[North Shore Nights] Chapter Three: Deepening Night.

Valentine


Valentine hangs up, and sits perfectly still for a moment. "I should call Garrison Blake. The term 'Thousand Young' may mean something to one of the Dragons.'


Opening his phone again, he rapidly dials Blake's number.
 
To Blake


"Hmm, you're right Yuri, he does like to ask a lot of questions. Blake, we wouldn't have you here unless we needed you, to be perfectly plain. You are new to us, but you've been embroiled in this colossal foolishness, so we have use of you. This creature you fight, and possibly the other are...extensions of the Thousand Young, we believe. It's very name is fertility. It's long been debated if it isn't simply the creature behind all the fertility gods since man started believing in such creatures. We have walking avatars of something beyond man's kenning walking around out there."


Silence.


Your phone starts to ring.
 
Garrison Blake


Blake feels his phone buzz and looks at the face. His eyebrows go up fractionally. "Honored Masters, I have a phone call coming in from an associate. He and I have been working on this...problem. Do you mind if I take the call?"
 
To Blake


"Please, Selene's child is as much involved as you. He's drawn in that little rat Nosferatu and his information ring. Maybe they have something."
 
Valentine


The first thing you notice about Valentine's voice is a hollowness. The second is an unusual rigidity.


"Garrison Blake. This is Valentine. Selene and I were set upon by six of the wooden golems we encountered in the barn shortly after you left. It was a close fight, but we defeated them, primarily thanks to Selene's talents, which far exceed my own. Myself, I would have been beaten in to torpor or died had she not helped me.


However, that is not what I must ask you. We heard a voice commanding them. It was similar to the demon's in the barn, though perhaps higher. It said 'Go. Find. Kill. Find me someone sweet to talk to. I'd like a new soul. Now, for the Thousand Young, go!'


Does this mean anything to you?"
 
Garrison Blake


Blake's eyes close, for a moment, then open again. He punches a button and puts the phone on the table.


"You're on speaker, Valentine. Can you repeat that last part? About the voice? There are those here who should hear this."
 
Valentine


Valentine's tone does not change.


"Selene and I were set upon by six of the wooden golems we encountered in the barn shortly after you left. It was a close fight, but we defeated them.


We heard a voice commanding them. It was similar to the demon's in the barn, though perhaps higher. It said 'Go. Find. Kill. Find me someone sweet to talk to. I'd like a new soul. Now, for the Thousand Young, go!'


Is that everything you wish repeated, Garrison Blake?"
 
To Blake


"Golems? Hmm, that's news to me." Yuri mutters. "But it does seem to match." Others at the end of the table are in hurried conversation.
 
Garrison Blake


"That is everything I wish repeated, Mr. Valentine. Thank you for your diligence. Masters, are there anymore questions you have for Mr. Valentine?"
 
To Valentine


A voice comes over the line, like bricks hitting pavement, "Did you see the creature? Was it the one you faced before?"
 
Valentine


Valentine does not shake his head. There would be no point.


"No. I did not see it, it did not engage us directly. The voice was similar, but I cannot be certain it was the same."
 
To Valentine


More murmured conversation.


"Thank you, Valentine." Another voice, not sure who. "That will be all."


To Blake


Yuri will nod and motion for you to end the call.
 
Garrison Blake


Blake hits the button to take the phone off speaker and picks the handset up. "Thank you, Mr. Valentine. I will call you shortly, when I have finished discussing this with the assembled personages. I will say this. It is not good. I will talk to you soon. That is a promise."


He closes the phone and returns his attention to the Masters at the end of the table.
 
Valentine


Valentine puts his phone in his pocket and unfolds into an upright standing position.


"I shall go home now. I will let you get your rest. We have both had a long night."


Something in his eyes softens slightly. "Selene, I... I'm sorry. I should not have snapped at you like that. I think I am feeling a little off. It is probably residual brain damage or something. I'll talk to you tomorrow night when I have rested. I'm sure I'll be my old self again."


