Search Posts
The Ultraviolet Kind “If you want forever, close your eyes and surrender to me
Nestled on the north side of the Monterey Bay in California’s coastline, the fief of Santa Cruz softly glows against the deep black of the Pacific Ocean. While San Francisco roars with perpetual intrigue, Santa Cruz slumbers. Don Bartolomé de Alba, the Prince of Santa Cruz since its inception as a Camarilla domain, rules with largesse uncharacteristic of his clan. Aside from a few modest demands, he allows those Kindred in his lands to exist as they like. He upholds the Traditions, but he is no petty tyrant. He maintains a coterie of neonates to watch over his eastern flank, but they are free to come and go in exchange for their vigilance. Tonight, however, is one of those duties he demands of Los Vigilantes del Este, the so-called Eastern Watchmen. A poacher has been detected in Watsonville, a small town sitting on the edge of the domain claimed by Don Bartolomé, as several patients in the ICU have succumbed to anemia. He has sent his Vigilantes to speak with the Southern Cross, their counterparts in Monterey. If one of them is poaching on his land, restitution will have to be given. Chapter 1: The Poacher It is summer, but that doesn’t mean warm. The wind blowing off the Pacific has teeth. The four members of Los Vigilantes del Este wait, arrayed over the sand. Valerie Rhodes, diplomat of the coterie, is out ahead. Echo, eldest and leader, in its center, a gray wolf by her side. Alex and Rook, enforcers, flank their leaders. Trudging up the sand come the Southern Cross. Four of them, familiar faces to those who have existed in Santa Cruz for a long time. In the lead is their diplomat, the Nosferatu Frannie Orozco. Wrapped in a ratty hoodie and worn-out leggings, her filthy feet are bare on the sand. Her wide carplike mouth stretches in a reflexive smile. Beside and slightly behind is the official leader of the coterie, Ernesto Cortez of Clan Tremere. The warlock is dressed more formally than his diplomat, in slacks, shirt, and waistcoat, his sleeves rolled up. His face is stamped with annoyance—Ernesto’s default expression. Flanking them is the massive Nosferatu Sonny Colosimo. Sonny’s lumpy body ripples with muscles, and he looks ready to burst out of his clothing if he so much as flexes wrong. His piggish eyes size up each member of the Vigilantes, and as they fall on Rook, an ugly smile creases his face. Lastly is Madison Blair of Clan Ventrue, a beautiful young woman in a slinky minidress, she holds her expensive party heels in one hand while she stares at the phone clutched in the other. She barely seems to acknowledge anyone until her coterie stops. Only then does she look up and mouth hey to Valerie. ”Hey, girl,” Frannie says to Valerie. ”Coming out in force tonight, huh? I should talk.” She chuckles. ”Get to the point, Fran,” Ernesto monotones. Frannie rolls her eyes. An impressive sight, as they’re much too big for her head. ”Okay, let’s get down to business.” ”Hang on,” Sonny says, his voice comically deep. ”Who’s the new chick? Looks good enough to eat.” ”Sonny,” Frannie scolds, her voice growing serious. Then, to Valerie: ”He’s right though. Introductions first?”
Night has fallen. Of course it has. It's been thirty years since any of you has seen the sun. Eternal night, that was the promise. While thirty years isn't eternity, it's close enough. The nights since then have blended into one long dark, a smeared span of existence. You slake your hunger. You sleep. And again. And again. Occasionally, you are asked to help. That's the price of eternity, the price of the hunting grounds your Prince allows you. Tonight, you received the call from Sam Stokes, the Sheriff of this place, the Prince's fist, enforcer, what-have-you. She commanded you to meet with her servant, Detective Robert Webber. So here you are, an hour or so after sundown on a lonely road out of town. Trees loom on all sides of you, nearly blotting out the night sky. Somewhere close, a creek burbles. An owl cries out once; a fellow predator hunting for its meal. Introduce yourselves. Did you arrive separately or all together? Do you share a haven or do you sleep separately?
