The house on King’s Way was a large white villa with a spacious driveway, surrounded by palm trees and some kind of exotic grass. There was nothing wrong with the villa at first sight, but it seemed... dead somehow. There were no cars in the driveway, and weeds were growing between the stones. All the shutters were down and the walls looked like they hadn’t been maintained in a long time. The entire house was one large chunk of dead, faded matter. A hulking creature that had died some time ago and had slowly petrified. The air felt icy and humid on my face.

But then, what had I expected? To see the occupants barbecuing with the neighbours, the man of the house wearing a “kiss the cook”-apron?

I took a look around the house for a way in. The front door was locked. After a quick look around, I slid my lockpicks into the lock and attempted to manipulate the tumblers. I had never been too good at those things, but sometimes simple locks were manageable. And this, oddly so given the location, was a simple lock. People probably put their faith in alarm systems around these parts.

After ten minutes of tampering with the lock, my aching fingers finally succeeded in making the lock produce a click. I put my lockpick away and pushed the door open. At least, I tried to. The damn thing was bolted from the inside. Breaking it down wasn’t really an option, even though the cops were distracted with other matters. There could always be some crazed vigilante who felt a desperate need to complicate matters. Or to get himself eaten by those critters, for that matter. Better to take the stealthy approach. There was an arch next to the house that led to the back. Maybe I could find a way in through there. I saw a curtain move in the neighbours’ window. Someone had moved away from it when I looked up. Probably went to call the cops. Good luck with that, old girl.

Like all the other houses, this one had a pool, but unlike those others, this pool only had a few centimetres of stagnant, brackish water in it. And that water was disgusting, filled with decomposing leaves, dirt, and even a few dead animals that had probably scurried in for a drink and hadn’t been able to get back out. It was pretty disgusting. At least the owners hadn’t bothered with a “we don’t swim in your toilet”-sign.

I looked around for a way into the house. There was nothing on the ground floor, but when I looked higher, I saw a balcony with two terrace doors slid a centimetre apart. And the trellis looked like it might hold my weight without breaking. The white paint on the wood had flaked and the plants were dry and withered, but the wood itself appeared to be in good condition. First I hurled my trenchcoat onto the balcony and then I gave the thing a few tugs to be sure. It seemed capable to carry my weight. As I started climbing, I felt like a character in some eighties movie, and wondered why they didn’t make trellises that snapped when a person tried to climb them. This trellis snapped and groaned a few times, but it was probably too grateful for its new, if short-lived, sense of purpose to disappoint me.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply before putting on the trenchcoat again. Not that I needed the air, but taking a deep breath was one of those old human habits that still had the effect of calming me down. I looked out over the city and saw lights of cars moving. People going home or going out, having no idea what was going on here. I hoped that none of those crawlies were still around, but I had to assume they were. I took out my Glock and slid the door open with my left hand.

The stench that wafted out was overpowering. Good thing I didn’t need to breathe. The air that slowly billowed out stank of rot, stale blood, and that horrible smell that comes free when someone’s insides become someone’s outsides. I thrust my Glock inside and scanned the room. This wasn’t the same room as the one in the video, but it was similar enough for me to know that it was the same house. Blood had splattered and smeared all over the floor, walls and ceiling. Most of it had turned brown and crusted already, but some of the stains were fresh and bright red, which reinforced my worries that this house was still ‘inhabited’. Furniture was knocked over and had been chewed by small, but powerful teeth.

Apart from that, the room was clear. But just to be sure, I sweeped my pistol over the entire length of the walls. There were two doors, one closed and one ajar. Logic dictated that I started with the one that wasn’t closed. I gently pushed it open with the barrel of my Glock. It was a bathroom, although it probably hadn’t seen any bathers for a long time. There was blood everywhere, but it probably wouldn’t be the last room splattered with red. I checked the room with the help of the blood-spattered mirror, and this one appeared to be clear as well. Even the bath, although I half-expected to find a severed head in it, or something equally gruesome.

The bathroom didn’t have any doors, so I went back to the closed one in the previous room. It was bolted on this side. In other words, bolted to keep things inside. I slowly slid the bolt back and pushed the door open. It creaked open partly, making too much noise for my tastes, but it was blocked by something lying in front of it. I gave it a hard push, and it opened all the way, pushing the obstruction out before it. The thing that had been blocking the door was the mangled carcass of a German shepherd.

