Mister Vampire: Requiescat in Potentia

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Mister Vampire: Requiescat in Potentia

Post by Chamomile »

The Makhzen are facing a total collapse of power in the western hemisphere. Their strongholds in the Texas Triangle, including Houston, their headquarters on this side of the world, remains firmly under their control, however they've been losing ground to unknown assailants in Atlanta and their powerbase in New Orleans never recovered from Hurricane Katrina - both incidents which the Cauchemar Communes swears up and down they had nothing to do with and that it is purely coincidence that they happened to be in a position to take advantage. The Makhzen's protracted shadow war with the Marduk Society over the Arizona Sun Corridor has long suffered from Makhzen splitting their resource between there and their reclamation efforts in New Orleans and Atlanta, with the end result that all three are entering a tailspin.

The prevailing line of thought in Houston is that now is the time to entrench themselves in their crown jewel to repel whatever underhanded treachery or blatant aggression the Cauchemar Communes and Marduk Society (respectively) have in store, but the Ulmian Mehtar Virgil Mason of Department 7 believes that the Makhzen should be turning their eyes westwards towards Los Angeles.

LA is possibly one of the greatest centers of soft power in the entire world and it is up for grabs. No mass emigration of ambitious supernaturals will be required to import a population capable of fighting for the city, nor will a sympathetic population have to be grown slowly over the course of decades (at least). With the city fractured and split, the Makhzen can reasonably control the entire city while representing barely 10% of its population. The plan has intentionally been kept from the greater supernatural community of Houston to prevent a supernatural emigration in an effort to get in on the ground floor of a new Makhzen kingdom, depleting Houston of a robust supernatural population when attack and subversion are both imminent. This suits Mason just fine. If the Ulmians are single-handedly responsible for establishing the Makhzen government in the city, then the Ulmians will be vital to the continued functioning of the city - for the Makhzen, and for whoever pushes them out of it a hundred years from now.

Mason has selected the ambitious and relatively young (in this incarnation, anyways) Marco Romero to lead this effort, promising him what forces the Ulmians can spare to support his takeover efforts. Marco has acquitted himself well in the Ulmians' Houston operations and he has exactly the mindset of power through irreplaceability that Mason needs to install a permanent Ulmian influence in Los Angeles, and on top of that, he's the focus of some resentment of the peers he left behind in the grunt ranks of the Ulmians Houston outfit, leading to rumors that he's favored by the higher ups due to alleged affiliation with Joaquin Murrieta and half-remembered encounters with Santa Muerte. Getting him out of the city is beneficial even if the Los Angeles job goes south.

Marco Romero has spent one lifetime being "the other guy" and spending this incarnation overshadowed by his partner in crime from nearly two centuries ago is nearly as unpalatable as making hundreds of millions of dollars is enticing. Los Angeles is where he'll make his mark and his fortune.

Welcome to the city of dreams.

---

Image

At 200,000 residents, San Barnardino is a speck of dust compared to the vast sprawl of Los Angeles one county over, and is one of hundreds of tiny cities too miniscule to bother with in America alone, tiny vassal states whose rulership is ultimately determined by cities with population and wealth an order of magnitude higher. When a city like Los Angeles comes under control of a syndicate, ambitious supernaturals fan out to smaller cities like San Barnardino, seeking to uproot the rulers affiliated with the former regime and replace them. Fortunately for everyone except those ambitious few, most minor princes are wise enough to defect when the big cities change hands. Those with genuine dedication to a syndicate are always found in the centers of power, and those who would rather rule a tiny kingdom undisputed than jockey for ten times the power against a hundred times the opposition languish in these satellite states, pledging their loyalty to whoever will let them keep their petty domain. For the rank and file supernaturals, this is where those who can't leave the cities behind come to avoid the conflict. The little cities are, to supernaturals as to mortals, a quieter place to live. Or unlive, as the case may be.

