[DFM]

I wake up the following evening, rested and ready to face a new night of torture, murder and unimagined horrors. Ho-hum. LaCroix wants me to hunt for some elder who's apparently gone crazy paranoid and no doubt laced his diabolical volcano lair with fire spitting traps and ethereal monsters just in case someone wanders in, I don't know, looking for him.



LaCroix said he was the head of clan Malkavian or Malkavia or something along those lines. Didn't Tung say Malkavia was a giant batch of crazies?



Which would mean that the head of them must be the biggest, baddest crazy in crazy land.



You know, when I'm Prince I won't have to put up with this kind of shit.



I leave the apartment complex and walk down the sidewalk, not heading anywhere in particular. I don't feel a whole lot like diving into another mess of supernatural and mostly hostile horrors.



It isn't long before I pass an old church that's been converted into some kind of theme nightclub. The sign above the stone fence reads "Confession" and I think about heading inside before laughing it off.



I don't think I want to see the inside of another club for as long as I live.





Unlive.



I pass a white truck parked along the sidewalk and can't help but notice the poorly dressed man leaning against the back, obviously waiting for clientele. He was either an arms dealer or a drug pusher, probably both given the neighborhood.



"Babygiiiiiirl! I saw you coming from down the street and I started paryin' to the Lord to find it in his heard to send you to me and HALLELUJAH if he didn't come through for me. Welcome to Fat Larry's truck of mack!"

I don't know if I've seen anyone with that many animated hand gestures.



"I am the proprietor and salesman of the month several years in a row; the ladies call me 'Oh, god!', but you can call me Fat Larry with a F-A-T 'cause there's mo' of me to love."

I glance around the truck, but with the back closed there's not much clue of what he's actually offering.

"And exactly what do you actually, you know, sell?"



"Now that is a legitimate question, but a better question would be: 'What don't I got in this truck?' Cuz at Fat Larry's, our motto is: 'Everything's got a price, but I probably know somebody who can get it anyway.'"

"So... counterfeit baseball jerseys?"

"Counterfeit? Man, I look like one of those peanut-headed, rock-smokin' brothers sellin' S-H-A-C-K shirts they made at thei' momma's house? I'm the real deal, OG, man in the alley with what you need! Counterfeit!" He suddenly sounds like he's genuinely hurt.



"Why you gotta be like that?"

"Sorry, Larry. You've got to assume the worst these days, nothing personal. What've you got?"

He slides open the back of the truck revealing what looks like a massive thrift sale of black market goods, everything from guns to clothes to banned video games and ultra-porn. I grab a glock from a roughly-organized display of firearms.

"That right there's a-"

"Glock 17cc. Used. Hmm. Heavily used. Scratched exterior. Busted sights. Two broken safeties. Firing pin's been replaced. Hmph. Probably not a long life ahead of it without some extensive repair. I'll give you... two hundred dollars, market value for this region's around one seventy five, but I'm in a hurry. I'll also trade you a .38 that's got another twenty years or fifty thousand rounds on it, whichever comes first."

Fat Larry stares at me a moment before smiling and laughing.



"Da-a-amn, baby girl! . Here you had me thinkin' you were one of them skank ass soccer moms got lost downtown lookin' for some joints. You got yourself a deal."



I take the gun, offer up my old .38 and the cash. He stuff both in his pocket, closes the back of the truck before looking me over again.



"Say now, wonder girl... if you know all that commando bullshit, you ain't just buyin' that for keeping the neighbor's away from your shit, is you?"

"The fuck that's supposed to mean?"

"Woa, woa, woa! I ain't trying to get all up in your bu'ness, it's just, you know, bu'ness. I just figured somebody with the US armory fallin' outta thei heads might be up for a little action's all, a'ight?"

I check the chamber on the glock before sliding it down the back of my waistband. Taking work for a human, probably killing other humans, might be a nice reprieve from fighting Fenris, Hound of the Damned.

"What's bugging you, Larry?"

"See I need a harcore, pimp-killin', Cleopatra Jones for a super-sized score. Straight up foxy Pam Grier style. Still wi' me.?"

"Let's pretend I am."