The stink in this room was flattening. Man’s best friend was already partly decomposed (it had left a slimy trail where I’d pushed it out), and maggots crawled all over the liquifying tissue. And a little further, I saw the shredded remains of a human. For some reason, the monsters had left one lower leg intact. The white woman’s running shoe left me no doubt as to who this victim had been. Again I was struck with a draining sadness over this girl. Poor thing had never stood a chance. Imagine only knowing the mundane human world and then being trapped in a house with those gruesome little creatures. The inspired an instinctual revulsion in me already, so I could only wonder what the effect on an unknowing human would be. Insane panic probably.

I wasn’t one to be overly sentimental concerning the fate of humans, since they were, after all, short-lived and blissfully ignorant for the most part, but this was simply horrible. I could only hope her terror had been so great that she hadn’t lived through her brutal death with her full conscience. But no use dwelling on that.

I took one step into the room. As I lifted my foot to take another one, I saw something move in the corner of my eye. In a flash, I whirled toward the movement and as the cardboard boxes behind which the creature had been hiding were knocked aside, I fired two bullets, the cracks of the shots blasting the silence apart. The monster was caught in mid-leap by the projectiles, one of the bullets smashing into its teeth and the other blasting into the centre of its head. The thing spun through the air, its two paws describing circles which elongated into a spiral as it fell.

A phenomenon which causes quite some casualties among soldiers, police officers, criminals and other users of handguns is what is known as ‘tunnel vision’. Not the same tunnel vision as the one that occurs when you drive a car at an extremely high speed, but the principle is similar: the defender’s vision focuses only on the initial source of aggression, making his awareness shrink to only that point. All the rest, outside of that point, is a blur, and is not perceived. Once the initial threat has been dealt with, the defender’s vision remains locked on the now-neutralized danger, and other threats outside of the walls of the tunnel remain unnoticed. It was this tunnel vision that allowed the second monster to catch me unaware. It leapt at me with blinding speed, and I noticed it far too late, so all I could do was bring my arm up to protect my face. The creature’s maw closed around my arm and there was an explosion of pain and pressure as it struck. I felt the two bones in my forearm break. However, the pressure lasted only a fraction of a second. The critter let go and screeched in pain, blood running from its broken teeth. Through a haze of pain I pointed my Glock with my good arm and shot the little monster five times, blasting it apart in a spray of brains, tissue and broken teeth.

I sweeped my Glock across the room to prevent another case of tunnel vision and at the same time, burned some blood to heal my arm. The bones mended back together with a series of snaps and cracks. It was horribly painful, but it allowed me to hold my pistol with both hands again. After I had satisfied myself that there was no threat, I took a look at my sleeve. The leather was shredded, and through it, I could see the metal threads. Metal strips was a better word. They were twisted and damaged, but they had stopped the creature’s bite from severing my arm entirely. Another bite in the same place would most likely go through them, but it was good to know that the metal actually protected me more than just psychologically. I looked down at the remains of the creatures. They were even uglier up close. The most disgusting thing about them was that their skulls, at the back of their heads, were open, exposing the brains even when they hadn’t taken any bullets. I shuddered, an instinctual human reaction I didn’t know I still possessed.

There was nothing in the room apart from the bodies, old and new, and so I descended the stairs and found myself in what had been a kitchen. Another monster leapt at me from behind the kitchen counter, and as it leapt, I fired two bullets at it. The shots hit the target, but didn’t slow it down. I was able to dive aside just in time to avoid the leap. The creature skidded to a halt, turned around and leapt again. But this time I had boosted my speed using my Celerity. I sidestepped, let it slam into the wall and as it tried to get up, I blew a bullet straight into the opening of its skull, bursting the brain apart in a spray of tissue.

I tactically reloaded, keeping my eyes on the kitchen, but nothing leapt at me. When I looked down at the critter again, I saw I had blasted its brain out through its mouth. Something on its paw, however, drew my attention. It looked to be just a darker spot, but it was more than that. On the red-brown skin of the creature’s paw was something that had a pattern or a clear definition, and so was’t just a discolouration. As I looked even closer, I saw what it was. It was a U.S. Marine Corps tattoo!

The realization made me back against the wall for support. These weren’t just monsters! They were beasts made of what used to be people! Now I realized why the creature’s faces, while deformed beyond recognition, still reminded me of human faces, and why the brains had the same size and cortex complexity as human ones. I took a look at the eyes and wished I hadn’t. They were human! I felt blood coming up in my throat, the same way bile and sour stomach contents come up for a living human. I gagged but the blood stayed down. Imagine being turned into this! I could only guess at the process used to hack apart, twist and butcher people and turn them into these monsters, but however it was done, it could only be done by an extremely sadistic and wrenched mind. I closed my eyes and took a moment to collect myself.

