Charmed into Darkness 01 - Apocalypse Rising
Charmed into Darkness
by Soledad
A "Pathways in the Dark" story.
A Charmed/BtVS/AtS/Kindred: The Embraced/PtL crossover
Rating: Mature, for this part.
Note: Lady Heather is borrowed from CSI and features in my other story, “The Toreador Chronicles”. Nahir and Four-eyes are canon characters from White Wolfe, where they aren’t given much character background. So I borrowed them and turned them into my own characters. Broadhurst University is my own invention.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chapter 01 - Apocalypse Rising
Nahir, one of the most ancient creatures of the night - if indeed not the most ancient creature still walking the Earth - never intended to leave England. Nor did he keep in touch with his fellow vampires; not beyond what would be absolutely necessary. Being a Lasombra Antitribu, even though he lived under the disguise of a Tremere Anarch, was a dangerous way of unlife; the fewer knew about his mere existence, the safer it was for him. Not even the Prince of London knew about his true identity.
He lived in an old manor house just outside London for decades, teaching ancient history at Broadhurst University - a small, very traditional, very conservative and very expensive private college in London - for so long that no-one could remember the time when he hadn’t been there. That was the advantage of old private English schools: once you’d become a fixture, people simply accepted you and stopped asking questions.
He lived there in near-seclusion, with only his personal ghoul (and slave) as a company, and he was content with the arrangement. He would sometimes miss his remaining progeny but there was a reason why they lived scattered all over the planet with very little contact to each other. It was safer that way, for them all.
Still, when the invitation came to hold a series of guest readings at UCLA, he welcomed the chance to reconnect with Heather. She, like himself, was an Antitribu and lived in disguise: disguised as a Toreador dominatrix in Los Angeles, owning and running the BDSM and fetish club called La Lune Rouge that was highly popular among both Kindred and mortal clientele.
“We are a completely legal establishment; but an exclusive one,” Heather - called Lady Heather by employees and patrons alike - explained, after having given her Sire the full tour through every single room of the club. Nahir was a Master himself and thus had a professional interest in the place. What he saw met his expectations; Heather had created a place of style and professionalism.
“We only accept a very selected number of clients,” she continued. “No-one gets in without the recommendation of at least two old and reliable patrons. We are represented by the law firm Navital & Waters - Camarilla Ventrue lawyers - so we are suitably safe. Well… as safe as anyone can be in these days.
Nahir nodded in agreement. “Life in a Free Anarch City can be turbulent at times. Especially if it’s the last of its kind.”
“Actually, Los Angeles has become much safer since Angelus took over as Prince,” Heather replied. “He has the support of the Camarilla, of course - they were the ones to invite him, after all - but the Anarch gangs also listen to him. He’s forged an alliance with the two powerful Anarch Ministers and helped to establish the local Legacy House. Together, they are more than capable of holding back the Sabbat.”
“Los Angeles has a Legacy House?” Nahir said in surprise. “Since when?”
“A few years by now,” Heather answered. “Oddly enough, it was Angelus’s idea. And since the Prefect used to be an ex-Watcher and his personal assistant, it wasn’t too hard for him to recruit the right people for the job. They even have a small branch watching over the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. No, the real danger breeds in San Francisco.”
“How that?” Nahir asked with a frown. “The city has been firmly in Camarilla hands - in Ventrue hands at that - for decades. Both Archon Raine and Julian Luna have run a tight city. And a safe one at that.”
“That was true until a few years ago,” Heather said grimly. “Until the Legacy House was destroyed. Now there’s nothing and no-one to guard the Hellgate that lies under its ruins. San Francisco has no real Tremere presence; besides, certain dark forces can only be stopped by people who can wield the power of the Lasombra.”
“Only that our Clan would rather support those dark forces than trying to stop them,” Nahir commented.
“Which is why you should move to San Francisco; at least for a while,” Heather returned promptly.
Nahir gave her a bewildered look. “Why should I want to do that? I’m perfectly content in London.”
“Too content,” Heather said disapprovingly. “You’ve been there for how long? A hundred years? Two hundred? Or even longer? You know it’s dangerous for us to remain in the same place. We don’t have the Clan backing us.”
“I’ve always kept a low profile,” Nahir said with a shrug.
“After a century or two, no profile can be low enough,” Heather insisted.
Nahir rolled his eyes. “And you’re suggesting that I should move to San Francisco, of all places? To a city so tightly controlled by Ventrue Camarilla that not even a bat can enter it unnoticed?”
“To a fatally endangered city in desperate need of your powers, yes,” Heather corrected. “Julian Luna may be a sticker to Camarilla rules but he’s not a fool. He knows he can’t withstand the dark forces on his own, without the Legacy hunters. That’s why he’d worked out a détente with them long ago, but now they’re gone and he’s in a precarious position. The Sabbat he can deal with. Demons and other such powers he has no experience with and will inevitably fall. He knows that; or at least Daedalus does. And he will bring Luna over, eventually.”
Nahir shook his head. “Even if you are right, what can I possibly do? I may be old and powerful, but I’m just one vampire; I seriously doubt that Olivier would be willing to settle down in San Francisco - or that you would be willing to leave Los Angeles.”
“Not permanently,” Heather admitted. “But I might come over from time to time to help. You’ll need more progeny, though.”
“No,” Nahir said promptly. “Even if I were willing to make more Childer, which I am not, what use would a bunch of fledglings be for us?”
“Not just any fledglings,” Heather opened the safe in her office, took out a thick manila folder and handed it to her Sire. “Fledglings with power.”
Nahir opened the folder and glared at the photos of some pretty girls that lay atop the documents. “Who are these?”
“The Halliwell sisters,” Heather replied. “Also known as the Charmed Ones: some of the most powerful witches ever to walk the Earth, dedicated to protecting innocents and ridding the world of evil. Each one of them has some specific powers inherited from their ancestor, Melinda Warren, a powerful witch. They are immensely strong each on her own, but united in the magical bond of the Power of Three, they become magnitudes stronger than they are individually. That is the power you’ll need to keep the Hellgate in San Francisco under control; at least until the Legacy re-establishes its presence there. And that can take a long time yet.”
