TEXT: Vampire
  1 
  
  2
  Paths of storytelling
  
  Vampire
  3 
  Paths of 
  Storytelling: 
  Vampire
  
  4
  Paths of storytelling
  Written by Kelley Barnes, Jess Hartley, 
  Monica Valentinelli, and Eddy Webb
  Developed by Eddy Webb
  Edited by Genevieve Podleski
  Layout by Ron Thompson
  © 2011 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written 
  permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes 
  of reviews, and one printed copy which may be reproduced for personal 
  use only. White Wolf, Vampire and World of Darkness are registered 
  trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Vampre the Masquerade,Vampire 
  the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean 
  the Created, Storytelling System and Parlor Games are trademarks of 
  CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein 
  are copyrighted by CCP hf. CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned 
  subsidiary of CCP hf. The mention of or reference to any company or 
  product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright 
  concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and 
  themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for 
  entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader 
  discretion is advised.
  Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
  White Wolf Publishing, Inc.
  2075 West Park Place Blvd 
  Suite G
  Stone Mountain, GA 30087
  
  Vampire
  5 
  Prelude
  Sometimes my job at White Wolf requires 
  me to dig around in our archives. Mostly I’m 
  looking for a long-lost CD with a particular 
  piece of art or the layout files for an old book, 
  but once in a while I stumble across old 
  contracts, ad copy, and submissions.
  A few weeks ago, I ran into this manuscript, 
  in a folder labeled “Paths of Storytelling” and 
  a hand-written note that said “No. Absolutely 
  not. -SW.” It looks like something we worked 
  on right around the time of Vampire: The 
  Masquerade, Revised. The cover sheet appears 
  to be missing, so I don’t know who originally 
  submitted it, or even if it was done by one 
  writer. 
  Since it’s the 20th anniversary of Vampire: 
  The Masquerade, I thought it might be cool 
  to share this strange piece of missing history. I 
  scanned it as best as I could, and we used some 
  old assets from our fiction archive to make a 
  pretty digital version. Enjoy this glimpse into 
  what might have been.
  Eddy Webb
  - 
  World of Darkness Developer 
  
  6
  Paths of storytelling
  1.
  This is a world of darkness.
  It’s a world much like our own. It has the 
  same streets and the same television programs. 
  But in this world, the creepy house down 
  the street really is haunted. The mysterious 
  murders that look like an animal attack were 
  actually done by werewolves.
  And there are vampires.
  You have been chosen to become one of the 
  undead, to join one of their “clans” as a newly 
  created (or Embraced) vampire. One clan is 
  the Gangrel, bestial vampires that can turn 
  into beasts. Another is the Malkavians, seers 
  and madmen all. And there are the Toreador, 
  artists and dilettantes who value their ties to 
  humanity.
  Which kind of vampire will you be?
  If you choose Gangrel, turn to section 2.
  If you choose Malkavian, turn to section 3.
  If you choose Toreador, turn to section 4.
  
  Vampire
  7 
  2.
  You’re finally starting to relax after a long 
  day at work, when you hear a loud knock at 
  your door. Exhausted, you’re about to ask your 
  boyfriend Dennis to answer it, when you hear 
  a deep voice calling your name.
  You hop over and squint out a peephole. 
  “Hello?” 
  A man, dressed in what can only be 
  described as a study in black leather, flips a 
  card in front of the hole. 
  “This is for you,” he says with a sly smile. 
  You fasten the security chain and crack 
  open the door. He slips a small card to you 
  through the narrow gap.
  “Tell no one about this,” the man warns. 
  “Not even that cute boyfriend of yours.”
  You slam the door shut and lock it. How 
  did he know about Dennis? Curious, you 
  examine the card in your sweaty hand. It 
  appears to be handmade; it’s decorated with 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  paw prints and pictures of animals. Opening 
  it, you read the following:
  YOUR WISH IS GRANTED. 
  VISIT 
  HYDE 
  PARK 
  AT 
  MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. COME 
  ALONE. OR ELSE.
  SIGNED, X
  P.S. YOUR SAFETY IS NOT 
  GUARANTEED.
  “That’s right,” you mumble. “How could 
  I forget?” It’s been a while, but you do 
  remember something about agreeing to 
  become a Gangrel. Still, a private meeting at 
  your local park with a stranger you’ve never 
  met? Your head reels as you mull over your 
  options. Just how badly did you want to 
  become a vampire anyway? Hell, you’re not 
  even convinced vampires are real. Maybe this 
  whole thing is a publicity stunt for a crappy 
  movie studio. City park. Dark night. Cosmic 
  joke?
  
  Vampire
  9 
  You lift the curtains on your front window 
  to see if the creepy guy’s still there, but the 
  streets are empty. Whoever he was, he’s long 
  gone by now.
  “Who was that, babe?” Dennis calls from 
  the kitchen. Good thing he volunteered to 
  make dinner tonight: spaghetti and meatballs. 
  If what the card said was right, maybe this will 
  be your last meal.
  You’re not sure if you should tell him the 
  truth, but you’ve got a good thing going and 
  you don’t want to mess it up. Do you? After 
  all, it is your anniversary. Still, you’re not in the 
  habit of keeping secrets from him. It couldn’t 
  hurt, could it?
  To tell Dennis the truth and explain you 
  want to become a vampire, turn to section 5.
  To act like nothing happened and enjoy your 
  anniversary dinner, turn to section 8.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  3.
  Your choice seems to have surprised the 
  masked man with the black silk top hat. His 
  eyes widen, a gesture so strong that you can 
  see it even through the oval eye-holes of the 
  half-mask and when he speaks, his voice holds 
  a darkness that it did not before.
  “You’re certain? You will take up the 
  Broken Mirror?” The tone of his voice 
  makes it clear that he thinks you’re crazy, but 
  somehow that only firms your resolve.
  You nod, with more confidence than you 
  feel. “I’m sure.” After all, what are your other 
  choices? You’re no art snob, and animal fur 
  makes you sneeze. Besides—prophecy and 
  omens? How cool is that?
  “So be it, then. Follow me.” Without a 
  further word, he turns and walks out of the 
  room, with a steady gait that suggests the cane 
  in his hand has some use other than support. 
  As you follow him, you realize you’re 
  not headed back out into the main area of 
  the nightclub, but instead have passed into 
  some sort of private zone towards the back 
  of the building. The noise from the bar fades 
  out, until the only sound is that of your own 
  
  Vampire
  11 
  footsteps and the nervous pounding of your 
  heart drumming in your ears.
  You pass through dark halls and darker 
  doorways as you follow the now-silent man 
  deeper into the labyrinthine maze. Your earlier 
  suspicion about his choice of accessory is 
  confirmed as he murmurs a few words in some 
  arcane tongue and the door-knob sized globe 
  beneath his hand begins to emit a faint and 
  flickering yellow-green glow. 
  You begin to ask him about it, but the 
  expression he casts your direction silences your 
  questions before they emerge from your lips.
  The path forward is illuminated faintly by 
  the cane’s hellish flame as you continue into 
  the darkness. You follow him down stairs, 
  along hallways, and around corner after mind-
  numbing corner until you have no sense of 
  direction or bearing. 
  At some point, you realize that the walls 
  themselves have changed. Paint and plaster 
  have been left behind, replaced first by grey 
  brick, then rough-hewn stone. The tunnel 
  itself takes on a surreal feel, as if the journey 
  you are undergoing is no longer one person 
  walking down a series of hallways.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  You are an insect, crawling through the 
  center of the earth, too small to be noticed by 
  the human world above you.
  You are a soul, transitioning from life to 
  death, from Earth to the great beyond, from 
  living to Limbo.
  You are Everyman. The journey is eternal. It 
  will never end. It never began. It only Is.
  Or, perhaps you’re just one human being, 
  being led to an unknown fate. 
  After you’ve walked long enough that 
  your legs are beginning to tire and you can no 
  longer imagine where within the city, let alone 
  the building, you’ve travelled, the masked man 
  leads you to what appears to be a dead end. He 
  pauses, fiddling with something in the center 
  of the wall at the end of the tunnel. You bob 
  and lean, trying to see past his shoulders, but 
  before you can catch a glimpse of what he’s 
  doing, the entire wall groans and shudders.
  He steps back to reveal a narrow gap, 
  holding the light away so that only darkness 
  appears beyond the opening.
  “If you are certain… your destiny lies 
  through there.” His tone is ominous.
  
  Vampire
  13 
  With more confidence than you feel, 
  you nod and step through the gap, into the 
  darkness. As the door slides shut behind you, 
  you wonder just exactly what you’ve gotten 
  into.
  Without the glowing ball of light, the room 
  appears at first to be pitch black inside. But as 
  your eyes adjust, you realize that you can pick 
  out shapes, even movement, around you.
  You jump, and all around you, shadows 
  and shapes parody your startled gesture. You 
  squint and rub your eyes, and as the shadowy 
  figures around you mock your actions, you 
  realize that you are surrounded by mirrors.
  Closer examination reveals that the room 
  is filled with them. Mirrored tiles cover the 
  walls, including the one that you think you 
  just entered through. The floor and ceiling are 
  similarly outfitted, giving a dizzying ambiguity 
  of perspective. Floor-length mirrors, some in 
  antique frames, some looking like they’ve just 
  been ripped from a school gym locker room, 
  are arranged at angles all around you. Some 
  hang on the walls, others seem to float on thin 
  air, are propped willy-nilly against one surface 
  or are layered, partially covering another. Very 
  subtle light radiates from behind several of the 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  mirrors, just enough to cast shadow and mar 
  perspective.
  “Forgive me,” a voice echoes in the 
  chamber, refracted like the light, making it 
  impossible to tell exactly where it originated. 
  “I know many find this room to be… 
  pretentious. But I do believe that symbolism is 
  just as important as ritual for truly embracing 
  the depth and import of such a momentous 
  occasion.”
  A man’s image leaps into place in a hundred 
  locations around the room. Dark and dour, his 
  black clothing is only accessorized by a single 
  white tab at the center of his collar. The priest 
  is reflected over and over again until there is 
  an army of clergy surrounding you on all sides 
  and you are no longer certain which, if any, of 
  them are real and which are illusion.
  “The journey you are about to undertake 
  is unlike any you have been upon in the past. 
  Are you certain of your choice?” The crowd of 
  identical priests waits for your answer.
  You begin to nod, but before you’ve 
  finished the gesture, the lights go out. You 
  are grabbed, hard, from behind. A thousand 
  
  Vampire
  15 
  hands, cold and unyielding, hold your body in 
  place. A hundred mouths, full of icicle shards, 
  cut into you. They pierce your neck, your 
  wrists, your skin, stinging and slicing. For one 
  endless moment, there is pain. For another 
  lifetime, there is pleasure. 
  And finally, there is only the cold.
  You wake to find yourself alone in the 
  mirrored chamber once more. Or at least, you 
  hope you’re alone. Hundreds of eyes stare back 
  at you, reflected in the mirrors. You’re not 
  entirely sure that all of them are truly yours. 
  You do know for certain, however, that 
  you are hungrier than you could ever imagine 
  being.
  Several of the mirrors have been knocked 
  askew. Their frames are slanted at strange 
  angles, crooked angles, wrong angles. You 
  realize that the placement of the mirrors 
  seems to hold some sort of a message, but it’s 
  distorted because some of them have been 
  disturbed.
  The eyes follow you as you stand, waiting 
  for you to make a decision. No matter where 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  you turn, they’re watching you. Judging you. 
  Reading your thoughts. Finding you wanting.
  Another section of the mirror in front of 
  you has been moved to the side, revealing a 
  dark passageway beyond. You cannot see what 
  lies through the doorway, but at least there are 
  no mirrors there.
  To straighten the crooked mirrors and try to 
  understand their message, turn to section 6.
  To escape the eyes that seem to bore into your 
  very soul, and find sanctuary down the hallway, 
  turn to section 9.
  
  Vampire
  17 
  4.
  “You are exactly what I have been looking 
  for.” There is the hint of a foreign accent as 
  a dark-haired man in a tailored three-piece 
  suit addresses you. You take him in with a 
  quick glance from head to toe. His coloring, 
  cheekbones and styling of his shoulder- length 
  hair are curiously out of step with modern 
  appearances. Just under six feet, he is of a thin 
  runner’s build. As he gestures to the crowd 
  dismissively, you note the long, tapered hands 
  covered with a fine line of old scars across the 
  backs. 
  “What you and I must discuss is not for the 
  ears of the rabble. Come with me.”
  You feel no reason to protest, even when 
  his uplifted hand caresses the side of your 
  face in a strangely possessive manner. Perhaps 
  it’s the eyes: steel blue, mesmerizing. All you 
  can do is nod in agreement, falling into step 
  beside his tall, gaunt figure. The two of you 
  walk for several minutes without an obvious 
  purpose, but heading away from activity and 
  others. A smothering silence is broken only by 
  the sounds of your feet, and your path is filled 
  with more shadows than light.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “My name is Nathaniel Le Roi,” he 
  murmurs, glancing over his shoulder before 
  gesturing towards the façade of an imposing 
  brownstone residence with a decoratively 
  carved walnut door. 
  As he leads you up the walkway, you to 
  take in the three-story building – noting the 
  bars on the first floor windows and the locked 
  gateway to the basement entrance to the right 
  of the steps. There appears to be one room on 
  the second floor, with a light shining through 
  a space in the closed drapes. 
  While your companion fiddles with the 
  door’s lock, a vague memory from French 
  lessons long past surfaces and you comment 
  aloud, “Nathaniel… the King?” 
  One side of his mouth curves upward in 
  a smile, visible as the door swings inward, to 
  reveal an entryway that is nothing less than 
  an idealized recreation from the Victorian 
  Era: Carved, ornate banisters and lush velvet 
  drapery, a chandelier of flickering candles and 
  vases of roses filing every flat surface in sight 
  and overwhelming the air with their scent.
  
  Vampire
  19 
  “Not a King here.” He pauses. “But, I strive 
  to live with as many luxuries as this world can 
  provide.”
  To enter the brownstone at Nathaniel’s 
  invitation, turn to section 7.
  To decline and leave, turn to section 22.
  
  20
  Paths of storytelling
  5.
  You skip over to the kitchen and pour 
  yourself a glass of red wine. “It’s that Gangrel 
  thing I was telling you about. Looks like I’ve 
  been invited to a party.”
  “I don’t know, babe. Sounds like it could be 
  fun.” He wipes his nose on his sleeve; he’s up 
  to his elbows in ground beef and spices. “You 
  bringing your camera?”
  You roll your eyes. “A camera? Come on, 
  Dennis. I volunteered to get turned into a 
  vampire. This isn’t a play or anything. This is 
  real. Like, drinking blood and everything.”
  “Uh-huh, sounds like it.” Dennis is only 
  half-interested in what you have to say. He’s 
  too busy shaping the next batch of meat balls. 
  “You should go. It’d be good for you to get out 
  there, meet new people.”
  “What’s that supposed to mean?” You 
  bite back. Just that morning you had a 
  conversation about how you were too clingy. 
  “You know my lab work is really important to 
  me. Those animals need me.”
  
  Vampire
  21 
  “Don’t start, babe.” He quickly wipes his 
  hands clean and samples the tomato sauce. 
  “Stop reading into everything, okay?”
  You give Dennis a sheepish grin and stash 
  the invitation. “You know, I hear a lot of 
  couples sneak into Hyde Park and make out 
  there. You up for a midnight drive?”
  Dennis solemnly shakes his head. “Got a 
  big presentation at work tomorrow and I have 
  to be there by six. We can always go later.”
  “Fine.” You can’t help but feel a little 
  slighted. It’s your anniversary, isn’t it? 
  Shouldn’t you have a say in what you want to 
  do? “If your job is that important to you, why 
  are you here?”
  Dennis drops the spoon. It strikes the 
  floor hard, tomato sauce splatters everywhere. 
  “Come on, you can’t be serious.”
  Rage builds inside of you. You’ve been 
  trying to tell him you want to be a vampire. 
  Can’t he connect the dots? If you’re undead, 
  you can’t be together anymore. Doesn’t he 
  care? “Work always comes first, right?”
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “You’re a real bitch sometimes, you know 
  that?” He grabs a towel off the counter and 
  starts cleaning up the floor. 
  You give Dennis the once-over. Other than 
  a nice ass and his tall, thin frame, you can do 
  better. Hell, who knows what fresh meat you’ll 
  hunt down once you’re a Gangrel? That guy in 
  leather looked pretty tasty.
  “Just go, Dennis,” you say, checking your 
  watch. It’s already close to ten o’clock, and it’ll 
  take you at least an hour to get ready before 
  you head over to Hyde Park. “I’ll talk to you 
  some other time.”
  Dennis gives you a blank stare. You know 
  you’ve gone too far this time. “Fine by me.”
  As soon as you hear the door click you 
  swing into action. You’re halfway up the 
  stairs when you realize Dennis still has your 
  apartment key. Flying back down, you open 
  the door to yell after him, but he’s already 
  driven off. “Shit, shit, shit!” 
  Pissed off, you slam a lamp against the 
  wall and shatter the bulb. Furious, you grab 
  the invitation and shred it into tiny pieces. 
  
  Vampire
  23 
  Who knew that a piece of paper could be so 
  dangerous?
  Rocked with guilt, you bury your head 
  in your hands. In between sobs you realize 
  Dennis was right. You do need to get out there 
  and meet new people, take risks you normally 
  don’t want to take. Your mind made up, you 
  hop in the shower and carefully select your 
  outfit: your perfectly worn-in and torn jeans, 
  tennis shoes and a college sweatshirt.
  Although you’re furious you had a fight on 
  your anniversary, you convince yourself you’ll 
  make it up to Dennis. Eventually.
  You glance at your watch and swear in 
  earnest. If you want to be on time for your 
  meeting, you have to leave now.
  To head over to Hyde Park for your Gangrel 
  meeting, turn to section 11.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  6.
  You move to straighten the mirrors, staring 
  intently into them as you painstakingly assure 
  that each is perfectly aligned before going to 
  the next. The perfection of each adjusted angle 
  reassures you against the paranoid thoughts 
  that flooded you moments before. 
  Time passes slowly as you work your 
  way around the room, squaring each frame 
  and centering it against the backdrop of 
  reflections. You carefully wipe away each 
  fingerprint, breathing on the glass and 
  polishing it with the cuff of your shirt sleeve 
  until there’s no trace of your adjustments left 
  behind. 
  At length you stand back and admire your 
  work. 
  It is perfect.
  “Have you finished?” A gentle voice behind 
  you startles you. You jump back, narrowly 
  avoiding crashing into one of the free-standing 
  mirrors. 
  For a moment, in your mind’s eye, the scene 
  plays out differently and you see the tall mirror 
  
  Vampire
  25 
  tumble to the ground, shattering into a million 
  pieces, all hope of understanding the message 
  found within it lost.
  You blink, to find the mirror still whole. 
  Turning back towards the voice, you find an 
  angelic figure waiting patiently to speak with 
  you.
  You believe it to be a woman, although 
  her body is as willowy as a young boy’s. Her 
  hair is almost silver-white, loose around 
  her shoulders. She is dressed in white silk, a 
  robe belted loosely at the waist. The fabric 
  undulates with each breath, but reveals 
  nothing of the body beneath. A strand of 
  scarlet rosary beads drapes across her chest. 
  “I’m to serve you, should you desire.” 
  There is something, a twitch at the corner 
  of her mouth, perhaps, that speaks of layers 
  of meaning below the obvious one. So much 
  import held in so few words.
  All in all, she’s a vision, and you wonder 
  if she is, in fact, the truth you summoned by 
  undoing the chaos of misaligned mirrors. You 
  step closer and look deeply into her eyes.
  They are full of stars. 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “My name is Ariel. The Reverend said that 
  you would be hungry?”
  Your stomach gurgles.
  She’s an angel. Her gaze holds the truth of 
  the ages.
  And she smells like food.
  You must look confused, because she steps 
  forward and takes the lead. Drawing a tiny 
  razor from the lining of her belt, she raises it 
  to her wrist, and before you can protest, draws 
  the blade across the inside of her wrist. 
  You want to be horrified. You want to 
  protest, to find her help for the wound that 
  has left a trail of crimson slowly winding its 
  way down the perfect snowdrift of her inner 
  arm.
  But more than anything else, you want to 
  feed.
  When she raises her wrist to your lips, you 
  try to protest. But the scent of her blood, the 
  sweet metallic tang is too much to resist, and 
  when she presses your lips against her skin, 
  your protestations are forgotten.
  
  Vampire
  27 
  You lap at the scratch, intoxicated by the 
  trickle of blood against your tongue. And 
  when that does not sate you, you feel yourself 
  bite into her wrist, burying fangs you did not 
  know you possessed deeply into the vein there.
  She gasps.
  You drink, deeply. The hot coppery flow 
  of her vital blood over your tongue spurs you 
  on. Her moans turn from pleasure to protest, 
  and as she tries to pull away you hold her wrist 
  tightly.
  “Stop! Not too much…” Ariel’s voice begins 
  to fade. You hear another voice, a male voice, 
  barking a command.
  “Enough! We have business.” Somewhere 
  beyond the cloud of crimson pleasure that 
  has taken you over, you recognize the priest’s 
  voice, and the inherent threat that it carries. 
  Something about him is different now, 
  however. Something feels familiar. As if you 
  and he are two jagged pieces of a splintered 
  whole, and somehow you fit together.
  There is more, though. Something in his 
  tone demands obedience, and you reluctantly 
  pull away from your meal.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  Ariel slips to the floor, limply, crimson still 
  dripping from the wound at her wrist. The 
  stars in her eyes have dimmed, and her rosary 
  is skewed against the pristine white of her 
  robe. You reach out to straighten the beads, 
  and your fingers leave scarlet stains on the 
  angel’s gown.
  “Lick her wound,” the priest commands. 
  You obey, although you are uncertain 
  why. To your amazement, the wound your 
  fangs left closes beneath your tongue, leaving 
  only the scratch the angel had inflicted on 
  herself to mar her perfect skin. Two robed 
  figures slip into the room from behind one of 
  the standing mirrors, and haul the angel off 
  between them.
  With the angel’s blood still on your lips, 
  you turn to the priest. 
  “Drink too deeply from the well, and it will 
  surely run dry,” he says, handing you a cloth 
  and gesturing for you to clean your face and 
  hands. “In time, that choice and the weight 
  thereof, will rest solely in your hands, but 
  until you learn enough to choose… best to sip 
  lightly.”
  
  Vampire
  29 
  You’re not certain exactly what the priest 
  means, but you nod anyway as he continues.
  “I am Reverend Isaac Murik. You have 
  come here for a reason,” the clergyman 
  intones. “God has brought you here for 
  a purpose. Are you ready to take up your 
  duties?”
  He waits for your answer.
  To agree with Reverend Murik and take up 
  your duties, turn to section 12. 
  To refuse the priest and try to ask more 
  questions about your situation, turn to section 
  15.
  
  30
  Paths of storytelling
  7.
  You can’t—don’t want to look away. When 
  your arm bushes against Nathaniel as you cross 
  the threshold, there is an inexplicable stirring 
  of lust, causing your heart to pound. The 
  sound is so loud to your ears, you are certain 
  he must hear it as well.
  Taking off your coat, while Nathaniel does 
  the same, you comment, “I don’t think I have 
  been in a place this lovely in a long time.” 
  He does not reply, but the smile on your 
  companion’s face is echoed in his eyes this 
  time. He takes the compliment with pleasure 
  while pushing apart a pair of sliding doors. 
  “My refuge,” he says simply.
  Before you is another feast for the eyes: 
  bookcases filled with texts and oddities, one lit 
  marble hearth behind an ornate mesh screen, 
  a sidebar stocked with decanters and various 
  drinking implements and a variety of animal 
  heads decorating the walls. You are drawn 
  inside by the desire to see more and when 
  you gesture with a tilt of your head to ask 
  permission, he nods silently.
  