Look at a map of Los Angeles sometime. You’ll be surprised at the first thing you notice. Specifically, a lot of “L.A.” is in fact entirely different cities that have been consumed by the greater polity, sort of like the way an amoeba will eat other, presumably slower and smaller amoebae. The second thing you notice is that the city extends south in a narrow corridor, like a tail, only to spread out at the southern point of the peninsula. This southern point is the Port of L.A., one of the largest ports in the nation, and the neighborhood of San Pedro. Like many Spanish-named neighborhoods in the city, San Pedro is pronounced with the aggressively Caucasian accent of the 1940s. The quickest way to detect a non-native is if they say it anywhere close to how an actual Spanish speaker might. The improperly proper way to pronounce it is San Peedro, or the perversely shortened Peedro. While San Pedro has always been an important if somewhat removed patch in the crazy quilt that is Los Angeles, it shoulders a greater load in the following story. It’s commonly believed that the Outbreak began at the port. Possibly onboard one of the gargantuan cargo ships that arrive and depart daily. The first reports, panicked 911 calls mostly, come from those closest to the port. It’s as good a hypothesis as any, and it’s not like anyone can test it. Burger Emperor. 1:21am. Wednesday. Graveyard shift is well and truly underway. Burger Emperor, as a way to compete with the big boys, keeps the dining area open all night. Not just the drive-thru here. And good thing, too. That’s where the bulk of business comes from. The night shift over at the port brings in a couple regulars whose orders you know better than your cousins’ birthdays. None of them have arrived as of yet, but it’s still fairly early. Tonight is pretty quiet, though. The standard clean up from the night shift (those lazy bastards never pull their weight) is finished. Now it’s just keeping the grill hot and the fry oil from congealing. Through the colorful advertisements painted onto the windows, you can see that the street outside is empty, except for a single shape. It’s probably Outside Steve, a local unhoused fellow who has a camp in a nearby park. Sometimes he sleeps, or attempts to sleep, in the dining area. This looks to be one of those nights, as he’s headed more or less in this general direction, his gait suggesting he might have gotten lucky and scored a bottle of Boone’s Farm.
Cast of Characters Tori Hill:
Tori’s in her early twenties. Dark brown skin, hair tied back in a ponytail under a baseball cap, walkie-talkie in hand. She probably owns clothes other than her work uniform, but can’t remember the last time she wore them.
Obsession: Protecting her crew.
PASSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS
Wound Threshold: 50
Everyone on the night shift defers to Tori despite her relative youth. She blazes with competence and composure; she gives the impression that she’ll be running the country in a few years, like you’re watching the first stage booster burn of a very big rocket. She can feel it too — it’s like something in her caught fire when she first put on the store uniform. Ever since she joined All-Mart, she’s been full of this energy, this drive. She hears the corrugated-steel roof of the store creaking in the night, and it sounds like sails billowing in the wind; her mop bucket shines like a glorious battle standard; and that “shift captain” star on her name tag blazes with its own inner light. The assistant store manager, Moses Pike, doesn’t like her, she can tell. She doesn’t know if it’s because she’s a girl, or because she’s black, or because he fears she’s going to burn past him, but she’s right at the top of his shit list, and she’ll have to be ten times better than every other employee just to keep her job. You know what? That’s not going to be a f%&@ing problem for her. SHOCK METERS
Mike Shaw:
Mike’s in his early 30s. Quiet and efficient, unfailingly polite, and seemingly tireless. He walks with a limp; he’s missing his right leg from the knee down, and wears a prosthesis. Mike’s unflappable — no matter what, he’s seen worse than this.
Obsession: Finding his true destiny.
PASSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS
Wound Threshold: 50
The night before he shipped out to Fallujah, Mike had a dream — a nightmare, really. He remembers it vividly, like it’s an actual memory and not a dream. How the grenade landed in front of him. How the blast lifted him, broke him. How his leg got the worst of it. He remembers the strobing shadows of the medivac helicopter’s blades. That was just a dream, though. The weird thing is, he doesn’t remember the actual injury at all: they tell him he walked straight out in front of a car in Memphis. Like he was sleepwalking, they said. The surgeons couldn’t save his leg. He ended up at the VA hospital, learned to walk again alongside guys who’d lost limbs the way Mike now realizes he was supposed to. That injury was preordained, somehow — he knows that’s true, it’s true the way his phantom leg still aches. He dodged the blast in Fallujah, so it found him in Memphis. Now, his limping path has led to him to this All-Mart; if there are other predestined events in his future, maybe they won’t find him here. SHOCK METERS
Ann Paddington:
Ann looks to be in her mid-40s. She’s eerily pale, with big ‘80s hair and a clipped, precise way of speaking. She seems faintly surprised and horrified by everything, as if there’s some platonic ideal of reality out there, but this universe is falling short. “Oh no,” she says, “that’s awful. Awful.”
Obsession: Finding her origin.
PASSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS
Wound Threshold: 50
Here are the things Ann knows: she woke up in the hardware section of All-Mart fifteen years ago. She’s not human — there are pistons and gears beneath her “skin”. Her memory is recorded on wax cylinders in her skull, and it’s dangerous for her to stay outdoors during the day, or the heat makes her forget. She went looking for her creator a few years ago. Never found him. She returned to the All-Mart and got a job there, figuring that he’d (she guesses it’s a he) come back for her. At first, she just showed up there every day when the store opened and waited patiently until it closed around her — back before it went to twenty-four hours a day — but that got suspicious, so she ended up getting a job here. Sometimes, at the end of a long shift, when she’s worked so hard that the effort softens the wax in her clockwork brain, she almost manages to forget that she’s not human. Those are the best days. SHOCK METERS
Darby Carter:
Darby’s in her mid-20s. Does the employee dress code prohibit visible tattoos, piercings, or smelling of weed? No? Then guess what Darby looks like.
Obsession: Finding the truth about Stuart’s death.
PASSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS
Wound Threshold: 50
Six months ago, Darby was an anthropology post-grad. One night, she and her friend Stuart Walepeg came up with the then-hilarious idea of doing an anthropology field trip to All-Mart. Treat it like an expedition to some uncontacted tribe in the Amazon rainforest. Set up blinds and camouflaged observation posts in the homeware section. Watch these primitive, violent hominids in their natural environment. They found Stuart’s body in a ditch a mile west of the All-Mart. They said it was suicide; that he’d stolen a knife from the store and used it to carve symbols into his arms and chest, before he finally opened up his wrists. Shaken, Darby dropped out of college; she didn’t know where else to go, so she stayed here. If there is something occult going on here, then maybe she’s the one with the critical tools and academic background to find out the truth. SHOCK METERS
Dustin Druthers: Broad-shoulders, broad smile, big belly, and balding prematurely. Up until recently, Dustin was generally considered an amiable idiot who’d be stacking shelves at the All-Mart until the day he died. Only a few people have noted the sudden intensity in his eyes.
Obsession: Getting into the secret world.
PASSIONS
RELATIONSHIPS
Wound Threshold: 60
In Dustin’s life, there’s before and after. Before’s not really worth talking about — Dustin grew up here in town, got a summer job working in the mart, and now works there full- time. There wasn’t anything to say about Dustin; he was a generic, mass-produced American selling generic, mass-produced goods. Then, one hot day, he grabbed a bottle of cola off the shelf to drink with his lunch break. Opened it as he walked though the store. The cola was... ambrosia. Perfection. Like every fizzy bubble was a universe exploding on his tongue and ricocheting around his brain. The green glass grail. For about fifteen seconds, Dustin Druthers drank the soda of the gods. Then this thing — he calls it Fat Slenderman — slithered out from between Aisle 16 (Plumbing) and Aisle 17 (Electrical Fittings and Screws). It grabbed the half-finished cola drink out of Dustin’s hands with one leather tentacle, then drained the rest of the bottle and belched in his face before vanishing. Like it was pissed that someone as irrelevant, as unworthy, as generic as Dustin had dared taste that forbidden fruit (or carbonated beverage. Whatever.) The experience left Dustin with a sixth sense for magick. Something guided his hand to pick that one special bottle out of the cooler, and the same gift stays with him now. It also left him with the deep conviction that the only way he can be special is by finding more of that magick... SHOCK METER
|