The living room was dominated by a red, bloated pillar of flesh, stretching from floor to ceiling. I thought it moved, but I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination. This was crazy. Stairs led down into the basement. I put my Glock away and took out the Python. The heavy metal revolver felt reassuring in my hand. Slowly, I crept down the stairs. The basement was a large, empty room, more like a warehouse. In the middle of it stood a figure in a red robe. It stood on two feet, and it looked almost human.

Almost. Its face was a sickly green-gray, and its face, while vaguely human-looking, was topped by a large bony crest and riddled with protrusions and jutting bone. Inside its gray-green eyesockets, red irises burned inside black eyeballs.

“Welcome, Camarilla,” it grated in a strange Eastern European accent. As it spoke, I saw the pointed fangs in its mouth. I wouldn’t have been able to tell without seeing that, but this was another Vampire.

“So you are the one who made these... creatures?” I asked, training the Python on him.

He nodded, the crest going up and down. “Yes. These creatures. My creatures. Is it not frightening to you that, like a God, I can create life?”

“How? How can you create those things?”

The figure laughed. “They can not be made when one only limits himself to the powers offered to Kindred of the Camarilla. Only the fleshcrafting discipline of us Tzimisce can create new out of the old.”

The Tzimisce. I had heard of them, but this was the first time I actually encountered one. They were feared monsters, and along with the Lasombra they were the leading clan of the Sabbat.

“But why? Why did you make these monstrosities?”

“You call them monstrosities? Interesting. I prefer to call them superior lifeforms. They exist only to kill, and they do so with an effectiveness that inspires fear in all creatures, living or dead. They were the homeless, the useless, the excrement of society. I have given them new, glorious purpose! I have recreated them in my image!”

“They’re abominations!” I shouted.

He laughed again. “You speak as should be expected from one who is caught in the trappings of dead flesh. You feel this body of yours as a cage, do you not? As a limitation, a crux of your damnation. I have broken free of this cage. I have altered it to suit my needs and now my cage has become the instrument of my power. I have made myself a truly frightening and powerful being to behold.”

“Why did you create them?”

His eyes narrowed. “To gouge out the eyes of the Camarilla! To kill the Nosferatu, or drive them from their homes! The Camarilla will be blinded to the designs of the Sabbat! It is feeble when the Nosferatu cannot provide them with information.”

“So you released them in the sewers?”

The Tzimisce merely grinned.

“And what are you hoping to accomplish?”

“The Final Nights are approaching, Kindred. The Camarilla is weak and will fall at the moment of Gehenna. The Camarilla is an insult to our nature! It is an instrument to stunt our glory! We are meant to rule mortals, not cower among them! We shall assume our rightful place as rulers again, and the human race will be enslaved, fed upon and altered as we see fit!”

“You are a fool!” I shouted. “Even if we were to reveal ourselves and attempt to enslave humanity, they would wipe us out! They outnumber us a hundred thousand to one!”

“Yes, and so have many of my peers discovered, several hundred years ago. And so the Camarilla was formed. And so you became the cowering sheep among sheep you are today. We must again be wolves, Kindred. And so we must reshape our bodies and those of our enemies to suit our purposes. And you will fall before us as wheat before a scythe!”

I’d heard enough. “Maybe, but you won’t live to see Gehenna!” I yelled and pulled the trigger of the Python. The blast was deafening and the recoil knocked the gun upwards. But the bullet smashed into the wall behind the Tzimisce. The creature laughed as I realized it had been standing several metres to my left and projecting his image. Its hand was on a lever.

“Now you will be torn apart by my creations, Kindred, and turned into one yourself!”

It pulled the lever. A panel slid upwards, revealing the mouth of a same monsters as those I had shot earlier poured out of it, half-jumping forward on their two misshapen paws. There were seven of them. I pulled the trigger on my Python again and again, five more times. One bullet missed and two bullets struck the same target. The salvo had burst apart three of the creatures. I dropped my Python and used my Celerity, projecting myself upwards with a great leap. As I leapt, I pulled my Glock and fired four more rounds, right in the exposed brains of the creatures, flattening them. I had calculated my jump so that I came down right in front of the Tzimisce. Before it could react, I fired four times into its face. The Vampire staggered back, blood spraying from its head. Then it screeched and launched itself at me, body-slamming me to the ground. My Glock skittered across the floor and I felt my ankle twist as I tried to keep my balance but was knocked over by the velocity of the Tzimisce slamming into me. Some of its bony points stabbed between the metal strips and into my chest, ripping through the flesh of my breasts and abdomen and piercing lungs and shredding organs I fortunately no longer needed. The pain was incredible. My vision became red as we both crashed into the ground.

As my blood fled from my body, my strength fled with it. The Tzimisce used its weight to drive its points further in me. Its face loomed over mine, fangs bared in a horrible grimace.

