Disclaimer: This is a rewrite of Thirst; I decided to emphasize some of the more interesting aspects of Monroe's political machinations and her internal struggles, rather than focusing on the romance between her and Mizrah. I removed any scenes from Mizrah's perspective as well. I hope you enjoy it.
Four nights ago, down at the river
By the standards of the normally rowdy syndicate, It had been a rather orderly gathering. Nobody showed up openly brandishing weapons or anything of that nature. Both officially and within their still-beating hearts, Kindred blood shed on the balmy concrete, or bodies turning to ash were the last things anybody desired. She knew better, however, than to trust in the members' individual senses of propriety, and that was why they'd concentrated their petty hopes and dreams onto Monroe Carter as their representative. Not that she was complaining.
The roughly thirty Kindred who'd come together on this night were as motley and differentiated a band as could be expected from those whose only real ties were death and servitude. Their masters had segregated and censored them. Their hunting grounds had been leased at the undesirable edges of the Overseers' vast domain. They'd been drained dry by the loathsome blood tax, and yet they'd become a cohesive force. The Cause had grown from little more than a whisper of rebellion, shared in near silence among those who lined up weekly to give Communion unto their dread rulers. Slowly it'd turned into secretive meetings where resistance to their individual
vincula
was slowly built among the gathered. Debates and lectures about "the Natural Rights of the Unnatural" stretching into the night forming the mental cornerstone that would become the fortress of their resistance.
Finally, it had come to this.
The bonds of servitude and death were surprisingly strong, enough to overcome divisions that had, more often than not, been purposefully placed there by their own Overseers. Vorath the Thricefold's old rivalry with Manny Vaull was once fierce enough to set their teeth gnashing in the other's presence; now they stood side by side. It was the same with Corra Wilson and Nettletongue; an unlikely jealousy between the two over a shared blood doll, given the scarcity of appropriate prey, had been replaced by something nearing as close to comity as could be found among the Dead.
Monroe stood at the head of the silent gathering of eclectic individuals, pulled from The City's rusted shadows here to meet the Overseer Committee as they returned from conclave with their own elders. The Red Rock River flowed like a wriggling worm through downtown, out to Ashland Port and into the thrashing waters of the Gulf. It was usually reserved for shipping liners carrying refined gas, steel, and other byproducts of the state's industrial blight. Such was the pull of the Overseers, however, that the waterways were cleared for their entry.
She was like a cold-forged, steel torch in the night, beat bright and unyielding against an icy anvil. A black bandana was tied around her forehead - something the syndicate's members all shared, whether worn on their arms or looped through a belt - holding her vibrant braids back in an intricate complex knot. Each was clasped by a gold bead, her sole ostentation. Her midriff-cut jacket was weighed down by the fire-hatchet within, her tool of choice in the regrettable event that negotiations failed and this became a violent confrontation. More than likely, given the difference in age between the Overseer Committee's members and their own, it would be a savage rout. Still, five against thirty was good odds, and they'd surely pull at least half the elders' number down with them.
Monroe was confident in herself, in the strength of the Cause to liberate her fellow undead from oppression by their elders. It was a crossbow bolt with a red-hot iron head, pointed threateningly at the hearts of their masters; their message
would
be heard, and their demands met.
For now, they were silent, waiting patiently. It wasn't your typical protest or picket like she was used to, with marching and signs, slogans shouted for cameras...that sort of thing wouldn't get through to the Venerable Dead, who were beings of an earlier time. They intimately understood the balance of power, however, and the message would be entirely clear when the Overseers laid their eyes upon their servant-livestock, staring them down and wearing banded black, with Monroe leading them.
"Look," breathed Harlowe, pointing down toward the bay.
The first glimmers of the luxury yacht's fog lights cut through the springtime haze of condensed pollution. Although the gathered Dead barely moved, everyone felt it...that anxious pressure that preceded a confrontation with authority. That terror was understandable, though quieted by their unity and a certain understanding shared among The City's common Vampires: if anyone was going to take the blame and end up an example, it was Monroe Carter.
Rhymes with martyr
. An old lover, long lost to the years, had once said that, and that's what she remembered instead of his (or her?) face.
To Monroe's Spartan sensibilities, the garish trappings of the superyacht showed how the Overseers laid the garb of the new over the old and familiar. The massive boat was a sleek thing of white steel with blaring, soulless lights. Their servants had gone through the trouble of carefully interweaving Tatarian Honeysuckle across the decks in bright, purple petaled magnificence. Crimson silk ribbon was intertwined among the railing. By its streamlined form, it was the most modern boat that moldering money could buy. Its spirit was that of the old pleasure barges of nobility whose largesse had, since the time of the Egyptian Old Dynasties and the Kings of Xia, been supported on the backs of the masses.
Now...for the grand act.