Nahir shook his head again. “Natural powers cannot survive the Embrace.”
“Tell that the Tremere witches of the LA Chantry,” Heather returned dryly.
“That is different,” Nahir said. “I wouldn’t dabble in Tremere blood rituals even if I could. Our powers are not compatible.”
“Exactly,” Heather nodded. “But you are old; older than the Sabbat as a whole. You are the last true Aurelian. You could do it.”
“Perhaps,” Nahir allowed; there was indeed a strong possibility for him to succeed. “But why should I want to do so? San Francisco is not my concern,”
“But if the city falls to the dark side, it will become your concern,” pointed out Heather. “Yours and Olivier’s and Angelus’s and mine; because the Clan will gorge themselves in dark power and our unlives will be forfeited. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be diablerized by some power-hungry Sabbat.”
“Surely you’re exaggerating!”
“No, I am not. If Julian Luna falls and the Hellgate opens in San Francisco, the dark wave will roll over South California in no time. The aftershocks will tear the Hellmouth in Sunnydale wide open, releasing a second wave of hellish creatures; and then the darkness will spread over the entire continent like the plague… and not the kind of darkness we would be comfortable with. We all were humans once; and we kept some of our human traits, despite the changes. If the Old Ones are released to walk the Earth again, not even we will last much longer.”
“Are you having visions now?” Nahir still wasn’t quite buying it,
“Not me,” Heather replied. “Drusilla.”
That silenced Nahir quite successfully. Drusilla, the insane Childe of Angelus, was known for having had the second sight even before Angelus would turn her into a vampire. She was said to have been healed - sort of - from her madness, but the truth was, her visions had always proved true, despite her insanity. If Drusilla saw the end of the world coming, the end of the world was coming.
“Very well,” Nahir said after a lengthy pause. “I haven’t survived all those millennia to become demon fodder now. Tell me more about these witches. Assuming they are true witches with true power, not just some wannabe Wiccas brewing vile potions and dabbling in what they believe to be white magic.”
“All I have is their basic file,” Heather admitted. “The one we gained through our people with the police and the FBI. If you want to learn about their powers, you need to talk to the Nosferatu. I can give you the address.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Two hours later Nahir was sitting in one of the small offices at schrecknet.com, the centre of the Nosferatu information network, with an elegant, scholarly man in a tailored three-piece suit. The man had a completely bald head and gold-rimmed glasses and looked like a university professor - which he had been once, in his mortal years. Only the elongated earlobes and the taloned hands revealed that he was, in fact, a vampire. A Nosferatu at that, from one of the oldest and more animalistic Clans.
He was known among the upper echelons of the undead as Four-eyes, due to his ever-present spectacles (not that he would actually need them, vampire eyesight being what it was) and to the fact that he adamantly refused to reveal his true (mortal) name. Sometimes he was asked for the reason of his refusal; in such times he simply replied that he still had living family that was better off believing him dead.
Nahir and he had known each other for decades, albeit only professionally - they were both Noddist scholars - and this was the first time they had actually met in person. They had exchanged phone calls and e-mails on occasion, of course; whenever Nahir needed sensitive information. All Nosferatu were information traders and Four-eyes, the founder and maintainer of schrecknet.com, was their uncrowned king.
Needless to say that he had extensive files on the Halliwell sisters, too. With countless photos, copies of every important document of their lives, starting with their birth certificate through their school notes to their college degrees… well, to the college degree of the oldest sister, as the others didn’t have any. Nahir was impressed. He always knew that no-one could beat a Nosferatu when it came to gaining information, but even he hadn’t thought that they would be so good.
So good indeed that they found something the existence of which not even the sisters themselves were aware: that of a fourth sister. Well, half-sister, actually, as she was born as a result of a forbidden affair between the girls’ mother and her Watcher and raised by adoptive parents, outside of the powerful grandmother’s influence.
Nahir did wonder at first why the family matriarch would agree with that. On second thought, however, he realized the calculating wisdom behind it. They needed three sisters to unleash the Power of Three. It didn’t matter which three of them. Should anything happen to one of the legitimate daughters - and considering the lives they led, in constant focus of the dark forces, that had always been a distinct possibility - they could reach out to the fourth one. Should that not be necessary, though, the girl could live out her natural life in peace, oblivious to her dangerous heritage.
A heritage Nahir intended to put to good use. Which wasn’t as simple as it might seem.
“To activate her inherited powers, one of her sisters has to die first,” Four-eyes explained. “It is a bit like with the Sabbat Slayer: only if the current one dies will the next one be called. Of course, in these modern days of reanimation that can still lead to the existence of two Slayers at the same time.”
Nahir nodded. He was aware of the recent decade’s events, naturally. Heather saw into keeping him informed about the situation in the States all the time. Pro forma all Lasombra counted as Sabbat, and they had to be aware of the location of the Slayer constantly. Or Slayers, as it happened to be right now. Those girls usually didn’t know enough to recognize the difference between a Sabbat Lasombra and the extremely rare Antitribu.
“Therefore I shall have to Embrace one of the sisters to unleash the potential of the half-sister,” he summarized. “Which one would you suggest?”
“The eldest,” Four-eyes replied without hesitation. “She is the most powerful of the three; and you’ll need her acceptance to approach the others. She is very protective of them and not above doing horrible things to people she sees as a threat. You also might need her support when it comes to the training of the youngest. That one will be high maintenance. Besides, it would be only prudent - pardon the pun - to preserve Prudence in her current, perfect physical shape. Another year or two and her body would begin to sag without cosmetic interference; and if I remember correctly, you prefer your Childer in their natural shape.”
Nahir nodded again. “I do. What about the middle one, though?”
“She could prove very useful running your household,” Four-eyes selected the picture of a young woman, lovely yet fairly plain compared with the exotic features of her older sister. “She’s used to taking care of her siblings and to work in the background most efficiently. She also owns a club that can be turned into an official haven. For that, however, you’ll have to arrange yourself with Julian Luna.”
“Do you truly believe he would accept me?”