"Here's what's going down: I got a tip that the Chinatown Tong and some local boys are meetin' at the bottom of one of them nearby parking garages, gonna carry out a bu'ness deal. Now, I can't tell you what they's exchangin'..." He leans in closer, almost whispering. "...but let's just say a certain client of mine is ready to drop some Unlce Sam-sized bucks to acquire what's in briefcase number one. You get it for me, I'm a' not only gi' you a cut, but I'll roll out my special stock as well. Now how dat sound?"

"Sounds like a good deal." I slip my hands behind my back and lean in, feeling a whole lot more confidant now that I'm not running around in shit covered rags. "For you. If you want me to take out a whole meeting between some local assholes and the goddamn Tong you're going to have to pony up something else. I want a discount, too. On all your merchandise. Ten Percent."



"Yo baby, why you gotta shake me down like that? If I hadn't just got my foot outta that cast, I'd do it myself. But... Yeah, it's gotta be that way, fine. You got your discount... but only after I get the briefcase."



I start down the street toward the parking garage Larry'd indicated. I never saw myself as a mercenary, didn't make much business sense. Risk was too high, margins were too narrow, expenses too... vast. The only way you could turn mercenary work into a financial empire was if you started a PMC and were both really good and really lucky. In which case you'd be bought out by someone like me. Especially if you happen to have a seven foot tall, two hundred and seventy five pound Somalian in your em-

I hear a scream.



It's muffled, but it was definitely a scream. Came from somewhere over there.



I creep over a broken segment of the chain link fence. The building looks like a hospital, probably fifty years abandoned. I hear something crash to the ground not far beyond door.



Probably a bunch of junkies on a bad trip.



There's a musty feel in the air, but nothing out of the ordinary. I move into the door way, pistol aimed down. I lean just far enough through the opening to examine the room beyond. Hallway that goes further down to my right, opens into a small room just on my left.



Not sure what that room was used fo-

Feet slamming against the ground, getting louder. Shit. I whip around, pistol aimed straight out.





"A-a-a-aaah! Help me! Are you a cop? Oh thank god, thank god, you've gotta help me! I-it's coming for me! It already got them, it... Jesus it's coming for me now!"

I lower the gun and keep my voice steady.

"Slow down. Tell me what happened."

"My crew... my crew, w-we were here.... here shooting for the show, for Ha... hahaha-" He's scared out of his mind. "Haunted LA. Haha Oh god, it was right behind me. It's still coming we've got to get out of here!"

"Relax. Nothing's coming. You were shooting for a show?"

"Y-Yeah... look I'll... I'll level with you, we- we- we usually fake these things, you know? Ghosts I mean... that's all... it's all bullshit. We were setting up downstairs and... and we started hearing things... people started disappearing... then there was screaming, oh god, the screaming... then we- we- we- saw the blood... there was so much blood... I heard... I heard it talk, it w-w-was in my head..."

I flip off the gun's last working safety and push the man gently aside as I move deeper down the hallway.

"Stay here, I'll go fix this."

He grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me back.

"N-No! Don't go down there! We've gotta get out! It's coming... It's coming!"

I push him aside and head down the hallway.



No, bitch, I'm coming.



There's a horrible scream to my left. I take the first turn I see and come into a small room, just in time to see a pair of kicking legs sucked into a broken air vent.



Shit. Here comes the retarded vampire, crawling up your tiny little chimney chute.



Nothing. A few smaller streaks of blood, nothing that'd indicate a lethal wound.



The next vent in the shaft is already kicked open. Since it comes to a dead end just a few feet further down, whatever grabbed the cameraman must have moved through here.



There's a camera in the room, pointed at a large hole in the wall and the surrounding floor. The entire floor is coated in blood, like someone popped a gorilla-sized pimple just beyond the maw. The camera is hooked up to a newer computer, just against the wall. The monitor playing looping footage of a woman being pulled into the hole feet first, kicking and screaming and clawing at the floor.



She disappears from view for a second before her screaming stops and the blood gushes up like a geyser, coating the edges. Something rushes past me, I can feel the wind move against my back. I spin around, pistol pointed at empty air. Only way in is through the hole and the vent I just came out of. Door's shut. I check the handle. Locked, too. I look down into the bloody pit once more before leaping down.



There's another terrified scream somewhere to the right, maybe a little down. This one's cut short before it finishes in a gurgling sound. Something heavy hits the floor.



