Quite a long update, so I apologise if some of it doesn't read too well.
Chapter 9 – London’s Burning
“Yes, Humphrey, you heard me correctly. Creekside Industrial Estate, Deptford. It should begin in roughly thirty-eight minutes. There may be automatic weapon fire.”
You duck into the shadows of the alleyway, heading south-east. Behind you, a truck roars past. Then another.
Humphrey says, weakly, into your ear,
“Patrician, I…er…I don’t know…”
“These are the people responsible for staking out that poor bastard who got caught on camera,” you lie. “We’re making sure they can’t do any more damage – but we need your help.”
Cutting through the darkness of a concrete children’s playground, you slip past three young kine boys smoking weed on the swings. They spit and yell something abusive in your direction.
Your pace quickens.
Humphrey sighs.
“So what do you need from me?” he asks.
“We’ve already got friends on the ground,” you tell him. “They’ll be waiting in squad cars, patrolling the perimeter, making sure nobody gets too close. What we need is a dictat from above. Some old lady hears gunfire, she dials 999, and she’s told it’s a training exercise and she should stay indoors. An officer hears about it, he’s told it’s Scotland Yard taking down drug dealers.”
“And if Scotland Yard hears about it,” Humphrey murmurs, “I tell them it’s the Security Service. All right, Patrician – I know how to keep things quiet. But if any civilians are harmed, any at all…”
He goes quiet for a moment.
“Did you give my predecessor so many sleepless nights?” he says, with a weary little laugh. “No – I’d rather you didn’t answer that. Goodnight, Patrician. I’ll do my best to help.”
*
You creep onto the edge of the canal just after two. On the ridge, the barons are gathering. There’s a little nervous laughter – almost a sense of festival. Turcov, the lank Baron of Richmond & Houslow, is passing around a silver hip-flask. Filled with the blood of a Spanish prince, he declares proudly. Perfect for holding back the cold. Aldous Fesk, Malkavian primogen, lurks beneath his raincoat and cackles quietly to himself about the coming rain.
You slip into the group. A few glances; and then heads turn back towards the grey rooftops below. Figures are moving through the narrow streets. In threes and fours – now you’ll catch sight of a tall, looming shape trailing past the telegraph lines to the north, now a pack of wolf-like creatures dodging through the car park to the east. All of them converging upon the great warehouse in the very centre of the industrial estate.
Du Marchais is standing on the edge of the ridge, chatting with a scrawny Kindred in shirt and shorts. He turns, and acknowledges you, a satisfied grin spreading across his face.
“Come to see the fireworks, eh?” he says. “Well, well, I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you at all. I don’t suppose you know Don-”
“Finally,” the scrawny Kindred says, in a rangy American drawl, “somebody I’ve heard of. Pleased to meet you, Patrician.”
He takes your hand, grinning; he has, you can’t help but notice, an absolutely hideous moustache perched on his upper lip.
“Don Jamieson,” he says. “Like the whiskey. I heard a lot about you, sir.”
“Jamieson,” du Marchais tells you, “is an emissary recently arrived from our Kindred in New York. An honour, indeed, to have our American cousins visit us on the eve of such a momentous occasion.”
He smirks at you. He doesn’t seem to have picked up on the crack about ‘somebody I’ve heard of’.
“Is that right?” you reply.
Jamieson rocks cheerfully back on the heels of his shoes.
“Well,” he says, giving you a hearty wink, “I been in town for a week or so, picking up the sights. Just a vacation, y’know? And I look down from the heights and I see Kindred, Kindred, Kindred, all tooled up and heading south. Life in London always this exciting?”
“Rarely,” you murmur, turning to gaze back out towards the industrial estate. You’ve just made out the unmistakeable, gangly shape of Fellowes, picking his way fastidiously across the nearest rooftop.
“The first of many assaults,” du Marchais pronounces, “upon the strongholds of the Sabbat. The opening strike of the campaign to reclaim the south of the city.”
“That so?” Jamieson says. He scratches his eye. “I, uh, heard Fesk there saying you were going in to get one of your boys back. Interesting stuff."
