5

Olivecrona's mental arts outshone yours as the sun outshines the moon, but she had spread herself too thin. Fighting a war on a dozen fronts as her hundred-year plan disintegrated, she badly underestimated you. You never found out what happened to her, or to the ghouls you sent back to her haven with instructions to drag her out into daylight, but you never saw her again.

And after all that, ten years on these miserable desert highways, scraping by on the "charity" of your elders as you run their errands.

If you were still alive, you'd be middle-aged.

The elders of the Kindred are lies wrapped in flesh: undeath is no promise of immortality. You've seen a hundred Cainites born into the night, only to die a few months later at the hands of hunters or their own kind, or just because they didn't know what time it was.

Strange that you're going to die young.

The air ripples. It smells like burning metal. You never should have bought a hatchback.