Thirst

...Reality came blasting back cruelly, like a gunshot cracking her to terrified awareness when she sensed the presence of another Kindred - there, coming through the gate leading out to the Forsythe entrance. A severe Chinese woman with short-cut, light blue hair wearing an earth-colored off-shoulder sweater, bluejeans that cost more than she'd probably ever seen before her eyes...Quiet Yan, one of Lady Shira's creatures; disaster if she saw her like this with Yusuf, or possibly even if she simply came into proximity.

She pulled her fingers out of his roughly, quickly adopting her trademark cold, determined demeanor and breaking off from Mizrah, dipping effortlessly into the crowd. No thought for how it might make him feel - at least none she had the time to entertain - as she became one with the morass of man, joining a stream of flesh that led away from Yan's cutting, keen vision; if Monroe has seen her, however, it was just as likely the older Kindred had spotted the young Brujah.

She sat down on a bench next to a big, brightly lit map of the city, overlain with the colorful lines of the Metro...to her blood-obsessed mind she couldn't help but see veins and arteries leading from The City's thudding downtown heart, down here to its red-lit, proudly displayed fundament. Gathering her braids back, Carter felt her cellphone buzz in her pocket; pulling the little android into her palm, she saw a message from Yusuf and the accompanying guilt for leaving him hanging like that.

Mizrah:

`whered you go? you ok? imma find u`

That actually sounded nice, and she was about to explain her herself when -

"Hello Carter." A sickly, cold sensation, like muddy permafrost, passed through her throat as she felt Quiet Yan's presence; the Brujah hadn't even noticed her arrival and for all she knew, the severe Mekhet could have been sitting there this whole time...watching her incriminating herself. "Leaving Ashland are we?" The azure-haired Kindred was perched on the bench next to her, legs crossed pertly.

Yan's voice had the quality of sharpened ice cutting through wax paper and it made Monroe's flesh crawl. Neither looked at the other, and she slipped her phone in her pocket surreptitiously. "I am, yes. Lady Shira gone and decided to make a rule sayin' we can't?" she responded with barely restrained hostility.

The Mekhet next to Carter reached into her pocket, never once looking at the other Kindred - she had no need, Shira's creature was perceptive far beyond sight...perhaps not the way Mizrah or Samara could be, but every Syndicate member, every deviant or disobedient Vampire feared falling under the gaze of the Silent Clan Mekhet. The flat, silver wafer of her mobile sat in her hand, feather light, its screen a rectangle of black light with a single red button in the center, recording their words.

Here it comes Monroe...The Inquisition. The Syndicate's laws protect you. They're signed in blood, the paper pressed from the ashes of fallen revolutionaries...powerful thaumaturgy that will shield your secrets.

"What are you hiding, Carter?" The Mekhet's gaze met her own, and a sense of vertigo tugged behind her belly as she felt the invasive tendrils of her coldly structured mind brushing against hers. The young Brujah focused on the Syndicate's laws, a mystic anchor and shield against the older Kindred's psychic intrusion.

"Nothing that's your business," she answered with a voice even as the cold forged targe that was her will - Mizrah's grinning, handsome face, flashed unbidden to the murky surface of her mind - before the By-laws scrolled in a crimson marquee across her consciousness.

Article One - The Syndicate protects its own from deprivation, dominance and dissolution

Yan didn't flinch. She expected this, perhaps, from her experiences questioning others of her movement; an arcane pact existed between those who'd taken the oath and joined their quiet revolution, one that shielded normally defenseless, easily read minds from the invasion of the Auspex Discipline...as long as her will held. "But you are hiding from me," she pushed.

Article Two - The Syndicate avenges its own

"What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets," she responded dismissively.

"Neither funny nor creative. I'd take this more seriously were I you." Yan's blood boiled in her veins - a mortal might not notice but the Vitae was slowly burning within her as she drilled against the bulwark of her connection to the others.

Article Three - The secrets of the Syndicate's Membership are the secrets of the Syndicate, and shall be guarded as such

Was Mizrah a Syndicate secret though? Could she really be that selfish? "You ain't finding anything cuz I ain't breakin' no rules, so if you got nothing better to do than harass a 'vassal' on her own business..."