Du Marchais pretends not to have heard. Jamieson just grins at him.
"Well," he says. "I’ll go chat to that saucy Tremere Baroness of yours. Just a tip from New York, Baron – fighting the Sabbat’s easy. Driving them out? That’s a little different. Evening, gentlemen.”
You watch him stroll away across the grass, hands in the pockets of his shorts, towards the rest of the group.
“He’s quite the hot-shot in New York, I hear,” du Marchais says, after a moment. “Though he lacks…decorum. That’s just the American way, I suppose.”
You clear your throat, significantly.
“Baron,” you begin. The use of the title is enough to get his attention.
“Baron,” you continue, “I am aware that I have acted wrongly; that I have failed to respect your rights and your authority in Whitehall. I behaved as if your domain was my domain, and I your equal. You might have killed me for this. Instead, you showed patience and restraint – and when the time came, you taught me a valuable lesson.”
You extend your hand.
“I want to thank you,” you tell him. “You found Rannigan when I could not. You reminded me of the limits of my powers – and the foolhardiness of my ambition.”
Du Marchais stares at you. His smile widens. And then, with a giggling, child-like laugh, he takes your hand.
“My dear boy,” he cries, “I’m so glad, so very glad that you’re being sensible about this. And, after all, you’re not unintelligent. I mean, your contacts alone…look, there’s no need for us to continue bickering. I can find work for you after tonight, don’t you worry.”
He glances across, and brightens. You turn.
The Prince is stalking up over the ridge. Three suited Brujah trail behind him.
He nods to the gathered Kindred, one after the other, as he passes them; then he comes to you.
“Ah,” he says, after a moment. His grey eyes rest upon you. “Have you contacted your kine friends in government, Sommers?”
“I have, sire,” you reply, bowing.
He nods, apparently satisfied.
“Good,” Kirkbeck says, and turns his attention to du Marchais.
“Esteban,” he murmurs, “how are we doing?”
Suddenly, du Marchais looks rather panicked.
“Well,” he gabbles, fast, “very well, sire, I think. Er…I think we’re ready to go, in fact. If you’d like me to give the signal…”
The Prince nods.
“Do it,” he says.
Du Marchais, fumbling about in his coat pocket, produces a mobile. He frowns at it, as if slightly confused by all of the buttons, before dialling a five-digit number.
“Sunrise,” he says, and hangs up.
For a moment, the night remains still. And then the shadows begin to move, far below.
A cackle of machine-gun fire, from somewhere to the south.
The warehouse doors burst open; figures dash out in all directions, scrambling for the cover of the vehicles in the car park.
Fellowes’ arm barely moves. Two muffled shots. Two of the figures fall back.
“One of our lot doing well,” du Marchais says, appreciatively.
Someone hands you a pair of binoculars. You raise them.
The remaining Sabbat in the car park have taken up a position behind a van. A flash, and a burst of blue flame. Someone begins to scream.
“What the hell was that?” Samantha Eames asks.
“No idea,” one of the Barons answers. “Ah! Don’t worry – here come the Nos.”
More gunfire. Bodies stream forward through the night. The Sabbat take aim; a Nosferatu falls.
“Sire,” du Marchais asks, suddenly, “ahm…where is the Sheriff? Shouldn’t she be here, in case the Sabbat…er…strike back?”
Kirkbeck shakes his head.
“She’s happiest down there,” he says.
An enormous grey wolf pounds forward out of the shadows, knocking one of the Sabbat back against the side of the van. Something shifts, and Erika Schiller’s standing there, slashing downwards-
The vampire implodes into ash. His fellows scatter. They don’t get far. On the roof above, Fellowes slips downwards and out of sight.
“Bravo!” someone says. “They’ve taken the front doors.”
Not a moment too soon, you think, passing on the binoculars; the windows of the apartment high-rise on the other side of the canal are lighting up. Far away, to the north, a police siren begins to wail.
“Make sure our boys in blue pick the car up before it gets too close,” says the Prince, without turning his head. “We’ll need at least another hour.”