The hundred-odd supernaturals in San Bernardino are, thus, more than a little bit upset that the conflict one county over has sunk its claws into their quiet patch of people-eating paradise, which is why Marco is bothering with this backwater in the first place. That, and because San Bernardino represents the only particular concentration of Makhzen power in southern California. A decade prior, when the Makhzen were on the rise throughout the south, a would-be prince named Grant Ellis made his own attempt on the perpetually unstable Los Angeles. After losing to the Griffith Pack, and badly, he contented himself with seizing San Bernardino, then controlled by the Chain of Coronis, and imported with him what was left of his army, a few dozen Makhzen supernaturals who had once dreamed of empire, their ambitions blunted by heavy losses against the Pack.

After years of the peace and quiet San Bernardino's residents are accustomed to, several of the supernatural residents have gone missing, most of them affiliated with the Makhzen prince. Someone's making a push, and already the city's supernatural population is beginning to drain as unaffiliated locals head to San Diego, Bakersfield, or Las Vegas to wait for the latest conflict to blow over and hope that someone will get Los Angeles under control before this happens again.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Marco is of course rather perturbed by the rumors of disappearances and discontent surrounding his new digs. He'll start his investigation of the matter by racking his brain as to what groups would most profit by muscling into the turf of Mr. Ellis.

He has a Logic+Research pool of 2 to 6 (6 for the archive specialization, 2 for anything that doesn't cover) and rating 3 backgrounds in Makhzen Politics and LA Crime as well as a rating 4 in Finance.
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Post by Chamomile »

There's been an influx of gang members into San Bernardino from Los Angeles in the past few months, leading to an uptick in homicide rates that predates attacks on Makhzen guards by a few weeks. It could be coincidence, but the timing is exactly what a Masquerade cover for shadow war would look like, driving up the homicide rate so that a few mutants and their troglodyte ringleader vanishing in the night is chalked up to the general trend and not investigated too closely, while simultaneously tying up detectives and journalists with a multitude of cases ensuring that no one will really go digging on any particular case and it imports lots of gangsters into the town, whose combination of a low on-average level of education and lack of credibility with mainstream society means that the flexibility of the Tradition of Misdirection is an option, and on top of that they're far more willing to resort to violence than bodyguards or accountants. Gangsters are such flexible tools - it's why so many supernaturals try to make sure there's always a certain amount of poverty clinging to the wretched underbelly of any given city.

Through his criminal contacts, Marco is able to pin down MS13 as the likely pawns of the supernatural. Though several other gangs have moved in as a response, MS13 were the first, the biggest, and the most organized, entire sets moving in all at once and hitting the ground running, while the others moved in as a reaction, trying to avoid being outcompeted in a new market.

On the other end of the Masquerade, there's been three main killings of people who matter (along with a few dozen mortals no one cares about):

1) Sid Chambers, a troglodyte and his mutant crew principally responsible for guarding and operating Patton State Psychiatric Hospital, where burying patients in unmarked graves after their unexplained deaths officially stopped occurring in 1934, but pragmatically speaking about half of the hospital beds are "occupied" by people who were fed to the orderlies or their guests years ago. Sid and his team were picked off in their homes within 36 hours of one another. None of them were killed at the hospital where they actually worked, and all of them were killed in groups of one or two. No patients are missing from the inventory, so the revenge killings of a crazed Luminary have been ruled out.

2) A pair of strigoi, Rogelio Lyons visiting Lynette Becker at her manor. She was the sheriff, and he her top informer, and were presumably meeting to discuss the killing of Sid Chambers. It isn't known whether one or the other in particular (or both) was the target. Exact details are unavailable, as the whole building was burnt down, presumably to hide the evidence of what was by far the most overt attack of the push. A number of blackened assault weapons were found clutched by burnt skeletons in the rubble, which suggests some kind of full-on assault, and gunfire was heard in the night, so this attack has been attributed to the mysterious aggressors by reason of not fitting typical gang activity at all, but little evidence is available. The attack occurred about a week ago, the night after the last of the killings of the Patton Hospital staff.