“That I cannot promise. But without his permission you won’t stand a chance. He runs a tight city, as you know; but he’ll be relieved to have an ally against the creatures that might creep through the Hellgate. An ally who actually has the power to deal with them, unlike his own people. Not even Daedalus is old and strong enough to do that.”
“True; but will he actually believe that I’m not, in fact, a Sabbat monster?”
“He’ll ask Daedalus for a background check; and eventually Daedalus will ask me. They all do, sooner or later.”
And they’ll believe Four-eyes, Nahir knew that. Everyone trusted schrecknet.com - and rightly so. Four-eyes’s own reputation was high enough; but he was also the second of Hawk, of all people, and Hawk had been, until recently, the Enforcer of Justicar Petrodon; and that was enough for any Camarilla Prince.
“You would vouch for me?” he asked; it was highly unusual for a Nosferatu to do so.
Four-eyes shook his head. “We don’t take sides, as you know. But I’ll give them enough facts to draw their own conclusion.”
That was fine with Nahir, and after another hour of pleasant conversation, all of which rotated around more scholarly topics, he gathered the thick manila folder with the information and left, taking with him the promise that Four-eyes would collect more in-depth details about the fourth sister. Nahir had definite plans for that one; but he needed to learn more to see if those plans were feasible.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He returned to Heather’s personal haven under the club La Lune Rouge and spent a very… relaxing afternoon with his Childe and her personal ghoul, a spunky Goth girl. Both were highly trained in bondage and discipline games, and Nahir allowed himself the rare luxury of being whipped by his skilled Childe within an inch of his unlife.
Yes, he was a Master and very dominant, both sexually and otherwise; but even he needed balance, rare though such chances might happen. And Heather was the only person on the entire planet to whom he would willingly submit. One of the only two people whom he trusted… well, as much as a Lasombra Antitribu could trust anyone.
The other such person was Olivier, his eldest Childe still alive (relatively speaking; undead would have been the correct definition, but Nahir wasn’t really bothered by mere semantics), but Olivier wasn’t a dom. Oh, he was dominant, very much so (which Lasombra wasn’t?), but even after centuries in the Dark, he had problems with containing his violent impulses. Having his Sire at his mercy would have thrown what little control he had straight out of the window.
Female Childer, if properly trained, were so much more reliable, Nahir thought, hanging hogtied from the ceiling of Heather’s personal playroom, while she pierced his most intimate parts with needles and the Goth girl was servicing him with her mouth. Letting go like this was the best thing that had happened to him for a very long time. Back in England he had no-one to serve those particular needs.
Later he was released from the bondage and his already fading welts and burn and knife marks tended to. After that, he was treated to a bath with rose petals and re-established his dominance over his Childe by taking her over the whipping bench, using all available orifices, one after another. For Heather, it was much-needed balance, too. She couldn’t afford to submit to her customers, either mortal or otherwise.
He was offered the Goth girl for dessert; an offer that he gladly accepted. Granted, she was whippet thin with barely any breasts and a scrawny little arse that was even smaller than Roderick’s, but she was also extremely skilled. The things she could do with her mouth and her inner muscles could only be compared with the skills of the great courtesans in Ancient Greece. Clearly, Heather had done a good job while training her.
And she was mortal warm; something that Nahir always appreciated in his subs.
They were barely finished when Olivier arrived. He, too, dwelt in Los Angeles in these days, disguised as a Tremere Anarch. Nahir eyed him with proprietary pride. By Caine, his eldest Childe was beautiful! Every bit as beautiful as he had been at the time of his Embrace, back in the twelfth century; but now his natural beauty was accentuated by the power and knowledge he had gained during the centuries in-between,
Compared with Nahir himself, he was still barely more than a fledgling, of course. But he was the second-oldest Aurelian still walking the Earth, which meant that he outranked even Angelus and his entire family.
Not that the Anarch Prince of Los Angeles would know of his true identity; or that of Heather, of course. That would have been foolish. Angelus tended to have a dim view towards the Order of which he had emerged. It would take time - a lot of time - to make him understand that the Order had not always been the vicious Sabbat pack it had become in his own times.
Time that Nahir didn’t have right now.
Despite his age and powers, Olivier still knew that he owed his maker respect, so he greeted Nahir the traditional way: by kneeling and kissing his hand. Very few undead families practiced these rites in modern times, when most of the elder generations had been exterminated in the Anarch Revolt and the subsequent Clan Wars. Nahir, however, was an ancient vampire; one of the Antediluvians, actually, although he had been embraced shortly after the Greet Flood, so strictly seen he didn’t count as one. But he had lived his mortal life before the Flood; something no-one else could say about themselves.
The young ones couldn’t even imagine what that meant. Even Heather watched Olivier’s submissive mannerism with slight bewilderment. She was highly trained, true, but she simply didn’t have the age to understand, coming from an era several millennia later.
Nahir leaned down to his eldest Childe cut his tongue with the tip of a fang and kissed Olivier deeply, sharing his Vitae with him. They hadn’t done this for a very long time, given that they lived on the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and their centuries-old bond re-established itself with a vengeance. Later he would order Olivier into his bed and dominate him into sexual obedience, for this was the way between them; he was already looking forward to it very much.
He had missed Olivier; the sharing of blood, the violent sex, the struggle of forcing him into submission. It had been too long, for both of them.
Right now, however, they had important things to discuss. They retreated to Heather’s boudoir with a bottle of excellent bloodwine to bring Olivier up to date with the long-term plans for the foreseeable future. Nahir knew that he needed the help of his surviving Childer to build a sufficient new household; and one consisting of such potentially volatile Childer, at that.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I was thinking about the right order of taking them in,” he told his Childer,” and I believe I should begin with the half-sister.”
Heather, examining the file of Paige Matthews, nodded in agreement.
“That would be perhaps the best. She has no contact to the others; doesn’t even know about them. Therefore she can’t turn to them for protection, which could be dangerous, even for you. Besides, this says she’s very active in the BDSM scene of San Francisco; you could naturally approach her from that angle…”
“ … and take her as a personal slave,” Nahir finished the sentence.
“My thoughts exactly,” Heather nodded. “It seems she hasn’t accepted a permanent Master yet. She is choosy, which is a good thing. I don’t doubt that you’ll be able to persuade her to submit.”