  Vampire
  31 
  Your fingers run along the leather spines of 
  one row of books, silently reading the titles—
  some in French and Italian—while behind you 
  the room’s doors slide shut with a soft click.
  “I have read some of your work, you know.” 
  Suddenly, Nathaniel is standing behind you, 
  “There is artistry in your writing. You have 
  such insight into how people think. What 
  motivates them. It’s a rare talent. Too rare.” 
  His voice sounds strange to your ears. The only 
  word that seems to fit is… covetous. “It can’t be 
  allowed to go to waste.”
  “Thanks,” you reply, shivering the sudden 
  desire to lean back against him, wondering 
  what it would feel like to press your back to his 
  chest. 
  “May I offer you a drink?” he murmurs. He 
  remains equally still, but closer than a shadow.
  Your head turns slightly trying to make eye 
  contact over your left shoulder. “Whatever 
  you’re having,” you quip. 
  “Indeed?” he purrs. 
  You feel a light pressure against your side 
  and look down to watch Nathaniel’s right 
  
  32
  Paths of storytelling
  hand snaking around your waist, fingers 
  tracing a line up the middle of your torso. He 
  closes the space between you, but there is no 
  instant warmth like you’d expect, just a solid 
  coolness. It reminds you of leaning against a 
  marble pillar. His left hand slides up your arm, 
  before coming to rest on your shoulder lightly. 
  Nathaniel whispers. “I was hoping you’d 
  say that.” His tongue traces the shape of your 
  ear and starts to trail down the side of your 
  neck. Your weight shifts from one foot to the 
  other as you prepare to turn around, wanting 
  to explore the taste of his mouth. Giving in to 
  the moment, no matter how out of character 
  it may be. 
  The pain of his bite startles you at first, 
  feeling his teeth—no, his fangs—sink into 
  your skin. You struggle to break free, only to 
  find that Nathaniel holds you in a vise-like 
  grip. Then, the panic gives way to a growing 
  passion. His lips remain, teasing at your neck. 
  A sudden, undeniable arousal moves through 
  your body like a fever. Nothing in your 
  memory compares with this—no lovers, no 
  acts of passion measure to a fraction of what 
  you feel, trapped in his arms. You shudder 
  with release, only to feel the unexpected 
  warmth of his kiss—surely his lips were cold 
  on your skin initially—stir your body again. 
  
  Vampire
  33 
  He’s drinking your blood, you realize 
  in the dim recesses of your mind. And you 
  don’t mind. More than that, you want him to 
  continue. Nathaniel’s fangs sink in deeper and 
  you moan, becoming limp in his embrace. No 
  resistance, just pleasure.
  Your pulse becomes frantic, pushing blood 
  through your body, and then slows while 
  Nathaniel drinks. You feel light-headed, vision 
  starting to blur. The flames from the fireplace 
  transform to a dull orange glow, seen through 
  half-closed eyes. You hear the pounding of 
  your heart again - loud in your ears, but so 
  very slow. This is what it means to be drained. 
  To die because there is nothing left for the 
  heart to use.
  Nathaniel’s head lifts, your blood dripping 
  from the corners of his mouth. His expression 
  is one of satiation. His tongue sweeps over his 
  fangs once, as if savoring that last taste of you. 
  He sinks to the floor, ignoring the nearby 
  furniture, your body like a rag-doll in his arms. 
  Your breath comes in shallow, uneven gasps. 
  Dying. He tsks, “Know you your Shakespeare? 
  ‘And he will make the face of Heaven so fine, 
  that all the world will be in love with night.’” 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  With those words, Nathaniel rips open his 
  wrist with his fangs and presses the bleeding 
  wound to your open mouth. The tang on your 
  tongue hits like a small electrical shock. You 
  have never tasted anything so rich, so good. 
  You stir, limp arms lifting from the ground so 
  your hands can grasp his forearm. You lap at 
  the blood hungrily.
  He whispers as the fingers of his free hand 
  stroke the top of your head, “My childe, you 
  will love the night. I know from your works, 
  this was destined—already a part of you.”
  Long seconds pass, while you drink before 
  Nathaniel wrenches his arm away from your 
  mouth. You howl in frustration. In that instant 
  there is clarity as the revelation sinks in. 
  Nathaniel is a vampire. 
  You are a vampire.
  And you are starving.
  To attack Nathaniel, turn to section 10.
  To flee the room, horrified by the truth, turn 
  to section 16.
  
  Vampire
  35 
  8.
  Convinced your anniversary dinner will 
  be your last meal as a human, you enjoy it as 
  much as you can. You even go so far as to light 
  candles all around your tiny kitchen and whip 
  up a batch of your favorite brownies.
  “Why so enthusiastic?” Dennis cocks an 
  eyebrow. “Was it something I said?”
  You laugh. Typical male. “No, I guess I 
  want to enjoy the little things. You know, 
  because these moments won’t last forever.”
  Dennis stuffs a meatball in his mouth and 
  winks at you. Something about the way he’s 
  looking at you gets under your skin. Sure, he’s 
  a nice guy and all, but is he really the one you 
  want to spend the rest of your life with? You 
  imagine what it would be like to grow old with 
  Dennis. Visions of your wedding, kids and a 
  minivan flash in front of your mind.
  The images nauseate you. You don’t want to 
  grow old or end up in suburbia—with Dennis 
  or with anyone else for that matter. Wasn’t 
  that why you decided to become a vampire? 
  So you’d never die?
  
  36
  Paths of storytelling
  Your mind made up, you realize you have to 
  get rid of Dennis, quickly. Your meeting is in 
  less than an hour and you still have to do your 
  hair and makeup. 
  “Hey, babe? I have an idea.” You bat your 
  eyelashes. “Didn’t you say you had a big 
  presentation due tomorrow?”
  Dennis wipes his face with a napkin. “Yeah, 
  I do. Unfortunately.”
  “Why don’t we pick this up tomorrow, 
  then? After work. That way you have time to 
  prepare.”
  He gives you a strange look; he suspects 
  you’re up to something. “I could use an extra 
  hour or two of sleep. What are you going to 
  do?”
  You smile sweetly. “I just figured we’d have 
  more time tomorrow. In bed, I mean.”
  “Now that’s something I can live with.” He 
  leans over and kisses you. “Okay, I’m game.”
  Your plan worked. Dennis scarfs down the 
  rest of his plate and grabs his things. On his 
  way out the door, you give him a long, wet kiss 
  good-bye. Locking the door behind him, you 
  
  Vampire
  37 
  fly up the stairs to your bedroom and ransack 
  your closet, wondering what vampires wear.
  After trying on several outfits, you don your 
  favorite sweatshirt and jeans, favoring comfort 
  over style.
  You’re ready for your meeting. Turn to section 
  11.
  
  38
  Paths of storytelling
  9.
  Feeling a thousand gazes on your back 
  as you depart, you escape down the dark 
  hallway. As you leave, you think you hear a 
  soft chuckle from the room behind you, but 
  you don’t hesitate long enough to investigate 
  it. Whoever—or whatever—was there surely 
  intended you no good.
  The hallway stretches out in front of you, 
  long and dark. You leave the light of the 
  mirrored room behind you, trying not to 
  think about who was back in there with you.
  Or whether they’re following you. 
  They could be… right behind you.
  You break into a half-run, concentrating 
  on what’s ahead of you. Stairs. A seemingly 
  endless series of stairs, spiraling up from the 
  belly of the building. You climb them at a 
  sprint, flight after flight, until you’re certain 
  you’ve left whatever was in the mirrored room 
  with you far behind.
  You turn your attention upward. 
  Somewhere up there in the darkness, you sense 
  something. An almost imperceptible easing 
  
  Vampire
  39 
  of the blackness. A whisper of murmured 
  reassurances. The faintest stirrings of a breeze 
  against your skin. The scent of… food.
  Your stomach growls, and you’re hit 
  with a hunger stronger than you have ever 
  remembered. Without willing them to do 
  so, your legs pick up the pace, propelling you 
  further and faster up the stairs towards the 
  faint light and the smell of sustenance.
  As you draw near, the subtle glow of 
  illumination reveals itself to be a thin outline 
  of light coming from around what appears 
  to be a doorframe. After your time in the 
  darkness, the light beyond seems almost 
  blindingly bright. But equally intense is the 
  scent of sustenance, just beyond the door. 
  Hunger wracks your body, making your 
  hands shake with need. You scramble at the 
  door until your hand falls upon a lever of 
  some sort. You jerk and claw at it, until the 
  mechanism gives way and the door suddenly 
  swings inward, spilling you out of the stairwell 
  and onto an open roof.
  A cacophony rises at your appearance. The 
  noise is coming from a circle of small buildings 
  surrounding you. Three or four of them, no 
  
  40
  Paths of storytelling
  bigger than bus stop stations. Each is filled 
  with a flock of highly irritated birds.
  The pigeons protest your presence, flapping 
  violently within the confines of their wooden 
  prisons. As you draw near, the closest coop 
  goes mad, birds beating themselves against the 
  chicken-wire windows in an attempt to escape 
  from your presence. Claws rake against one 
  another as they struggle, and the night air is 
  filled with the scent that drew you up here. 
  You act before you can think, thrusting the 
  door open. A whirlwind of wings buffets at 
  you as your victims flee. 
  You drink. And when the broken body in 
  your hands offers no more sustenance, you 
  throw it aside and snatch up another, too 
  injured to have escaped with its fellows, and 
  drink that as well.
  “What’s this now? Look at the mess 
  you’ve made!” A woman’s voice with a slight 
  British lilt to it scolds you. You turn to face 
  her, dropping the last, limp body from your 
  bloodstained hands.
  
  Vampire
  41 
  She looks at you, elbows akimbo, hands 
  on hips. She’s a dour-faced woman of what 
  appears to be middle years, wearing a tweed 
  skirt suit and sensible brown alligator-skin 
  shoes. Her short auburn hair is carefully 
  coiffed in curls and her makeup is sedate 
  but expertly applied. She frowns at you, her 
  disapproving stare makes you incredibly aware 
  of the ludicrous picture you must present.
  There’s something about her, something 
  beyond what you can see. She feels like you 
  felt when the darkness overtook you in the 
  mirrored room. Like she’s a part of you, in 
  some way. The feeling doesn’t provide you 
  with any comfort, though.
  “You’re another of the Reverend’s now, 
  aren’t you? Damned shame, that one, making 
  childer and then not giving them the teachings 
  they need to feed without mussing up my 
  coops. It’s going to take me hours to get all 
  them home and settled in now!”
  You apologize and begin to introduce 
  yourself, but the woman waves off your 
  explanations with an imperious gesture and 
  orders she obviously expects you to obey 
  without question.
  
  42
  Paths of storytelling
  “Enough of that. I’m Amelia Kettlesworth, 
  but you may call me Mrs. Kettlesworth. There 
  will be time for introductions on your part 
  when you learn who you are. Until then, you’re 
  nothing but mouthing the words, so no sense 
  in wasting the air. Gather those up there, and 
  put them down the chute. That goes to the 
  incinerator, so there won’t be questions.”
  There’s something about her tone that 
  makes you certain there’s more to what 
  she’s saying than meets the eye. She doesn’t 
  want to know your name. That way you stay 
  anonymous. 
  “Hurry up now. We haven’t got all night.” 
  She nods towards a basket big enough to 
  hold the half-dozen pigeon carcasses you’ve 
  left scattered around the rooftop, and then 
  towards a small metal door set in the side of 
  the stairway. 
  Caution signs warn “Danger! Refuse 
  Depository: Dangerous Drop and Incinerator 
  Below. Insert only Trash!” The warnings clang 
  through your vision, echoing in your head.
  Danger! Danger! Danger!
  
  Vampire
  43 
  She doesn’t want to know your name. 
  You’re not a person to her. You’re just trash… 
  You begin to gather up the dead pigeons, 
  but you can feel Mrs. Kettleworth’s glare on 
  the back of your neck. 
  You killed her pigeons.
  You reach for another of the dead bodies, 
  its wings splayed at unnatural angles. 
  You glance back over at the woman, 
  surreptitiously. She’s still glaring at you. Is she 
  closer than she was before?
  The last pigeon lies near to the refuse 
  chute door. Unlike its companions who were 
  mottled browns and blacks, this one was white 
  as any dove. Pure, before you took it, but 
  smeared now with garish red where you ripped 
  its throat open with your bare teeth.
  Mrs. Kettlesworth moves closer. 
  You pick up the last body, and place it atop 
  the rest in the basket. Its unblinking eye stares 
  up at you from the pile of its kin.
  
  44
  Paths of storytelling
  “That’s it,” the woman says, stepping up 
  behind you. “Now into the chute.”
  You can feel her tension behind you, sense 
  her plans for you as clearly on the stink of her 
  perfume as if she was speaking them aloud. 
  She’s going to get revenge for you destroying 
  her pets. The chute is just shoulder-wide, and 
  the drop must be 20 stories.
  You open the chute, and she moves behind 
  you. You only have a moment to make your 
  decision.
  To fling Mrs. Kettlesworth down the chute 
  before she can shove you in, turn to section 24. 
  To throw the basket of dead birds at her and 
  escape, turn to section 27. 
  
  Vampire
  45 
  10.
  Nathaniel stands, one hand pressed over 
  the wound on his other forearm. You inhale 
  and the scent of his blood is irresistible. 
  Like a starving animal you leap up at him, 
  desperate for more. Your gaze fixes on the 
  dark red smears marring the perfection of his 
  translucent skin. 
  Your tongue draws across your teeth 
  remembering the taste, and you become aware 
  of your fangs for the first time. Unfortunately, 
  that second of distraction gives Nathaniel the 
  opportunity to backhand you with a blow 
  that sends you hurling against one of the tall 
  bookcases. The impact makes a loud clatter, as 
  the books fall in sections around your body.
  Nathaniel glares, his gaze never breaking 
  contact. “Do not try that again, my childe. I 
  am older and far more powerful than you.”
  You growl, crouching on your knees, 
  one hand on the ground for balance as you 
  gingerly touch the bite marks along your neck 
  then the fangs in your mouth. For a moment 
  despair threatens to overwhelm you.
  
  46
  Paths of storytelling
  “Other sires would not be so generous with 
  their own vitae. They will let their progeny 
  take only what is needed in the embrace and 
  no more. On the other hand, I prefer to deal 
  with a reasoning being.”
  “Why?” you shout, filling the room with 
  your cry.
  “To settle a debt. To take my revenge. To 
  replace what was lost.” Nathaniel’s eyes remain 
  cold. “Your embrace will fulfill all those needs. 
  And I think you are worthy.”
  He continues. “The very fact you seem to 
  realize what has just transpired here, the fact 
  you have some control over your Beast even 
  now is further proof. You have not asked, but 
  you know what I am and now what you are.” 
  You turn your head to the side, unwilling to 
  look at his face. 
  “I know you are hungry.” 
  The mention of food makes you shudder, 
  reminds you of the clawing hunger inside and 
  your very fragile self-control. You can still taste 
  the ghost of Nathaniel’s blood on your tongue 
  and down the back of your throat.
  
  Vampire
  47 
  He takes a step towards you, careful as any 
  hunter trying not to spook their prey. “My 
  childer take names from Shakespeare, whom 
  I adore. I have given some thought to it and 
  because of the circumstances involved I think 
  you will be called Morgan.” The last words rise 
  in pitch, almost but not quite a question. 
  “I don’t care what you call me,” you exhale 
  bitterly. “You have killed me.”
  “Not so, my dear,” Nathaniel counters, “I 
  have opened up a new world for you. I am 
  your sire, your teacher. One day, Morgan, you 
  will not even remember what it is to be mortal. 
  But first, you must dine.”
  As before, he reaches out a hand in 
  invitation, an offer to help you rise from your 
  still-crouching position. “I have food waiting 
  for you. A small buffet for your selection.”
  You look at his hand, his face and back 
  down again, trying to make a rational decision, 
  fighting to control the blood hunger that 
  seems to build with each passing moment.
  To accept Nathaniel’s offer, turn to section 13.
  To reject Nathaniel’s offer and flee the room, 
  turn to section 16. 
  
  48
  Paths of storytelling
  11.
  You decide to clear your head by running 
  over to Hyde Park. You quickly reach the 
  wrought iron gates, climb over them, and 
  jump down onto a patch of lush, wet grass. 
  The closed park is heavily wooded; the further 
  you wind between the trees, the less you see.
  “Okay, I’m here!” You shout into the 
  darkness. “Come out, come out whoever you 
  are.”
  “Stop being so damned loud,” a voice snarls. 
  You think you’re hearing things, because it 
  sounds like the voice is coming from above 
  you. “So, you want to become a Gangrel? 
  Why?”
  “I don’t know,” you reply, keeping your 
  voice calm and steady. “Sounded interesting 
  and I really like the name. What does Gangrel 
  mean, anyway?”
  You hear a sinister laugh that makes your 
  skin crawl. The voice makes some off-handed 
  crack about someone you’ve never met. “Oh, 
  Beckett would have a field day with you, 
  wouldn’t he? Juicy little lab rat that you are.”
  
  Vampire
  49 
  Have you been followed? How do they 
  know all of this about you? You try to move 
  your head, but can’t. Your feet are frozen in 
  place. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” 
  you whisper to yourself. “Silly old Gangrel.”
  “Silly? Silly?” The voice roars so loud you’re 
  scared your ears will explode. “Gangrel aren’t 
  silly!”
  You’re not going to put up with some 
  stalker bullshit. Are you? You’re not happy 
  with your boyfriend, you haven’t gotten a raise 
  in two years, you live in a shitty part of the 
  city and now some random asshole is going to 
  make fun of you?
  “Look up,” the voice commands you.”
  You lift your head just in time to see a fuzzy 
  blur of fur, claws and fangs slam your body to 
  the wet ground. Terrified, you try to fight back 
  but the animal is way too strong for you. The 
  second you open your mouth to scream, the 
  beast’s fangs rip a hole in your neck and the 
  blood drains from your body. 
  “Fuck!” You want to cry, yell or do 
  something but you can’t. Your head is telling 
  
  50
  Paths of storytelling
  you that this... thing... is unnatural. Wrong. 
  Dangerous. Seductive. Powerful. You can’t 
  escape, because this was meant to be. You were 
  supposed to die like this, in a park, alone. It’s 
  fate. 
  The creature tears itself off your body as 
  if an invisible hand slapped its face. You turn 
  over and curl up into a little ball. You were 
  safe in Dennis’s arms. Maybe you should have 
  listened to him. Nothing can save you now.
  Something cold and slimy drips into your 
  mouth; the minute the liquid touches your 
  tongue your whole body is drawn toward it 
  like a moth to a flame. The creature presses 
  its wrist against your mouth and its blood 
  electrifies you, filling your body with liquid 
  fire. If you had to describe it, you’d say it felt 
  like a thousand orgasms happening all at once, 
  only they’re exploding in and out of every 
  bone in your body, oozing from your pores.
  The sensations don’t stop there. 
  Everything—from the sounds of an owl 
  screeching to the smell of freshly dug earth—
  feels different, sharper. Overwhelmed with 
  sights and smells and sounds, you’re desperate 
  to hunt; to run through the forest and revel 
  
  Vampire
  51 
  in your natural instincts. Suddenly, a fierce 
  pang of hunger grips your body, demanding 
  satisfaction. Just when you think you’ll die of 
  starvation, you catch a whiff of the only thing 
  you’ll ever need, ever again: blood.
  “Let’s see what kind of Gangrel you are,” the 
  beast challenges you. “Just remember, Santi 
  wants you alive. So don’t die, kid. There’s too 
  much at stake.”
  Who’s Santi? Bound and determined to 
  survive the night, you drag your body to the 
  source of the smell. Two pits are on either side 
  of you. To the left, you detect the powerful 
  stench of animal blood. To your right, the 
  fragrant smell of human blood fills your 
  nostrils.
  To roll into the hole on your left and feed off 
  the blood of animals, turn to section 14.
  To drop into the pit on your right and drink 
  from a human vessel, turn to section 17.
  
  52
  Paths of storytelling
  12.
  Although you’re uncertain of what exactly 
  the priest means by asking you if you’re ready 
  to “take up your duties”, you nod.
  “I am ready,” you say, with more confidence 
  than you feel. But now that your hunger is 
  sated, you’re anxious to begin whatever it is 
  that this new existence holds for you.
  The priest leads you into another chamber, 
  this one cavernous in size. The floor here is 
  hardwood, polished to a high gloss despite 
  its apparent age. The walls are covered in row 
  after row of ceiling-high bookshelves. Similar 
  shelves are arranged in rows, dividing the 
  room into aisles narrow enough that you could 
  touch a shelf on each side with outstretched 
  arms.
  “Welcome to the Repository,” Reverend 
  Murik says, sweeping an arm out to draw 
  your attention to the room like a game-show 
  hostess displaying a new car to the audience.
  Books of all types fill many of the shelves. 
  At a glance, you see modern graphic novels 
  
  Vampire
  53 
  stacked haphazardly beside leather-bound 
  tomes and magazines from the 1950s. 
  Leather hides inscribed with ornate-but-
  faded illumination are heaped beside piles of 
  children’s books whose once-garish primary 
  color illustrations have also dulled to muted 
  tones with time.
  “Members of Clan Malkavian have, 
  throughout the years, gathered this material 
  and brought it here to be studied. Each 
  piece was chosen because it resonated for the 
  individual who brought it here. Each item is a 
  piece of the puzzle. Somewhere in here lies the 
  answer.”
  “The answer?” You follow the priest’s gaze 
  out over the shelves. At first you thought 
  they were filled solely with books, but as you 
  examine them, you see that here and there, 
  other media is also evident: VHS tapes, wax 
  audio tubes, paintings and sketches and even 
  player piano scrolls.
  The bedlam makes you nauseous. It’s a 
  visual version of a first violin practice, as 
  performed with a chainsaw by an epileptic on 
  a fiddle made of alley cats.
  
  54
  Paths of storytelling
  You clench your jaw, fighting back waves of 
  revulsion, even as your fingers ache to begin 
  setting it to rights. Just one shelf, one spot 
  of order in the midst of all this, and you’d be 
  okay. 
  But before you can act, the priest begins 
  with his explanation again. You force all of 
  your attention upon his words, just to try to 
  keep the clutter from driving you mad. “There 
  are those who believe we—the Kindred—are 
  cursed. That this state, with its hungers and 
  needs, is a punishment from God levied 
  upon the first of our kind for unforgiveable 
  actions.” The priest frowned, shaking his 
  head at this last thought. “Some believe that 
  this is a permanent state. That the sins of our 
  forefathers blight our souls beyond any chance 
  of redemption. That this is why we have the 
  Hunger for blood. The Beast that drives us to 
  frenzy. Why the sun can destroy us and our 
  hearts no longer beat. Why we have no souls.”
  “What do you think?” 
  “Personally, my views are simple.” the priest 
  answers. “The good Lord is a mighty God. He 
  asks much of us. He is not an easy master to 
  serve. He does not forgive lightly. But He is 
  
  Vampire
  55 
  just. If there were no chance of redemption, he 
  would have simply punished the sinner and let 
  that be the end of that. He would not give us 
  the opportunity to redeem ourselves, without 
  the possibility of doing so.”
  You shake your head, confused at the 
  clergyman’s rambling explanation. “You think 
  there’s a way to cure vampires?”
  “To call it a cure would mean that our 
  state is a disease. I believe—as do many of the 
  eldest and wisest of our clan—that just as God 
  offered Adam and Eve’s descendants his only 
  begotten son as an answer to the weight of 
  the Original Sin levied upon their ancestors, 
  so he offers us the opportunity to transcend 
  the sinful state we find ourselves in… a way to 
  become more than what we are, and to leave 
  the curse of thirst and rage behind us.”
  “Vampires… but no drinking blood? No 
  having to hide from the sun? How is that 
  possible?” 
  The priest smiles at you. “The Good Lord 
  works in mysterious ways, my childe. But He 
  also provides us with all the answers—if we’re 
  willing to do the work to find them.”
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “And you think the answer is… here?” You 
  look around the Repository.
  “The secret to Golconda is contained 
  within these walls. I do not think it. I do not 
  believe it. I know it. I have faith. The question, 
  my childe, is… do you?”
  The priest waits for your answer. 
  To begin your work in the Repository, turn to 
  section 18.
  To refuse the duties Reverend Murik has set 
  before you, turn to section 21.
  
  Vampire
  57 
  13.
  Waving off his offer of help, you stand up. 
  “I can barely think for the hunger.”
  “I know.” He sounds almost sympathetic. 
  “Everyone who is Embraced has experienced 
  this. And you will find that this need will be 
  the base reason for everything you do, but you 
  can strive to control it.”
  You dust off your clothing, and wipe 
  at your neck with water from one of the 
  decanters, hands shaking slightly. “Embraced?”
  “It’s what we call the act of changing a 
  mortal to Kindred. What you call a vampire,” 
  he answers. “That is your first lesson. You are 
  Kindred. You are also of Clan Toreador. We 
  are the artists, the shining lights of grace and 
  civility among our kind. Remember that.”
  Nodding absentmindedly, an idea occurs 
  to you and you start to uncork the various 
  bottles on the side bar, but the smell of alcohol 
  only seems to assault your nose, rather than 
  entice as it once did. “Don’t you keep blood in 
  bottles, like in the movies?” You turn, looking 
  at Nathaniel again. At your sire.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  A grimace shadows Nathaniel’s face and 
  then is gone. “No. I prefer fresh. And if you are 
  ever offered such, do not take it.” He gestures 
  with a pointed finger for emphasis. “Not 
  unless you watch every step of the process. Try 
  never to drink blood if you are not certain of 
  the source. There will be times you will have 
  no choice—but hopefully they will be few and 
  far between.”
  Again, you nod to confirm you have heard 
  his words but the conversation starts to 
  wear on your patience and self-control, “You 
  mentioned food. Where?”
  Nathaniel offers the first smile since he 
  attacked you. “Only two blocks from here. A 
  friend has offered me hospitality tonight. I 
  intend for us to both partake.”
  As you both head out of the house, 
  putting coats back on, your sire comments. 
  “Take note—your body will adapt to room 
  temperature unless you spend blood to alter 
  that.” He locks the front door. “That lesson 
  will keep for another night. But that does 
  mean you must observe the weather and what 
  mortals are wearing if you wish to blend in.”
  