3) Jay Jordan, a werewolf who missed a handful of appointments and then turned up just yesterday, shot to pieces and surrounded by corpses, roughly human but too mangled up to make out many details. While he had been one of the premier warriors of the Makhzen during the fight against the Griffith Pack ten years ago, since the retreat to San Bernardino Jay has become withdrawn from politics and spent most of his time roaming the countryside, finding secluded places to wolf out and run wild. Since he'd been prone to missing appointments anyway, it's unknown exactly when he was killed. The corpses were at least a day or two old, the first missed appointment was six days ago, and he'd last been seen alive a week before that. The man who discovered the corpses has been successfully labeled a nutjob and/or liar and his story confined to tabloids, but the investigation into the actual scene of the crime is still ongoing. Mr. Ellis is typically wary of Makhzen from outside the city, viewing each of them as potential threats to his power, but he is far more concerned about the much more immediate threat to his power posed by these killings and as such has instructed his people not to get in Marco's way if he decides to examine the evidence firsthand.

So far as which groups would most profit from an invasion, San Bernardino has a bad history and a border with the Griffith Pack, which would put them at the top of the list for potential invaders. The King With Three Shadows has a presence in LA and unlike the big four syndicates, he's not shy about starting wars when he wants something. Along the same lines, it's not out of the question that the Marduk Society is responsible, cleaning out minor Makhzen outposts or trying to establish a beachhead for their own attack on Los Angeles, although using gangsters as catspaws is outside their usual modus operandi. They typically prefer psuedo-official cults.

EDIT: I'll go ahead and add in a timeline of events, as well. The starting date for this campaign has been randomly selected as March 1st, 2015.

February 16th: Jay Jordan last seen alive
February 20th: Some of Sid Chambers' staff are picked off in groups of one or two
February 21st: Sid Chambers and the rest of his staff are picked off
February 22nd: Attack on Becker manor
February 23rd: Jay Jordan misses a planned meet-up with a friend
February 27th: Latest possible date Jay Jordan could have been killed based on decay of corpses
February 28th: Jay Jordan's body discovered along with several unidentified mangled humans
March 1st: Marco Romero gets involved
Last edited by Chamomile on Tue Oct 21, 2014 7:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

What supernatural type is Grant Ellis, anyway?

Marco decides the Jay Jordan murder scene seems like the most promising lead for a medium such as himself and will take a couple mooks with him to investigate the scene.
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Post by Chamomile »

Grant's a Nosferatu.

The Jay Jordan murder scene doesn't have any of the trappings of a police investigation except for the yellow caution tape and a pair of official looking people standing watch - official looking people who are in fact vampire spawn. There's no little numbered cards listing where evidence was found or other evidence that a forensics team has been to visit. None of the local supernaturals happen to be any good at forensics, and no one ever bothered to get a forensics team so indoctrinated into a cult that it was safe to point them at a werewolf corpse and specifically tell them to find out what happened. The corpses have begun to show clear signs of decay, though it's kind of hard to tell for the mooks who were ripped to pieces where their wounds stop and regular decomposition begins.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Marco'll briefly interact with the spawn in order to be polite and ask if they've seen anything but for the most part he wants to get right to work. His plan for the evening is to first read the scene with psychometry (pool of 9) before disturbing anything. He also has a perception of 11 and supernatural senses if that means anything obvious pops out right away.
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Post by Chamomile »

A handful of bound and gagged victims surround a growing bonfire. Masked thugs, some of them heavily armed, stand watch. A number of younger men, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, stand shirtless with their faces painted. Shooting up on various drugs of choice for courage, each one in turn feeds one of the victims into the pyre, ignoring their pleas for mercy. With each victim fed into the flames, a rat monster, presumably a nezumi in war form, growls and hisses from the shadows just at the edge of the fire. A man, fully clothed but with his face painted like a skull, watches the younger men execute the victims, and occasionally glances back towards the rat monster.

Whatever ritual this is, it is interrupted by the attack of Jay Jordan. Emerging from the woods, the werewolf carves through a pair of guards before anyone can even react. The rat shrieks in fury but retreats rather than attacking. Consumed now by battle fury, the wolf fights the thugs, slaughtering close to a dozen of them, but even in war form there's only so much gunfire from shotguns and assault rifles he can take. The wolf is ultimately killed, and the surviving cultists flee to nearby vehicles (those who haven't already), racing away from the scene of the battle.