“Once she’s in my house, though, I’ll need help to train her properly,” Nahir pointed out.
“I can close my club for a month but no longer,” Heater said. “My clientele can’t be neglected for too long. Some of them are in a… delicate mental state and need my treatment regularly.”
Knowing Heather’s usual clientele that could mean anything from a mortal suffering a mental breakdown to an unstable vampire going on a killing spree; the latter of which could have unfortunate consequences for the entire undead community. Ever since he’d been cursed, Angelus reacted really badly to the unnecessary killing of mortals. Coming from him, of all people, it was more than a little hypocritical, Nahir found, but ex-criminals tended to make the most overzealous vigilantes.
“What if you came over a few days every other month in the first year?” he suggested. “I’d come up for the expenses, of course; and night trains are quite comfortable nowadays.”
Heather hesitated. She was one of those vampires who rarely ever left their havens, using blood dolls most of the time instead of Hunting. And while she was fully capable of taking care of herself in every sense of the word, being outside of her own four walls made her extremely uncomfortable.
Nahir knew that, of course, and hated to force her outside. But he needed her expertise in slave training and would force her, if he had to.
“I can accompany you, so that you won’t be travelling alone,” Olivier offered; then, with a wicked grin, he added. “We could have sex in the train compartment, while the conductor is watching; then we could drink from him and make him forget everything.”
“Or I could handcuff you to the parcel rack, naked, and flay the flesh from your bones to entertain him,” she returned, unsmiling.
There was something in her eyes that told Nahir that she wasn’t joking, and he briefly wondered if anything had happened between these two in his absence. They had always got on quite amiably in the past.
“Is there something you two want to tell me?” he asked.
Heather shook her head. “Nothing of importance. Some people just need to be reminded from time to time that their Blood-sibs are not their progeny… or their possessions. I can handle it, Sire… and he knows it.”
A glance at Olivier’s uncomfortable expression proved the truth of that statement. Heather might have looked like a small, fine-boned girl, but even in her mortal days she had been a lot stronger than she looked. Add enhanced vampire strength, her practical knowledge about disciplinary tools and the arcane Lasombra powers, and she made a formidable opponent, even for a male of the same Blood.
Plus, she always acted in cold calculation, and that was an advantage in itself.
“Very well,” Nahir said after a moment. “Just remember, Olivier: I’m still your maker and have the right - and the strength - to unmake you if you disappoint me.”
“That won’t be necessary, Sire,” Oliver sounded more subdued that he’d heard him for a very long time. For centuries, actually.
“I hope so, because I’ll need you for this project, too. Embracing three Childer in quick succession would be draining, even for me; I can’t hope to train all three of them properly on my own.”
“Three Childer?” Heather echoed. “I thought there were four of them.”
Nahir shook his head. “I won’t Embrace the half-sister. I’m planning to turn her into a slave and eventually a personal ghoul. One whose training should be completed before I would start with her older sisters.”
“That should be doable,” Heather said. “But you’ll have to find a house first; one well suited for a Kindred household.”
“I know. Could you help me with that?”
“My lawyers probably can. Louis Fortier, the Minister of West Los Angeles - a Ventrue Anarch by the way - owns a bank and several real estate agencies; he ought to have good connections in the market of San Francisco as well. He has several Childer and a small army of ghouls; he knows what’s needed for a large household. He’ll find the right place for you. Are you going to disguise yourself as a Tremere?”
Nahir nodded. “I wouldn’t make a convincing Toreador, unlike you; and San Francisco has no Tremere presence right now. I ought to be safe… for a while.”
“You’ll have to come clean with Julian Luna, sooner rather than later, though,” Heather warned him. “He is fairly reasonable as the Ventrue go, despite his role in the Manzanita massacre, but he doesn’t react well to being mislead.”
“I’m not afraid of Julian Luna or his Gangrel lapdogs,” Nahir replied arrogantly.
Heather rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say you should. But he is the lawful Prince of San Francisco, whatever you might think of him in particular - or of the Camarilla in general. If you want to stay in his city for years, you’ll have to get his permission. That’s how things are done in a Camarilla-controlled city, and you know that.”
“And people wonder why it came to the Anarch Revolt in the first place,” Nahir commented sourly.
But Heather was right, as usual. For somebody so relative young in the Dark she possessed unusual insight and wisdom, and Nahir had never regretted listening to her - so far.
For his plans to work, he would have to present himself to the Prince of San Francisco. He only hoped that Julian Luna, almost shockingly young as Camarilla Princes went, would indeed have the common sense to recognize the advantages of a tentative alliance with him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The other necessary step was to find a teaching job in San Francisco, but he wasn’t particularly worried about that part. Broadhurst might have been a small college, but it had an excellent reputation, close to that of Oxford and Cambridge. It was very hard to get in - one needed lots of money and beyond that good connections - and equally hard to stay in. The workload was enormous, so that only the most diligent students could keep up with it, and the rules very strict. Only one’s very best was good enough, and that was expected from both students and teachers.
Nahir taught ancient history at Broadhurst, both religious and secular. During his incredibly long life he had earned a solid reputation concerning the cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome, some of which he had seen with his very eyes, so he was much sought after the best universities all over the word. He had chosen Broadhurst because it was small and secluded. At Oxford he would have inevitably run into the Watchers who usually enrolled their offspring there, and there was no way he could have fooled that ancient organization in the long run. The other schools were too multinational for his taste. He preferred time-honoured English traditions - those fit his own private nature better.
Thanks to his professional reputation it wasn’t hard to get an offer for a four-year teaching stint at Berkeley, starting in September 2001; especially as Four-Eyes and his contacts were involved in the process. So, at the end of his guest readings he returned to England to dissolve his household there, to take an extended leave from Broadhurst and to prepare Roderick for the upcoming profound changes in their lives.
Ah yes, Roderick. That had been an intriguing story on its own right - and a somewhat unexpected one. One that, in hindsight, might have been a mistake and could clash with his new plans most uncomfortably. But what had been done years ago could not be undone ever again. He only hoped that Roderick would be able to deal with the new situation. Because for better or worse, he was now responsible for the well-being - not to mention for the continued existence - of his boy.
by Soledad
A "Pathways in the Dark" story.