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  59 
  Standing on the stairs you look out at the 
  street and notice something odd. “Everything 
  is brighter somehow.” 
  “Ah,” murmurs Nathaniel. “It seems we get 
  a hint of the gifts of the blood you will develop 
  first.” 
  As you head down the steps, this time 
  ahead of him, you can feel your sire’s gaze 
  resting on your body. “There will be plenty of 
  time for that as well.” His pace quickens, to 
  stride at your side. “I am so pleased. I think 
  you will be a credit to me and to our clan!”
  Turn to section 19.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  14.
  You stumble into a dank hole in the 
  ground and find yourself surrounded with the 
  carcasses of freshly-drained possums, mice 
  and foxes. Pissed off, you grab one of the furry 
  corpses and squeeze its tiny body to a pulp. 
  Someone has played a sick joke on you: 
  animal blood has been splashed all over the 
  sides and edges of the pit. You’re about to 
  jump out and hunt down something with a 
  pulse to eat when you feel that thing inside 
  you—your Beast—sneak toward the only 
  siren call you’ll ever answer to: the sweet, 
  intoxicating smell of human blood.
  Furious and desperate, you refuse to be 
  grossed out by the dead mound of small 
  woodland creatures. You let out a guttural cry 
  and fling the furry bodies up and out of the 
  pit, clawing your way through to your prize at 
  the bottom.
  Someone—or something—has bound and 
  gagged the one person you thought would 
  never leave you. Dennis, the boyfriend you 
  recently broke up with for the third time in six 
  months, lies there in front of you as naked and 
  
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  61 
  as helpless as a baby. Thin cuts decorate his 
  body; he’s smeared in his own blood. 
  The Beast inside you is getting stronger 
  by the minute. It doesn’t care that Dennis is 
  whimpering or scared; it wants to shred his 
  flesh and suck every last drop of marrow from 
  his tender bones. Not only does your Beast 
  demand you pay tribute to the Gangrel you’ve 
  become, it commands you to rip Dennis’s 
  heart out and stuff it into your face while it 
  still beats.
  The human in you recoils at the thought 
  of drinking Dennis’s blood. Just yesterday you 
  were planning a trip to the Caribbean where 
  you would bathe for hours under the warm 
  sun drinking pina coladas. Now? The thought 
  of drinking something fruity makes you want 
  to puke. The only thing on your mind, the 
  only thing you’ll ever want ever again, is blood.
  “Must feed. Can’t... Need to feed.” Your 
  Beast assumes control of your mind and body, 
  forcing you to sink your fangs into Dennis’s 
  bare flesh. The coppery-tasting liquid floods 
  your cold veins and temporarily satiates your 
  Beast, but you cannot release Dennis from 
  your grasp. Not yet. Not until your hunger 
  
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  subsides. You suck and suck and suck until the 
  last drop of blood leaves your former lover’s 
  frigid body.
  Horrified by what you’ve just done, you 
  sink to the ground and wonder who else 
  you’ll kill to satisfy your thirst. You gently roll 
  Dennis’s body to the side of the pit, beg for 
  his forgiveness, and feebly cover him up with 
  loose dirt. 
  Your hunger abated, you fall on your knees 
  and wonder what kind of monster you’ve 
  become. Gingerly, you touch your face to see 
  if your face is still there, only to discover that 
  a pair of short, stubby horns has erupted from 
  your skull.
  “Are you okay down there? Do you know 
  where your sire is?” The male voice sounds 
  friendly enough, but you know appearances 
  can be deceiving.
  Squinting, you spot a pair of glowing red 
  eyes peering down at you. For a split second, 
  you wonder if this guy might be your sire, but 
  you don’t recognize him. Then again, you’re 
  not sure if you could. Everything happened so 
  fast. One minute you were arguing with a tree, 
  and the next...
  
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  63 
  “Don’t talk to him,” a voluptuous dark-
  haired woman purrs, slithering out of the 
  wall behind you. “He’s boring and dull. Stick 
  with me and I’ll teach you the ropes. Not that 
  crusty old bookworm.”
  Who will you talk to? To speak with the 
  friendly voice in the park, turn to section 20. 
  To address the mysterious woman in the 
  shadows, turn to section 23. 
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  15.
  “Duties?” You don’t know what the priest 
  is talking about. “I don’t want duties! I want 
  answers!”
  The priest sighs, but nods. “Of course you 
  do. Forgive me, my childe. I forget, at times, 
  how confusing this can all be to those who are 
  newly baptized into this existence. Come with 
  me. I will explain all that I am able.”
  The priest leads you down a dark hallway, 
  and through a long series of stairways and 
  tunnels. There are seven steps in the first 
  stairway, and two sets of thirteen in the 
  second. As you follow him, you contemplate 
  the possible meanings of these numbers.
  Does it bode well? Or ill? Does the fact 
  that the smaller stairwell (with the more 
  traditionally “lucky” number of stairs) 
  came first mean that you made the right 
  choice about joining Clan Malkavian? Or 
  is it an omen of some upcoming fortune, 
  some situation you haven’t encountered 
  yet? And what of the double-dose of “bad 
  luck” numbered stairs? Do they cancel out 
  one another, or is it a sign of exponentially-
  increased misfortune?
  
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  65 
  You’re so deep in your thoughts that you 
  almost run into Reverend Murik’s back when 
  he pauses before a bank of elevator doors. You 
  look around and realize you’ve left the tunnels 
  behind, and are now standing in what looks 
  like a modern office building lobby. The floors 
  are marble tile, inlaid every fifth intersection 
  with a disk of tarnished bronze. The interior 
  walls are a muted buckskin color, textured like 
  suede. The exterior is smoked glass from floor 
  to ceiling. Through it you can see a busy street 
  scene with cars rushing past in a constant 
  stream of head and tail lights. 
  In the elevator alcove, an ornate mirror in 
  a gilt frame reflects back a distorted image of 
  the city street. You meet your own eyes in the 
  reflection, and wonder who exactly it is that is 
  staring back at you.
  The elevator opens, and Reverend Murik 
  ushers you inside. The doors close, and the car 
  jostles and begins to ascend. A chime sounds, 
  thirteen times, before the doors slide open 
  once more.
  Murik leads you out of the elevator 
  and through a heavy double door with 
  “Reflections, Inc.” inscribed on the glass. On 
  
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  the other side, he escorts you through an office 
  area and back to a private meeting room. Like 
  the lobby below, the entire exterior office wall 
  is glass, from floor to ceiling. Through it, you 
  can see the city arranged around you, lit up 
  like a Christmas tree against the night sky. 
  “They say that we’re madmen,” the priest 
  explains. “That our entire clan is tainted with 
  insanity.”
  You nod. You’d heard the rumors, but 
  figured they were like those that said all 
  the Gangrel had fleas or that becoming a 
  Toreador was really just acquiring some sort of 
  supernatural STD.
  Reverend Murik looks out the window over 
  the city. “And, of course, they’re right. We’re 
  mad, to a man.” 
  You blink. This wasn’t how you expected 
  this conversation to go.
  “The Truth, however, is far deeper than 
  that,” the priest continues. “They think we’re 
  crazy because we don’t fit in with their reality. 
  What they don’t realize is that their reality is 
  
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  67 
  just a mirror. It’s a consensual creation that 
  reflects back to them what they want to see.”
  You try to listen, but you find yourself 
  counting the windows in the building nearest 
  to this one. Some are lit. Some are dark. The 
  pattern blends with the priest’s speech.
  “Madness isn’t an illness.” Two bright 
  windows and three dark. 
  “It’s not a curse.” One dark, two bright, and 
  one with a curtain pulled. 
  “It’s the ability to see between the cracks—” 
  A whole row dark. 
  “—in the mirror of consensual reality that 
  humanity has built for itself—” Two dark, one 
  half-drawn shade and two light. 
  “—and understand the nature of Truth that 
  lies behind and beyond that reflection.”
   You understand what the Reverend means 
  now. Somewhere in the space between his 
  words and the pattern of the lights across the 
  street, it’s all become clear.
  
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  He turns, to face you. “There is a library, 
  down below. We call it the Repository. 
  Members of Clan Malkavian have brought 
  artifacts and information there for… decades. 
  Centuries, perhaps. There are times when one 
  of our line is called to seek for Truth amongst 
  these offerings. To find the secret which will 
  free us all.”
  “The choice, of course, is yours. It must 
  be. Free will and all that. But I do hope you 
  will consider taking up the duties you have 
  been chosen for. It is, I believe, your destiny 
  to help us find the answers we’ve searched for 
  throughout history.”
  To accept Reverend Murik’s offer and begin 
  your duties, turn to section 12.
  To refuse and set out on your own, turn to 
  section 21.
  
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  69 
  16.
  Food. All you can think about is food. 
  Blood. There is nothing to eat… No. Nothing 
  to drink here. You have to get out. Get away 
  and think about this. Away from him. From 
  the man who did this do you.
  With a guttural growl, you backpedal as 
  you stand up, putting space between you and 
  Nathaniel. You start to circle the perimeter of 
  the room, moving to the doors. 
  Nathaniel pivots, mirroring your moves. 
  “My childe, you do not want to do this.” 
  “Back up!” you hiss and grab at one of the 
  glass decanters on the sidecar.
  Bringing it down the edge of the furniture 
  with a crack, shards spray out, covering the 
  floor and chairs, embedding in your clothes 
  and cutting lines on your skin. In your hand, 
  you hold the remains of the bottleneck, a 
  weapon brandished to force Nathaniel to keep 
  his distance.
  With your free hand, you push open one 
  sliding door and step into the entryway with 
  a quick glance behind to make sure no one 
  lingers there to trap you. Nathaniel remains in 
  a fixed spot, his hands upraised to show they 
  
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  are empty as he cajoles, “You can’t go outside 
  alone. You’d be in danger. Please don’t do this. 
  Trust me.”
  You grab at a drapery tie and use that to 
  hold the sliding doors shut, trapping him 
  inside while you escape. Then, you run out 
  the front door into the night. You scoff at his 
  warning; how could things possibly become 
  any worse?
  When you reach the street, you look over 
  your shoulder and see Nathaniel’s silhouette 
  in the window, watching you from the house, 
  unmoving.
  Distraction comes in the form of laughter. 
  In the dark, some distance away you can 
  hear it: the sound of a woman’s high-pitched 
  laughter. It bears the promise of food—and 
  you are so hungry.
  After running a few blocks in the direction 
  of the noise, you spot her leaning against a 
  streetlamp, talking into her cellphone, while 
  rummaging in her purse. Stupidly, she’s not 
  paying attention to her surroundings. Because 
  her blond hair is in a high ponytail and she 
  wears a low-cut top you can see the woman’s 
  neck clearly. You can almost feel the pulse of 
  her blood calling to you.
  
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  71 
  There is an alley entrance not ten feet from 
  where she is standing. Easy enough to pull 
  this woman out of the light and take what you 
  need. 
  Just before you commit to the attack, a 
  door opens, casting light onto the sidewalk, 
  not far from where you stand.
  Jazz music pours forth, a slow, seductive 
  melody, and there is the clink of glasses and 
  the sound of more voices. You tilt your head 
  toward the sky, inhaling. There is blood on 
  the air, a good deal of it, coming from this 
  establishment. It’s at this point you notice the 
  sign above the door, “The Gilded Cage.” 
  “Leave it open, Steven,” says a woman’s 
  voice. “The night air is refreshing and you 
  never know what surprises might come 
  through the door.”
  You look away from the jazz club, across the 
  street, noticing the blond woman has finished 
  her call and is starting to walk away, closer to 
  the alley.
  To go after the blond woman, turn to section 25.
  To explore the blood-scent in the Gilded 
  Cage, turn to section 28.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  17.
  Lured by the irresistible scent of human 
  blood, you claw your way over to the edge of 
  a deep hole in the ground. The sides of the 
  hollow are slippery and you can’t seem to get a 
  grip. Reaching just a little bit farther, you wind 
  up sliding all the way down to the bottom, 
  landing in a chilly pool of congealed blood. 
  The consistence and temperature of the 
  blood appalls you, but you taste it anyway, 
  hoping it will satiate your hunger. It disgusts 
  you. Frustrated, you splash the blood all over 
  the sides of the hollow and howl in anger. 
  Your steps uncover a pile of half-buried plastic 
  bags. Nice. That human blood you smelled? 
  Donations from a local blood bank.
  You’re just about to leap out of the hollow 
  when you feel the pitter-patter of a thousand, 
  tiny feet squirming all around you. Without 
  hesitating, you reach down and grab a large 
  sewer rat and drain it dry. Its blood doesn’t 
  taste very good but it holds your hunger in 
  check--for only a brief moment--but you need 
  more. A lot more. 
  
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  73 
  You drop to your knees and suck the blood 
  out of every rat you find until the Beast inside 
  you quiets down long enough for you to plan 
  your next move.
  “They’ll do in a pinch,” a man steps out in 
  front of you. “Animal blood can be useful if 
  you’re stuck somewhere.” His imposing frame 
  frightens you, but there’s something about his 
  tense demeanor that tells you he’s important. 
  “My name is Karsh.”
  You pick out a plump rat and pop it open 
  like a grape. “First name or last name?”
  “Just Karsh.”
  “Well, Karsh, do you mind if I eat? I’m still 
  pretty hungry and um... I’m kind of new to 
  this whole Gangrel vampire thing.”
  “That’s part of the reason why I’m here,” 
  Karsh replies, leaning against the wall of the 
  hollow. “We’ve got a few things to discuss.”
  You’re too busy sucking on a rat to respond, 
  but you do your best to politely wave your 
  approval. Karsh frowns. It’s obvious by the way 
  he fingers his beard that he disapproves of you, 
  but you’re not sure why.
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “Before you became a vampire, were you 
  aware that we existed?”
  “Nope.” You shake your head, tossing 
  another carcass on the growing pile of fur.
  “The most important rule of being Kindred 
  is that your existence must be kept secret from 
  the prying eyes of mortals. We call this the 
  Masquerade and, though we vampires have 
  our differences, it is the one rule we all agree 
  upon. The Masquerade must be protected at 
  all costs. If one human learns that we exist, 
  and that human tells another human, then all 
  Kindred are threatened. Your sire, for example, 
  is a threat to the Masquerade.”
  “Why?”
  “Your sire can barely call himself Kindred 
  anymore. Gangrel must control our Beasts, 
  the demonic force that resides deep within 
  our chest. Otherwise, its animalistic nature 
  will spring from our bodies and change it in 
  unfathomable ways.”
  Karsh’s words make sense, though you don’t 
  want to tell him that. You’re anxious to hear 
  what he has to say so you can go exploring. 
  
  Vampire
  75 
  “Can you give me an example? I mean, what’s 
  the worst thing that can happen, right?”
  “Imagine a pair of bony, stunted wings 
  sprouting from your back or your eyes 
  changing their shape into that of a large fish.”
  “Ouch,” you say, fingering the features on 
  your face to show Karsh you’re listening. “Will 
  I turn into an animal? What’s that about? Are 
  the Gangrel werewolves...”
  “No, the Lupines are our mortal enemy.”
  “So then how do we all get along? I 
  mean, are there other laws of the night or 
  something?”
  Karsh gives you a cold smile. “There are 
  laws and those, like myself, who will enforce 
  them. Then there is the Camarilla, a complex 
  organization connected from city to city by 
  an intricate court system. If you choose to 
  join your local Cam, you’ll answer to Prince 
  Julius Morganti, a formidable-but-fair leader. 
  Regardless of what you’ll decide, eventually 
  you’ll run into the Primogen of your clan, an 
  elder vampire that goes by the name of Luna 
  Santi.”
  
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  Paths of storytelling
  “Santi... Santi... That name sounds really 
  familiar?”
  “Oh?” Karsh cocks an eyebrow. “Do you 
  believe that she Embraced you?”
  “No, no,” you say, shaking your head. “I 
  think my sire mentioned something about 
  needing me alive.”
  Laughing, Karsh extends a hand and pulls 
  you to your feet. “Well, you are alive, after a 
  fashion I suppose. I wasn’t sure you were going 
  to make it this far.”
  “Me, neither,” you admit, putting your 
  hands in your pocket. You suspect Karsh isn’t 
  telling you all of this for your own benefit, but 
  for his, too. From what he’s told you, Kindred 
  life appears to be terribly complicated. You’re 
  pretty sure you didn’t sign up to become a 
  Gangrel to belong to some mysterious club or 
  answer to a Prince you’ve never met. 
  “So what’s up with the Gangrel, then? Do 
  we all have to join the Camarilla?”
  Karsh chuckles. “Your sire is rare, for a 
  lot of reasons. Unlike him, most Gangrel are 
  independent. From what I hear, he’s been 
  
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  77 
  making the rounds. He’s pretty friendly with 
  a Toreador, goes by the name of Nathaniel Le 
  Roi.”
  You shake your head in disbelief. Who 
  cares who your sire makes friends with? You 
  still haven’t met him yet. Shows you what he 
  thinks about you, doesn’t it?
  “What about the other Kindred? Aren’t 
  there other clans out there?”
  “Clans, bloodlines and different groups of 
  rogue Kindred that band together. A select 
  few, like Beckett for example, choose to live as 
  an Anarch, which is a kind of modern gypsy 
  that roams from place to place.” 
  “Sheesh. Karsh, this is... a lot of 
  information to take in.”
  “And I haven’t even told you about the Path 
  of Humanity or the Book of Nod yet.”
  You’ve had enough lectures for one night. 
  “Okay, Karsh. Let’s focus on the moment here. 
  Right now, what do I need to know?”
  “If you succumb to your Beast and your 
  body morphs into a mutated animal, I will 
  train the new Sherriff to hunt you down and 
  kill you to protect the Masquerade.”
  
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  Your jaw drops slightly but you manage to 
  regain your composure quickly. “Okay, then. 
  Note to self: don’t piss Karsh off.”
  Karsh winks at you with a knowing look in 
  his eye. “Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like 
  to invite you along with me to meet your sire.”
  “What do you mean you’ll take me to him? 
  Isn’t it back in the park?” You check your 
  watch. It’s almost one-thirty. Already? “Oh.”
  “We’ll be safe traveling underground,” 
  Karsh continues. “The tunnels in these sewers 
  are ancient, built before the city’s first trading 
  post even existed.”
  “What choice do I have?” As new as you 
  are to this whole Kindred of the city park 
  thing, you don’t want to be suckered into 
  trusting another vampire without reviewing 
  all your options first. “This isn’t an ultimatum, 
  is it?” 
  Karsh shrugged. “You can always go back 
  the way you came.”
  Where will you go? To jump back out and go 
  to the other pit, turn to section 14. 
  To follow Karsh into the sewers, turn to 
  section 29. 
  
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  79 
  18.
  You set yourself to the task at hand, certain 
  that if anyone can discover the Truth here in 
  the Repository, it is you. The priest has put his 
  faith in you, and you refuse to let him down.
  As you look around the Repository, you 
  quickly realize that there is no way you can 
  work amidst this type of clutter. There doesn’t 
  seem to be any sort of organization system in 
  place, so you set about to establishing some 
  sort of order to the archives.
  Hour after hour, night after night, you 
  group the artifacts in first one fashion and 
  then another. By era. By media. By material. 
  By geographic region or language or content. 
  And then, frustrated by the contradictions 
  unveiled by your classifications, you pile them 
  all together and begin sorting again.
  Silent acolytes bring you sustenance as 
  if sensing when your hunger is growing. 
  Sometimes they bring vitae still-warm from 
  chalices encrusted with jewels and religious 
  icons. Other times, they kneel before you, 
  offering their own wrists and throats for your 
  holy communion. The angel is never among 
  them.
  
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  But still you work.
  Occasionally new information is brought 
  to the Repository. It appears while you 
  slumber, and you wake to find some new 
  snippet of data, some new reliquary of 
  potential enlightenment waiting for you to 
  catalogue it. To decipher it. To weave it into 
  the tapestry of Truth.
  The more you learn, however, the deeper 
  your confusion becomes. Just when you think 
  you’ve begun to grasp one truth, you turn over 
  a piece of paper and discover evidence that 
  unravels every thread of hypothesis you’ve 
  woven so far.
  Time passes. You learn so much. But never 
  the Truth.
  To set out on your own, turning your back on 
  your duties, turn to section 21.
  To continue your studies, turn to section 42.
  
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  81 
  19.
  Nathaniel gestures with a nod of his head, 
  “I am taking you to the Gilded Cage. The 
  owner is Victoria Ash and it is important you 
  make a good impression on her. She is…” He 
  pauses in thought, looking for the right words, 
  “…the social arbiter of our society. Something 
  of a records keeper, combined with gossip 
  columnist. The formal term we use is Harpy. 
  And she is powerful.”
  A young couple holding hands comes out 
  of the dark, drawing near. They pass and your 
  head turns, sighting on them. Your hands 
  shake as you clench them into tight fists. The 
  urge to feed is so strong.
  As if he can sense how close you are to 
  spinning about and attacking, Nathaniel grabs 
  your upper arm in his hand, a vise-like grasp. 
  “We are almost there. Patience. You will be 
  able to sate your hunger in safety.”
  You nod, closing your eyes and slowly 
  opening your hands. You start to inhale, and 
  stop, startled by the realization that you have 
  not been breathing until this point—you took 
  
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  in air only to speak, to question, not because 
  you had the need. Your right hand lifts over 
  your heart. Silence.
  “Oh my god,” you exhale in quiet wonder.
  Nathaniel looks at you, the steel blue 
  eyes narrow, “Come. You are going to draw 
  unwanted attention.” He drags you away 
  with a thoughtful, frowning expression 
  on his face. Minutes later you stop, and he 
  knocks discreetly on door beneath a recessed 
  neon sign. “Steven, it’s Nathaniel. Victoria is 
  expecting me.”
  The door swings outward, and for the 
  second time tonight you enter a strange place 
  you have never seen nor heard of before. In 
  this case, the atmosphere is of a hole-in-the-
  wall jazz club; empty tables, a bar running the 
  length of one wall, with a matching mirror 
  behind it. In a far corner an elevated stage with 
  permanent piano and space for a signer and 
  one or two instruments. 
  The burly man who you assume works as 
  the club’s bouncer greets Nathaniel. He gives 
  
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  83 
  you a once-over as your sire explains, “This 
  is my childe, Morgan. I have come to make 
  introductions to the harpy.”
  Steven nods. “Unreleased, I assume?” His 
  bass voice is as rough as his battle-scarred face.
  Nathaniel nods. 
  Your nose is assaulted by the smell of old 
  blood that permeates the room, layered with 
  something fresh and ripe. Your patience starts 
  to shred. “Where?” you hiss in Nathaniel’s ear, 
  demanding. “I need it. Now.” 
  Steven’s right eyebrow arches up, giving a 
  quizzical expression to his face. “Unreleased 
  and brand new. Interesting.” He calls out over 
  his shoulder. “Victoria, the Primogen of Clan 
  Toreador is paying you a visit.”
  From behind a round table in a shadow-
  filled alcove, a woman leans forward, her face 
  and upper torso caressed by indirect light. She 
  has been there all the while, secluded and still. 
  You had no idea she was there.
  
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  Even in your single-minded focus on 
  finding sustenance, you are momentarily 
  stunned by the sheer physical perfection, the 
  ideal that she embodies. Victoria is a platinum-
  blonde like the classical screen sirens of film 
  noir. Her elaborate 1940s hairstyle is pulled 
  away from her face by a vintage set of sapphire-
  studded pins. She wears an electric blue silk 
  gown that clings to every curve and radiates 
  that icy sex appeal Alfred Hitchcock only 
  dreamed of capturing in his movies.
  She looks first at Nathaniel, takes a drag 
  from her cigarette set in an elaborate holder 
  before turning her attention to you. 
  “This is Morgan,” Nathaniel gestures in 
  introduction. “We’ve come to take advantage 
  of your generous offer of hospitality.” He 
  smiles and places a kiss on her uplifted hand—
  the custom of older times, but something that 
  seems so natural to them both.
  A soft “ah” passes from her lips and her eyes 
  twinkle with amusement. She addresses your 
  sire, “I expect you need to make a phone call?”
  “Actually, I think I had better handle this in 
  person. May I leave Morgan here?”
  
