{V:tM - IC} New York by Night

[Tory Adore]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

The song that was dancing through Vych’s mind as she was surmising Carrick’s embrace fell short of its end. The last line she remembered hearing in her head as she finished her welcome was “…and your heart will race…” Then the song bled from her ears into that of the club’s music and disappeared as she felt her grandsire’s light gaze begin to examine her.

Vych relaxed her hands and arms, taking a step inward shifting her weight to her hip to form a most graceful curve and making her hands open up at her stomach, palms facing upward stretching out her arms to encompass, without touching them, her and Carrick. Her lips, moist and sweet, elicit the gentlest of voices into the air about them as her skin prickles slightly at the memory of her own embrace,
“If that should be true, then I made the right choice at Carrick's approach to willing give my life and heart to your childe. I wholeheartedly embrace the possibility of a forever of tragedy to have the chance, no matter how slight, to love for an eternity. To live and die to have never loved him…or to have never met you, that would be tragedy in and amongst itself.”

Vych gracefully takes a few more steps forward to stand closer to the two beautiful Sires all the while looking to steal their crossing scents into her body to mark an indelible impression in her memory of this meeting of her lineage. She can feel the musical vibrations in the air tickling the naked skin of her back attempting to woo her to indulgence. Her body starts to sway ever so slightly as the song, Ingénue, begins to come to a close. Trying to stop her motion and hide one of her passions, Vych continues,
”Truth be told? I find it difficult to control my passions in certain venues. I fear I can only hope to attain half of Carrick’s discipline in this craft. His confidence and control I am envious of…as well as…”

Vych’s voice trails off with her last three words being consumed by the music swirling about them in its dance.

Throwing a hopeful glance in Carrick's direction as if to say 'Maria is staying with us is she not', Vych asks Maria,
"I take it arrangements been taken care of for your stay with us?"

 

[Catulle]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Caitlyn and Nathaniel

Despite her best intentions, Nathan twisted in her grasp, eluding it with a horrified, yet terrible caste to his fevered visage. His eyes were bloodshot, now, the sclerae themselves seeming reddish-tinged in the club light. Every step laboured, he backed away from her, although his face betrayed the opposite desire.

"I don't understand..." The directionless utterance, so far departed from his usual confidence, reached her across the slender space between them. Even in retreat, he had proven unable to detach fully from her.

Did he hear the song, too?

HE will destroy you. Drain you away to dust and ash, burn out your soul and replace it with a monster of his own creation. ...It was a voice, the voice, her voice. Resonant with power and music and truth, it cut right through all the club's distortions so clear that she could easily be going mad, all this a fabrication of her mind.

(OOC - Nathaniel spends another willpower)

 

[KitanaVorr]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

No! He won't...he won't...

Caitlyn stared after Nathan, not understanding his emotions, his confusion, his torture, any of it. But all of it roared back to her with a sound so profound that she could feel herself physically pounded by it.

"No!" The strangled cry echoed into the music, becoming with it a note hanging in perfect disharmony with those words echoing in her head. Fingers digging into either side of her hair, she squeezed her eyes shut as if the music could stop invading...twisting in like an unwanted guest to sully the house that she had so carefully built.

Oh God if you are out there tonight...not now... libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna in die illa tremenda...please...

Spinning around, her silky hair a raven banner behind her, the young singer pushed through the dancing crowd. Her heart beat in time to the music, shuddering at its loudness. Her body thudding against others as she tried to find a place where Nathan could not see her...where she could compose herself...control the music beating in her mind.

Tremens factus sum ego et timeo, dum discussion venerit atque venture ira...why is this happening to me?

 

[Catulle]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Carrick, Maria, Sabrina and Vychtorya

An cool smile formed of indulgence wound its way across Maria's dark lips, even reaching her glittering, vague, eyes. Perfect artifice lying beneath the skin.

"Of course, our 'curse', as some would term it. To resist it too well is to invite madness. I believe that, after a fashion, we truly feed off beauty in all its forms... in addition to the other thing, of course."

She leaned back, smooth interplay of muscles adding a mechanical grace to the motion, and with a languid motion, rolled her neck around to look up as far as the Mezzanine.

"My staff have my needs well in mind, dear. I will be well taken care of a little way distant, once the evening plays out. Perhaps Chicago will call to me next. There, too, is a lack of leadership..."

Her gesture came full circle, bringing her to rest her attention on Sabrina. "And you, childe? What occupies your sire that he sends my Carrick in his stead?"

 

[Catulle]

The Warrens
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Dim light shed from a single weak bulb flickered in and out over the table. Sturdy wood, piled high with sheafs of papers, strewn across with books and a multitude of little plastic discs, was barely visible in the gloom. Shadows crept in at every seam, blanketing the room in an oppressive shroud. The electric buzz was the only sound to be heard.

There were figures there, too, clinging to the darkness as a drowning man to the flotsam of his broken vessel. They moved in silence, the steady shuffle of building anticipation and the faint illumination casting only a suggestion as to the identities of the myriad of hidden shapes. Perhaps it was better this way.

A sharp click broke the silence and signalled the closing of a door, and a hunched, massive figure shambled to the table, one pallid hand thrusting into the light, thick-nailed fingers wrapped about a paperclipped folder. It dropped the dossier onto the table, before retreating from the light, as if in recoil.