A Charmed/BtVS/AtS/Kindred: The Embraced/PtL crossover
Rating: Mature, for this part.
Note: Lady Heather is borrowed from CSI and features in my other story, “The Toreador Chronicles”. Nahir and Four-eyes are canon characters from White Wolfe, where they aren’t given much character background. So I borrowed them and turned them into my own characters. Broadhurst University is my own invention.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chapter 01 - Apocalypse Rising
Nahir, one of the most ancient creatures of the night - if indeed not the most ancient creature still walking the Earth - never intended to leave England. Nor did he keep in touch with his fellow vampires; not beyond what would be absolutely necessary. Being a Lasombra Antitribu, even though he lived under the disguise of a Tremere Anarch, was a dangerous way of unlife; the fewer knew about his mere existence, the safer it was for him. Not even the Prince of London knew about his true identity.
He lived in an old manor house just outside London for decades, teaching ancient history at Broadhurst University - a small, very traditional, very conservative and very expensive private college in London - for so long that no-one could remember the time when he hadn’t been there. That was the advantage of old private English schools: once you’d become a fixture, people simply accepted you and stopped asking questions.
He lived there in near-seclusion, with only his personal ghoul (and slave) as a company, and he was content with the arrangement. He would sometimes miss his remaining progeny but there was a reason why they lived scattered all over the planet with very little contact to each other. It was safer that way, for them all.
Still, when the invitation came to hold a series of guest readings at UCLA, he welcomed the chance to reconnect with Heather. She, like himself, was an Antitribu and lived in disguise: disguised as a Toreador dominatrix in Los Angeles, owning and running the BDSM and fetish club called La Lune Rouge that was highly popular among both Kindred and mortal clientele.
“We are a completely legal establishment; but an exclusive one,” Heather - called Lady Heather by employees and patrons alike - explained, after having given her Sire the full tour through every single room of the club. Nahir was a Master himself and thus had a professional interest in the place. What he saw met his expectations; Heather had created a place of style and professionalism.
“We only accept a very selected number of clients,” she continued. “No-one gets in without the recommendation of at least two old and reliable patrons. We are represented by the law firm Navital & Waters - Camarilla Ventrue lawyers - so we are suitably safe. Well… as safe as anyone can be in these days.
Nahir nodded in agreement. “Life in a Free Anarch City can be turbulent at times. Especially if it’s the last of its kind.”
“Actually, Los Angeles has become much safer since Angelus took over as Prince,” Heather replied. “He has the support of the Camarilla, of course - they were the ones to invite him, after all - but the Anarch gangs also listen to him. He’s forged an alliance with the two powerful Anarch Ministers and helped to establish the local Legacy House. Together, they are more than capable of holding back the Sabbat.”
“Los Angeles has a Legacy House?” Nahir said in surprise. “Since when?”
“A few years by now,” Heather answered. “Oddly enough, it was Angelus’s idea. And since the Prefect used to be an ex-Watcher and his personal assistant, it wasn’t too hard for him to recruit the right people for the job. They even have a small branch watching over the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. No, the real danger breeds in San Francisco.”
“How that?” Nahir asked with a frown. “The city has been firmly in Camarilla hands - in Ventrue hands at that - for decades. Both Archon Raine and Julian Luna have run a tight city. And a safe one at that.”
“That was true until a few years ago,” Heather said grimly. “Until the Legacy House was destroyed. Now there’s nothing and no-one to guard the Hellgate that lies under its ruins. San Francisco has no real Tremere presence; besides, certain dark forces can only be stopped by people who can wield the power of the Lasombra.”
“Only that our Clan would rather support those dark forces than trying to stop them,” Nahir commented.
“Which is why you should move to San Francisco; at least for a while,” Heather returned promptly.
Nahir gave her a bewildered look. “Why should I want to do that? I’m perfectly content in London.”
“Too content,” Heather said disapprovingly. “You’ve been there for how long? A hundred years? Two hundred? Or even longer? You know it’s dangerous for us to remain in the same place. We don’t have the Clan backing us.”
“I’ve always kept a low profile,” Nahir said with a shrug.
“After a century or two, no profile can be low enough,” Heather insisted.
Nahir rolled his eyes. “And you’re suggesting that I should move to San Francisco, of all places? To a city so tightly controlled by Ventrue Camarilla that not even a bat can enter it unnoticed?”
“To a fatally endangered city in desperate need of your powers, yes,” Heather corrected. “Julian Luna may be a sticker to Camarilla rules but he’s not a fool. He knows he can’t withstand the dark forces on his own, without the Legacy hunters. That’s why he’d worked out a détente with them long ago, but now they’re gone and he’s in a precarious position. The Sabbat he can deal with. Demons and other such powers he has no experience with and will inevitably fall. He knows that; or at least Daedalus does. And he will bring Luna over, eventually.”
Nahir shook his head. “Even if you are right, what can I possibly do? I may be old and powerful, but I’m just one vampire; I seriously doubt that Olivier would be willing to settle down in San Francisco - or that you would be willing to leave Los Angeles.”
“Not permanently,” Heather admitted. “But I might come over from time to time to help. You’ll need more progeny, though.”
“No,” Nahir said promptly. “Even if I were willing to make more Childer, which I am not, what use would a bunch of fledglings be for us?”
“Not just any fledglings,” Heather opened the safe in her office, took out a thick manila folder and handed it to her Sire. “Fledglings with power.”
Nahir opened the folder and glared at the photos of some pretty girls that lay atop the documents. “Who are these?”
“The Halliwell sisters,” Heather replied. “Also known as the Charmed Ones: some of the most powerful witches ever to walk the Earth, dedicated to protecting innocents and ridding the world of evil. Each one of them has some specific powers inherited from their ancestor, Melinda Warren, a powerful witch. They are immensely strong each on her own, but united in the magical bond of the Power of Three, they become magnitudes stronger than they are individually. That is the power you’ll need to keep the Hellgate in San Francisco under control; at least until the Legacy re-establishes its presence there. And that can take a long time yet.”
Nahir shook his head again. “Natural powers cannot survive the Embrace.”