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  85 
  “Of course.” 
  With a quick shake of his head, Nathaniel 
  tells you to stay while he heads to the back of 
  the club, passing out of site through a bead-
  curtained doorway.
  Victoria tucks a loose curl behind one ear 
  as she fixes her grey-green eyes on yours. Her 
  tone of voice is business-like. “For Nathaniel’s 
  progeny I extend consideration. Tonight is my 
  death-day gift to you. For the future…” She 
  shrugs, “I am sure you will find your footing in 
  no time, but if you need a back-up, there will 
  be expectations. And exchange of favors.” 
  You nod, not sure what the woman means, 
  but remembering Nathaniel’s words of 
  caution. This woman is a powerful vampire. 
  How to proceed?
  To tell Victoria you need to feed, turn to 
  section 46.
  To ask Victoria to explain about ‘favors,’ turn 
  to section 48.
  
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  20.
  “Sure, I could use some help getting out,” 
  you shout to the man with the burning red 
  eyes. “You’re not going to kill me or anything. 
  Are you?”
  The man leans over and pulls you up and 
  out of the hole as if you were made of air. As 
  soon as your feet touch the soil, he lets go of 
  you and feebly attempts to brush the mud off 
  of his khakis. “My, you are newly hatched. Tell 
  me, how did it feel?”
  Confused and a little creeped out, you take 
  a few steps backward toward the hole you just 
  came from. “How did what feel?”
  “Oh, I would stay out of the shadows if I 
  were you. We Kindred may prefer the cover 
  of night, but not all of us lurk in that realm of 
  darkness. My name’s Beckett. What’s yours?”
  “Um...” You’re not sure whether you 
  should talk to Beckett or run away from him. 
  Although the rest of him looks somewhat 
  normal, he has the eyes of an angry albino 
  cat. Truth be told, Beckett looks more like a 
  
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  frumpy college professor than a fierce vampire. 
  In addition to his muddy khakis, he’s wearing 
  a field vest and a crappy-looking fedora. If it 
  wasn’t for his glowing, red eyes, you’d swear he 
  was a character out of a pulp adventure novel.
  “Fine, I’m sure this is all way too much for 
  you right now. Still, I would like to know how 
  it felt.”
  “How what felt? I ate my boyfriend on our 
  anniversary. Do you want me to tell you about 
  that?”
  Beckett regards you with disdain. “I just 
  wanted to know how it felt to be transformed 
  from mortal to Kindred. It’s been a long 
  time since I’ve had the opportunity to talk 
  to a neonate. You see, I’m on the hunt for 
  something, a piece of knowledge that’s very 
  important for our future.”
  “I don’t give a damn about your hunt,” you 
  snap at him. “I’m a monster.”
  Much to your surprise, Beckett seems to be 
  agreeing with you. “Yes, I can understand how 
  that must feel. Tell me, what were you before 
  
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  you were Embraced? I’m guessing some sort 
  of loner, no doubt? You’re obviously not very 
  good with people.”
  For whatever reason, Beckett makes you 
  feel incredibly young—and not in a good way. 
  “I was a lab rat, a scientist who worked with 
  animals.”
  “Ah,” Beckett says with a knowing smirk. 
  “Yes, that makes perfect sense. Troubling, as all 
  this is, I must leave you now before...” 
  “Before what?” You imagine a ghostly 
  shiver shooting up your spine. It’s obvious that 
  Beckett knows something you don’t. “What’s 
  out there? What won’t you tell me?”
  Beckett gazes deep into your eyes. It may 
  just be your imagination, but you swear your 
  Beast recoils at the sight of him. “If you want 
  to be a Gangrel, you’ll have to figure some 
  things out for yourself. Use your instincts and 
  sniff out the truth.”
  “So why’d you drag me out of that pit then. 
  To quiz me? Some help you are. That’s sick.”
  
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  Laughing, Beckett thumps you hard on 
  your back. “Oh, I’ve been called many things, 
  but sick is definitely not one of them. Even 
  Sascha would disagree with you on that 
  one. Tell you what. You seem to have a lot 
  of spunk. If you’re feeling adventurous, you 
  can walk with me and meet a friend of mine 
  passing through here on her way to Chicago. 
  Can’t guarantee she won’t eat you, but you 
  never know. Inyanga has a thing for younger 
  members of our clan.”
  “And if I’m not?”
  “Then I’d suggest you hide and hide well. 
  Perhaps find a hole in the pit I dragged you 
  out of?”
  You pretend to mull over Beckett’s offer, 
  but your mind is already made up.
  To crawl back to the shadows in the pit, turn 
  to section 23.
  To visit Inyanga, turn to section 26.
  
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  21.
  You may not know much about things like 
  enlightenment and the great beyond, but you 
  know that you’re not about to spend the rest 
  of eternity in a library. Something tells you 
  that the Truth is out there, somewhere, in the 
  city, not sequestered in a bunch of dusty books 
  in some priest’s basement.
  You make your apologies to the Reverend, 
  then find your way out to the street. The noise 
  here is deafening, a discordant orchestra of 
  vehicles and machinery. The sky overhead 
  is dark, but neon and traffic light up the 
  surface streets until they’re brighter than you 
  remember daytime being. 
  It’s all so loud, so bright, so chaotic. It takes 
  almost physical effort for you to tune out 
  the worst of it and get control of yourself so 
  that you can navigate the city streets without 
  shielding your eyes or stuffing your fingers 
  into your ears to dull the incoming sensory 
  onslaught.
  Eventually you acclimate, though, and 
  can turn your thoughts to the important 
  challenges facing you. Safety. Sustenance. 
  Survival.
  
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  91 
  You’ll need a place to sleep through the 
  day, and those southern-facing windows that 
  seemed like such a bonus when you rented 
  your apartment are suddenly a major heath-
  concern. Even the bathroom has a skylight, 
  which limits your choices for sleeping to “in 
  the closet” if you plan on finishing out your 
  lease.
  You find yourself counting basement 
  windows as you pass them, and wondering 
  how many of “your kind” will be sleeping the 
  day away behind their painted-over panes.
  Food’s another challenge. You don’t know 
  how often you’re going to have to feed, but 
  your first meal is already feeling like it’s 
  wearing a little thin. As you pass through 
  the night-crowds on the sidewalk, the other 
  pedestrians are all starting to smell a little… 
  appealing. Even the bums huddled back in the 
  alleyways are causing a reaction in your belly 
  that was once reserved for steaks hot off the 
  grill.
  The idea both nauseates and excites you, 
  and as your stomach begins to rumble, you 
  consider backtracking to the mirrored room 
  and visiting the angel for a late-night snack.
  
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  You turn back, but your wanderings have 
  taken you out of the area of the city you’re 
  familiar with. Comfortable condos and 
  brownstones have made way for abandoned 
  storefronts, cavernous warehouses and the 
  occasional industrial factory. There are no 
  more briefcase-wielding business-folk hurrying 
  home from overtime shifts. The only presences 
  on these streets are those that gather in tightly 
  knit packs in doorway alcoves or drift back 
  into the shadows when you turn to look their 
  direction.
  As you try to get your bearings, you 
  realize that you’re being followed. It’s nothing 
  concrete; you can’t actually see someone 
  tailing you. But the hackles standing up at the 
  back of your neck don’t lie. 
  You try to stay calm, but there’s a definite 
  feeling of being stalked… of being hunted. 
  Your pace quickens, first to a speedy walk, 
  then a half-run. You don’t bother slowing 
  when you get to the other sidewalk. After a 
  few blocks, you’re sprinting, trying to trace 
  your meandering path back out of the ghetto 
  and back towards civilization.
  
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  Your instinctual navigation fails you. You 
  dart down what you think is a connecting 
  street, buoyed by the promise of heavy traffic 
  and bright lights just beyond, only to find 
  yourself at a dead-end. 
  The streetlights have been broken out here, 
  the storefronts locked up tightly with security 
  bars, and the only car on the street looks like 
  it was stripped of its wheels, radio and any 
  fenceable parts years ago.
  You turn back towards the arterial road, 
  hoping to double-back before you’re trapped, 
  but it’s too late. A figure in a long trench 
  coat slowly walks up the center of the street 
  towards you.
  “So, this is the Reverend’s latest progeny…” 
  The voice is painfully well-enunciated, each 
  syllable razor sharp. “I’ve been curious about 
  that library he’s been gathering down in his 
  basement. So well protected, and he’s been 
  dreadfully recalcitrant about sharing even the 
  slightest tidbit of information on its contents. 
  How fortunate, then, that the Good Father 
  allows his latest apprentice to wander the city 
  streets alone.” 
  
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  The swarthy skinned vampire smiles, fangs 
  glistening despite the darkness. “Fortunate for 
  me, that is. Perhaps not so much for you.”
  You begin to protest, but an army of 
  ethereal servants springs from seeming 
  nothingness around you. They grab you, 
  impossibly strong despite their translucent 
  forms, and hold you in place as their master 
  approaches. 
  Ghostly voices keen and howl in your ears 
  as the other vampire closes the space between 
  you. Spectral hands cover your mouth so 
  that you cannot scream as he begins his 
  interrogation.
  It takes a very long time for him to believe 
  that you know nothing.
  It takes an even longer time for you to die.
  THE END
  
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  22.
  In the distance, you hear the sound of a car 
  horn, loud and piercing. It startles you, as you 
  spin about, looking out into the night to see if 
  you can locate the source. 
  The rush of adrenaline seems to have the 
  same effect on you as if waking from a deep 
  sleep. You realize you know nothing about 
  the man you have followed and were about to 
  enter a strange house in an unknown area of 
  town. 
  This isn’t like you at all. Something is 
  wrong here.
  “Listen,” you say, while taking a step 
  backwards, “I completely lost track of the 
  time. It’s later than I realized and I have an 
  early day tomorrow. Why don’t we do this 
  another time?” 
  “I thought we were getting along so well.” 
  Nathaniel looks at you with a quizzical 
  expression on his face. 
  
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  You smile in reassurance, even as you 
  experience an ever increasing feeling of danger. 
  “Oh yes. It’s just the timing. Tonight’s not 
  good for me.”
  “I see.” He looks away at the ground, as if 
  lost for a moment in thought.
  In the time it takes you to blink, 
  Nathaniel suddenly behind you, his hand 
  over your mouth. Your eyes widen as you 
  hear him murmur in your left ear. “Tonight 
  is exceptionally good for me, however. I have 
  been planning this with you in mind.” 
  You struggle as arm wraps around your 
  body, unyielding. Then you feel his teeth rip 
  into the side of your neck. No. Not teeth, they 
  are too sharp for that. Nathaniel has fangs.
  Even in the horror of that realization, you 
  continue to squirm, hoping to break free, but 
  he is too strong. You start to feel light-headed 
  and lethargy envelops you, arms and legs going 
  limp, until you stand upright only because 
  Nathaniel is supporting your weight. 
  
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  The loud thudding in your ears is the 
  sound of your heartbeat. It mingles with the 
  sickening slurp of his mouth against your 
  neck. You can feel the trickle of warm blood 
  escaping from his lips to slide along your skin 
  and over your collarbone.
  You sway, gasping for breath as he picks 
  you up in his arms, head bent with fangs still 
  embedded in your neck. You see the cloudy 
  sky overhead, with the moon in eclipse for an 
  instant, then it is replaced by plain painted 
  ceiling, quickly followed then an ornate scene 
  involving cherubs and fields as Nathaniel 
  carries you into the house and then to a nearby 
  room.
  The pain in your neck abates as he lays your 
  body across a brown leather couch. “Know you 
  your Shakespeare?” you hear him ask, but the 
  sound is so distant. Your eyelids are heavy, but 
  you know once closed, they will never open 
  again. You are dying. Nathaniel is a vampire 
  and he has drained you to death.
  His face comes into your view, blocking the 
  pastoral scene above. Your think how strange 
  it is to see your blood lingering on his lips.
  
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  “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, nor the 
  furious winter’s rages…” he intones, while 
  pressing his gashed right forearm to your 
  mouth. 
  The tang on your tongue hits like a small 
  electrical shock. You have never tasted 
  anything so rich, so good. You stir, tongue 
  lapping at the blood. When you have regained 
  enough strength, your hands clasp his arm 
  tightly, the better to press your lips to his skin.
  When he pulls away, saying gruffly 
  “Enough,” you first feel abandoned, then 
  empty. What he gave you is but a taste of what 
  you need. You feel so empty inside, worse than 
  the greatest hunger you can remember. You are 
  starving and all you want is blood. 
  More.
  Now.
  To attack Nathaniel for more blood, turn to 
  section 10.
  To flee the room, horrified by the truth, turn 
  to section 16.
  
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  23.
  Against your better judgment, you decide 
  to face the mysterious woman who emerged 
  from the shadows. 
  “Well, better get this over with. What else 
  can happen tonight?” You tentatively wave a 
  hand, pressing against the wall of the pit, but 
  nothing is there.
  “Looking for ussssss?” 
  You turn around, more than a little 
  frustrated. Just how many vampires are there 
  in this damn city, anyway? “Yeah, I guess so. 
  Who’s ‘usssssss’?” You mimic, half-hoping your 
  bad joke will draw the vampire out so you can 
  get a better look at him.
  “Why, Dmitri, this one has a sense of 
  humor. I like her even more than Ariel.” A 
  woman cloaked in black smoke steps in front 
  of you. “The name is Cassandra. Cassandra 
  Veil.”
  “Pleasure.” You’re not sure what the 
  protocol is for meeting a new vampire, but you 
  extend your hand out anyway. “I’m guessing 
  you’re a Toreador?”
  
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  “Why yes, I am. Good guess.” The corners 
  of Cassandra’s lips curl into a seductive smile. 
  “Dmitri, don’t be shy. Come meet your fellow 
  Gangrel. After all, you are the same generation, 
  I suppose.”
  The other vampire almost trips over 
  Dennis’s corpse to get to you, but when 
  he does you recoil from the sight of him. 
  Compared to Cassandra, Dmitri is downright 
  monstrous. His misshapen spine looks like it 
  had been broken in three places then fused 
  into a permanent twist. You can’t tell which of 
  his arms is worse: the midget stump or the one 
  shaped like a pipe cleaner. And his ears? Two, 
  bat-like things spiraling toward the ceiling; 
  you assume he has excellent hearing. The only 
  thing remotely human about Dmitri is his 
  perfectly-shaped nose. 
  “We’re related?” You don’t want to be rude 
  but you don’t believe for a second Dmitri is 
  anything like you. Anything “but,” maybe.
  Cassandra slips an arm through yours and 
  whispers in your ear. “Oh, but he was like 
  you. Young, fresh, full of ideas. Until his sire 
  tortured him and made him drink the blood 
  of his baby.”
  “Kind of like what happened to me,” 
  you confess, wondering if underneath that 
  
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  grotesque face, Dmitri is as scared as you are. 
  “Only I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye 
  to my boyfriend or my animals. Well, ex-
  boyfriend.”
  Dmitri’s head bobs up and down in 
  agreement. “Take you to sire. Make payment.”
  “You know who my sire is?” 
  “Sure,” Cassandra teases. “Everyone knows 
  who your sire is.”
  “Then what do I have to do to meet him?”
  Wagging a slender finger, Cassandra scolds 
  you gently. “Tsk, tsk, little one. I need you to 
  do something for me, first.”
  “Name it.” You’re dying for a little payback 
  and you can’t wait to give it to him. 
  “You haven’t even heard what it is yet,” 
  Dmitri whines. You hate to admit it, but you 
  have to wonder what connects a hideous thing 
  like Dmitri with someone as beautiful as 
  Cassandra. 
  “Lay it on me.”
  “Well...” Cassandra begins. “You see, all 
  Kindred have to answer to a higher power in 
  order to survive. Unless of course, you believe 
  
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  you can do better on your own, which is 
  something a large number of rogue vampires 
  will regret soon enough.”
  “Rogue... vampires?” You want to hear 
  more about what Cassandra is hinting at, but 
  she ignores your question and moves on.
  “Dmitri and I belong to the most powerful 
  group in the city, called ‘The Sabbat’. Our 
  mission might sound familiar to you, 
  especially if you followed politics when 
  you were alive. We simply want to be free 
  to exercise the dark gifts granted to all us 
  Kindred.”
  You never really followed the elections, 
  but you suspect most politicians are sneaky 
  bastards. “Doesn’t sound too bad, but I need 
  some time to think it over. Do I have to make 
  my decision now?”
  Dmitri grabs your hand. “You’re family 
  now. No waiting.”
  You jerk your hand away and take a large 
  step back. “Nuh-uh. I may have wanted to be 
  part of the Kindred, but I’m not going to sign 
  up for any group just yet. Can’t you give me a 
  tour or something?”
  
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  Cassandra grins, revealing a set of dazzling, 
  white fangs. “Sure thing, sugar. Tell you what. 
  You can either decide to come with us, or we’ll 
  lead you to our mentor. What do you say?”
  You realize you don’t really have much of a 
  choice. You’re alone in a pit with not one but 
  two vampires that obviously know more about 
  being Kindred than you do. “What about my 
  special powers? Don’t I get some of those?”
  It was Dmitri’s turn to laugh. Coming from 
  his twisted throat, he sounded like he was 
  choking on a bone. “Super vampire. Wears 
  funny cape.”
  “If I teach you how to use your Disciplines, 
  will you join the Sabbat?”
  “Maybe.”
  “There you go, then. Join us and learn how 
  to use what God cursed you for.”
  “Or...”
  “Or,” Cassandra stresses. “Simply lift that 
  trap door over there and chart a new course 
  with our dearest friend, Karsh.”
  “I take it you don’t have a lot of love for this 
  guy?”
  
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  “You could say that,” she snarls. “Oh, before 
  you meet Karsh, you might want to fix your 
  hair... there’s a... um...”
  It’s not just your hair that’s messed up, 
  you feel like you’ve been living on the streets 
  for months. You’re covered in mud and god-
  knows-what-else and don’t have anything else 
  to change into. “What? Do I have horns or 
  something?”
  Dmitri stoops over a small pile of clothing 
  in the corner. He tosses you a hat—Dennis’s 
  hat.
  “Thanks for the warning.” You pretend 
  Cassandra’s advice is meaningful, so you 
  put your boyfriend’s hat on and smooth out 
  your hair. Oh, crap. Your boyfriend--Dennis-
  -is dead. He may not have been the best 
  boyfriend, but he didn’t deserve to die. Did 
  he? Your chest aches with sadness and guilt, 
  but you don’t have time to wallow in self-pity. 
  Cassandra is waiting for an answer. What are 
  you going to do?
  To lift the trap door and talk to Karsh, turn 
  to section 29.
  To join the Sabbat, turn to section 41.
  
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  24.
  It’s her or you. 
  You prop the basket of dead birds on one 
  hip and pretend to struggle with the door to 
  the incinerator chute with your free hand. “I 
  can’t quite get it…”
  You watch as Mrs. Kettlesworth draws 
  nearer. You can’t believe you’re considering 
  this, but you can tell by the way she looks at 
  you as she approaches, that it’s her or you. 
  “You ninny. It’s a simple matter.” She 
  reaches for the incinerator door, and you yank 
  it open at the same time and try to shoulder 
  her into the chute.
  Unfortunately for you, the old bat is cagier 
  than she looks. She steps out of the way, and 
  you are forced to pretend that you slipped in 
  order to cover your assassination attempt. 
  “Watch it! You clumsy oaf!” She steps 
  back and brushes the rust stain from her suit 
  where you pushed her against the iron chute 
  door. She pulls a linen handkerchief from her 
  pocket, and works at the stain until there’s 
  
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  nothing left. For a moment, as she fusses with 
  her outfit, she seems like nothing more than 
  an uptight dowager. There’s nothing of the 
  conniving murderer you sensed before.
  Maybe you were wrong about her. Maybe 
  she’s not really out to get you. Maybe she 
  doesn’t resent you for killing her pets.
  But there’s no sense in being careless about 
  it.
  You slowly back towards the exit from the 
  roof, still carrying the basket of dead pigeons.
  “Wait— on second thought, there’s no use 
  wasting those.” She turns towards you, and you 
  once again sense a glint of something in her 
  eye. Is it malice? Resentment? 
  “I mean, they’re dead already. They may as 
  well be good to someone.” Is there a hidden 
  message in her words? Is she really talking 
  about you, rather than the birds?
  You glance around the rooftop, but your 
  options are limited. Mrs. Kettlesworth stands 
  between you and the incinerator chute, and 
  the doorway to the stairs down is still most of 
  the way across the roof from you.
  
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  “You can take them downstairs, and tell 
  your sire what you’ve done.” Disapproval coats 
  her voice. 
  What you’ve done. What you’ve done. 
  You’ll have to pay for what you’ve done—that’s 
  what she really means.
  “Perhaps he can find use for them in 
  feeding his flock.”
  She’s not fooling you. You know what she 
  really means. Either she’s going to destroy you, 
  or she’s sending you to your doom. It’s as clear 
  as the moon in the sky above her: This will not 
  end well for you.
  She begins slowly walking towards you, her 
  frown deepening as you frantically scour the 
  rooftop for an escape route. 
  You can see the rooftop of the next building 
  over. It would be a long leap, but it’s a story or 
  two lower, so maybe if you got a good run at 
  it, you might make it. On the other hand, you 
  must be ten stories up, and as far as you know, 
  none of your new vampiric powers include the 
  ability to fly. 
  
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  If you don’t make it on the first leap, it’s a 
  long, long way down.
  Mrs. Kettlesworth is walking towards 
  you. You’ve only got a second to make your 
  decision, and your options are limited.
  To dart back into the building and try to 
  escape, turn to section 27.
  To take your chances and try to leap to the 
  next building, turn to section 39.
  
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  109 
  25.
  Although you are intrigued by the sounds 
  and smells from the open door, your instincts 
  scream at you to feed first and that your meal 
  is getting away.
  Faster than you can ever remember running 
  before, you cross the street darting between 
  parked cars, careful to stay in the shadows. The 
  woman takes no more than ten or twelve steps, 
  while you have moved some 50 yards to close 
  the gap. 
  It makes perfect sense. After all, vampires 
  are always fast and strong in the movies. It’s 
  part of what makes them dangerous. What 
  makes you dangerous. 
  The woman is taken completely by surprise 
  when you grab her arm, yanking her off-
  balance and into the alley. The fear in her eyes 
  is arousing.
  As she inhales to scream, you react 
  instinctively, hitting the side of her face with 
  the back of your hand. She whimpers, head 
  turned to the side, exposing her neck to your 
  eyes and fangs.
  
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  The world turns red as you savage her 
  neck and shoulders, desperate for blood. You 
  bite repeatedly, each time pulling away to 
  swallow before sinking fangs into her scented 
  skin, while the woman makes sounds like a 
  wounded animal. She softly pleads for you to 
  stop, but the sheer taste of liquid life sliding 
  along the back of your throat is erotic. 
  This must be what Nathaniel felt when he 
  was draining you. Powerful. Intoxicated.
  The terrible craving abates while you kneel 
  among the refuse littering the alley, bent 
  over your prey, enjoying the mingled scent of 
  jasmine perfume and blood while you pause in 
  feeding. The woman moans as her gaze fixes on 
  your face. Her voice is sandpaper rough as she 
  begs, “Please. Stop. …hurts.” Her neck most 
  closely resembles an over-used pincushion. It’s 
  impressive that she is able to speak at all after 
  what you have done to her.
  What you have done.
  The feeling of remorse pounds like a 
  sledgehammer. What have you done? You’ve 
  become a monster and the proof is before 
  you, crumpled like a broken doll against the 
  
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  building wall. Shaking your head in denial, 
  you wipe the back of your hand over your lips, 
  smearing her blood on your face. 
  “Are you just going to leave her like that?”
  The deep voice comes from your left, 
  towards the street. Illuminated from behind 
  by the scattering of streetlamps and other 
  sources is a man of middling height, with close 
  cut brown hair.
  This stranger wears a worn leather biker’s 
  jacket, blue jeans and boots. Standing with legs 
  apart, arms hanging loose at his sides, the man 
  carries himself with the confidence of a fighter. 
  This may be bolstered by the presence of two 
  other people flanking him, dressed in similar 
  clothing—a woman with curly red hair and a 
  man of Asian descent.
  You have no idea how long they’ve been 
  standing there, watching you.
  “I don’t know you,” the group’s leader says 
  flatly. “This means you are new or foolish.”
  Your sharp eyes catch the shine and shape 
  of fang in his mouth. You exhale in relief, 
  
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  tension easing with the realization he’s not the 
  police and from his behavior, not the woman’s 
  boyfriend. 
  “New.” You touch the side of your neck in a 
  self-conscious gesture. 
  His gaze tracks the motion of your 
  hand as his eyes narrow. The man looks 
  away, exchanging a glance with each of his 
  companions. His head tilts to the side, as if 
  listening to something, but you hear nothing.
  “New, I can believe. Foolish is something 
  left to be determined.” 
  The red-head leans forward, gesturing to 
  your still breathing victim who is clinging to 
  consciousness, “You are in violation of the 
  Camarilla’s First Tradition: ‘Thou shalt not 
  reveal thy true nature to those not of the 
  Blood.’ This mortal knows what you are. In 
  most cities this will cost you your life.” She 
  places emphasis on the last two words, her lips 
  curled up in a strange sort of smirk.
  The Asian man moves quietly along the 
  opposite side of the alley, flanking you, to 
  
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  mirror his companions, who are blocking the 
  exit leading to the street. 
  “In this situation, you really have only one 
  option.” Their apparent leader speaks again, 
  “Make sure she never speaks of what she saw. 
  That or face your own death.”
  Momentarily stunned by his words, you 
  close your eyes. Will the horrors of this night 
  never end? Now you must be a killer as well?
  To make the death as quick and painless as 
  possible, turn to section 31.
  If you can’t bring yourself to take the woman’s 
  life, turn to section 43.
  