Yeah, you can kill a bunch of unarmed mortal film technicians. Fucking scary badass you gotta be, inviso-the-werewolf.



Footsteps coming from the next room, running ones. Screaming. I pass through the door and see a man pounding on the windowed glass of a door.



He looks behind him and screams again. It's the most unearthly, soul-retching scream I've ever heard. He looks back at me, utter, uncontrolled terror etched into every feature of his face as he pounds the glass like he's trying to break it. Before I can get to the door, something pulls him underneath the window.



The sudden splash of blood against the window is getting a little too familiar. I make sure a round is chambered, and I kick the old wooden door in, snapping it right off it's hinges.

I'm standing in the hostipal's morgue, blood covering it like a layer of paint. Bodies. Dozens of bodies lining the floor, hanging off of morgue beds, every last one of them... picked almost completely clean. I take a step into the room, weapon raised high. I can hear laughing from somewhere. It sounds like a child's. The voice seeps into my head, soft and low.

Terror is the fear of death.

I wheel around, almost drop the pistol. I stagger back, nearly trip. The gun's shaking.

"...G-Gimble? Gimble you... N-no! NO!"

I whip around again, one of the near barren skeletons slipping off a ledge and crashing to the ground.

"GIMBLE COME OUT YOU PIECE OF-"

Laughter. Soft and low. Just like the voice. That... wasn't Gimble's voice.

"The fear of death, is terror of the unknown."

I jump back, pointing the gun at the source of the voice.

A monster stares at me through the iron sights.



"These eyes that peer into you, are they the eyes of the killer, the man you killed in turn? No. Do you fear them? No, not truly. Because I am not the unknown. You and I are closer kin than you and it were."

I lower the gun slightly, until it's pointed at her waist.

"What... what are you talking about?"

"Drinking blood to sustain your death, you are damned, yes? What if, besides the blood of the living, you had to consume pounds of their flesh as well, to maintain that thin facade of life. What would you call it? Twice damned?"

I lower the pistol the rest of the way.

"You're... a cannibal vampire?"

"We drink blood. I eat flesh. Kine eat beasts... but kine think us a monster. Without remorse they would burn our body twice over to be certain we were destroyed. What is monstrous for some is vital for others."

I slip the glock back into my waistband. I hadn't really expected to not be attacked by the ravenous monster that was killing everyone. I guess being a vampire isn't always all bad.

"So... who are you?"



"My birth name I tell no one. You may address me as Pisha. Pisha was the name of my companion and lover in a time before my death, two hundred and thirty years ago. She has no need of it any more."

I decide not to press any further about... that last bit.

"So... you live in LA? You don't seem... native."

"My stay in this city is transitory. I seek relics of the occult traced here, and would trade similar artifacts to acquire them. But if you wish to bargain with me, the kine upstairs must be sent... down here. He has seen too much."

"So you can eat him."

She slides her tongue along her lips, eyes gracing over a menagerie of rusted surgical tools and blood stained corpse beds.



"Eventually."

I shake my head.

"Even if I wanted to do that, there's no way he'd come down here after you... you know, brutally slaughtered everyone and made him believe in hell."

"Tell him this was all a ruse... his friends playing a joke. He will come. He must come down here. If he leaves, the frail disguise we wear for mortals will be seen through."

"Okay, I'm not really liking this 'we' thing you're doing, I'm not..." I glance around the room. "I don't really think I'm in the same category of monster as you."

She tilts her head slightly forward.

"Do you really believe killing thousands for profit less monstrous than killing dozens for survival?"

"Yeah alright, look. I'll see what I can do, I'm not promising anything, though."

God why does everyone always bring that up?



I walk back towards the entry I'd come in. I suppose... this wouldn't be that bad. I mean, he had seen too much. The Masquerade must be preserved, I'm pretty sure everyone had said that. If he didn't want to be eaten he shouldn't have been poking around abandoned hospitals. Or abandoned ocean front hotels. Or prosthetic shops.

And it's not like it's going to make me a worse person than I already am, I mean the flesh eating monster said it was okay.



"Hey... guy?"

Nothing.





Short update today because I'm kinda tired, rest will be coming tomorrow.