing more and more with each step upon it.

Three things happen at once. I try to dive out of the way. I try to invoke the blood to mask me with invisibility. I throw the five-pound lump of overengineered German firearm at his face. Two of them work, although I am not sure which. I feel him grab my ankle, then he throws me across the room. I go ass over tea kettle over the disgusting display, rolling on the bodies of his victims.

I do what my blood does best. I reach out. I picture myself wrapping up all the fear, all the darkness, all of the atrocities that have been performed in this room. I push it out, trying to engulf him in it. He stops for a second, and there is more than enough time for me to try to take my leave. The strategy of barricading the door with a dumpster and then setting this place on fire with him in it is a completely valid one.

I pass, I feel something sharp and heavy embed itself in my arm, and then in my torso, and then I cannot feel my arm. Why can I not feel my arm? What the crap?

I look down. My arm is on the ground, already starting to rot. I have not been dead long enough for things to just pop into dust. He looks at me. He snorts. He laughs. I do the only reasonable thing I can do in the situation. I wrap my hand around the massive cleaver handle. I pull it out of my torso, and I bring my weight down on it into his arm.

Despite my clan’s gifts, super strength is not something I rely on too often. It feels weird, but it passes through his arm with almost no resistance. He stands there, a confused look on his face.

“Whaaaa?”

Then I remember the structural difference between a vampire and everyone else. As long pumps of blood scatter and squirt across the room, with whatever kind of ridiculous blood pressure this changeling freak is dealing with, all I can do is take a step back. I wish I could tell you I said something cool, but I just point at him. I snicker and say:

“You stupid fucking idiot. You use your blood as blood. You need it to move oxygen around your body and maintain pressure.”

I pry the cleaver out of his body, and I bring it down into his rib cage.

“I keep forgetting. No matter what kind of weird supernatural weirdos you are, you are all basically still human. Me, I had to let that go a while back.”

He falls to his knees. I bring the cleaver down on the back of his neck, hacking at it until the head falls off.

“And you are exactly the kind of thing that cannot survive if you chop its head off.”

And that is my turn.

I hear a throat clear. I look up, covered in eldritch blood, and see the face of Michael. I would bother to explain how Michael looks to you, but I am told that part of his changing physiology is that everyone sees a different face. No matter what he sees in the mirror, you see the picture that would make your toes curl. He is wearing some blazer from Kohl’s, a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of Vans.

“Very few things Mr Cross, can survive getting there heads cut off.”

Probably the most attractive man I have ever been in the same room as, and I know for a fact he buys his clothes at JCPenney.

He uses his hand to me. “Would you like to explain all of this? Is there a particular reason that I am getting phone calls from changelings I barely know, summoning me to a club I have never heard of, to find a vampire, who frankly I spend far too much time with, hacking one of my subjects to pieces? Is there some reason I should not just reach into your mind and destroy whatever sense of self you have left?”

I make a grand sweeping gesture. “Because one of your subjects, when you were not paying attention, was making money filming himself eating humans alive on the dark web. I am pretty sure if you kill me, you set a very dangerous precedent for your approval of such things.”

“You know if one of your vampires killed one of my changelings this brazenly, your Prince would already have killed them and been on her way to kill every single one of the Lost she could find.”

“Yeah, but the difference is the Prince is completely okay with the city being a festering shit hole as long as it is one she can manage. You actually want to make the city a better place. And that means you are not going to kill me for no reason other than taking out a serial killer who is part of your community.”

“God damn it,” he whispers under his breath. “Fine. Go. And next time you find something that fucked up in my city, let me know.”

Leavin the Hole, I stumble down the streets, you really dont appreciate the fact that your arm weighs… alot. My fromer arm is in a messenger bag rhythmically. 

Eventially I make it home in… well two pieces, Michael kindly clingwrapped what was left of my arm for me.

I unlock the door and lean in 190lbs of dead weight.

Liv is there waiting for me. The current favrote child of a ghoul linage reaching back to rome. I drop my… well arm. I see her look me over. Gallons of blood on my cloths.. One fewer arm than typical, she takes it in a fair amount of stride

She looks at me “And were were you tonight?”

“I killed a cannable changeling, almost started a war between the Kindred and the Lost. Then talked Mike out of it.”