"Tallage," Yan finally smiled her way, giving the younger kindred cause to empathize with a mongoose's prey. It was a cruel smile, one utterly devoid of mirth, taking pleasure in what Monroe couldn't hide: her absolute

loathing

for Tallage. Every servant and subject of the Overseers despised this arbitrary annual tax, a holdover from the high middle ages when common men were powerless subjects of cruel, hungry tyrants...for people like Monroe, this kind of change came slowly, if it came at all. Any Kindred higher on The City's hierarchy could call on a lesser to pay once a year, and the price was almost always service...or blood.

In the calculus of her mind she understood that she'd already pushed hard against the Overseers and to defy a favored ancilla like Yan so thoroughly may earn her retribution...and she'd seen the mangled, still moving forms of those who'd gone too far, howling for release, if even that coherent.

"You look like a fuckin' flea when you grin like that," Monroe allowed herself...Yan didn't care, she just ran the tip of her tongue over a sharpening, needle-elegant canine, a knowing look that seemed out of place in her corpse-dark stare.

It was shameful...Yan knew the mortals would simply witness a well dressed woman necking her punky companion, not the stinging humiliation of being drank from, against her will but with little choice.

Pressed up against the chipped, pitted concrete wall, cold against her back, her fingers clenched and her nails scraped against the hard material. Quiet Yan had little care for the pain-dulling, euphoric aspect of the Kiss when draining a vassal, rather than a mortal - instead she suffered the pain, of cold fangs digging into her jugular, pulling greedily at the thick, dark Vitae in her body. Her own Beast rebelled against this kind of treatment and the dead-thing in her heart screamed

RELEASE ME

.

Yan pulled her teeth free from the younger Kindred's neck, chuckling as she licked the holes closed. Monroe refused to look her in the eye, but she couldn't ignore her words: "Know your place...it's the best advice I can give you. I know you just love your fifteen minutes shaking the boat, but keep it up and you'll go overboard; and that mire is filled with things much greedier, who will take much more than I."

"Don'tchu worry 'bout me," Monroe sneered with an effort. I got friends who'll pull me AGH...!" the stab of the Mekhet's sharp teeth into her lip, taking a final sip left her feeling drained and defeated. She sagged against a support pillar as Yan licked her mouth clean, curiously.

"Something is different this time...very different," she exhaled, and for the first time since she'd had the misfortune of meeting her, Yan seemed less an utterly controlled, watchful stool pigeon, more...savage. Unhinged. Even her hair was out of place. "Next time I catch you, someplace quiet, I'm going to open your head like a can, scoop out the thoughts and roll them around on my tongue...unless you behave." An unnerving chuckle, she patted Monroe's cheek and next the Brujah blinked, she was gone.

Monroe Carter didn't bother with breathing, not when she had been badly drained -again-. Every encounter with the Overseers and their servants left her taxed, hungry, feeling weak and insecure. As much as she wanted -

needed

to hunt, she also wanted to just crawl home, wrap herself in her blankets, and just sleep the night away.

That'd been...way too close. Her Will had almost faltered, and if Yan had gotten wind of what she'd been up with Mizrah, it would be enough to drag her before The City's dread Iudex. Speaking of, she cast her gaze about for her tall, dark-eyed lover and to her horror, found him watching her across the platform.

What does he think just happened? Does he have any idea how close he came to getting caught, or to me getting caught? What are we doing here, and is he judging me?!

She pushed herself into a steady standing position, fixed him a defiant, amber glare and strode with single-minded purpose for the subway exit. This was nuts, just like she'd been telling herself from the very beginning, only now she was taking her own advice and getting the hell out of here. Away from the object of her uncontrolled, dangerous desires and, for once, keeping her head low.

"Yo..." his voice intoned musically behind her, and she sped up her pace haughtily, catching his indistinct reflection in the reflection of a broken terminal screen and already feeling that pull when she saw it. "Yo, wait up!"

His fingers caught her wrist, and she yanked away roughly, wheeling on him with a grimace, expecting misunderstanding, jealousy turning his black eyes green. All the darkness and venom was loaded onto the tip of her tongue, ready to lash him away and out of her life for good.