Time races forward, the sky shifting from night to day to night again, tiny scavengers begin picking at the corpses. Someone discovers the bodies, freezes in shock, and then runs back the way he came. The vampire spawn arrive to tape off the area. And then Marco himself arrives, makes a bit of polite conversation, steps towards the bodies and, with a jolt, is returned to the present.

Judging by the amount of day/night cycling in the psychometric flashback, the battle took place three days before it was discovered, on the 25th.
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Post by Whipstitch »

(Man, I totally thought I had posted already. I'm an idiot.)

If there's enough shade to give some cover from the sun Marco'd like to try summoning Jordan's ghost (dicepool of 8).
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Post by Chamomile »

Things already take place at night unless you go out of your way to wait for daylight. Lots of monsters lose their powers in daylight but none of them lose their powers at night, so the supernatural world runs on a nocturnal schedule (those that need sleep at all, anyways) unless for some reason they are specifically planning to catch one of those nocturnal-by-necessity monsters flatfooted.

Jay Jordan's departed spirit is still in warform, bleeding from dozens of bulletholes, mouth and hands/paws stained red. He walks about in a daze, growls and bares his fangs at Marco upon being summoned, but his eyes are glazed and unfocused.
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Post by Whipstitch »

"We have never met but we are Kindred. Your death demands answers and with your aid I will find them."

(So, yeah, I'll ask him what he was doing and if he has any ideas about the other various deaths. If he needs convincing I know the club handshake (a Friendly Banter of 5 from Charisma 2 and Makhzen Politics 3) and can make an Appeal to Emotions of 12 (Willpower 6, Empathy 6).
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Post by Chamomile »

Mention of vengeance brings a bit of focus to Jordan's spirit - not quite coherence, but focus, at least. "Liar. Traitor. Backstabbing rat!" he snarls. Marco presses for details: Does he know which rat in particular we're looking for? "A rat for the Pack. They were the only ones who knew. The only ones who could set that fire. To kill Becker and Lyons on the same night! Who else would know he would be there, he, who walks in on a moonbeam and leaves as a bat? Had to know. Who could know, and how? False friends, lying traitors! Said the war was long over. Said we could be friends. Said it was safe. Lied and listened and waited until he knew what he needed!" Any particular name? "Yvonne. Eddie. Trevor. A rat, a rat who listened...Could be any of them." How exactly did he find the rat here, anyway? "Invader needs footsoldiers. Cannon fodder. Found the places where he found his pawns. Found his scent. Smelled like rat. Smelled familiar, but...Not like any I knew. Had to be one of them! Had to be! No one else knew! Followed the scent here, to demand answers. To demand vengeance! Rat got away. Have to follow the rat..."
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Post by Whipstitch »

Marco pauses for a moment, choosing his words carefully. The last thing he needs to deal with is an irritated werewolf-wraith.

"I believe you, but we both know how these games are played. I need any evidence you can think of regarding the Becker killings. If I can prove that the Pack struck first and without cause than no outsiders can deny us retribution due to the lies of a rat."
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Post by Chamomile »

Jordan paces restlessly, snarls out "no one else knew! It had to be them! Who else could have known?"
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Post by Whipstitch »

"I'm sure you're right, I'm just trying to work out all the angles. I've got to go, but I have a pen here, so if you could make a signed statement for me first it may prove helpful later on if anything were to happen to your current form..."

Assuming nothing interferes Marco will excuse himself. He'll make some calls and see if any of his Ulmi buddies know about rat/nezumi cultists or Pack affiliated supernaturals named Yvonne, Eddie or Trevor. Otherwise he plans on keeping this lead under his hat for a bit given that he's looking for a metaphorical as well as a literal rat. The next day after his power points come back (which is in the afternoon, as it happens) he'd like to visit the Becker manor and make a reading of what's left.
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Post by Chamomile »

I'll point out for the record that wraiths cannot interact with anything not made of wood, which most pens are not. Since summoning the victim for signed statements is presumably a pretty routine step in murder investigation for Marco, it's not unreasonable to assume he carries around a special wooden pen for ghost witnesses, but I thought I'd mention that a wooden pen is in fact required.