"I'll say this for 'im." The voice, from deep in one of the room's corners, was nasal and yet deep at the same time, "'e could certianly keep the books, whatever 'is faults." A pause, and the sound of something being dragged across the concrete floor. A chair became visible, and a figure dropped into it. The batlike ears and bald scalp were the only discernable details of the occupant's head, who gestured with a gnarled hand in the direction from which the courier had approached, then retreated. "What is it, Krid?"

"Another." Gutteral, harsh accented speech rolled from the darkness. "Staten Island, this time. We've backtracked as far as Charleston, so maybe it came up with the Sabbat."

"Source(source)?" A third voice, muffled and echoing itself in a parody of resonance joined in the exchange.

"Ha. A little bird told me." The second speaker responded. "Area's crawling with other investigators, now. I think the sheriff could be there. My information was vague on that point."

"I can confirm that." A dry rasp and a fourth speaker cut in. "Both the Sheriff and the Scourge left Manhattan earlier tonight. The scourge collected his from Carnegie Hill." The shadows rippled with motion, as that of a predator under muddied water.

"Company?" The first, again. "who is 'elping them?"

"That could be the Brujah childe (childe). Thepclay's whelp (whelp). We know what he did (did)... Perhaps he will tell us what he found there (there)."

"Then we shall ask 'im for 'is 'elp in exchange for our silence..." The speaker leaned back in his chair, folding gaunt arms wrapped in heavy, filthy coatsleeves across his chest. His crusted pate vanished backwards into the gloom.

 

[Shalimar]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Sabrina looks up at Carrick confused, she didn't quite understand the question, it was her belief from what she had been told that her Sire was Elizabeth, and not a 'he' at all. "Mister Carrick, I thought you and uncle Nathan said that miss Elizabeth was my sire?" she asks from her position in his arms.

"I don't know where she is at all, I don't think uncle Nathan likes her though, not at all. He's over there with Miss Cate, I expect he should be here soon though." she said snuggling into the crook of Carricks shoulder, smiling up at the beautiful woman. "You are very, pretty, do you think I might get to be as pretty as you and miss Vychtorya when I grew up?" she asks Maria, to give her uncle more time to arrive.

 

[Catulle]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Caitlyn

The crowd surged about her, the maddening rhythm breaking against her mind, setting sharp promontaries of terror against the emotional storm that raged as nothing before.

She struck flesh on flesh, heard a distant glass shatter in her stumbling flight. Turning a corner, a bright-costumed acrobat twirled about a ceiling-mounted frame, dazzling; disorienting. And the music played on... twisting to preempt each horrible sensation, foreshadowing destruction.

Then, cool air. An open space, exposed to the sky, greeted her, and the music of her mind, synchopating with her heartbeat, assumed a more comfortable mein. The sleet continued to fall, melting on her skin where it touched, salving away the urgency of her situation. It was a small space, little more than two stone benches facing a little garden of low shrubbery, lit by a single exterior lamp.

Cate's awareness returned more fully; a man was sat on one of the benches, plainly dressed with short dark hair and a fair complexion. He half stood as she entered the space, head inclining a fraction towards her. "I'll go away. You look like you need the space more'n I do." The voice was light as music on the air with a lilt to it that, at that moment, proved difficult to place. He moved to pass her, keeping carefully back out of arm's reach, and gave her a backward glance as her reached the doorway. "Are you in a band, by the way? The Hundred Nights?"

 

[Catulle]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Carrick, Maria, Sabrina and Vychtorya

Carrick didn't respond to Sabrina's question, seemig lost in thought which her interruption failed to draw him from. Instead, it was Maria who answered, her voice wrapping about the child with a soothing tone beneath the surface.

"I see... The emphasis is clear, now, and I imagine precisely why this Elizabeth may incense Mr Montague so... la limpieza de sangre, si?" She smiled to herself, a flicker of the eyes towards Vychtorya as she did so. Nathan and Cate, Sabrina could note, were no longer in sight from her position.

"Thank you, childe. Change for you will be difficult and though there are a few way for you to change this, all are dangerous. This is why your sire's action will be thought by some as monstrous. We are statues, frozen in time at the Embrace, but some exist who can work at the stone of our essence, shaping it at will. The Tremere, perhaps..."

Vychtorya felt a flutter in her chest, a rhythmic pulse which stemmed from beneath her breast... Though sudden and silent, it took her a moment to realise - Mazz' telephone was vibrating busily.

 

[KitanaVorr]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

The cold sleet touched her hot skin, melting away more than just the heat from her body. Cleansing away more than just the physical agony but many layers more unseen.

Caitlyn almost didn't even see the man in the alcove, so intent was she on the sensation of cold. Wrapping her arms around her, she sat down on the empty bench, every sensation of the snow - falling on her eyelashes, melting on her skin, clinging to her black hair - keeping her sanity in check in the wake of the lingering music's echo.

"Kindred Knights," she corrected absently in her soft luxurious tones. Why did that seem ages away? What were they doing tonight, she wondered and why wasn't she with them instead of partaking in this crazy and unpredicatable night.

 

[Catulle]

Antiquities Nightclub, Manhattan
Wednesday 11th December, 2003

Caitlyn

"Of course." With her back to the door, she couldn't see him, but the cold, still air carried his harmonious, accented voice to her clearly. "I thought I recognised you. You're a very good singer..."
Silence. The music stilled. She sensed the man was gone, or going at the very least, and the sound from the dancefloor was muffled within the nook.

Sleet continued to fall, melting away to nothing as it brushed her and the true chill of the night only now started to work its way up through the stone of the seat. For now, it was a mild discomfort.