“Tell that the Tremere witches of the LA Chantry,” Heather returned dryly.
“That is different,” Nahir said. “I wouldn’t dabble in Tremere blood rituals even if I could. Our powers are not compatible.”
“Exactly,” Heather nodded. “But you are old; older than the Sabbat as a whole. You are the last true Aurelian. You could do it.”
“Perhaps,” Nahir allowed; there was indeed a strong possibility for him to succeed. “But why should I want to do so? San Francisco is not my concern,”
“But if the city falls to the dark side, it will become your concern,” pointed out Heather. “Yours and Olivier’s and Angelus’s and mine; because the Clan will gorge themselves in dark power and our unlives will be forfeited. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be diablerized by some power-hungry Sabbat.”
“Surely you’re exaggerating!”
“No, I am not. If Julian Luna falls and the Hellgate opens in San Francisco, the dark wave will roll over South California in no time. The aftershocks will tear the Hellmouth in Sunnydale wide open, releasing a second wave of hellish creatures; and then the darkness will spread over the entire continent like the plague… and not the kind of darkness we would be comfortable with. We all were humans once; and we kept some of our human traits, despite the changes. If the Old Ones are released to walk the Earth again, not even we will last much longer.”
“Are you having visions now?” Nahir still wasn’t quite buying it,
“Not me,” Heather replied. “Drusilla.”
That silenced Nahir quite successfully. Drusilla, the insane Childe of Angelus, was known for having had the second sight even before Angelus would turn her into a vampire. She was said to have been healed - sort of - from her madness, but the truth was, her visions had always proved true, despite her insanity. If Drusilla saw the end of the world coming, the end of the world was coming.
“Very well,” Nahir said after a lengthy pause. “I haven’t survived all those millennia to become demon fodder now. Tell me more about these witches. Assuming they are true witches with true power, not just some wannabe Wiccas brewing vile potions and dabbling in what they believe to be white magic.”
“All I have is their basic file,” Heather admitted. “The one we gained through our people with the police and the FBI. If you want to learn about their powers, you need to talk to the Nosferatu. I can give you the address.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Two hours later Nahir was sitting in one of the small offices at schrecknet.com, the centre of the Nosferatu information network, with an elegant, scholarly man in a tailored three-piece suit. The man had a completely bald head and gold-rimmed glasses and looked like a university professor - which he had been once, in his mortal years. Only the elongated earlobes and the taloned hands revealed that he was, in fact, a vampire. A Nosferatu at that, from one of the oldest and more animalistic Clans.
He was known among the upper echelons of the undead as Four-eyes, due to his ever-present spectacles (not that he would actually need them, vampire eyesight being what it was) and to the fact that he adamantly refused to reveal his true (mortal) name. Sometimes he was asked for the reason of his refusal; in such times he simply replied that he still had living family that was better off believing him dead.
Nahir and he had known each other for decades, albeit only professionally - they were both Noddist scholars - and this was the first time they had actually met in person. They had exchanged phone calls and e-mails on occasion, of course; whenever Nahir needed sensitive information. All Nosferatu were information traders and Four-eyes, the founder and maintainer of schrecknet.com, was their uncrowned king.
Needless to say that he had extensive files on the Halliwell sisters, too. With countless photos, copies of every important document of their lives, starting with their birth certificate through their school notes to their college degrees… well, to the college degree of the oldest sister, as the others didn’t have any. Nahir was impressed. He always knew that no-one could beat a Nosferatu when it came to gaining information, but even he hadn’t thought that they would be so good.
So good indeed that they found something the existence of which not even the sisters themselves were aware: that of a fourth sister. Well, half-sister, actually, as she was born as a result of a forbidden affair between the girls’ mother and her Watcher and raised by adoptive parents, outside of the powerful grandmother’s influence.
Nahir did wonder at first why the family matriarch would agree with that. On second thought, however, he realized the calculating wisdom behind it. They needed three sisters to unleash the Power of Three. It didn’t matter which three of them. Should anything happen to one of the legitimate daughters - and considering the lives they led, in constant focus of the dark forces, that had always been a distinct possibility - they could reach out to the fourth one. Should that not be necessary, though, the girl could live out her natural life in peace, oblivious to her dangerous heritage.
A heritage Nahir intended to put to good use. Which wasn’t as simple as it might seem.
“To activate her inherited powers, one of her sisters has to die first,” Four-eyes explained. “It is a bit like with the Sabbat Slayer: only if the current one dies will the next one be called. Of course, in these modern days of reanimation that can still lead to the existence of two Slayers at the same time.”
Nahir nodded. He was aware of the recent decade’s events, naturally. Heather saw into keeping him informed about the situation in the States all the time. Pro forma all Lasombra counted as Sabbat, and they had to be aware of the location of the Slayer constantly. Or Slayers, as it happened to be right now. Those girls usually didn’t know enough to recognize the difference between a Sabbat Lasombra and the extremely rare Antitribu.
“Therefore I shall have to Embrace one of the sisters to unleash the potential of the half-sister,” he summarized. “Which one would you suggest?”
“The eldest,” Four-eyes replied without hesitation. “She is the most powerful of the three; and you’ll need her acceptance to approach the others. She is very protective of them and not above doing horrible things to people she sees as a threat. You also might need her support when it comes to the training of the youngest. That one will be high maintenance. Besides, it would be only prudent - pardon the pun - to preserve Prudence in her current, perfect physical shape. Another year or two and her body would begin to sag without cosmetic interference; and if I remember correctly, you prefer your Childer in their natural shape.”
Nahir nodded again. “I do. What about the middle one, though?”
“She could prove very useful running your household,” Four-eyes selected the picture of a young woman, lovely yet fairly plain compared with the exotic features of her older sister. “She’s used to taking care of her siblings and to work in the background most efficiently. She also owns a club that can be turned into an official haven. For that, however, you’ll have to arrange yourself with Julian Luna.”
“Do you truly believe he would accept me?”
“That I cannot promise. But without his permission you won’t stand a chance. He runs a tight city, as you know; but he’ll be relieved to have an ally against the creatures that might creep through the Hellgate. An ally who actually has the power to deal with them, unlike his own people. Not even Daedalus is old and strong enough to do that.”