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  26.
  Beckett transforms into the shape of a large 
  wolf; he nuzzles your hand, urging you to 
  follow him. The wolf takes you deeper into the 
  park, padding softly on a well-lit path marked 
  by colorful bricks. Together, you wind through 
  an impressive display of topiary trimmed into 
  the shape of large animals. 
  One of the animals, a sleek leopard, regards 
  you with great interest.
  The wolf howls loudly and runs off, leaving 
  you alone with the deadly cat. You feel your 
  Beast straining against your chest as if it, too, 
  wants you to change your shape—but into 
  what? What could possibly help you defend 
  yourself against a jungle cat?
  “Thanks for nothing, Beckett.”
  The leopard leaps on your chest and knocks 
  you to the ground. Before you have a chance 
  to react, it clamps its jaws around your waist 
  and flings you up toward the tree tops. You sail 
  high into the air, bounce off a tree branch, and 
  hit the ground hard. You wince in pain, but 
  
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  realize you don’t hurt as bad as you think you 
  should. In fact, your muscles and skin stretch 
  back to normal. Your body has absorbed the 
  damage. You’re okay.
  You roll over, only to see the face of an 
  ancient woman with very pronounced cat-like 
  features. Her hair is mottled with gray and 
  silver strands; her ebony skin is lined with the 
  memories of a thousand lifetimes. The matron 
  extends a hand and pulls you to your feet. 
  “That was your first lesson,” she instructs 
  you, sweeping her arm from the damp grass to 
  the rustling trees. Although she looks human, 
  you sense she was Embraced long ago, in a 
  time romanticized in history books. “Beckett 
  has brought you to me, Inyanga, because you 
  are young and full of burning questions. You 
  even smell like a suckling babe.”
  You aren’t sure what to ask Inyanga, even 
  though you secretly agree with her. You don’t 
  like being compared to a baby, though—you’re 
  not that young. To her, though, you probably 
  are. “What do I do? I don’t even know who 
  made me this way.”
  
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  “That’s your choice. While most Gangrel 
  are independent, your sire has aligned himself 
  within the Camarilla. I view the Camarilla 
  as our government, one that protects all 
  vampires. Sure, it has its own laws, but it also 
  keeps us from succumbing to the darkest parts 
  of ourselves and from those who threaten 
  us. Without it, the world we know would be 
  threatened by the witch-hunters who walk in 
  the light.”
  “What’s the alternative?”
  You wait patiently for Inyanga to respond. 
  She turns away from you, tilting her head 
  toward the trees. It might be your imagination, 
  but you think the forest is speaking to Inyanga 
  and she’s talking back to it. “Many Gangrel 
  favor a solitary path. Though, I would not 
  recommend that one such as you walk the 
  path of an Anarch… yet. You still have a lot to 
  learn and could benefit from the teachings of 
  your sire. You’re much too young to declare 
  your independence. There is safety in numbers 
  for one such as you.”
  Inyanga sniffs a fresh breeze, her nose 
  crinkles in disgust. “Do you believe in the 
  devil?”
  
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  “What?” Her question throws you for 
  a loop. “You mean the red skin, horns and 
  forked tongue kind?”
  “I suppose I should have expected no less 
  from a fledgling. The idea of great evil, do you 
  place your faith in that?”
  You were never religious; you’ve always 
  placed your faith in data. The idea of selling 
  your soul to the devil doesn’t freak you out. 
  “No, definitely not. I’m guessing I’m one of 
  the Damned now, but I don’t think the devil 
  has anything to do with it.”
  Inyanga then describes a group that makes 
  the hair on your Beast’s back stand on end. 
  “The Sabbat is our equivalent of the devil. 
  There are many monsters that walk this earth, 
  but they are an abomination.”
  “Sounds like you really hate the Sabbat. 
  Can’t you stake them or something?”
  Her lips curve into a disapproving frown. 
  “This, childe, is the choice you now face. Prove 
  your worth to the Gangrel clan and meet your 
  sire. Or, seek out what hides in darkness, and 
  learn what you should be afraid of. Either path 
  will teach you a valuable lesson.”
  
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  Although you wish living your life on your 
  own terms as an Anarch was a third option, 
  you realize that Inyanga is not the type of 
  vampire you can simply suggest things to. 
  Mulling over your options, you realize the 
  wisdom in her words. She’s asking you if you 
  want to rise to an incredible challenge or if you 
  want to ignore her advice altogether. It’s clear 
  she believes you’re so full of confidence you 
  think you have more answers than she does.
  Do you? You never considered yourself to 
  be an arrogant person. Well, maybe a little. 
  You did try to control your relationship with 
  Dennis and look where that ended up. This 
  is your chance to make things right—at least 
  with your clan.
  To prove yourself as an upstanding member 
  of the Gangrel clan, turn to section 32.
  To learn for yourself why Inyanga hates the 
  Sabbat, turn to section 41.
  
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  27.
  Certain that a moment spent longer on 
  the rooftop will result in your death, you 
  fling the basket of dead birds towards Mrs. 
  Kettlesworth and dash for the door that led 
  you here. Pigeon carcasses flutter everywhere, 
  blanketing the rooftop in a gory snowstorm of 
  feathers and blood.
  Although you’re certain you can feel her 
  right behind you the whole way, you manage 
  to sprint across the roof, throw open the door 
  and dart through it.
  As the heavy metal door clangs shut 
  behind you, you hurl yourself down the stairs, 
  leaping down several stairs with each bound. 
  Your heart should be pounding; your breath 
  should be coming in ragged gasps. Instead, 
  the stairwell is silent, except for the sounds of 
  your escape: the slam of your weight against 
  the metal stairs each time you land, the echoes 
  of your hurried steps, and the squeal of your 
  shoes as you wheel your way round the corners 
  at each landing. 
  You’re sure the door shut before Mrs. 
  Kettlesworth could have slipped through. 
  
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  You don’t think she’s behind you. 
  You’re pretty sure, at least.
  But there’s that feeling again, the one that 
  starts at the base of your spine and traces icy 
  fingertips up your back. You look behind you, 
  but there’s no one there.
  No one you can see, anyway.
  On the next landing, there’s a door leading 
  out to the seventh floor of the building. You 
  dart through it and slam the door shut behind 
  you, quickly enough that you’re certain no one 
  could have followed. You jimmy the locking 
  mechanism, forcing it closed and then bending 
  the cheap push-bar so that there’s no way 
  someone from either side will be able to pass 
  through it.
  And then you wait. 
  No one tries to open the door.
  You’re safe. At least for the moment.
  You look around, and find yourself in 
  a long hallway. Other halls branch off at 
  right angles at either end. A series of doors, 
  
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  identified by discreet brass nameplates and 
  room numbers line the hall. Across from 
  the stairwell door, there’s a single elevator. A 
  small alcove with a hanging mirror provides 
  space for people to stand while waiting for the 
  elevator to arrive.
  Is it a hotel? A professional building? 
  You’re not sure, but something about it doesn’t 
  feel right.
  From around a corner, you hear voices.
  “I know I heard something, Mikael,” one 
  says.
  “No one’s supposed to be on this floor,” the 
  other replies. “Reverend Murik will have our 
  heads on a platter if someone’s messing around 
  up here.”
  There’s the sound of a bullet being 
  chambered into a pistol before Mikael’s 
  companion responds.
  “Not if we take care of it before it becomes 
  an issue…”
  
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  You look around for somewhere to hide, 
  but the hall is bare. You try several of the 
  doors, but they’re all locked.
  The only possible concealment comes from 
  a shallow alcove near the elevators. If whoever 
  is looking for you walks past, you should be 
  fine, but if they look in, there’s nothing to hide 
  behind.
  Or, you could try to explain yourself to the 
  two voices that are rapidly approaching your 
  current location.
  To try to hide, turn to section 30.
  To give yourself up, turn to section 33.
  
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  28.
  For the second time tonight you enter a 
  strange place you have never seen nor heard 
  of before. In this case, a hole-in-the-wall jazz 
  club; every table empty, a bar running the 
  length of one wall, with a mirror behind it. 
  In a far corner there’s an elevated stage with 
  a permanent piano and space for a signer and 
  one or two instruments. 
  The burly man who you assume works 
  as the club’s bouncer gives you a once-over, 
  before looking across at a booth whose 
  occupants can be concealed by velvet drapes. 
  “Victoria?” he asks.
  The glow of a lighted cigarette in the 
  darkness indicates there is one person relaxing 
  in the shadows. A woman’s voice, smoky and 
  sensual, calls out. “Let this one pass.”
  Steven’s right eyebrow arches up, giving a 
  quizzical expression to his face. “Interesting.” 
  The man steps aside, allowing you entrance, 
  but you get the impression he has memorized 
  your face and also determined that in a fight 
  you would be easy for him to take down.
  
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  Seated behind a large round table, the 
  woman leans forward, her face and upper 
  torso caressed by carefully-placed lights. The 
  fingers of one hand are wrapped around an 
  empty wine glass while an old-fashioned 
  cigarette holder rests in the other.
  Even in your single-minded focus on 
  finding sustenance, you are momentarily 
  stunned by the sheer physical perfection, the 
  ideal that she embodies. Victoria is a platinum-
  blonde, like the classical screen sirens of film 
  noir. Her elaborate 1940s hairstyle is pulled 
  away from her face by a vintage set of sapphire-
  studded pins. She wears an electric blue silk 
  gown that clings to every curve and radiates 
  that icy sex appeal Alfred Hitchcock only 
  dreamed of capturing in his movies.
  She takes a drag from her cigarette holder 
  and comments off-handedly with a slight smile 
  which allows you to make note of her fangs, “I 
  suspect you are hungry.” 
  She is a vampire. That is both a relief 
  and a reason to panic. You twist your body, 
  the better to keep an eye on her and on the 
  
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  bouncer, Steven. You feel increasingly nervous 
  about being trapped in an unfamiliar place, 
  where you would have to fight to get out 
  again.
  “Relax, childe. If you were going to run 
  anywhere, you had either the wisdom or the 
  luck to find my door. The Scourge and Sheriff 
  won’t harm you in my domain,” Victoria 
  pauses, a thoughtful look on her face. “Unless 
  I ask them to.” 
  The woman tucks a loose curl behind one 
  ear as she fixes her grey-green eyes on yours. 
  She places the cigarette holder across the 
  crystal ashtray at her side and proceeds to pull 
  the stopper from a green-glass wine bottle, 
  pouring a finger’s width of dark red liquid into 
  the glass in her right hand. A second later, the 
  aroma of blood fills your nose and you take a 
  few steps closer to Victoria and her table, as if 
  compelled.
  She addresses you in the manner of a 
  business negotiation. “Your sire is Nathaniel, 
  correct? You do match the description.”
  
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  “You know the man who did this to me?” 
  Reflexively, your left hand lifts up to feed the 
  bite marks that scar your neck.
  “He has promised to owe me a favor if I was 
  able help you tonight. For the future…” she 
  shrugs, “I am sure you will find your footing in 
  no time. So, Morgan, child of Nathaniel, how 
  can I assist you?”
  To tell Victoria you need to feed before you 
  can talk, turn to section 47.
  To ask Victoria to explain about ‘favors,’ turn 
  to section 48.
  
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  29.
  Karsh’s chiseled frame stands next to a 
  massive, tiled pillar that looks like it’s strong 
  enough to support the entire city sprawling 
  above you. He fingers his beard, then beckons 
  you over to him. Together, you wind through 
  a deep network of tunnels that twist and turn 
  for miles. The deeper you go, the chattier he 
  gets. You can only make out about half of what 
  he says, but one thing is clear: he won’t stop 
  stressing the importance of the Masquerade.
  “While we are more powerful than 
  humans, the Masquerade allows us to thrive 
  as a society. Without it, the world would be 
  plunged into chaos. That’s one of the reasons 
  why the relationship between a sire and childe 
  is important...”
  Blah, blah, blah. You want to listen to 
  Karsh’s speech, but you can’t stop thinking 
  about who your sire might be and what he 
  looks like. 
  “Every vampire is different, every clan 
  unique,” he tells you. “We Gangrel were born 
  to hunt.”
  
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  You think you remember your sire telling 
  you something about that. “What? Like a dog 
  or a pigeon?”
  Karsh freezes in his tracks. “You might 
  want to rethink that last statement.”
  “I’m just asking...” 
  Before you can blink, the elder vampire 
  puts you in a head lock. You feel your Beast 
  rising to the surface, but you tell it to calm 
  the fuck down. Pissing Karsh off is not a good 
  idea. His skin is cold to the touch, but feels 
  hard, like a slab of thick marble. “Generations 
  of vampires have come before you, little one. 
  You’ll want to talk less and listen more.”
  “Yes, sir.” You manage to croak.
  “Hmmph,” he grunts. The next time you 
  blink, he is halfway up the tunnel. “Hurry up, 
  they’re waiting for you.”
  “Why me?” You catch up to him and exit 
  the sewers through a slimy doorway into the 
  basement of a butcher shop. Long slabs of 
  skinned meat hang from the rusted ceiling. 
  Ragged saws threaten to erupt from of the 
  
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  wall at any moment. Karsh doesn’t seem to 
  care that you’re a little freaked out; he marches 
  down a rickety stairwell, taking you deeper 
  underground. You’re just about to ask Karsh 
  where the fuck you are, when you hear the 
  roar of a cheering crowd.
  “Welcome to Extreme Wrestling Warfare, 
  where Beast meets Beast in a showdown to 
  Final Death or torpor, whichever comes first. 
  Tonight, we welcome a special guest to our 
  fair city. Your favorite luchador... the one... the 
  only... El Diablo Verde!”
  The announcer’s voice is faint, but his 
  words are unmistakable: you’re about to enter 
  a vampire wrestling match.
  “You can’t be serious,” you whisper 
  underneath your breath, hoping Karsh won’t 
  smell your fear.
  “Santi has an unusual way of leading her 
  clan. In life, she was a huge sports fan, so it 
  makes sense she’d utilize the arena to welcome 
  new Gangrel to the fold.”
  “You call this welcoming? Let me guess, 
  survive two minutes and I can finally meet my 
  sire?”
  
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  Karsh regards you with disdain. You 
  wonder what he’d do to you if he didn’t have 
  to answer to the Prince. “More like thirty 
  seconds.”
  It’s been a long night for you, but the Beast 
  inside of you is itching for a fight. It smells the 
  danger and begs you to rise up and meet it. 
  “I’ll do it, for my sire.”
  “Good, in you go.” Karsh tosses you head 
  first into the ring.
  “Now just wait a second...” You mull 
  over your options. If you want to stay on 
  Karsh’s (and probably Luna’s, too) good side, 
  you should stay and fight. Still, you realize 
  you might have another option. There was 
  someone waiting for you in the shadows, 
  wasn’t there? Maybe you should find out what 
  she wants.
  To jump out of the ring and backtrack to 
  meet the woman filled with dark secrets, turn to 
  section 23.
  To take on El Diablo Verde, turn to section 32.
  
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  30.
  Discretion is the better part of valor, and 
  you duck into the elevator alcove, hoping to 
  avoid detection.
  There’s nothing here to hide behind, not 
  even an armchair or lamp, so you press your 
  back up against the wall and think “I’m 
  not here” thoughts with all your might. 
  You picture oatmeal. Rain. Glass windows. 
  Anything unnoticeable, and pray to whatever 
  gods might be listening that they stay in that 
  other hallway. 
  The voices come nearer. 
  “This way?” The first man seems skeptical.
  “Yeah, I swear I heard something.” The 
  second is definitely suspicious.
  The footsteps pause, and then turn and 
  begin approaching the stairwell you entered 
  through.
  The men pause to rattle a few doorknobs, 
  just as you did a moment ago, but like you, 
  they find them all secure.
  
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  “Tight as a drum.” He sounds irritated at 
  his companion’s suspicions. “Let’s go back. 
  We’re not supposed to leave our station.”
  That’s it. Go back. You squeeze your eyes 
  tight, straining with every fiber of your being 
  to mentally force the voices to turn around 
  and go back the way they came.
  “Yeah, but I heard something. Come on. 
  I’m gonna check the door to the stairs.”
  No! That’s right across from you. They’re 
  going to see you! You don’t want to look, but 
  you have to. 
  Two men, each the size of a football 
  linebacker, step into view. They’re casually 
  dressed in jeans and windbreaker jackets, but 
  everything about their stance screams “armed 
  guard”. 
  Their backs are turned towards you as they 
  examine the makeshift lock-job you did on 
  the door to the stairwell. Their attention isn’t 
  on you, but you’re stuck. There’s no way for 
  you to slip out of the alcove and down the hall 
  past them, or to signal the elevator without 
  drawing their attention. Between the two 
  
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  of them, their shoulders pretty much fill the 
  entire hallway. You can’t even see the stairwell 
  door past the mountains of muscle.
  What isn’t blocked from view, however, is 
  the massive pistol one of the men is carrying. 
  You don’t know anything about firearms, but 
  if big means bad, the gun he’s toting has got to 
  be among the worst.
  “You were right, Svara. Someone was here.” 
  The gun-wielder is pale and bald, and looks 
  like he could bench-press a small truck. He 
  rattles the door with the hand that isn’t toting 
  the pistol, but your slap-dash work holds 
  despite his obvious strength.
  Maybe they’ll think you left through the 
  stairs. You don’t move a muscle. 
  “Whoever did this has got to be inside,” 
  Svara says. “They couldn’t do this from the 
  stairs.” He turns, looking down the hallway, 
  then back the way they came. Unlike Mikael, 
  he’s not carrying a gun. Instead, he’s got what 
  appears to be a foot-and-a-half long piece of 
  broom handle. The end has been sharpened to 
  a dagger-point.
  
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  You don’t know what he plans to do with 
  that, but you can’t imagine that it is healthy for 
  whoever’s on the receiving end.
  You fear that you’re about to find out, first-
  hand.
  Slowly, Svara turns to face you. His glance 
  flickers over the entirety of the ten-foot-square 
  alcove you’re standing in. His expression 
  doesn’t change.
  Mikael looks as well, first into the alcove, 
  then back down the hallway in each direction.
  Neither raises their weapon.
  “The elevator?” Svara offers, frowning. 
  “We’d have heard it,” Mikael responds, 
  holstering his pistol in a side harness hidden 
  beneath his windbreaker. “Come on, let’s 
  report this to the Reverend and get back to 
  our station.”
  The two men turn, and, as one, walk back 
  down the hallway.
  They didn’t see you. 
  They looked right at you, both of them, and 
  didn’t so much as blink an eye.
  
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  Holy crap. They didn’t see you!
  Elated by your apparent invisibility, you 
  creep out of the alcove and turn down the 
  hallway in the opposite direction the men had 
  taken. You’ve only gone a few steps when you 
  hear them stop and turn towards you.
  “Hey!”
  You’re not sure what you did differently, 
  but from the men’s reaction, your invisibility is 
  long gone. So is their patience. You see Mikael 
  reach for his pistol. Svara’s still got that huge 
  stake in his hand.
  The hallway extends another 30 feet or 
  more before it takes a 90-degree corner that 
  might provide you some cover. There’s no way 
  you can make it to the corner before Mikael 
  can get his gun out.
  You’ve really only got two options. You 
  can give up and try to talk your way out of the 
  situation before things get too bloody.
  Or, you could just try to will yourself 
  invisible again and hope to hide as you did 
  before.
  To talk your way out of it, turn to section 33.
  To try to turn invisible again, turn to section 36.
  
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  31.
  You access a hidden reserve of practicality. 
  If it’s you or her, you want to live. So, this 
  woman who happened to be at exactly the 
  wrong place and wrong time needs to die.
  It feels like a burden is suddenly lifted from 
  your shoulders. Not so hard a decision to make 
  after all. You open your eyes and after glancing 
  at two vampires still blocking your escape from 
  the alley, you cross over to the blood-covered 
  woman.
  She starts to scramble away from you with 
  slow, weak movements, shaking her head in 
  denial. The panicked woman tries to speak, 
  but the only sounds from her throat are low, 
  gruff squeaks – the damage to her neck has 
  clearly hampered any ability to call for help.
  You are startled by a flash of silver that 
  comes over your shoulder. A knife, tossed by 
  the Asian man, is embedded with a dull thud 
  into the right side of your victim’s torso. “Saw 
  you didn’t have one of your own,” he speaks for 
  the first time, with a perfect English accent. 
  “You’re welcome to use mine.” 
  
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  You head spins. You had decided to kill, 
  but not how to do it. But the knife solves 
  that problem. That will be much easier than 
  choking or trying to break her neck. 
  For a second you feel qualms about the fact 
  you are sitting here, thinking how best to take 
  another person’s life. Then that is gone and the 
  practical, survival-oriented voice inside your 
  head is urging you to just be done with it. Kill 
  the woman and get out of this place. 
  You don’t look at her face or murmur any 
  soft words of comfort or apology. Grasping 
  the knife, you yank it out of her torso and 
  draw the blade deep into the woman’s flesh in 
  a jagged line across her throat. 
  Blood splashes on your clothes, droplets 
  decorating your face and arms like tiny pieces 
  of glitter. The woman’s eyes roll back, her skin 
  pales to a shade of blue and she falls over on 
  her side, unmoving.
  It is done. In silence you stare at this first 
  victim of your vampire life. Everything has 
  changed with no hope of being normal again. 
  
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  Behind you there is the sound of applause, 
  one pair of hands clapping in a slow rhythm. 
  “Bravo.” 
  All three watchers are smiling, each 
  showing fangs. You look down at the knife in 
  your hand, and pause to wipe it on the dead 
  woman’s top and skirt, so it gleams again in 
  the glow of streetlights before offering it hilt-
  first, back to its owner.
  “New, but definitely not Camarilla 
  material.” Approval colors every word the 
  Asian man says.
  “I agree,” states the redhead, standing 
  behind the third vampire and resting her chin 
  on his shoulder. “You belong with us.”
  Their leader extends his right hand to you, 
  asking, “Who is your sire?”
  You shake your head in confusion and 
  ignore his offer of a handshake. His hand 
  drops to his side. 
  “The one who changed you, gave you the 
  Embrace,” he explains. 
  
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  “The man who killed me said his name was 
  Nathaniel Le Roi,” you reply, not bothering to 
  hide the anger or hatred in your voice.
  He nods, folding his arms across his chest. 
  “If that’s the case, perhaps we can help each 
  other. We’ve been hunting Nathaniel, among 
  others, because he killed some friends of ours.” 
  The man gestures with a nod of his head to 
  the other two vampires, “I’m Randall, this is 
  Lexie and that’s Jody. Our pack’s called Caine’s 
  Mercy.”
  “You’re lucky you got away before he 
  could brainwash you,” Randall continues. 
  “In this city, you are either a member of the 
  Camarilla—that’s your sire’s group—or they 
  hunt you down and try to kill you. They won’t 
  stop until you leave the city or are dust. We’re 
  Sabbat. We look after each other and we don’t 
  buy their party line.” 
  Lexie interjects, “Actually, tonight we 
  were planning a little sabotage action, but 
  finding you is so much better than that. You 
  see, Nathaniel will be frantic to find his lost 
  childe. He’ll come looking for you and he’ll be 
  
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  vulnerable, careless even.” She tilts her head up 
  to whisper in Randall’s ear. “This could be our 
  chance.” 
  Randall makes a short nod, acknowledging 
  her words, but his attention remains focused 
  on you. “Would you like to get even with 
  Nathaniel for what he’s done to you? If you 
  throw in with us, we can teach you about what 
  you are, help you find a safe place to rest before 
  the sun comes up and help you get revenge. 
  What do you say?”
  To join forces with Caine’s Mercy, turn to 
  section 34.
  To turn down their offer, turn to section 40.
  