In any case, Marco is in luck. The local Ulmian outfit happens to have had a run-in with Kit Strive and her personal posse, which includes people by all three of those names, and two of them are known to be nezumi. Presumably the third one is as well - they never figured out what Yvonne was. The run-in was a strained but not ultimately hostile territorial dispute. Kit didn't particularly appreciate the Ulmians operating in her neck of the woods, but was eventually persuaded that the Ulmians, being that they aren't trying to occupy any territory in the area, weren't a threat to her dominion.

Image

Since there's nothing immediately obviously supernatural at the burnt ruins of the Becker Manor, secluded in the woods north of town, the regular police have been assigned to watch the place, but since those regular police are ultimately owned by Grant Ellis, they're as willing to let Marco examine things as the vampire spawn were.

A meeting between Lyons and Becker is interrupted by a bus ramming through the gates and into the room. Becker is pinned underneath the bus, Lyons is sent flying into the wall. Thugs pour out and begin exchanging gunfire with the private security, alarmed but not quite stunned into inaction by the sudden and unusually overt attack. Lyons is executed almost immediately by the attacking thugs, but Becker is less easily dealt with. Fast, strong, and already in fairly close proximity to the thugs, she carves a swath through the thugs before the bus explodes, and the bomb has a lot more fire than you'd expect, and a lot less blast. The mansion immediately begins going up in flames. A few survivors stagger away, and are picked off by a sniper. Or multiple snipers? The place doesn't quite know - they died in the rubble, but the attackers were in some distant tree.

After the survivors are dead, and while the mansion is going up in flames, a rat climbs through the burning manor. It transforms into a masked man and rips a safe out of a crumbling wall, drops it in a mirror pocket, and then transforms into a rat again, scurrying away.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Chamomile wrote:I'll point out for the record that wraiths cannot interact with anything not made of wood, which most pens are not. Since summoning the victim for signed statements is presumably a pretty routine step in murder investigation for Marco, it's not unreasonable to assume he carries around a special wooden pen for ghost witnesses, but I thought I'd mention that a wooden pen is in fact required.
(Yeah, I thought about, since most wood pens are hobbyist kit jobs. I figured it wasn't a big deal though given that it may be possible to just wrap a pen in some paper and do it that way. Worst case scenario, I was prepared to use a pencil.)

Marco lights a cigarette and returns to his car with his men in tow. "Miggy, you're driving, I've got some thinking to do. Fucking California, man. This shit wouldn't fly in Houston."

(So, how much does Makhzen Politics 3 tell me about Elliot Grant's popularity with his subjects? Marco finds it a bit odd that Jay Jordan apparently felt the need to handle the rats all by his lonesome.)
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Post by Chamomile »

The capture of San Bernardino just barely earned Grant enough credibility with the remnants of his army to prevent a coup from within. The ones who still had dreams of conquest returned to Houston with nothing good to say about him, and the ones weary from war and willing to settle down for a few decades were generally unhappy with him, but for the same (varied) reasons they didn't return to Houston to find another campaign to sign up for, they didn't particularly want to make a fight out of it. The supernaturals who lived here before Grant showed up want almost nothing more than to be left alone, so they're not super thrilled to have a former war hawk running things, but are likewise unwilling to do anything drastic about it. Grant doesn't have a lot of friends, but since he's smart enough not to stir the pot, he also doesn't have a whole lot of people willing to go to the hassle of being his enemy, even if his death would make their night just a little bit brighter.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Marco decides that now isn't really the time for lone wolf bullshit and decides to contact Grant Ellis and see if they can have a chat.
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Post by Chamomile »

Grant is very willing to discuss the ongoing crisis with anyone willing to help solve the problem, over the phone or in person at the dillapidated old motel where he usually meets with people. It's the kind of place where someone who looks like a cross between a burn victim and a crack addict can come and go without raising an eyebrow.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Sounds lovely. Motel it is.
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Post by Chamomile »