He pivots and begins to walk toward the door. "And Selene? Thank you for helping me. It was true what I said. If I had been alone there, I would now be dead."
 
To Valentine


Selene simply sits on her couch, feet scraping against the rug. Her face has a pinched look. "Yeah...you're welcome. See you later, Val."
 
To Blake


"Well, this is wonderful. What in the hell do we do now? Gird our loins with piety and faith like Wornsworth would rather we do?" Yuri snorts derisively.


A violent turn of discussion comes after that. The elder Wornsworth taking umbridge and standing up to only be restrained by one of the others.
 
Garrison Blake


Watching his elders bicker, Blake maintains a neutral expression. Inwardly, he shakes his head. We're dealing with an unimaginable horror, that may spell the doom of us all, and they're bickering like school children. You would think their years of experience would have taught them better. The Gangrel waits until there is a lull in the arguing.


"Could these Tremere have anything to do with the events that have transpired?"
 
Annabelle


"Let's just go to Roanton Park," she says, pulling her coat on and dropping her keys into her handbag. She slips her arm around his, and walks in step with him. As they pass a group of friends walking and chatting, her eyes follow them hungrily. "I'm hungry," she says in a whisper, looking up at Adulio.
 
To Anna


The Spaniard nods. "Not them though, I don't like the look of them." He takes you further into the park where a few musicians sitting in a gazebo string their instruments for a night out. Some people really didn't give a damn about the dangers. They nod to you, oblivious to the danger, though one looks a little unsettled at the pale strangers watching from the sidewalk.


You both watch, they turn a good song out from those old instruments. The oldest can't be older than 25 or so. Soon enough they finish up, thanking you and a few others who stopped to watch. Your throat is so dry, and you're so hungry.


"A moment, if we could, sir." Adulio calls out, voice dripping with the charm of the Blood. One of the bass players, hiking the case of his shoulder.


"Yessir?" Adulio talks to him about everything and nothing related his music, keeping him riveted to the spot, letting you take him unawares whenever you're ready.
 
Such a haughty young vampire, tsk.


To Blake


"I've heard the legend of the Tremere. I find it amazing and almost amusing those vampires survived." Morovin, the elder who held back Wornsworth straightens his coat as if nothing happened. "An old coterie who sealed a black pact with something beyond the Veil. No one really knows what happened to them, 'til now, I suppose. Simply another thing to be dealt with."
 
To Gavin


The doll climbs each step up to the doors and waits as the doors swing open by themselves. It waves you on, pointing with one arm like some policeman at an intersection. Or a car crash. The hall is flanked by two sets of stairs leading up, the lobby dominated by a long oaken table, usually filled with leaflets and advertisements during recitals and what not in the chapel down the hall.


Tonight, not so. The yellow glow of the old overhead lights of the lobby show a gentleman sitting at the table, shuffling cards. Aces, then suicide king, then a card that was only a black spot with a skull. Well dressed, expensive suit and an ash cane with an amber top.


"I intuited that the doll would bring you hear, sir. Come, sit."
 
Ourobouros


Watching the others go, Ouro decides to wait for Yuri, and to put its expertise to use.


For now, it does not disturb the corpses, merely examining them and the symbols carefully. It wracks its ind for the significance in any of this. The Order insists a general knowledge of this kind of thing.


It should be horrified, a small part of it suggests, but its much more curious. It is difficult to be disgusted by bodies in any shape when you know them so well. It is rather unnerved that something was capable of this much devastation.


Think. Triangles. Triangles denote a hierarchy. The placement of those extremities reinforces the image. A pyramid of skulls is both offering and warning, typically, and perhaps a display of largesse. The pile of bodies has no significance, unless it was intended as a pyre - unlikely. It looks around for any signs of genital mutilation - fertility rites may be involved - before examining the symbols more closely.
 
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