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  32.
  You stand at the foot of a wrestling ring 
  emblazoned with a sign that reads: Extreme 
  Wrestling Warfare. The room is crowded; 
  you spot a collection of odd characters on 
  the bleachers, including a mysterious group 
  wearing long, velvet robes covered in magical 
  sigils. Somewhere in that mess of fangs, claws 
  and bad hairstyles, is your sire.
  The announcer is a vertically-challenged 
  figure dressed in green velvet from head-to-
  toe. “Annnnnnnnd in this corner, fresh from 
  the sewers beneath Prince Morganti’s fair 
  city, we have the fierce tenth generation... 
  Pomeranian.”
  The crowd boos. Is he talking about you? 
  Shit. Feeling bold, you jump into the ring and 
  grab the microphone out of the announcer’s 
  tiny hands. “That’s right, sports fans. I’m the 
  Pomeranian because even though I’m little, 
  I’ve got plenty of teeth.” 
  Several people in the crowd start to laugh, 
  but you take that as a good sign.
  “Go over there, kid.” The announcer points 
  to the far corner. “Try not to bleed all over 
  my ring. You’re not the only match scheduled 
  tonight.”
  
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  “Sure thing.” You dig deep inside of you 
  and tune into your Beast. You’ve never been 
  much of a fighter, but there’s something about 
  wrestling your Beast adores. 
  Trotting over to the other side, you come 
  face-to-face with one of the organizers. 
  “Congratulations. Usually he toys with childer 
  until you’re all a little older, but you’ve really 
  riled up the crowd this time.”
  “Is that bad?”
  “Let’s just put it this way, El Diablo Verde 
  has a reputation to uphold. Keep mouthing 
  off like that and you’ll find out why he’s 
  unbeatable.”
  The lights in the makeshift arena snuff out. 
  A spotlight shines on the far side of the room 
  and a song—the theme song for Zorro?—
  begins to play. 
  “And in this corner, your host—the Queen 
  of the Gangrel, Luna Santi—is pleased to 
  present... that masked luchador, the terror of 
  Tijuana... the scourge of the Southwest... El 
  Diablo Verde!”
  The crowd goes wild. A huge, manly 
  specimen breaks through the door and 
  emerges into the ring. El Diablo Verde’s arms 
  
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  are the size of tree trunks. His enormous head 
  is covered with a colorful mask, the tell-tale 
  mark of a Mexican luchador.
  El Diablo Verde leaps over to his corner 
  and faces the crowd, egging them on. Your jaw 
  drops. He’s the size of a small car. Santi expects 
  you to fight that guy? The announcer steps 
  aside to make way for a referee. The ref, who 
  looks like something out of a slasher movie, 
  grabs a whistle and calls you both to the center 
  of the ring. 
  You shift uncomfortably and ask the ref if 
  there are any rules.
  “There’s only one rule here, puppy: survive.” 
  Shit. You haven’t even seen a wrestling 
  match let alone been in one. And what’s this 
  guy all about anyway? He obviously has no 
  problem hitting girls. You drop back, raise 
  your fists and wait for the signal.
  “Fight.”
  You’re face-to-face with a deadly Mexican 
  luchador. To give El Diablo Verde a left hook, 
  turn to section 35.
  To climb up on the ropes, turn to section 38.
  
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  33.
  You stop and raise your hands, in the 
  universal gesture of “Please, please, don’t 
  shoot me.” You’re not sure, but it’s possible 
  that you may have said those exact words as 
  well. There’s no shame in it; you’re not used to 
  people pointing guns at you.
  To your surprise, the men appear to accept 
  your surrender. No bullets fly, but as Svara 
  comes up alongside of you, you can see that 
  he’s wielding the wooden weapon he was 
  carrying earlier. 
  You only have time to blurt out a single 
  sentence—“The Reverend brought me here”—
  before he plunges the sharpened stake through 
  your ribcage and into your heart.
  You freeze, from the shock of his attack, 
  and from the pain. You can’t move, but it 
  hurts, more than anything you can ever 
  imagine experiencing. Broken bones don’t 
  hurt this much. Childbirth can’t hurt this 
  much. Dying can’t. Nothing could.
  You slump to the floor, immobilized 
  by Svara’s attack. Mikael breaks your fall, 
  
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  cushioning you from the worst of the drop, 
  but it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve still 
  got a foot-and-a-half of wood sticking out 
  from between your ribs.
  Your eyes are open, but you can’t move a 
  muscle. You only see what’s happening directly 
  in front of you, which at the moment consists 
  of a fairly small expanse of office ceiling and 
  the two men arguing in the periphery of your 
  vision.
  “Here with the Reverend! The old man’s 
  going to kill you for staking a guest!” Mikael 
  seems eager to pin the attack solely on his 
  companion, but Svara’s having none of it.
  “Hey, I didn’t know! Could have been an 
  intruder. A Sabbat spy. An infiltrator. Almost 
  anything. I was just doing my job.” Svara 
  begins to pace, nervously, his path taking him 
  in and out of your limited field of vision.
  “I’m calling the Reverend,” Mikael says, 
  and you hear the muted sound of a cell phone 
  being flicked open and the musical tones of 
  numbers being dialed. 
  Svara curses under his breath. “Just doing 
  my job, dammit. Don’t get paid enough for 
  this.”
  
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  After a moment, Mikael relays a brief 
  summary of what happened to the person 
  on the other end of the phone. Despite your 
  pain, you note that he’s carefully presenting 
  the facts in such a way that he and Svara are 
  the undeniable heroes of the situation. He 
  waits, while the person he called issues a series 
  of gruff commands, and then responds in an 
  obviously cowed tone.
  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I understand, 
  sir.” He closes the cell phone, and Svara 
  immediately begins grilling him about the 
  conversation.
  “What did he say? Is he pissed? Jeez, he’s 
  going to have my ass for this.” Svara continues 
  pacing.
  Mikael’s tone is dour, and there’s fear in his 
  voice. You’re just not sure who he’s fearful for. 
  “He’s coming up.”
  The two men wait in silence, and a few 
  moments later, the elevator chimes and then 
  slides open. Footsteps fall, solemn, succinct 
  footsteps making their way from the elevator 
  alcove down the hallway towards you.
  
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  Svara starts to explain, but then grunts and 
  stops rambling. From the sound of flesh on 
  flesh, you suspect it was a judicious application 
  of Mikael’s elbow to Svara’s ribs that silenced 
  him.
  The newcomer’s footsteps come closer, 
  until a shadow falls across your field of vision. 
  Reverend Isaac Murik leans over you, moving 
  carefully around your fallen body until your 
  gaze and his are on a comfortable level.
  “I wondered where you’d gotten to, my 
  childe,” he begins, as if he had found you 
  returning from a trip to the restroom, not 
  lying staked and immobile in an office hallway.
  “You slipped away before I was able to 
  speak with you after your embrace. I regret I 
  was called away, but I am a man of extensive 
  responsibilities.” He checks his watch, and 
  frowns. “Even now, I fear my time is short. 
  Allow me to present my situation, albeit 
  briefly.”
  You listen. You don’t have much choice.
  “God has brought you here for a reason,” 
  the Reverend intones, as if beginning a 
  sermon. “Just as I have duties, so do you. Your 
  
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  choice is simply whether you will take up the 
  tasks at hand, or whether you will turn your 
  back upon them. The choice must be yours.”
  He reaches down and grips the stake, 
  frowning at the wound it is protruding from. 
  “I regret to say, this is likely going to hurt quite 
  a bit.”
  It does.
  But after he’s pulled the stake out, you can 
  move once more. The pain begins to recede, 
  and as you concentrate on how much you 
  want the damage to be healed and the wound 
  to stop hurting, the pain slowly begins to fade.
  He reaches down to help you up, handing 
  the bloodied stake back to Svara without 
  looking at the guardsman.
  “So, I’m afraid I must ask for your answer, 
  my childe. Will you take up the duties you 
  were created to fulfill?”
  To agree to take up your duties, turn to 
  section 12. 
  To refuse the priest and try to ask more 
  questions about your situation, turn to section 
  15. 
  
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  34.
  The idea of making Nathaniel pay for what 
  he’s done to you overwhelms any concern you 
  might have about the intentions of your new-
  found friends. The enemy of my enemy is my 
  friend. 
  For the first time since you left that party 
  tonight, you smile in reply, fangs showing as 
  theirs did earlier.
  “It sounds like a great idea.” Just thinking 
  about what you want to do to your sire sends a 
  rush of endorphins through your body. Images 
  of torture, burning and cutting flood through 
  your mind as you think about ripping out his 
  fangs, all of his teeth, about gouging out his 
  eyes—making him as vulnerable, even more so 
  than what he did to you. 
  He’ll beg for mercy, ask your forgiveness, 
  grovel at your feet and only then will you kill 
  him.
  Lexie steps forward, lightly resting her hand 
  on your arm in a gesture of welcome, which 
  serves to pull your attention back from your 
  reverie. 
  
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  She exhales, “I knew just by watching you 
  that we’d be friends. You’re going to be just 
  fine.”
  Randall looks past you towards Jody, the 
  Asian, who nods once. 
  You are stunned by a heavy blow on the 
  back of your head. Your last thought is “How 
  could I be so stupid?” You fall into darkness as 
  your eyes shut.
  Turn to section 37.
  
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  35.
  You swing your fist with all your might and 
  manage to cuff El Diablo Verde square in the 
  jaw. Surprised, you take a step back and kick 
  him hard in the shin.
  El Diablo Verde folds his arms across his 
  broad chest.
  A hush falls over the crowd. You advance 
  towards the luchador, your fists moving faster 
  and faster in a flurry of punches. In between 
  jabs you notice something weird—he’s not 
  even paying attention. He’s scanning the 
  crowd: searching for Luna Santi, perhaps?
  Without a second’s warning, El Diablo 
  Verde focuses all his attention on you. You 
  continue to pommel him, but nothing you do 
  has any effect on his massive frame. He steps 
  toward you, dropping some line about how 
  you’re a poor little chica.
  You tell him to fuck off.
  The words hit him harder than your fists 
  ever could. His thick arms wrap around you, 
  squeezing your chest until you feel your ribs 
  
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  crack. Panicked, you suck air into your lungs 
  until you remember you don’t breathe. 
  “The Calamar Gigante Clutch everybody...” 
  the announcer howls. His statement echoes 
  over the silent crowd. Like you, they’re waiting 
  to see what happens next. 
  El Diablo Verde releases your crumpled 
  body to the mat. He then climbs up onto 
  the ropes and straightens his immense build, 
  forming a weapon—aimed at you.
  “Oh God,” you whimper. Is there any man, 
  Beast or vampire that can help you now? You 
  want to cover your eyes, but you don’t. Your 
  Beast tells you to take it like a Gangrel, and 
  that’s exactly what you’re going to do.
  The crowd chants El Diablo’s name. The 
  announcer screams, counting down the 
  seconds. “Five... four... three...”
  Just when you think you’re safe, El Diablo 
  Verde leaps from the ropes, spins in mid-air 
  and slams your body to the ground, crushing 
  your spine. Before you have a chance to move, 
  he lifts your flattened form high above his 
  head and crumples it into a little ball. 
  
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  153 
  As the light in your eyes begins to fade, you 
  imagine your sire standing over you, chastising 
  you for being so weak. 
  The last figure you detect before you drift 
  off to a deep, restless sleep is the face--the 
  terrifying, masked face--of El Diablo Verde. 
  May he haunt your dreams forever.
  THE END
  
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  36.
  It worked once, and so you try to replicate 
  your earlier performance. Screwing your 
  eyes tightly shut, you think of rain and 
  accountants, of thin, wafty banks of fog and 
  any other thing that might be likely to ignored 
  or overlooked. 
  “Stop or I’ll shoot!” There’s not a second 
  between the time that Mikael barks his 
  command and the time the first bullet 
  explodes from his gun. The round whizzes 
  past your ear, close enough for you to hear the 
  pocket of air rush back in its wake.
  You drop to the floor, huddling there, still 
  thinking your invisible thoughts. 
  Please work. Please work. Please work.
  It doesn’t work.
  Mikael grabs you and holds you down with 
  a grip like steel. You struggle, but to no avail, 
  as Svara approaches with his wooden weapon 
  in hand. 
  You squeeze your eyes shut, frantically 
  trying to disappear again.
  
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  But, apparently your trick only works once, 
  or you’re just not very good at it yet. You 
  don’t know the whys and wherefores, but it’s 
  obvious that the Reverend’s security force have 
  had no trouble seeing you this time.
  With one of the goons on each side of you, 
  they haul you down the hallway so quickly 
  that your feet barely touch the floor. 
  They bind your wrists and ankles, hogtying 
  them behind you until you’re trussed up like 
  a Sunday chicken. Some sort of sweaty rag is 
  stuffed in your mouth, deeply enough that 
  you’re thankful you no longer need to breathe.
  You’re flung into a small room, no bigger 
  than a closet, and left there. From the other 
  side of the locked door, you can hear Mikael 
  and Svara arguing about what to do with you.
  “The Reverend is going to be pissed off 
  that we let someone through security,” Svara 
  posits. “It could be our heads on the line here, 
  and I don’t think we’re going to like the boss’s 
  retirement package.”
  “We’ve got to get rid of the problem before 
  the Reverend finds out.” You don’t like the 
  
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  finality in Mikael’s voice, and you like it even 
  less when Svara grunts agreement and the two 
  men make their way back to your makeshift 
  prison cell.
  They don’t bother to untie you. Mikael 
  picks you up by your bindings as if you 
  weighed nothing, carting you through a series 
  of hallways. Svara walks ahead of you, and 
  pauses in front of one of the rooms you’d tried 
  to escape into. He slides an electric key-card 
  through the reader and opens the door.
  Both men move through the room within 
  and out onto the metal balcony without 
  pausing.
  The ties holding you are cut, allowing you 
  to stand upright, but before you can get your 
  balance, Mikael grabs you by the ankle and 
  turns you upside down. Your world spins, and 
  you buck and arch like a fish on a line, trying 
  to grab hold of him (or anything else). His 
  reach is just too broad, however, and you can 
  do nothing but struggle in vain as he dangles 
  you out over the balcony.
  You struggle to beg for your life through 
  the balled up gag of cloth. You want to scream 
  
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  and cry and plead for them to rethink their 
  plan. To check with the Reverend. To at least 
  find out who you are.
  What comes out is unintelligible around 
  your gag. But it doesn’t stop you from trying. 
  Mikael swings you like a human pendulum, 
  and you see the safety of the balcony arc 
  towards you and then away. Like a child 
  pumping a swing, your momentum moves 
  you faster and harder with each repetition. 
  Then, suddenly, he lets go. In an inhumanly 
  cruel twist of irony, your gag flies out of your 
  mouth, leaving you free to scream, now that 
  it’s too late.
  Turn to section 39.
  
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  37.
  You hear the sound of distant chanting, 
  one voice echoed by many others in a call-and-
  response as you start to regain consciousness. 
  You open your eyes to darkness. There is a soft 
  but heavy weight covering your body, and you 
  inhale the smell of freshly overturned earth. 
  Dirt slides into your open mouth.
  You have been buried alive!
  With strength born of panic, or perhaps 
  the power you have gained from becoming a 
  vampire, you start to claw your way through 
  the dirt. For a moment you feel disoriented. 
  What if you are digging in the wrong 
  direction, going deeper?
  No. You pause, listening for the chanting 
  voices, feeling the pull of gravity and you start 
  to struggle toward the surface. 
  Suddenly, there is light and air as you pull 
  yourself inch by inch out of this improvised 
  grave. You are not alone. There is a large group 
  of people—some fifteen to twenty bodies—in 
  a loose circle around a pit about ten feet in 
  diameter. 
  
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  Nearer to you, also escaping from the earth 
  are four other vampires. In fact, everyone 
  present is a vampire.
  There are lit torches spaced at uneven 
  points and a large bonfire some distance past 
  that, to the east. Its very proximity makes you 
  oddly uncomfortable. You see two bodies, 
  hanging upside down from tree limbs, blood 
  dripping from their limp forms into ornate 
  punchbowls placed directly on the ground 
  below them. 
  Instead of being appalled, you feel curious 
  and just a little hungry again.
  The chanting stops as in one voice, the 
  assembled circle of Kindred watching turn to 
  face the woman you know as Lexie. She calls 
  out, “Praise Caine!”
  “Praise Caine!” the vampires answer as one 
  before lifting their voices in a cacophony of 
  joyous sounds.
  From his place in the circle, Randall tosses 
  a leather jacket at your feet. “Welcome to the 
  Sabbat.”
  THE END
  
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  38.
  You climb up on the ropes, pretending 
  you’re going to do one of those flying leap 
  move-thingies you’ve seen once on television, 
  but all you really want to do is stay out of the 
  luchador’s way.
  This is the one time you and your Beast 
  agree on something. 
  El Diablo Verde senses your ruse but 
  he, too, pretends to give the crowd a show. 
  Climbing up on the opposite side of the ring, 
  he nods his head slightly, giving you the signal 
  to jump.
  You leap high into the air the same time 
  he does, but you both manage to just miss 
  each other. He almost rips your arm out of 
  the socket, which doesn’t hurt as much as you 
  think it should. Your body is strangely resilient 
  to the bumps and bruises he’s giving you. 
  The crowd chatters excitedly. You continue 
  to dance with the luchador until you hear the 
  final countdown. “Three... two... one...”
  “The Pomeranian has survived. Welcome to 
  Clan Gangrel!”
  
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  161 
  While you’re not so sure how you managed 
  to last for thirty seconds in a ring with a 
  vampire the size of Texas, you’re happy you 
  did. You walk over to El Diablo Verde and 
  thank him, just to make sure he has no hard 
  feelings. He simply places his thick hands on 
  his hips and gives you a wink. You know damn 
  well if it was a real match your body would be 
  in pieces right now.
  Thankful you’re still alive, er... undead, you 
  wander over to the corner and exit the ring, 
  hoping you never see the likes of El Diablo 
  Verde—or Karsh for that matter—ever again.
  Three vampires are there to greet you. 
  One introduces herself as Luna Santi, the 
  other says his name is Thalus Teratov, and 
  the last declares he’s referred to as Sapphire 
  GoldenClaw.
  Sapphire GoldenClaw?
  You’re not exactly sure what you’re 
  supposed to do in front of the Gangrel 
  primogen, but you try to be as charming as 
  possible. Luna Santi is a study in amber; her 
  caramel-colored skin and brown eyes are 
  lovely. Although she could pass for human in 
  
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  a dark bar, she’d have a rough time covering 
  up her facial hair. “Ms. Santi? Thank you for 
  bringing me here.”
  “Yes.” Luna glances over her shoulder. If 
  you didn’t know any better, you’d say she was 
  acting skittish. “Well, I congratulate you on 
  surviving my little test, anyway. Did Karsh 
  bring you here?”
  You nod, trying not to betray your 
  emotions. Luna laughs. “Yeah, I bet you got 
  one hell of a lecture. Luckily for you, I figured 
  out a much easier way to help you transition 
  into our world.”
  “Oh?” You choose your words carefully. 
  “Another trial?”
  “Of a sort. You see, one of these vampires 
  has called in a favor I owe. The other Kindred 
  is your sire.”
  “What does that have to do with me?”
  “You get to choose who you’ll leave here 
  with. Your sire will immediately take you to 
  meet Prince Morganti, an honor typically 
  not handed down right after your Embrace. 
  
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  The other has guaranteed his intentions. For 
  Kindred, that means you won’t wind up in 
  torpor or set out in the sun.”
  Your gut instinct tells you this deal smells 
  rotten, but you’re not about to argue with the 
  clan primogen. “Before I choose, I’d like to 
  hear more from these two.”
  “Of course, of course,” Luna reassures you. 
  “But choose wisely, for among our kind, we 
  need to be very picky about the company we 
  keep. Le Roi taught me that.”
  Talus is the first to step forward. The 
  gaunt man is a study in blurry lines, his black 
  suit looks like it’s made out of gauze. “I’m 
  pleased to finally meet you. I’m sorry you had 
  to go through this nasty business, but it was 
  necessary. Luna’s orders, of course.”
  “So, you’re claiming to be my sire?” You try 
  to remember all the details, but you’ve been 
  through a lot tonight, more than you have in 
  months. “Can you tell me how it happened?”
  “But of course,” he says, oozing confidence. 
  Talus describes everything that had happened 
  to you with perfect clarity--right down to the 
  part about your first test.
  
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  “You mean those two pits? Gee, that was 
  something.”
  Talus smirks. “Aren’t you the feisty one? I 
  was right to ask the Prince to Embrace you.”
  “Permission?” The more you hear about 
  what you’re supposed to do and what you’re 
  not, the less interested you become in joining 
  the Camarilla, the Sabbat or any other group 
  for that matter.
  “What happens if I decide to go with 
  you? Where will you take me?” You ask 
  Talus carefully, hoping you don’t sound too 
  antagonistic. If this creepy guy really was your 
  sire, then he’d probably tell you to do whatever 
  was in his best interest. Sounds like something 
  a vampire would do, doesn’t it?
  “We will go where you rightfully belong, 
  by my side. Of course, you will join my 
  organization, which is why your choice 
  tonight is so important. If you don’t come 
  with me, I cannot afford you any protections 
  or boons that come with our arrangement.”
  “What kind of favors?” Bennies could be 
  good, right?
  “The usual. Teaching you how to use your 
  Disciplines, maybe add a couple of special 
  
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  powers along the way...” Talus’s voice trails 
  off into a whisper, as if he’s distracted by 
  something only he can see.
  You take that as your cue to talk to the 
  other Kindred. “And you? Sapphire?” 
  Sapphire GoldenClaw is a perfect 
  representation of what you imagine your Beast 
  looks like. The vampire is naked from the waist 
  up and is covered in fur. His broad, brown 
  face seems to have taken on the traits of a bear. 
  His hands look more like round paws than 
  anything else. 
  “I guess I don’t know what to say,” Sapphire 
  began. He looked anxious, like he has 
  something to hide, perhaps? “I followed the 
  rules, of course. I asked permission to Embrace 
  you from the Prince and Santi. Remember 
  how I got you to the park? Things didn’t go 
  the way I wanted them to, but you’re here now. 
  That’s what counts.” 
  Unlike Talus, Sapphire doesn’t remember 
  what happened to you after you were 
  Embraced, which makes you wonder what else 
  he doesn’t know. 
  “You know, the whole reason I picked 
  you was because you have a special way with 
  animals. I told Santi that’s why you’d make 
  
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  the perfect Gangrel, because you’d be able 
  appreciate them in a way humans can’t.”
  “Time’s up,” Luna butts in. “Talus, any final 
  words?” 
  Talus slinks over to you and takes your 
  cool hands in his. “I know this is hard for you, 
  childe, but I am your sire. If you acknowledge 
  this truth, you will become part of a larger 
  family of Kindred. Choose me and I will take 
  you to meet your sister Cassandra and your 
  brother Dmitri.”
  Luna interrupts him. “Don’t forget to tell 
  her she’ll have to join the Sabbat, first.”
  Talus leans over and whispers something in 
  Luna’s ear. Her eyes widen with fear. You’re not 
  sure what’s going on between the two of them, 
  but you’re not convinced it has anything to do 
  with you. Frustrated, you look to your Beast 
  for answers, but it’s on the defensive. Who will 
  you choose? 
  To follow Thalus Teratov’s instructions and 
  join the Sabbat, turn to section 41.
  To leave with Sapphire GoldenClaw, turn to 
  section 44.
  
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  39.
  You’re flying out into the open air between 
  one building and the next. 
  Your speed is amazing. The night wind 
  whips past you, pulling at your clothing, 
  tugging at your hair. You’re weightless, and you 
  wonder for a moment if this is what it feels 
  like to fly. 
  The next building’s rooftop looms, and 
  you’re sailing towards it. You stretch your arms 
  out, reaching for the relative safety it offers.
  Then gravity grabs a hold of you, and you 
  begin to fall.
  Time slows. You can see every detail of 
  the windows as you plummet past each floor. 
  Most of the rooms are empty, but from others 
  televisions flicker, holding the inhabitants 
  attentions mercifully away from you. 
  From one window, a young woman with 
  white hair and an angel’s face blows you a kiss 
  as you pass. You wish you had the presence of 
  mind to return the gesture.
  
  168
  Paths of storytelling
  The street rushes up at you. It’s an empty 
  street, but the parked cars grow larger by the 
  second, as you churn your limbs in a desperate 
  and hopeless effort to slow your fall. One 
  shoe comes off, and seems to defy gravity as it 
  dangles in the air beside you for what seems 
  like a lifetime.
  You don’t die right away, when you hit 
  the pavement. You feel the impact, one leg 
  shattering as it hits first, then the other knee 
  and both arms. Your head hits last, but no 
  less hard. You can hear the shattering of your 
  skull from the inside as the speed and velocity 
  of your fall flatten it against the cool, rough 
  concrete.
  You can’t move, can’t get up. Your eyes 
  are open, although you can’t see more than a 
  miniscule slice of the sidewalk directly in front 
  of your ruined face. It’s late. There’s no one on 
  the sidewalk. No one driving past. No one to 
  see you. No one to help you.
  It hurts. But you’re not dead.
  Not really dead.
  Then footsteps draw near. 
  