It occurs to you that you’ve never seen him so imposing as he is now. Nothing has changed, outwardly, in his appearance, and he speaks in the same quiet monotone. It’s more a question of the atmosphere around him; the way the other Kindred turn to listen when he talks.
They’re all uncertain, you think. They’d got complacent, and settled, and now everything’s been upheaved.
Below, a vampire scrambles out of one of the upper warehouse windows. He gets halfway before he’s dragged back inside.
Du Marchais is whispering furiously to someone on his phone.
“There’s a couple of pack members on the top floor,” he says, glancing up. “Sounds like they’re dug in fairly, ah, deep. Took a couple of our Brujah down. But if we…”
A rattle of shots from inside. Another window shatters.
And then silence. A single howl rings out from the depths of the warehouse.
“Is that it?” Turcov asks.
Kirkbeck frowns.
“I believe that’s it,” he says. “Yes,” he adds, more loudly. “I think that’s it.”
The assembled Kindred break into spontaneous applause.
And below, the howl becomes a hundred howls, echoing out into the night with vigour and lust and triumph. The restraints of the Masquerade, cast off by a bloodied and victorious Beast.
*
It takes them some time to prise open the trapdoor, hidden beneath a stack of crates in the back rooms of the warehouse. Outside, the Kindred are counting Sabbat corpses.
The Sheriff takes a couple of steps downwards, into the darkness below.
She vanishes only for a second before climbing back up.
“Kindred remains down there,” she says.
Du Marchais, you notice, seems immediately relieved by this news; his entire body relaxes. Schiller must have seen it too, because she catches your eye before turning to tell the Prince,
“Six of them.”
Kirkbeck nods.
“I suppose,” he says, “it’s more than likely that one of the victims was Rannigan. A shame, a terrible shame. Load the bones onto stretchers and remove them. Through the front,” he adds, “so that all may see what the Sabbat is capable of.”
He taps at something with the tip of his shoe.
You lean forward.
A scrap of skin. Purpling, almost round. A bulging, hollow pustule of flesh, that sticks firmly to the concrete floor. It almost looks like a droplet from something that once hung, far above.
“A Tzimicse has been here,” the Prince mutters. He sounds almost weary at the thought of it.
*
The shovelhead squirms. Firm hands hold him in place.
“I don’t know nothing!” he yells.
“You kidnapped a Camarilla baron,” the Prince intones. “You and the rest of your filthy pack murdered him in cold blood. You understood the consequences of your actions.”
All around the car park, Kindred are listening.
“Nine of our number died tonight,” Kirkbeck says, loudly, for the benefit of the crowd. “Their deaths shall be added to the charges against your kind. They will be avenged, I promise you.”
He lifts the long machete.
“Sculptor Angelos gonna know about this!” the shovelhead shrieks. “He’ll come for all you Camarilla fucks!”
The Prince slices down across the creature’s throat. The machete sticks awkwardly at the bone, and Schiller has to step in to help.
Behind the execution, to your surprise, you see Samantha Eames turn her head away as the shovelhead dissolves into ash.
*
There’s still an hour until dawn.
You trudge home through the empty streets. Fellowes and the rest of the rank-and-file have been put to work clearing up the warehouse. The elders have returned to the Prince’s residence to celebrate.
And here you are, somewhere in between.
A couple of kine protestors, jubilant, stroll past you, arm-in-arm, something about overcoming some day.
You keep walking, trying to think.
Up ahead, on Frith Street, the sound of a window being broken. Silence.
And a shop on the corner explodes outwards. Glass and wooden splinters shatter out across the pavement. Flames roar and swell, caressing the ruined skeleton of the shop-front window. Someone’s thrown a petrol bomb.
Two figures dash away from the scene, their feet smacking against the cobblestones. Car alarms begin to wail, all around.
Not just a shop, you realise. A home above a shop. Because, high above the snaking fire, smoke rising through the remains of the narrow building, someone’s begun to scream.
Do you-
A) Help whoever’s trapped in there.
B) Keep walking. Kine are kine.
C) Well, since whoever’s in there will most likely be burnt alive anyway…I might as well head up there and drain them.
D) Chase the bombers.
YUUUUURIIi!!!!!
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