“True; but will he actually believe that I’m not, in fact, a Sabbat monster?”
“He’ll ask Daedalus for a background check; and eventually Daedalus will ask me. They all do, sooner or later.”
And they’ll believe Four-eyes, Nahir knew that. Everyone trusted schrecknet.com - and rightly so. Four-eyes’s own reputation was high enough; but he was also the second of Hawk, of all people, and Hawk had been, until recently, the Enforcer of Justicar Petrodon; and that was enough for any Camarilla Prince.
“You would vouch for me?” he asked; it was highly unusual for a Nosferatu to do so.
Four-eyes shook his head. “We don’t take sides, as you know. But I’ll give them enough facts to draw their own conclusion.”
That was fine with Nahir, and after another hour of pleasant conversation, all of which rotated around more scholarly topics, he gathered the thick manila folder with the information and left, taking with him the promise that Four-eyes would collect more in-depth details about the fourth sister. Nahir had definite plans for that one; but he needed to learn more to see if those plans were feasible.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He returned to Heather’s personal haven under the club La Lune Rouge and spent a very… relaxing afternoon with his Childe and her personal ghoul, a spunky Goth girl. Both were highly trained in bondage and discipline games, and Nahir allowed himself the rare luxury of being whipped by his skilled Childe within an inch of his unlife.
Yes, he was a Master and very dominant, both sexually and otherwise; but even he needed balance, rare though such chances might happen. And Heather was the only person on the entire planet to whom he would willingly submit. One of the only two people whom he trusted… well, as much as a Lasombra Antitribu could trust anyone.
The other such person was Olivier, his eldest Childe still alive (relatively speaking; undead would have been the correct definition, but Nahir wasn’t really bothered by mere semantics), but Olivier wasn’t a dom. Oh, he was dominant, very much so (which Lasombra wasn’t?), but even after centuries in the Dark, he had problems with containing his violent impulses. Having his Sire at his mercy would have thrown what little control he had straight out of the window.
Female Childer, if properly trained, were so much more reliable, Nahir thought, hanging hogtied from the ceiling of Heather’s personal playroom, while she pierced his most intimate parts with needles and the Goth girl was servicing him with her mouth. Letting go like this was the best thing that had happened to him for a very long time. Back in England he had no-one to serve those particular needs.
Later he was released from the bondage and his already fading welts and burn and knife marks tended to. After that, he was treated to a bath with rose petals and re-established his dominance over his Childe by taking her over the whipping bench, using all available orifices, one after another. For Heather, it was much-needed balance, too. She couldn’t afford to submit to her customers, either mortal or otherwise.
He was offered the Goth girl for dessert; an offer that he gladly accepted. Granted, she was whippet thin with barely any breasts and a scrawny little arse that was even smaller than Roderick’s, but she was also extremely skilled. The things she could do with her mouth and her inner muscles could only be compared with the skills of the great courtesans in Ancient Greece. Clearly, Heather had done a good job while training her.
And she was mortal warm; something that Nahir always appreciated in his subs.
They were barely finished when Olivier arrived. He, too, dwelt in Los Angeles in these days, disguised as a Tremere Anarch. Nahir eyed him with proprietary pride. By Caine, his eldest Childe was beautiful! Every bit as beautiful as he had been at the time of his Embrace, back in the twelfth century; but now his natural beauty was accentuated by the power and knowledge he had gained during the centuries in-between,
Compared with Nahir himself, he was still barely more than a fledgling, of course. But he was the second-oldest Aurelian still walking the Earth, which meant that he outranked even Angelus and his entire family.
Not that the Anarch Prince of Los Angeles would know of his true identity; or that of Heather, of course. That would have been foolish. Angelus tended to have a dim view towards the Order of which he had emerged. It would take time - a lot of time - to make him understand that the Order had not always been the vicious Sabbat pack it had become in his own times.
Time that Nahir didn’t have right now.
Despite his age and powers, Olivier still knew that he owed his maker respect, so he greeted Nahir the traditional way: by kneeling and kissing his hand. Very few undead families practiced these rites in modern times, when most of the elder generations had been exterminated in the Anarch Revolt and the subsequent Clan Wars. Nahir, however, was an ancient vampire; one of the Antediluvians, actually, although he had been embraced shortly after the Greet Flood, so strictly seen he didn’t count as one. But he had lived his mortal life before the Flood; something no-one else could say about themselves.
The young ones couldn’t even imagine what that meant. Even Heather watched Olivier’s submissive mannerism with slight bewilderment. She was highly trained, true, but she simply didn’t have the age to understand, coming from an era several millennia later.
Nahir leaned down to his eldest Childe cut his tongue with the tip of a fang and kissed Olivier deeply, sharing his Vitae with him. They hadn’t done this for a very long time, given that they lived on the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and their centuries-old bond re-established itself with a vengeance. Later he would order Olivier into his bed and dominate him into sexual obedience, for this was the way between them; he was already looking forward to it very much.
He had missed Olivier; the sharing of blood, the violent sex, the struggle of forcing him into submission. It had been too long, for both of them.
Right now, however, they had important things to discuss. They retreated to Heather’s boudoir with a bottle of excellent bloodwine to bring Olivier up to date with the long-term plans for the foreseeable future. Nahir knew that he needed the help of his surviving Childer to build a sufficient new household; and one consisting of such potentially volatile Childer, at that.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I was thinking about the right order of taking them in,” he told his Childer,” and I believe I should begin with the half-sister.”
Heather, examining the file of Paige Matthews, nodded in agreement.
“That would be perhaps the best. She has no contact to the others; doesn’t even know about them. Therefore she can’t turn to them for protection, which could be dangerous, even for you. Besides, this says she’s very active in the BDSM scene of San Francisco; you could naturally approach her from that angle…”
“ … and take her as a personal slave,” Nahir finished the sentence.
“My thoughts exactly,” Heather nodded. “It seems she hasn’t accepted a permanent Master yet. She is choosy, which is a good thing. I don’t doubt that you’ll be able to persuade her to submit.”