“I will drain you, Kindred!”

The bullets that had hit the Tzimisce had been repelled by the thick bone of its skull, leaving only dents and pits in the creature’s face. The teeth came closer to mine.

“I will drain you, Kindred!” the creature growled again. I frantically tried to push it off me.

“Drain you through your eyesockets!”

The teeth were a centimetre away from my eyes. I screamed and with my last bit of strength, I manage to pull my right arm free. I tore my knife from its sheath and stabbed frantically at the Tzimisce’s side. The vampire screeched again and pulled its face up, only to bring it down again as it fought back the pain. I kicked and thrashed frantically, pistoning my knife into the Tzimisce’s side again and again, but it was no good. I couldn’t stop it! This creature was going to kill me, bursting my eyeballs and draining me through my eye sockets.

I created them in my image

I screamed again and focused all my remaining strength for the last time, pulling my right arm up, and slamming my knife down into the back of the Tzimisce’s skull, straight into the soft, exposed mass of its brain. My hand went in all the way to the wrist and the knife came out through the monster’s mouth.

The Tzimisce shuddered, its eyes rolled back and it started thrashing, the bony protrusions tearing open my wounds. Its claws spasmed up and down, ripping into my face. I closed my eyes as hard as I could, but my nose and lips were torn open and the pain went up another notch. I could taste blood running into my throat and nasal cavity. Suddenly the slashing stopped and the Tzimisce collapsed, crumpling off of me. I coughed out the blood that had run into my nose and throat and in a screaming conflagration of pain, pulled myself out from underneath the Tzimisce’s body. Some of the muscles and tendons in my torso were torn and they wailed in pain with every movement.

I felt I still had a little blood left, just enough to heal the wounds that were bleeding most. The tissues reattached themselves and the worst of the bleedings were contained. I brought my hand up and felt my face, weeping tears of blood from the pain as I realized that my face had been torn clean off from the nose to the upper lip. Between my eyes and lower lip was only blood red skull and a large hole where my nose had been.

Out of my trenchcoat pocket (the thing had saved my unlife, because without it, the Tzimisce’s spikes would have bled me dry in a matter of seconds), I took the nautilus-shaped artifact I had gotten from my master. I put it in my mouth, and my lipless upper jaw bit into it. The blood of the critters I had shot flooded into my mouth. It was weak, clotted and disgusting, but it had once been human and so I could extract at least some potence from it still. I groaned in pain as my nose reformed and my lip was recreated, and the holes in my body were closed. It had been just enough blood to heal my body. I remained on the ground for a while, in a large pool of blood, my eyes closed.

Finally, I rose, retrieving my Glock and my Python. Walking was still difficult and painful, but that would heal over time. All it required was a good meal, and I’d be good as new.

“LaCroix.”

“Prince, this is Tanira Del Rey,” I said into my phone. “Could you send someone to pick me up please?”

“Where are you?”

“King’s Way, in the Hollywood Hills.”

“I shall send my Sherriff to pick you up.”

“Thank you Prince. Although you might want to come take a look at this yourself.”

Silence on the other end of the line. “At what specifically?”

“It seems the Sabbat are more active in L.A. than we thought. I just found their base of operations and extinguished the Tzimisce inhabiting it.”

“I see... We’ll deal with that later, for now we’ll make sure you return safely. My Sherriff will pick you up and then we’ll go take a look at this Sabbat headquarters.”

Twenty minutes later, a silent Sherriff and his driver rolled up on the driveway in a Hummer to pick me up. Not a word was said on the trip. I wondered if I would ever hear that guy talk. As we drove back, I thought back on what had happened. I had never dared to fear that the Sabbat were such sadistic and monstrous beings. If they truly intended to destroy us, the fate that we were in danger of facing was terrible indeed. Perhaps the Anarchs would understand the necessity of the Camarilla a little bit more if I told them what had happened back there. But they probably wouldn’t. And I’d be sent into the sewers to look for the Nosferatu who would, in turn, lead me to the Sarcophagus. The opening through which the critters had come when the Tzimisce had pulled the lever would probably lead straight to the Nosferatu. And things would just continue the way they would. I sighed. At least no young woman would be taped being torn apart by those monsters again.

When I got out of the car and opened the large doors to Venture Tower, Prince LaCroix’ building, I stopped for a moment and realized I’d forgotten to check if that Tzimisce had truly met his Final Death or if he’d simply gone into torpor. I had checked, right? Yes, I had. But when? Had I? I wasn’t sure. But regardless, no creature could survive having its brain destroyed so it must have been sent into Final Death. It must have been.