Image

The motel is a haven for hookers, transients, and other people polite society would rather pretend didn't exist. Woe unto the family of four middle class Americans who pull into this motel for a place to stay while on their way to Disneyland, like the one Grant's snacking on when Marco arrives. "Ah, sorry about the mess," Grant says, shoving the father, terrified moans gagged by the cloth shoved in his mouth, back into a closet with the rest of the kidnapped family, "these just checked in and I don't usually get a chance to feed on middle class blood. Poorer people taste...Greasier, most of the time. Rich blood is smooth. Used to have a daeva friend, she'd bring me clubbers." His eyes grow distant. "Too drunk to know what was going on, could tap 'em half dry and they'd blame it on a hangover, and there was always enough to go around with just a little bit of Authority. No Masquerade problems, no worries about the herd growing thin. It was nice." He snaps back to reality. "Eh, anyways," he says, "these attacks. I hope you've got some good news about 'em."
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Marco shakes his head and produces the statement he took from Jay Jordan.

"Best news I have is that your boy Jay's instincts were probably right. I did a reading at Lynette's that backs up his statement. The fucking A-Team drove a bus right through her house and greased everyone while a rat shifter went right for her safe. I was hoping she just gone underground but the fire they started was serious enough that it may have snuffed even a strigoi. I haven't tried summoning her, Chambers or Lyons yet for lack of a body, but I could try if you think it'd help."
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"Fuck, they drove it through the house? When we found the remains we figured it was just how what they used to drive there," Grant runs his hands over his pale, bald scalp, "this isn't like the Pack at all. A little bit of hypocrisy in the name of retribution I'd expect, but this? This is a huge Masquerade risk, can you imagine how hard it'd be to suppress this if even one halfway respectable story got to print before we squelched it? And so long after the war's end? Just not their style. What would make them try something this crazy? Maybe it's not them, maybe that Silmoore kid, he's pushed the envelope a little in the past, not like this, but still...Why would he be coming after us when he's got his hands full with Lestrand, though?"

Grant sighs with frustration. "Alright, for Chambers I can give you the number for Dan Slade, he's one of Becker's people. Or was, I guess, but he's in charge of cleanup, he took care of the bodies for Chambers and his staff. He didn't get that job by being sloppy, I'll bet he's still got the body or an urn or something hidden away somewhere. If this isn't just an attack against the Makhzen, if this is more about what's in that safe than who owned it, maybe he'll know more about that, about why someone would want to kill him other than weakening my powerbase. And if you can manage to get Becker up here, she can tell us what's in that safe, failing that, maybe Lyons can."

"Drove a fucking bus through the house," Grant mutters, then gets up and makes for the closet. "If there's anything else you think I need to know, keep talking, I just really need a drink right now. You want something? I've got a thrall who can grab you a beer from the corner store or whatever."
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"No sir, but thanks. Anyway, Jordan believed that some of Kit Strive's crew were involved badly enough to die shaking one of them down, but I'm too new in town to say much about that. Otherwise I agree that the whole thing doesn't sound like the Pack. The Cauchemar back home were more like a train: hard to stop once they finally get going but you could always hear them coming."
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"Suit yourself," Grant says, pulling one of his victims out of the closet and biting into her, taking a long drink and then sighing with release. "Strive's a werewolf," he continues, "and she's a werewolf's werewolf, she'll get hostile on the slightest provocation, but this kind of thing isn't much like her. I'd expect her to come here demanding someone's head on a stick if they'd crossed her, or maybe just rip it off and send it to me with a note saying that's what happens to people who do whatever the Hell it is that pissed her off. And she wouldn't be driving a bus through a house, either, she'd just catch 'em alone, wolf out, and shred 'em. God knows she loves doing that, and the Pack hates fucking with the Masquerade." He takes another drink from the wriggling girl, his thirst already sated but the stress of the attacks driving him to excess. "Maybe it's not Strive. Jay was just after some of her people, right? Maybe they're acting without her knowledge. Maybe some other faction's got something on one of 'em or they're trying to make it as a vanguard by picking a fight with old enemies or something."
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