  Vampire
  169 
  “Tsk-tsk.” Even her disapproving noises 
  carry a slight air of the British Isles with them.
  You can’t look up at her. Can’t respond. 
  A pair of brown alligator shoes step into 
  your field of vision, and Mrs. Kettlesworth 
  kneels down beside you.
  You’re helpless.
  She pulls out the soiled hankie, the one she 
  used before to remove the stain from her suit. 
  She uses it to roll you over, so that your blood 
  and brains and bile—whatever fluids those are 
  that you feel leaking out of you—don’t sully 
  her fingertips.
  You can see her face now. There’s no 
  compassion there, no mercy. Only distain and 
  disapproval.
  From an alligator bag that perfectly 
  matches her sensible footwear, she brings out 
  a piece of pine dowel. It’s been lacquered and 
  polished, and sharpened to a sharp, gleaming 
  point. The pointed end is shadowy, as if it had 
  been steeped in some dark liquid, soaked for 
  long enough that the color has leeched into 
  the wood grain itself.
  
  170
  Paths of storytelling
  She sighs. “I hate cleaning up the 
  Reverend’s messes.” 
  And with an expression of put-upon 
  martyrdom, she stabs the stake deeply into 
  your chest.
  The shaft pierces your heart. Mrs. 
  Kettlesworth reaches down and closes your 
  eyelids, denying you even the power of sight.
  It hurts. But you’re still not dead.
  Not really.
  You don’t die there on the street. And you 
  don’t die as she calls for the Reverend’s men to 
  come fetch you.
  You don’t die when they take you down to 
  the basement, or when they leave you alone 
  with nothing but the rats scuttling over your 
  coffin for company.
  You don’t die at all.
  But you want to.
  THE END
  
  Vampire
  171 
  40.
  The idea of making Nathaniel pay appeals 
  to you and for a moment you want to accept 
  Randall’s offer. 
  For the first time since all this insanity 
  started, you smile in reply, fangs showing as 
  theirs did earlier.
  “I appreciate the offer, but this isn’t me,” 
  you gesture to the dead woman’s body. “Not 
  the real me. I killed her, yes. But I don’t want 
  to do that every night. To have to do that every 
  night.”
  Out of habit, you run both hands through 
  your hair, heedless of the blood still on your 
  fingers. “I think I need to get out of town. You 
  said they hunt you until you leave or die. Can 
  you… Will you help me?” 
  Lexie steps forward, lightly resting her 
  hand on your arm in a gesture of reassurance. 
  She looks…sad as she exhales, “We can help. 
  Nathaniel will never find you. The Camarilla 
  will never find you.”
  
  172
  Paths of storytelling
  You are stunned by a heavy blow on the 
  back of your head. Jody drops the plank of 
  wood and grabs your shoulders, while the 
  other two attack you from the front. 
  Randall hisses in your ear, “One thing your 
  sire would have taught you about, if given the 
  time. Diablerie. In the Sabbat, we strengthen 
  our blood by draining the souls of other 
  vampires. Weak vampires. Those unworthy of 
  the dark gift.”
  You feel the sharp bite of three sets of 
  fangs, in your arm, your back, and your neck. 
  That last, Randall’s bite, overlays the marks 
  you endured earlier this evening. The same 
  sensation of being drained is repeated, at a 
  greatly accelerated rate, painfully.
  And your last thought is “How could I be 
  so stupid?”
  THE END
  
  Vampire
  173 
  41.
  You enter into a stunted hedge maze that 
  barely reaches your knees. Over the tops of the 
  brush, you see a small ring of candles laid out 
  in the shape of a pentagram. Upon entering 
  the center, you notice the waxy candles are 
  tipped with black flames. You think this is 
  supposed to be some sort of fancy ritual, so 
  you kneel down in the center of the circle and 
  state your intention.
  “I am here to join the Sabbat.”
  A woman emerges from the far side of the 
  hedge. “I, Cassandra Veil, congratulate you.” 
  She slinks up to you and laces her fingers 
  through yours. “You’re now part of the Sabbat. 
  Right, Dmitri?”
  The other vampire, whose misshapen body 
  looks like something Picasso would have 
  painted, grunts his approval. “Party now?”
  “That’s it?” You’re beginning to feel you 
  made a mistake. So far, becoming a Kindred 
  was nothing like you thought it was going to 
  be. You’re definitely not impressed—especially 
  with these two. “I say I’m a member of the 
  Sabbat and now you’re my fairy godmother?”
  
  174
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  Cassandra opens her mouth to respond, 
  but Dmitri cuts in front of her. “Look out,” he 
  yells. “Owls!”
  From out of nowhere, a parliament of owls 
  spins around you. Large wings and sharp claws 
  flood the space in between you and Cassandra. 
  You shield your eyes from their beaks, but 
  to your surprise, they’re not attacking you—
  they’re targeting them. Are you supposed to 
  help or run away?
  “Whoooooo... would... doooo...” You 
  imagine words forming in the air all around 
  you, coming from the owls. “Dooooom. 
  Doooom the mooooon.”
  Is this some sort of vampire special power? 
  You hope so. Well, whatever the words mean, 
  they’re good enough for you. You leave 
  Cassandra and Dmitri behind. After you bolt 
  out of the maze, you head toward a glowing, 
  red light. Your feet fly through the damp grass. 
  Your mind is racing. Screw the Sabbat. You 
  have nothing to gain by joining them. No 
  secrets, no fancy powers. Stick around, and 
  you’re sure they won’t let you live through the 
  night. Nothing is worth that.
  
  Vampire
  175 
  You reach a small clearing and do a double-
  take. About a dozen scarlet-upholstered chairs 
  are arranged around a large ruby throne; 
  the entire arrangement is illuminated by 
  several glowing, red orbs hung to the trees. 
  At first you think they’re kind of pretty until 
  you move up a little closer. That’s when you 
  realize the decorations are all made out of 
  flesh. The chairs? Muscle and sinew, tissue and 
  membrane have been woven together to create 
  furniture. The lamps? Stomachs filled with 
  some sort of gas.
  “Oh, God.” You say the words and feel 
  embarrassed. Does a vampire even pray 
  anymore? “What the fuck. Who would do 
  this?”
  “Good,” you hear a sinister voice say. “Our 
  new recruit has arrived.”
  A stringy, hard rope winds around your 
  ankles, locking them together. The more you 
  move, the harder it squeezes. “Yeah, I’m one 
  of the Sabbat now.” Maybe if you keep the 
  strangers talking, you can buy yourself some 
  time.
  
  176
  Paths of storytelling
  “Are you now?” A chorus of voices cackle. 
  “Luna Santi has done well. It’s amazing what 
  a little fear will do to our fellow vampires. 
  First, Ariel and now her. Perhaps we’ll begin 
  with your heart. Such an interesting muscle, 
  wouldn’t you say?”
  Luna Santi is behind this? The Gangrel 
  Primogen? “Show yourself.” You may be in 
  trouble, but you’re not going down without a 
  fight. You feel another tendril snake up your 
  back and you try to ignore it—even though 
  your Beast can’t. That thing inside you recoils 
  in fear, telling you something terrible is about 
  to happen.
  To retain control over your Beast, you close 
  your eyes and center yourself. If you focus, you 
  might be able to escape. “The Hound daresss 
  to speak to usssssssss.” When you open your 
  eyes, you see the chairs are flesh and their 
  mouths are talking. To you.
  “Oh, shit.” Panicked, you try to wrench 
  yourself free, but wind up face first on the 
  ground. You inch further and further away 
  from the chair-mouth-things, but are held 
  back by the weird snake circling your forehead. 
  
  Vampire
  177 
  “Laika will be pleassssssed,” one of the 
  chairs tells you. “You’re so fresssssh.”
  “At least I don’t look like I’m from a 
  fucking rummage sale.” 
  Cassandra slinks over and helps you to your 
  feet. “That’s no way to treat your new Master, 
  little Hound. I know my place. Now you must 
  learn yours.”
  “You lied to me. I’m not a member of the 
  Sabbat, am I?”
  Laughing, she slakes her fingers up and 
  down your body, then slits her wrist and 
  raises it to your mouth. You refuse to drink, 
  but your Beast has already surrendered to 
  her blood. Once you’ve had a fair sample, she 
  dematerializes into shadow and speaks to you 
  from the blackness.
  “What do you think of me now, little 
  Hound?”
  Your head feels foggy, drugged. You want 
  to run and fight, but something has taken hold 
  of you. It’s too strong to resist. “I guess you’re 
  all right.”
  
  178
  Paths of storytelling
  Cassandra morphs back into her vampiric 
  shape and nods. “All yours.”
  “Time to rejoin your Master.” 
  You open your mouth to reply, but as 
  soon as you do, the pink vine wraps itself 
  around your mouth. At one end of it is a large, 
  bloodshot eyeball. “I, Talus, declare your flesh 
  to be the property of the Sabbat.” 
  His eye forces its way all the way down 
  to your stomach, winding through your 
  intestines. You gag. Each involuntary swallow 
  you take forces the eye-stalk deeper into your 
  bowels. Your Beast howls in terror and rails 
  against it, but it’s no match for Talus. You 
  sense your Beast whimper and fade into the 
  background, taking what little is left of your 
  sanity along with it.
  “Nope, nothing here.” The eye-stalk 
  contracts and spins its way out of your system 
  a lot faster than it went in. As soon as you are 
  released, you sink to your knees.
  “Please, just... please kill me. I want to die. 
  Please.” 
  
  Vampire
  179 
  Cassandra, Dmitri, the chairs and several 
  other vampires surround you with shadow. 
  “I’m sorry, my Love, but your nightmare is just 
  beginning.”
  Faced with the inevitable, you howl at the 
  moon in anger. Not for what you have already 
  lost, but for the terrors you can no longer 
  wreak on the Gangrel who betrayed you: Luna 
  Santi. 
  THE END
  
  180
  Paths of storytelling
  42.
  You refuse to be daunted by the challenges 
  you’ve faced before, or your earlier failure 
  to discover the truth contained here in 
  the Repository. Somewhere, here amongst 
  the clutter, lies the secret to Golconda. 
  Somewhere, hidden in the disorder, the pieces 
  lie fallow, just waiting for you to put them 
  together in the right combination.
  As you move between the aisles, you find 
  traces of those who have come before you, 
  remnants of previous presences here in the 
  Repository. They make no sense whatsoever to 
  you.
  Notes scribbled on the back of envelopes 
  document one person’s studies, while those 
  scrawled on a series of used cocktail napkins 
  directly contradict the work of the first. You 
  discover instructions written in the margins 
  of newspapers and between the lines on pages 
  of sheet music, clawed into stone tablets and 
  painted in colored ink on the back of woven 
  tapestries.
  
  Vampire
  181 
  There is truth here. You’re certain of it. 
  Each piece is like a personal message from 
  another member of your clan, a secret left for 
  you to decode. 
  But no matter how intently you study these 
  pieces, no matter how many nights you spend 
  dedicated to your work, the meaning of the 
  archived bits eludes you. 
  Some nights you sit without moving from 
  dusk ‘til dawn, studying a single artifact. 
  Others, you prowl through the aisles of the 
  Repository like some caged beast, unable to 
  focus, until the morning sun rises outside and 
  sends you back to your restless sleep.
  Time passes, weeks becoming months, 
  months becoming years.
  And still the Truth eludes you.
  To continue your studies, turn to section 18.
  To set out on your own, turning your back on 
  your duties, turn to section 21.
  
  182
  Paths of storytelling
  43.
  This is your breaking point. It’s all too 
  much. Vampires are real. You’re a vampire. 
  Everything you know has changed in the space 
  of a few hours.
  Out of habit, you run the fingers of both 
  hands through your hair, digging along your 
  scalp, trying to think. This has to be a bad 
  dream. Please let it be a bad dream.
  Their leader interrupts your musings, 
  “Who is your sire?”
  You glance in his direction, confused by the 
  question. “Uhh, what?”
  “The one who changed you, gave you the 
  Embrace,” he elaborates. “Made you one of us.” 
  “He said his name was Nathaniel Le Roi,” 
  you reply, not bothering to hide the bitterness 
  in your voice. 
  The redhead steps up behind the speaker, 
  keeping her eyes on you as she murmurs to 
  him. “Randall, if that’s true…” 
  He cuts her off with a sharp glance, before 
  returning his focus to you. 
  
  Vampire
  183 
  “Describe him to me.” 
  You get the sense he is accustomed to 
  giving orders and having them obeyed without 
  question. On edge, the descriptive details of 
  Nathaniel’s appearance spill from your lips to 
  the growing approval of your audience. 
  Randall nods when you are finished. “It 
  seems you are the childe then of the Toreador 
  Primogen. How lucky.” he smirks, folding his 
  arms across his chest.
  Something in his stance or expression sets 
  you off like a spark to tinder. “Lucky! I don’t 
  feel the least bit lucky!” 
  You point to the still-breathing woman 
  who has pushed herself to an upright, sitting 
  position against the building wall, one 
  blood-stained hand pressed against her neck, 
  eyelids half-closed as she fights to retain 
  consciousness. “She doesn’t feel lucky!”
  Behind you, the Asian man glides over to 
  the woman’s side and casually snaps her neck, 
  before you can react. “Now she doesn’t feel 
  anything. Better?”
  “Jody, you could have waited.” The woman 
  tsks, with a pout on her face. “I was hungry.”
  
  184
  Paths of storytelling
  Your mouth hangs open you take a few 
  steps away from the dead body and her killer. 
  This unfortunately brings you closer to the 
  other two vampires. Taking advantage of your 
  distracted state, they act.
  First here is a sharp pain in your chest, 
  starting at your back. When you look down, 
  the point of a blood-covered wooden stake is 
  jutting out from the space your heart should 
  be. Your muscles lock up and you become 
  paralyzed. 
  You can feel hands supporting you from 
  behind. The world tilts and spins, until you are 
  staring straight up at the night sky, stars mostly 
  obscured by the glow of electric lights. The 
  tall buildings telescope on either side of your 
  peripheral vision. 
  Then, bending over so her ratty hair drapes 
  like a frame around her face, the woman 
  speaks, while lightly caressing your cheek. 
  “You’ll be given a chance to prove your 
  worthiness to the Sword of Caine after we 
  kill your sire. All you have to do is lie there.” 
  She laughs, and for the first time you see the 
  depths of madness in her eyes. “We’re doing 
  you a favor. Really.”
  Turn to section 45.
  
  Vampire
  185 
  44.
  “Wonderful! Let’s get going.” The whiskers 
  on your sire’s nose twitch with anticipation. 
  “Thank you, Luna. Theratov, always a 
  pleasure.” 
  He hastily excuses himself from Santi’s 
  presence and rushes you out of the ring. Even 
  though your sire looks like a big ole grizzly 
  bear, you’re pretty sure he’s not someone you 
  want to cuddle with.
  “Hey, where are we—”
  Sapphire scolds you. “Keep your voice 
  down. You don’t want to get us killed, do 
  you?”
  Killed? What did you get yourself into, 
  anyway? You’re not sure if you’re happy he 
  Embraced you or if you should be pissed 
  at him. And what’s with that stupid name, 
  anyway? “So, I have to ask. Your name isn’t 
  really Sapphire GoldenClaw... is it?” 
  “Not here, okay?” Sapphire growls 
  menacingly. “We have an important meeting 
  to attend to. The kind I can’t afford to refuse.”
  
  186
  Paths of storytelling
  For the moment, you keep your mouth shut 
  and follow him back through the butcher shop 
  and into the sewers. After a few twists and 
  turns, you come to an intricately carved door 
  supported by two columns. Standing on either 
  side of the elegant doorway are two hooded 
  figures cloaked in velvet.
  Sapphire leans forward and whispers 
  to one of them. The figure raises his hand 
  and the door dissolves, revealing a dimly-lit 
  passageway. You tread carefully, hoping you’re 
  not getting suckered into a trap.
  “Okay, we have a few minutes.” Sapphire’s 
  shoulders droop. “Sorry to involve you in this 
  mess, but I am bound by the Prince’s orders. 
  Luna Santi has been a very bad girl.”
  “I’m guessing it’s not a good idea to piss off 
  the Prince.”
  “Ah, to be young and naïve again.” Your sire 
  stops about halfway down the hall on a tiled 
  landing. Wandering over to the wall, he starts 
  pressing various bricks and statues sticking out 
  of it. “You were right. My name isn’t Sapphire 
  GoldenClaw, by the way. It’s Urso.”
  
  Vampire
  187 
  “Let me guess, the whole GoldenClaw bit 
  was a disguise?”
  One of the statues slides back into the wall, 
  allowing a broad door to swing open. Karsh is 
  standing there, waiting for you.
  “I see you’ve brought your childe,” he says, 
  eyeing you suspiciously. “That wasn’t part of 
  the deal.”
  Urso holds his ground. “I know you don’t 
  like me much, warlord. You think I don’t play 
  by the rules, but you’re wrong. I brought my 
  childe here because she has a right to know 
  what’s going on.”
  Karsh sticks his face into Urso’s. It is full of 
  threats. “You disobey two Princes by bringing 
  her here.”
  You feel your Beast stirring. Either you do 
  something now, or both you and your sire are 
  going to wind up slaughtered. “Mister Karsh, I 
  asked him to tell me what was going on. Urso 
  felt it wasn’t safe to have our discussion out in 
  the open.” You do the best imitation of doe 
  eyes you can possibly muster. “I can leave if 
  you want me to.”
  
  188
  Paths of storytelling
  Your sire doesn’t seem affected by your 
  words, probably because he’s too busy 
  struggling with his Beast, but Karsh definitely 
  is. “Urso, you may tell her only what pertains 
  to her.”
  You pull the back of Urso’s pants away from 
  Karsh. “Thank you, Karsh. We’ll be going 
  now.”
  Karsh wanders deeper into the new 
  passageway, closing the door behind him.
  “If he had his way, I’d be dead by now.” 
  Urso moans, kicking the stone wall. “He 
  doesn’t even care how rare I am. Just sticks to 
  his damn orders.”
  “Yeah,” you say, fingering your forehead. 
  “I kind of got that impression. So what’s the 
  deal?”
  “Luna Santi has been working with a clan 
  known as the Tzmisce. She’s been feeding 
  them opportunities to grab new Gangrel. You 
  just happened to be one of them.”
  Although Urso is telling you what’s going 
  on, you’re not sure you understand the 
  seriousness of the situation. “I don’t get it.” 
  
  Vampire
  189 
  “Santi is trying to overthrow the Prince. 
  That particular plot happens a lot among our 
  kind. There’s always one vampire who wants 
  power over another but in this case, new 
  vampires and kine are getting caught in the 
  crossfire. Her war with Morganti is a huge 
  threat to the Masquerade.”
  “And the Tzmisce? I’m guessing Talus was 
  one of them.”
  “That clan is not part of the Camarilla. 
  They’re mostly Sabbat, which by our standards 
  is about the meanest, sickest, most terrifying 
  group of vampires known to man.”
  “Why would Santi side with them? For 
  support?”
  Urso’s shoulders droop. “Yes and no. Talus 
  is powerful, but until tonight I had no idea 
  how brave he was. He knew I was your sire 
  and yet he asked you to join the Sabbat right 
  in front of me. Santi must have promised him 
  part of the city in exchange for his help.”
  “How bad can the Sabbat be, Urso?” 
  
  190
  Paths of storytelling
  “Rumor has it they have power over bones 
  and flesh.” Urso shook his head, his face a 
  contorted mess of emotions. “They blend and 
  twist them in their hands like clay—while 
  you’re still alive, of course. With the Tzmisce, 
  mortals and Kindred alike are tools for their 
  nefarious ends.”
  The thought of being turned into pottery 
  causes your Beast to howl. “So what now? 
  Karsh didn’t seem too keen on me being here. 
  From what you’re telling me, you need to 
  figure out how to end this threat.”
  Urso takes a step back and gives you the 
  once-over. “I was right to choose you, little 
  one. There’s not much I can do for you now, 
  not with Karsh and the other Gangrel in town, 
  but I can give you a choice.”
  “Lay it on me.”
  “To prove your worth, jump back into the 
  ring with El Diablo Verde. If you win—for real 
  this time—it would be a tribute to me and to 
  Clan Gangrel. The only other option would 
  be to join the Sabbat and wait for me to rescue 
  you.”
  
  Vampire
  191 
  You may be new to the Kindred, but you 
  weren’t born yesterday. “You want to use me as 
  bait.”
  Urso places his fat paws on your shoulders. 
  “I can’t guarantee that I’d get to you in time, 
  but I’ll definitely try. ‘Course, it depends upon 
  how long this meeting takes. A lot of other 
  Gangrel and angry Kindred have appeared to 
  deal with this matter. Litrac, Inyanga, Beckett, 
  Karsh and Theo Bell just to name a few.”
  “I guess it’s up to me, then. Either earn my 
  chops in the ring or show my support for the 
  clan.”
  “That about covers it, yeah.” Urso hands 
  you a crudely drawn piece of paper. “If you 
  want to track Talus down, you’ll have to play 
  his game and join the Sabbat. If they let you 
  in, you can report from the inside.”
  “Has anyone else signed up for this? I 
  mean, there’s got to be other spies—”
  “Sure, kid. Ariel tried earlier tonight, but 
  she’s Malkavian. Whatever the Sabbat did 
  to her, she’s more messed up than before. 
  Obsessed with mirrors, poor thing. You 
  remember that suit who watched you wrestle?”
  
  192
  Paths of storytelling
  Your mind was so focused on El Diablo 
  Verde, you can’t remember who was sitting in 
  the audience. “I was a little busy...”
  “Well, that was Nathaniel Le Roi. He’s this 
  Toreador guy. Kind of a stiff, really. Anyway, 
  I told him his childe was in danger and he 
  didn’t believe me. Nathaniel thinks the Prince 
  is going to give him protection just ‘cause he’s 
  got some dirt on him.”
  “Great, so I guess it’s all up to me.”
  Your mind is reeling. So far you’ve managed 
  to survive long enough to accomplish your 
  goal. Now that you’ve met your Sire, you’re 
  faced with a terrible decision that will impact 
  your immediate future. Truth be told, you’re 
  not sure who’s worse—El Diablo Verde or the 
  Sabbat. You start to laugh. Just yesterday you 
  were complaining about the weather. Now? 
  You might be the only one in the entire city 
  who can thwart a coup. Your gut tells you 
  this is not what you have to do, but what 
  you should do. You’re no longer a weak and 
  powerless mortal, you’re a vampire now, and 
  you better start acting like one.
  
  Vampire
  193 
  “All right, Urso. I think I’ve made up my 
  mind. Tell Karsh I’ll see him later.”
  Making a quick exit, you dash out of the 
  crypt and wind your way through the tunnels. 
  The twisting paths seem a little more familiar 
  to you now, so when you come to a fork you 
  know exactly where you want to go.
  To veer right and face El Diablo Verde in a 
  deadly re-match, turn to section 32.
  To join the Sabbat to see what Talus is up to, 
  turn to section 41.
  
  194
  Paths of storytelling
  45.
  It seems like an hour, maybe two hours have 
  passed. Rats crawl over your still body. Your 
  sense of smell was never so keen as now, when 
  blood and urine, garbage and decay, gasoline 
  and alcohol mix to form a cocktail of aromas 
  you can’t ignore. 
  Then, you sense him coming. No better way 
  to describe it. You hear steps, a purposeful, 
  confident stride.
  “Morgan!”
  His form appears looming over your 
  unblinking eyes. “Who has done this to you?” 
  Nathaniel radiates concern and anger. “I 
  promise you, my childe, my poor childe, they 
  will pay.”
  He starts to kneel down, hand going 
  toward the stake, when Jody, the Asian 
  vampire, appears literally out of nowhere, 
  fangs bared, claws for hands, attacking him. 
  The other two vampires join in.
  You can only hear and see snippets of the 
  fight. It is brutal and brief. Bodies fly in the 
  air above you, blood trails make arcs in the air 
  like solid red rainbows, before splashing across 
  your face and the ground.
  