“Once she’s in my house, though, I’ll need help to train her properly,” Nahir pointed out.
“I can close my club for a month but no longer,” Heater said. “My clientele can’t be neglected for too long. Some of them are in a… delicate mental state and need my treatment regularly.”
Knowing Heather’s usual clientele that could mean anything from a mortal suffering a mental breakdown to an unstable vampire going on a killing spree; the latter of which could have unfortunate consequences for the entire undead community. Ever since he’d been cursed, Angelus reacted really badly to the unnecessary killing of mortals. Coming from him, of all people, it was more than a little hypocritical, Nahir found, but ex-criminals tended to make the most overzealous vigilantes.
“What if you came over a few days every other month in the first year?” he suggested. “I’d come up for the expenses, of course; and night trains are quite comfortable nowadays.”
Heather hesitated. She was one of those vampires who rarely ever left their havens, using blood dolls most of the time instead of Hunting. And while she was fully capable of taking care of herself in every sense of the word, being outside of her own four walls made her extremely uncomfortable.
Nahir knew that, of course, and hated to force her outside. But he needed her expertise in slave training and would force her, if he had to.
“I can accompany you, so that you won’t be travelling alone,” Olivier offered; then, with a wicked grin, he added. “We could have sex in the train compartment, while the conductor is watching; then we could drink from him and make him forget everything.”
“Or I could handcuff you to the parcel rack, naked, and flay the flesh from your bones to entertain him,” she returned, unsmiling.
There was something in her eyes that told Nahir that she wasn’t joking, and he briefly wondered if anything had happened between these two in his absence. They had always got on quite amiably in the past.
“Is there something you two want to tell me?” he asked.
Heather shook her head. “Nothing of importance. Some people just need to be reminded from time to time that their Blood-sibs are not their progeny… or their possessions. I can handle it, Sire… and he knows it.”
A glance at Olivier’s uncomfortable expression proved the truth of that statement. Heather might have looked like a small, fine-boned girl, but even in her mortal days she had been a lot stronger than she looked. Add enhanced vampire strength, her practical knowledge about disciplinary tools and the arcane Lasombra powers, and she made a formidable opponent, even for a male of the same Blood.
Plus, she always acted in cold calculation, and that was an advantage in itself.
“Very well,” Nahir said after a moment. “Just remember, Olivier: I’m still your maker and have the right - and the strength - to unmake you if you disappoint me.”
“That won’t be necessary, Sire,” Oliver sounded more subdued that he’d heard him for a very long time. For centuries, actually.
“I hope so, because I’ll need you for this project, too. Embracing three Childer in quick succession would be draining, even for me; I can’t hope to train all three of them properly on my own.”
“Three Childer?” Heather echoed. “I thought there were four of them.”
Nahir shook his head. “I won’t Embrace the half-sister. I’m planning to turn her into a slave and eventually a personal ghoul. One whose training should be completed before I would start with her older sisters.”
“That should be doable,” Heather said. “But you’ll have to find a house first; one well suited for a Kindred household.”
“I know. Could you help me with that?”
“My lawyers probably can. Louis Fortier, the Minister of West Los Angeles - a Ventrue Anarch by the way - owns a bank and several real estate agencies; he ought to have good connections in the market of San Francisco as well. He has several Childer and a small army of ghouls; he knows what’s needed for a large household. He’ll find the right place for you. Are you going to disguise yourself as a Tremere?”
Nahir nodded. “I wouldn’t make a convincing Toreador, unlike you; and San Francisco has no Tremere presence right now. I ought to be safe… for a while.”
“You’ll have to come clean with Julian Luna, sooner rather than later, though,” Heather warned him. “He is fairly reasonable as the Ventrue go, despite his role in the Manzanita massacre, but he doesn’t react well to being mislead.”
“I’m not afraid of Julian Luna or his Gangrel lapdogs,” Nahir replied arrogantly.
Heather rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say you should. But he is the lawful Prince of San Francisco, whatever you might think of him in particular - or of the Camarilla in general. If you want to stay in his city for years, you’ll have to get his permission. That’s how things are done in a Camarilla-controlled city, and you know that.”
“And people wonder why it came to the Anarch Revolt in the first place,” Nahir commented sourly.
But Heather was right, as usual. For somebody so relative young in the Dark she possessed unusual insight and wisdom, and Nahir had never regretted listening to her - so far.
For his plans to work, he would have to present himself to the Prince of San Francisco. He only hoped that Julian Luna, almost shockingly young as Camarilla Princes went, would indeed have the common sense to recognize the advantages of a tentative alliance with him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The other necessary step was to find a teaching job in San Francisco, but he wasn’t particularly worried about that part. Broadhurst might have been a small college, but it had an excellent reputation, close to that of Oxford and Cambridge. It was very hard to get in - one needed lots of money and beyond that good connections - and equally hard to stay in. The workload was enormous, so that only the most diligent students could keep up with it, and the rules very strict. Only one’s very best was good enough, and that was expected from both students and teachers.
Nahir taught ancient history at Broadhurst, both religious and secular. During his incredibly long life he had earned a solid reputation concerning the cultures of Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Carthage and Rome, some of which he had seen with his very eyes, so he was much sought after the best universities all over the word. He had chosen Broadhurst because it was small and secluded. At Oxford he would have inevitably run into the Watchers who usually enrolled their offspring there, and there was no way he could have fooled that ancient organization in the long run. The other schools were too multinational for his taste. He preferred time-honoured English traditions - those fit his own private nature better.
Thanks to his professional reputation it wasn’t hard to get an offer for a four-year teaching stint at Berkeley, starting in September 2001; especially as Four-Eyes and his contacts were involved in the process. So, at the end of his guest readings he returned to England to dissolve his household there, to take an extended leave from Broadhurst and to prepare Roderick for the upcoming profound changes in their lives.
Ah yes, Roderick. That had been an intriguing story on its own right - and a somewhat unexpected one. One that, in hindsight, might have been a mistake and could clash with his new plans most uncomfortably. But what had been done years ago could not be undone ever again. He only hoped that Roderick would be able to deal with the new situation. Because for better or worse, he was now responsible for the well-being - not to mention for the continued existence - of his boy.