"What's wrong? Hey, hey...whoa, easy baby." Yusuf stopped, arm's length from her, and his expression would have caused her breath to catch in her chest, had she breathed. "What happened?" Mizrah's hands were spread before him, those graceful musician's fingers open so she could see - 'nothing up my sleeves' - not that it was reassuring, pragmatically speaking. Werewolves were deadly by their nature. Where she'd expected anger at what must have looked like a romantic display with another woman, she was taken aback by how he appeared concerned; she hadn't seen 'concerned' directed her way in a long while.

Monroe's scowl softened and her will faltered. She really wanted to touch his hands...didn't exactly feel great for the way she'd dipped on him without explanation. She settled for taking a few steps in his direction, stopping close enough that she could lay her fingers upon his forearm, unable to meet the heat of his gaze. "You just don't get it." It sounded harsher than she meant. "I don't mean like you're dumb...look, if you don't know somethin', you just don't know it, and you don't know how close we got to gettin' caught just now, Yusuf."

Mizrah's expression became fearsome and difficult to describe, looking out past her but she tugged his arm to pull his attention back upon her. "She's gone, it's over...and we ain't done nothin' untoward out in public so you can relax for now," Monroe said quietly, crossing her arms under her bust and looking past him toward the exits...just to make sure the Mekhet actually

was

gone. "I just had a close encounter with another Kindred, a snake of a woman...Quiet Yan. She's a mind-reader - literally man," she snapped. "I could barely hold her off from getting in my skull, but you'd have nothing to defend your poor fool brain from her scalpels. She'd see your secrets, she'd see what you and I have done, and they'd come after both of us."

The Persian rockstar's brows knit together. He didn't say anything for a moment before his voice came, lower than usual. "Okay, you're right, I don't really know anything about what your life is like, and...okay. I've been kinda like, dismissing what you've been saying I guess." She felt her hackles raise until he slid his hand up into hers. "I'm sorry. I shoulda been taking you more seriously, even if I don't get it, I just got caught up in you. If you want, uh, I can dip." His voice sounded a bit tight. Not natural.

Monroe looked at him suspiciously...was he making a joke? He

looked

contrite, and the way he was touching her fingers was kind of sweet, almost placating. "What do you mean dip? Like leave the station?"

"No like..." her heightened sense of hearing, attuned to the beating of living beings' hearts, detected the way his sped up; she could feel the trace sheen of sweat on his palm. "I can stop this. Being all like...after you. Trying to get you."

Get me? Don't you already have me?

And then she thought back to how she'd been trying to push him away...always being hard on him. It was what she'd always known. Letting a man get close to her like this and making such intimate contact with her emotions...that was something that hadn't gone down since the last century.

Her heart softened, like figs left in wine, as she read and began to believe the guilt on his face, and she tugged lightly on his fingers. "Come on. Take me to the train like you were doing, and then we'll talk. A'right? Hey..." her fingers came up and under his chin, tipping his head back to look up from the ground. "Eyes up here handsome." When those glittering dark orbs made contact with hers, she felt a flutter in her stomach and couldn't help but reward him with a smile.

There it is...there's that pretty look.

She liked it much better when he was smiling back at her; it wasn't often that she let the emotions of others tug hers like this but, after this near-disaster experience, she found herself mysteriously warming up to whatever it was he'd had in mind. She even slipped her fingers into his back pocket as she fell in at his side, cocking her head expectantly.

Monroe even found herself liking him a bit more after this. Few men - few people really - could willingly and honestly apologize for messing up.

Later, she found herself standing with him in the crowded train car headed north on the Green Line. Monroe leaned back against the train wall with her fingers hooked in her sash, one hand idly twirling a purple braid around her finger as she spoke, laying it all out to him.

What her revolution really meant to her...what she was trying to do by challenging the authority of ancient dead things that would ash her on a whim. How delicate this process was, a macabre dance of shows of force; demure acquiescence; tithes and taxes and blood, blood, blood...what she was doing was yet another utter violation of some of the All-Night Society's most basic tradition:

do not break the masquerade

. Just because he was another inhuman didn't excuse this vile Sin of Honesty but she was starting to see that, bereft of knowledge, Yusuf let his desires and impulses guide him...speaking of being impulsive.