"William," she called, no-nonsense voice muffled by the warm, foggy air. "You're up." She congratulated herself at resisting her inward giddiness; never had she sent a message of defiance such as this.
The fishy-fleshed man that hunched beneath his concealing coat obliged silently, stepping from the gathering and leaping into the river, barely disturbing it. When he emerged, he'd coiled one dripping end of the iron chain fitted in Harlowe's Machine Shop around his torso. Its bright-green links were the size of a small box television, and in William's skinny, yet stunningly powerful arms, they dripped with the chemical-rich flow of the Red Rock River.
Little John, towering over all like a fortress wall yet boy-faced and quiet; Melinda Arsanova, always dressed proper no matter the event; and Sherman, his arms thick like tree-trunks from feeding on this very dock's workers. They stepped forward and pulled hard on the chain, secured on the other side of the river with a great iron stake Harlowe had shaped himself, and soon there was a neon-green painted barrier of links presented before the superyacht. One might look here and see an impossibility, four bedraggled oddities attempting to cut off the passage of a boat, but Monroe knew them as some of the strongest Kindred in the city.
She waited with baited breath. Here, based on the whim of a dead thing hundreds of years her elder, the Brujah's whole plan could come tumbling apart...but there came the booming sound of a foghorn. The yacht's forward wake churned a crimson foam in the river as it slowed its ponderous bulk to a halt. Another drawn out howl shook from the foghorn, like an indignant cry whale's cry.
The chain remained stretched taut across the river.
Minutes rolled by...nearly an hour, testing their resolve before one of the Overseers deigned to make an appearance upon the deck. Monroe knew that the least among them would be sent to bandy words with their so-called lessers. His overly long fingers curled around the steel bar struck into the deck posts, yellowed nails clicking odiously. Vasco Isidoro was, in her view, the weakest of the Five, and he reminded her of someone who would be put in charge of a rundown insane asylum. Vasco looked like a bag of bones and spiders supported by its own conniving will, stuffed into a suit that would have been fashionable during Reconstruction.
His eyes were green like pea soup, and his voice had the quality of something bubbling up from a brackish moor.
"A fine evening indeed to you,
Siervos
," Vasco called in a disarmingly cheerful tone, accented by his native Valencia. He smiled like a predatory lake fish, concealing hundreds of needle-sharp teeth behind his bloodless lips. "You all seem to have misplaced your charming, green chain, directly in our path...perhaps you require assistance recovering said chain, that your betters might be on their way?"
Isidoro's words were like a slow-falling, poisonous net; a ponderous threat they could scatter from and avoid the recourse they all feared. Monroe could feel the syndicate's members stirring uneasily in the line...authority had been so beaten into them by blood-bond and fear that each defiance was an act of desperate will on their parts. Stretching a harbor chain across the path of the barge along the river was more than a mere defiance.
"You ain't wrong," she answered. Monroe Carter was loud enough to be heard above the din of The City's night hum and the barge's sepulchral engine-thrum, yet she sounded as carefree as if speaking to a mere equal. "Thing is ya'll ain't answering your phones, replying to texts, checkin' your emails...so how else are we supposed to get your attention, hm?"
She didn't flinch or even squint as one of the ship's lights swiveled down to shine upon her; if it was meant to intimidate and separate her, the spotlight had the opposite effect. Always had. "Thing is, we're
far
past the point of chasing you for 'assistance' with anything now. Back before we just requests, but now we got demands. I'm afraid the chain stays until we're done here."
Vasco's slick lips drew wider across his long face, splitting to reveal where his fangs had grown in place of his incisors. She relished the way he quietly boiled with rage, a creature set a whole class above and apart from them, but the lowest of his kind - and now, facing disobedience from so-called
siervos
? Monroe could empathize, she also liked things to be orderly, and for that to happen all the moving parts had to work together and
obey
.
"My dear wards, certainly you understand the value of our time. Each moment's value eclipses your combined years as we work to keep you safe...to protect your posthumous rights. To waste such a valuable vintage as ours, surely you can see both the folly and danger inherent in such a thing. Now...Would you care to release your chain?"
Monroe took note of the ten or so men that stepped up to join him at the edge of the deck, pointing white-phosphor loaded M4s their way. Clad in visored black helms, moving in perfect unison, these humans - maybe even ghouls - were the preferred servant for the Overseer Committee. Unquestioningly obedient, tied by their own addictions and contracts, they still didn't have what old Vampires like Vasco and his ilk required: Kindred blood. That, of course, was their bargaining chip...if not her own trump card.
"'Fraid not Mister Isidoro."
She smiled internally as he bristled; these older, dead things, they demanded the honor of ancient titles even in these days of modern ruin. "We tried your 'official channels'; we were stonewalled. We wrote to y'all, we signed petitions, and we even sent messengers that you returned to us in them little wooden boxes. 'Member that?"
