37

It's quiet up here, but the music from the nightclub below vibrates through the trashed soles of your boots as you cross the flagstones. Your fellow Kindred watch you with disgust as your boots leave a crumbly trail of black dirt, but you size them up quickly and dismiss them just as quickly; they're weak Camarilla fledglings and neonates, ghouls, dead-eyed mortal servitors and blood dolls.

You scan the crowd for ghouls. Living mortals fed on vampire Blood, they gain immortality and a little power in exchange for slavish devotion. They are a vampire's most trusted servant, though they can grow erratic over the years. You think you spot a few. Then you look around for someone important. The eagle flies past you and lands beside a young-looking man in a linen suit with turquoise jewelry. He's conversing in worried tones with a Nosferatu, a particularly hideous example of the clan whose face is a death's head of gray-black muscles, as if her skin has been peeled away. Her monstrous face contrasts with her striking and powerful physique.