"That bitch also took a tithe from me, and didn't take lightly neither," Monroe groused, looking up and trying not to get lost in his eyes. "She noticed something different about the way I tasted, dunno if she's gone and put two and two together about it bein' wolf blood, but I'm thirsty again - and no," she raised a finger, touching his bottom lip gently before he could make the suggestion. "I ain't taking from you. You've given enough of yourself." Monroe favored him with a little smile as her fingers played over the stubble on his chin...she enjoyed the way it felt under her nails; he must have blunted every razor that touched his face.

He was leaning forward, close to her, one defined arm pleasantly flexed as he held a handgrip. They stood near where the cars connected, and this close she could smell him above the train-car stink. The six subway riders seated nearby were either intently absorbed in their headphones, arguing in Spanish, or passed out drunk, so she wasn't worried about eavesdroppers.

"Actually, before you so

rudely interrupted

me," he teased her, lightly pinching her midriff and provoking a playful smack at his wrist, "I was gonna say...I had an idea to take care of that, something that could be really fun and..." Yusuf leaned in close, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the heat of his nearness, "...maybe kinda hot." His tone certainly intrigued her more than she'd readily admit. Still.

"...you got some plan to feed me or somethin'? I was gonna say I can take care of myself - " she began but he quieted her with a look that was half impatient, half placating.

"Let's take the green line out to Villa Forte," he began and she was already gazing at him skeptically, "and paint that place red - now don't look at me like that, Forte's got plenty going on."

She'd actually driven through Villa Forte a lot back in the days when the sun's light wasn't anathema, and watched it change from a sleepy little farming burg to a gentrified college town that churned out IT and finance drones. "It's outside the Overseers' Domain...I don't think it's even claimed by anyone," she acquiesced. Most Kindred in Louisiana - the ones she knew of anyway - were concentrated in a few major metropolitan areas like New Orleans, or the shoreline districts of The City. "Whatchu got in mind?"

"Well, I thought it could be fun," he began, fingers tracing the edge of her jawline, a sensation that drew a soft smile as she leaned into his touch, "if you and I showed what we can do together on the Hunt."

"On the Hunt?" Monroe didn't deny that got her inner Beast's attention, and she could sense the fell sub-consciousness of the Beast pacing in the cage of her heart. It was intrigued by Yusuf's words as surely as she her higher thoughts had been captured by his music and his voice...and this bold suggestion. "How would that even work for you though?" The details were actually distractingly interesting; part of her had always been curious about the Lupines' habits, but encounters with them - even with Mizrah - had been terrifying, dissuading her from finding out.

"Easy, the same way I made it work on you, only I might have to actually try." His smile reached his eyes, and Monroe couldn't help but laugh, lightly smacking a palm on his shoulder. Her fingers tugged on the fabric of that white button-up as she pulled him in to kiss her...a long kiss, uninterrupted by the movements of the train as they moved easily with its momentum. Monroe's tongue explored his, nipping the tip as she pulled away, sneering playfully.

"I hate arrogant men."

As the stops drifted by and the train disgorged its occupants further and further from The City's rotten heart, they sat next to each other. She slung her leg over his thigh, leaning back against a pole as they moved on naturally from feeding to a surprising range of topics - she still remembered that first night she'd met him and they talked for a good hour before the aching hunger in her gut got the better of her. Now, as then, she was thirsty but it wasn't nearly as bad, and the feeling of his hand casually resting on her thigh was grounding.

"...alright Monroe, explain this again to me, it's all weird and indirect and insidious," he began. Carter reached down and took his hand, smiling as she tugged on his fingers, popping his knuckles in turn. "So you have this kinda, lord-subject arrangement going with the Overseers, your uh...gerontocrats, right? As in, there's maybe five or six of them compared to many more of you...and they basically make all the rules and decide where you get to stay?"

"In its most basic form, yeah." He got it. "They don't entirely make all the rules though, there's a network of 'em that we commoners don't get to see, and they gotta make good in their eyes too. It's why there's all this old school ritual and court behavior that we all hate, but what we think don't matter...long as we're back in our fief on Sunday evening and coming to court to pay our tithes, we're just moving parts to them." It was hard for Monroe to keep the indignation from her voice. "It ain't just us Neonates and the Overseers though, there's a layer between...Ancillae, middle-men. I think they call themselves 'knights' or

equites

to try n' make themselves better than us, but they're just as rightless. They're the ones doing the enforcing, and they'd rather be where they are than where we is, down at the bottom."