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  The three move as one. Nathaniel howls in 
  pain. Then you hear only slurping and silence. 
  “Jody, grab our little Toreador.” You hear 
  Randall order his companion. You are lifted 
  from the ground, like a sack of flour, tossed 
  over one shoulder. 
  Your head is lifted up by your hair and find 
  yourself staring at the disembodied head of 
  your sire. “The trophy of our hunt. Tonight we 
  have dealt a major blow to the Camarilla and 
  that is due to you.” 
  Randall’s eyes are fever-red and his face 
  flushed with color. “Nathaniel’s soul was 
  exquisite. One day, if you are very careful and 
  smart, you too will know what it is to enrich 
  your blood. The taste of another vampire—of 
  your enemy’s life—is like nothing else.” 
  He releases your hair, so your head flops 
  back down, face pressed against Jody’s jacket. 
  “We will teach you everything you need to 
  know, Morgan.” You feel his hand trace along 
  your spine as the group heads back out into 
  the street, brazen and unafraid of the night. 
  “Welcome to the Sabbat.”
  THE END
  
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  46.
  Nathaniel would not have brought you 
  here, left you with this woman if he didn’t 
  trust her. But the thought of food is becoming 
  all consuming. You look toward the exit 
  Nathaniel used, then back at Victoria, trying 
  to think of the most polite way to proceed.
  “I’d like to thank you for your hospitality 
  as well, Miss Victoria. Perhaps you would… 
  hrm… favor me with more conversation after 
  dinner?” 
  She laughs softly, leaning back in her chair. 
  “Excellent manners, even when under duress. 
  Do you know what Hospitality is, young 
  vampire?”
  “Hold that thought,” she continues 
  abruptly before you can reply. Then Victoria 
  looks beyond you and asks the bouncer, 
  “Steven, will you invite Violet to join us 
  please?” 
  She gestures to the empty chair across the 
  table. “Please sit. You will be provided for. And 
  while we wait, I will explain.”
  
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  “Thank you,” you murmur before taking the 
  indicated seat. “This has been a very difficult 
  evening for me.”
  “Of course it has,” Victoria replies in a 
  soothing voice. “And if I am correct, you come 
  into our world as a true neonate. You have 
  not been a ghoul. You did not know we exist. 
  This is as it should be. It means in our city the 
  Masquerade has been preserved.”
  She taps the mouthpiece of her cigarette 
  holder delicately against her perfectly white 
  teeth. “This is the first and most important 
  rule. We do not let mortals know we exist.” 
  She inhales then continues, “Never forget that. 
  You place everyone at risk should any hint of 
  our existence reach the wrong places. We will 
  kill our own to protect our safety. You will be 
  expected to do that as well if told.”
  You inhale reflexively, fascinated by 
  Victoria’s words, by her smallest gestures. Each 
  move is almost a dance, so graceful. Although 
  she is not a type you have ever been attracted 
  to before, you find yourself wondering if this 
  might be what people mean by love at first 
  sight.
  
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  Pleased by your attention, Victoria smiles 
  and leans forward again, resting her glove-
  covered elbows on the surface of the table. You 
  mirror her motions, content to stare into her 
  grey-green eyes for as long as she will let you.
  A third party joins your table, sitting at 
  your right hand. A wine glass is placed on a 
  golden charger in between you and the new 
  arrival. You are vaguely aware of this, but 
  everything else seems unimportant, so long 
  as you can view Victoria. Even the gnawing 
  hunger in your stomach abates while your eyes 
  are captured by such beauty.
  The spell of fascination breaks only 
  because she laughs again, clearly delighted, 
  before shifting her attention to welcome 
  the new arrival. “Oh there is no doubt you 
  are Toreador, definitely subject to our clan 
  weakness. I am going to enjoy having you 
  around to shake up the status quo, Morgan.”
  You straighten up, with a slight shake of 
  your head. It feels like you were under sedation 
  and are waking up again. 
  Dressed all in shades of purple with a Bettie 
  Page-styled haircut, a girl who must be Violet 
  
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  199 
  murmurs a soft hello. She looks at Victoria, 
  arching her right eyebrow in question. Your 
  hostess smiles and lowers her eyelids once in 
  confirmation.
  Violet holds up her left arm over the wine 
  glass and cuts a line across her wrist with her 
  other hand, using a delicate knife with a short, 
  two-inch blade. 
  Nothing else is as important to you in the 
  whole world at that instant than watching the 
  slow stream of her blood into the glass. You 
  note the scar marks on Violet’s wrist, old and 
  new—indicating she has done this before. You 
  can barely restrain yourself from grabbing the 
  glass. Your fingernails dig painfully into the 
  palms of your hands, while you force yourself 
  to wait, to be polite and civilized while in the 
  presence of Victoria.
  When the contents of the glass equal a 
  standard pour of red wine, Victoria whispers, 
  “Violet dear…” 
  The silent woman pulls her wrist away and 
  twists in her chair, presenting her extended 
  arm to the blond goddess. Victoria’s tongue 
  laps gently at the wound, while she closes her 
  
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  eyes for an instant. Then your hostess gestures 
  to the glass. “Be my guest.”
  You remember to salute Victoria with a 
  toast of the glass before proceeding to drain 
  it dry. Manners can carry you only so far, but 
  at last the desperate urges are contained and 
  you feel less like a caged animal and more like 
  rational personal again.
  Just as quietly as she arrived, Violet leaves 
  the table and disappears through the same 
  beaded doorway your sire used. You glance 
  about and realize that the bouncer has not 
  returned. The place is empty, except for the 
  two of you. Nathaniel should have been back 
  by now. That realization makes you vaguely 
  uncomfortable.
  “I was going to explain some more to you, if 
  memory serves?” Victoria tilts her head to one 
  side, the smile back on her face though it does 
  not reach her eyes.
  To ask Victoria to continue talking, turn to 
  section 49.
  To go find Nathaniel, turn to section 50.
  
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  201 
  47.
  Your eyes slip from Victoria’s face to rest 
  on the glass she just drained. You can smell 
  the last drops of drying blood that cling to the 
  side. 
  She exhales a soft understanding sigh. 
  “Hold that thought.” Victoria looks beyond 
  you and asks the bouncer, “Steven, will you 
  invite Violet to join us please?” 
  She gestures to the empty chair across 
  the table. “Please sit. You will be provided 
  for. And while we wait, I will educate you. 
  Some Kindred say it is one of the duties of a 
  Harpy.” Victoria’s voice gives a subtle emphasis 
  to the word before she continues in a more 
  casual tone, “But I like to think of it as a side-
  benefit.”
  “Thank you,” you murmur. 
  Victoria smiles and leans forward, “You 
  must answer one question for me so I can 
  better help you, Morgan. You come into our 
  world as a true neonate, yes? You have not 
  been a ghoul. You did not know we exist?”
  
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  You nod, because talking requires too much 
  energy, and all you want to do is reach across 
  the table, to steal the glass from her hand and 
  lick the minute trace of blood that remains.
  Victoria continues to speak, filling the 
  passage of time. “The First Tradition is our 
  most important rule. We do not let mortals 
  know we exist.” She puffs on the cigarette, 
  and then continues, “Never forget that. You 
  place everyone at risk should any hint of our 
  existence reach the wrong places. We will kill 
  our own to protect our safety. You will be 
  expected to do that as well, if ordered to.”
  You are drawn in, distracted from your 
  hunger by Victoria’s words, by her smallest 
  gestures. Each move is almost a dance, so 
  graceful. You have never seen anything like 
  her. Although she is not a type you have ever 
  been attracted to before, you find yourself 
  wondering if this might be what people mean 
  by love at first sight.
  Pleased by your obvious fascination, 
  Victoria smiles and leans forward again, 
  resting her glove-covered elbows on the 
  surface of the table. You mirror her motions, 
  content to stare into her grey-green eyes for as 
  long as she will let you.
  
  Vampire
  203 
  A third party joins your table, sitting at 
  your right hand. A wine glass is placed on a 
  golden charger in between you and the new 
  arrival. You are vaguely aware of this, but 
  everything else seems unimportant, so long 
  as you can view Victoria. Even the gnawing 
  hunger in your stomach abates while your eyes 
  are captured by such beauty.
  The spell of fascination breaks only 
  because she laughs again, clearly delighted, 
  before shifting her attention to welcome 
  the new arrival. “Oh there is no doubt you 
  are Toreador, definitely subject to our clan 
  weakness. I am going to enjoy having you 
  around, Morgan.”
  You straighten up, with a slight shake of 
  your head. It feels like you were under sedation 
  and are waking up. 
  Dressed all in shades of purple with a Bettie 
  Page-styled haircut, a girl who must be Violet 
  murmurs a soft hello. She looks at Victoria, 
  arching her right eyebrow in question. Your 
  hostess smiles and lowers her eyelids once in 
  confirmation.
  Violet holds up her left arm over the wine 
  glass and cuts a line across her wrist with her 
  
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  other hand, using a delicate knife with a short, 
  two-inch blade. 
  Nothing else is as important to you in the 
  whole world at that instant than watching the 
  slow stream of her blood into the glass. You 
  note the scar marks on Violet’s wrist, old and 
  new, indicating she has done this before. You 
  can barely restrain yourself from grabbing the 
  glass. Your fingernails dig painfully into the 
  palms of your hands.
  Manners can carry you only so far, but at 
  last the desperate urges are contained and 
  you feel less like a caged animal and more like 
  rational personal again.
  Just as quietly as she arrived, Violet leaves 
  the table. You glance about and realize that the 
  bouncer has not returned. The place is empty, 
  except for the two of you. 
  “I was going to explain some more to you, if 
  memory serves?” Victoria tilts her head to one 
  side, the smile back on her face though it does 
  not reach her eyes.
  To ask Victoria to continue talking, turn to 
  section 49.
  To go find Nathaniel, turn to section 50.
  
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  205 
  48.
  “Nathaniel mentioned debts and favors 
  when he changed me and you have mentioned 
  it now. This is important, isn’t it?” 
  Victoria smiles in approval. “Yes. You have 
  good instincts. Boons are the currency of our 
  society. While money is nice, given that you 
  live for decades and assuming you are smart 
  enough to do so, you will have basic needs 
  covered, but power comes from whom you 
  know, who you owe and who owes you.”
  “Then, if I understand correctly, he’s 
  placing himself in debt to you on my behalf.”
  “Yes.” She looks at you thoughtfully, 
  then continues, “This falls under the Fourth 
  Tradition, also called the Accounting. You 
  are a childe. Nathaniel is responsible for 
  everything you do. If you break our laws, he 
  can be made to pay.”
  Tilting your head back and running your 
  tongue over your fangs, you take a moment to 
  think, before asking. “So how many of these 
  traditions are there?”
  
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  “Six. They are the basis of our law. Being 
  here, in my club, you are in my Domain. That 
  is the second. We must have the area and 
  mortals to sustain us so we do not reveal our 
  existence. Tonight you feed from my herd. In 
  time you will cultivate your own.”
  At the mention of feeding, your 
  body stiffens in reaction. Victoria laughs 
  sympathetically. “Violet, dear…” she calls 
  towards the back of the club. 
  The beaded curtain over the doorway 
  jingles and a petite woman dressed only in 
  shades of purple, with a Bettie Page-styled 
  haircut, appears. She walks to your side and 
  looks at Victoria, arching her right eyebrow in 
  question. Your hostess smiles and lowers her 
  eyelids once in confirmation.
  Violet holds out her left arm. You notice 
  the inside wrist is covered with scar-tissue. 
  Using a knife with her right hand, she opens a 
  cuts a new line and offers it up to you.
  You glance at your hostess. Victoria 
  murmurs, “Please, be my guest.” 
  Her permission given, you drink directly 
  from the black-haired girl, enough to take the 
  edge off before you stop of your own accord. 
  
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  207 
  Violet sways slightly on her feet, eyes 
  heavily-lidded and complexion several shades 
  paler. You murmur a thank you as she slowly 
  makes her way towards the back of the club. 
  “Won’t you sit down?” Victoria points to 
  the empty chair across the table from where 
  she sits. 
  “May I ask a question?”
  “Of course.” 
  “You said something about being a 
  Toreador and having the clan’s weakness?”
  “Ah.” Victoria absent-mindedly twirls a 
  lock of hair hanging over her heart. “You will 
  not learn everything in one night, but you 
  should start somewhere. 
  “Toreador is a bloodline of vampires dating 
  back through eras of time. We are the lovers of 
  beauty, creators of art and muses that inspire 
  art. We are the most perfect, most lovely of 
  Kindred. We are the arbiters of taste. We 
  influence mortal fashion through our servants 
  and tools. We maintain the structure of 
  society.”
  
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  Victoria inhales and continues, “There 
  are other bloodlines in the night. Their 
  representatives are in this city as well—from 
  brutal, vicious Kindred who prefer nothing 
  more than to fight, to the sewer dwellers who 
  would make the Hunchback of Notre Dame 
  look like an Adonis. There are…”
  The bouncer, Steven, interrupts as he 
  appears at Victoria’s side, holding out a cell 
  phone. “It’s Prince Morganti.”
  Victoria looks surprised, but immediately 
  takes the call. She stands up, and walks 
  away while saying, “Good evening, my 
  Prince.” Once she reaches the far end of the 
  club, Victoria paces back and forth. The 
  conversation is one-sided as she answers only 
  with one word replies. 
  When she is done, Victoria walks up to 
  your side. She smiles down at you, brushing 
  the tips of her fingers along the line of your 
  jaw. “Nathaniel sends his love.”
  “What does that mean?”
  “He won’t be coming back tonight and 
  I have agreed to keep you with me.” She 
  tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. 
  
  Vampire
  209 
  “Remember when I mentioned it’s all about 
  debts and favors? Other Kindred have called 
  in their debts and their negotiated payment 
  requires Nathaniel to be out of commission 
  for some time. As his unreleased child, you 
  have no protection. But, I have a haven—a 
  safe place—nearby. You will stay there until he 
  comes for you.”
  As Victoria explains, you start to relax. 
  When Steven stakes you, pinning your torso to 
  the seatback, it comes as a complete surprise.
  “Nathaniel will be unstaked in about ten 
  years, assuming the Prince doesn’t change his 
  mind. And I promise Morgan that the day 
  he is walking among us again, the first thing I 
  will do is release you to your sire’s care. Until 
  then, you will be perfectly safe.” You can 
  feel Victoria press her lips in a kiss on your 
  forehead. “I promise.”
  THE END
  
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  49.
  “Nathaniel mentioned debts and favors 
  when he changed me and you have mentioned 
  it now. This is important isn’t it?” 
  “Yes. You have good instincts.” She leans 
  back, taking refuge in the shadows. “Boons 
  are the currency of our society. You will come 
  to see that power among the Kindred derives 
  from whom you know, who you owe and who 
  owes you.”
  “If I understand correctly, my sire is placing 
  himself in debt to you on my behalf.”
  “Yes.” Victoria exhales a lazy ring of 
  smoke, “Nathaniel will be held responsible for 
  everything you do. If you break our laws, the 
  Prince can penalize him—and likely will. He is 
  unyielding when it comes to the Traditions of 
  the Camarilla.”
  “And if I wanted to start acquiring boons 
  myself?” 
  Victoria’s mouth curls up in a slow smile. 
  “By rights, they would default to your sire 
  until you are released—acknowledged by the 
  
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  211 
  Prince as an independent vampire. That is…” 
  she taps her cigarette holder, allowing the ash 
  to drift to the floor, “if he knows about them.” 
  You ponder her reply while carefully 
  crafting your next question. “What about 
  committing to owe someone in the future? A 
  debt that takes effect when I am ‘released’?”
  “Did you have something specific in mind, 
  Morgan?”
  “I want to learn. I don’t want to be reliant 
  entirely on Nathaniel. I want to know the 
  things he won’t tell me. I want to live, and 
  knowledge is power.” You stare intently into 
  Victoria’s eyes. “If you will agree to help me, 
  then I would owe a future boon to you.”
  One finger glides back and forth over 
  her lower lip as Victoria stares back at you, 
  considering. After a moment she says, “I will 
  require more than that. I like to anticipate 
  when there are shifts in power. I offer this—I 
  will educate you in how to survive and in turn 
  you will keep me apprised of any threats to my 
  position as Harpy from your sire or any others 
  you encounter in our city. Agreed?” 
  
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  “I don’t know what a Harpy is or does.” you 
  counter. “I would not know what would be a 
  threat to you.”
  Her hand comes to rest on the tabletop as 
  the woman frames her reply. “The Harpy is the 
  final authority on who owes whom and what 
  standing an individual has in our society. The 
  best-connected Harpies can ruin their enemies 
  with a well-placed word. Reputations are made 
  and destroyed when a Harpy exercises their 
  influence. To be a harpy is to have power in 
  the Camarilla and I like power.” Victoria tilts 
  her head to one side, her smoky eyes making a 
  study of your face.
  “So, if I hear someone plotting against you 
  or slandering you, then I would contact you 
  and simply tell you what I heard?”
  She pauses, as if considering your words 
  before nodding in confirmation. 
  With a slight shrug of your shoulders, you 
  say, “Agreed.” 
  Victoria calls out, “Stephen, bring me the 
  book.”
  
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  213 
  The bouncer hands over an aged brown 
  leather journal, several inches thick, with two 
  buckled bands wrapped around its width, 
  holding the book closed. Victoria flips it open 
  and finds a blank page well towards the back. 
  At the top she writes “Morgan, Toreador, 
  Childe of Nathaniel Le Roi.” 
  When she has included the full details of 
  your verbal agreement, Victoria signs and 
  dates it before turning the book around and 
  offering you her pin. 
  You read the wording carefully and copy 
  her actions. When, out of curiosity, you finger 
  the edges of the book and flip back several 
  pages, Victoria quickly slams the cover shut on 
  your hand, leaning far across the table, so her 
  face is inches from your own.
  You pull back, startled.
  “No one will ever see your debts and boons, 
  so long as I am Harpy. Nor will you view that 
  of others trusted to my care.” 
  It is at this moment you see the killer 
  behind her elegant façade. She is as much a 
  monster as you are. A far older and better-
  practiced monster.
  
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  “Don’t be disturbed, Morgan. I do look 
  after my allies and informers. It’s to my benefit. 
  I value long-term relationships.”
  Worried, you think back on what you have 
  agreed to. You have missed something, made a 
  mistake. 
  You slump in your chair, head in your 
  hands. 
  You forgot to specify a time limit or end 
  to this agreement. From the look in her eyes, 
  Victoria is not the type to renegotiate. 
  “Consider this your first lesson in Kindred 
  politics, Morgan.” she coos with cigarette 
  holder posed in her upturned hand.
  THE END
  
  Vampire
  215 
  50.
  “Victoria, are you receiving?”
  A new voice heralds a new arrival coming 
  through the main entrance. He passes by 
  the bouncer with a cordial bob of his head, 
  already confident of his reception. The man 
  wears a priest’s collar, a carved wooden crucifix 
  hanging from a chain about his neck and 
  carries a bible in his left hand. He bears a 
  striking resemblance to Richard Chamberlain 
  in The Thorn Birds mini-series. More, than 
  that, you feel as if you have seen him recently; 
  his face is so familiar.
  You flinch, but feel no different in the 
  presence of the religious symbols.
  “Fewer of us find garlic, crosses and the 
  like to be an issue than you might think.” 
  Victoria whispers before extending a welcome 
  to the man. “Reverend Murik, why am I not 
  surprised?” 
  “Dear lady,” he murmurs while kissing the 
  back of her offered hand. “I heard just now 
  about the newest member of our flock and 
  wanted to introduce myself.” 
  
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  The priest turns to you, with a pleasant 
  expression on his face, “So, Nathaniel has 
  selected Cymbeline for you? I think he must 
  have decided to go in reverse order.” He 
  thumps the flat of his hand on the bible, before 
  running one finger along the inside of his 
  collar as if it was too tight to be comfortable. 
  “Never mind. Never mind.” He mutters to 
  himself as you try not to stare in confusion.
  “So, Morgan. Are you adjusting to um, 
  well, everything? I hope he… um…that is to 
  say, Nathaniel did handle it properly yes? You 
  look quite as I imagined, hoped you would. 
  Victoria, don’t you think Morgan looks just 
  as a Kindred should? I mean pallor…?” His 
  questions spill forth in a lower register of 
  voice, with a different accent and tempo of 
  speech. The priest tilts his head to one side and 
  says as he leans forward, “I would have let you 
  find your own name, you know.”
  His questions rattle about in your head and 
  you inhale before selectively answering him. 
  “I suppose I am adjusting, but I will admit 
  to being overwhelmed.” You decide to play it 
  cautiously, and tack on a polite “thank you” 
  while the Reverend looks at you expectantly.
  
  Vampire
  217 
  “Just so. Just so.” He looks at Victoria. “I 
  am going to invite young Morgan to join me 
  on my rounds. Hrm….You will let Nathaniel 
  know when he comes back, won’t you. I 
  suspect he will want to speak with me. He may 
  be looking for me even now.” 
  She exhales a puff of smoke. “I could never 
  say no to you, Reverend.” Laying her hand 
  against the table’s edge, Victoria asks him, “I 
  assume you’ve seen the Prince?”
  “I made a point of speaking to him as soon 
  as I heard the news. You can update your 
  book accordingly. I think he was quite glad to 
  remove that sword of Damocles.”
  You are unable to follow their train of 
  thought and lean back in your chair, as they 
  converse for a few moments in the same vein. 
  Then, Victoria rises and moves around the 
  table. “I have work to do upstairs. Record-
  keeping. Morgan, I have enjoyed your visit. Go 
  with the Reverend here and I will make sure 
  to tell Nathaniel you are with him when he 
  returns.”
  
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  Even walking away, she moves with such 
  elegance you can’t help but feel a momentary 
  envy and wonder if you can acquire similar 
  grace and polish in the nights to come.
  The Reverend sighs softly. “I hear music 
  when I watch her.” Then he taps your shoulder 
  with his book. “Come. Time is precious and 
  there is little of it left tonight to accomplish all 
  I must do.”
  Bemused, you shrug and follow him out the 
  door and into the night.
  The next hour is spent in apparently aimless 
  wandering. You find yourself answering 
  questions instead of asking them for a change. 
  The Reverend coaxes you to speak about your 
  family, your interests, and what you knew of 
  vampires before being Embraced. He shares 
  cautionary tales with you about some of the 
  older, more powerful and “quite insane” 
  vampires in the city.
  You feel so comfortable that you even 
  volunteer the story of the first time you tried 
  mood-altering drugs. He laughs and mutters 
  something about blood being the only drug 
  he needs. Yet, other than talking with you and 
  
  Vampire
  219 
  wandering the streets, the two of you visit with 
  no other vampires. Do nothing of purpose 
  that you can perceive. 
  “Well, we’ve come to the end of our time 
  together.” He stops abruptly. You look about 
  and realize you are standing before the same 
  brownstone where Nathaniel changed you to 
  Kindred.
  “I want you to know I wish…” The 
  Reverend sighs. “Nathaniel shouldn’t have 
  done this to you.”
  You angle your body away, turning your 
  head, to hide the expression on your face. 
  Sympathy is more than you can bear right now. 
  You are trying so hard to just come to terms 
  with your new condition.
  “I will remember everything you have 
  shared with me tonight and I will keep an eye 
  on your family.” 
  You start to look up and ask what he means 
  by that last bit, and you see him drive the 
  crucifix into your chest, up to the crossbar. You 
  fall on your back, lying flat and immobile on 
  the ground.
  
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  The Reverend kneels down beside you. He 
  crosses himself before grabbing one of your 
  limp hands, holding it between both of his. 
  His eyes are not sane.
  “I lost one of my childer at Nathaniel’s 
  hands and the Prince owed me a great debt 
  from years before you were born, Morgan. The 
  bible says “an eye for an eye.” Your sire did not 
  know I knew he murdered my youngest. Now 
  he will know that and he will know my pain.”
  A blood-tear rolls down the Reverend’s 
  cheek. “I will mourn you. He didn’t cry for my 
  loss, but I am a better person. I will remember 
  you and I will honor you. You should have 
  been mine. I will choose my next childe from 
  your family and you will be part of the night 
  always, through them.”
  These words terrify you, but all you can do 
  is scream inside where no one can hear.
  Reverend Murik releases your hand, reaches 
  up to gently shut your eyes. Left in darkness, 
  you imagine you feel his hand trace the mark 
  of the cross on your brow. 
  Then you feel nothing at all.
  THE END
  
  Vampire
  221 
  51.
  The angel leans over and kisses you gently 
  on the lips. Your body erupts in pain, pain 
  beyond your understanding. Through tightly-
  clenched lids you can still see a powerful white 
  light enveloping you. Blood runs from your 
  eyes, your ears, your nose. You scream and 
  scream and scream.
  After an eternity, the light fades, and 
  the pain returns to whatever realm it was 
  summoned from. You open your eyes, and 
  the angel is gone. You see blood all over your 
  hands, and you reach inside your jacket for a 
  cloth to wipe them clean.
  That’s when you notice your heart beating.
  Amazed, you press your hands to your 
  chest. Thump. Thump. Thump.
  You turn to the window, and see the first 
  rays of dawn. The sun slowly rises, and there 
  is no fear, no pain, no burn. You are human 
  again.
  You weep tears of joy. Your life is yours 
  once again.
  THE END
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Storyteller [multi]/EXTRA/Fiction/Vampire/Vampire the Masquerade Novels/Paths of Storytelling (OEF).pdf