Next evening I wake up refreshed but hungry, if you can imagine that. The rest of the clan are being a bunch of lazy-ass fuckers, so I take off on my own for the Sunset Grill. In no time I've got a BU computer science undergrad buying me drinks and hanging on my every word, and it doesn't take much convincing to coax him into the men's room with me, to the obvious envy of his friends. Geeks are so easy. I leave him gently sleeping on a john in one of the stalls; he'll wake up with nothing but vague memories and wondering what he missed. Couple pints of blood is what he's missing. And just what was that boy's blood alcohol level? I'm feeling pretty toasted as I walk back out into the bar. Geek-boy's buddies stare at me, and I wave toodle-oo to the lot of them on my way past. Out into the night air; damn, I feel good.
Big American car screeches up beside me. Wonder who this could be, hmmm… The passenger window is rolled down and Calliope's leaning across the passenger seat telling me to get in. I tell her honey, it's twenty-five bucks per half hour, but she's not in a humorous mood. "You're drunk, aren't you," she scowls at me as I plunk myself in the car. Ah, I don't think she's really mad. "Where are we going?"
"Want to solve a little mystery?" she asks, looking at me sideways. Keep your eyes on the road, woman!
"What kind of mystery?"
"If I knew that, I wouldn't be asking you, would I…" I roll my eyes and let her know I'm back in my place, that I know she's in charge. She relents and tells me that we're following two Toreadors, Kierney and Eleanor. What they're up to is apparently the mystery. We're heading out of the city now, on the road to Salem-could they be going to the Tremere chantry? What on earth for? We're racking our brains, trying to figure out why anybody would go there willingly, when I remember one of the Toreador mentioning something about Eleanor going to a funeral. Funerals don't happen at night, I don't think. I've never been to one, but they're never at night in the movies. Calliope thinks there's something in that memory, so I uplink my palmtop and search the obits for the last few days. I find it easily-it seems her dad kicked the bucket. Under mysterious circumstances, no less. Funeral on Tuesday at 11 am-that's tomorrow. It's at that huge Catholic pile at Copley Place, Trinity-my guess about money was not wrong then. I tell Calliope what I found, and she looks thoughtful.
"That's it, then…" "What's it?"
Calliope tells me that the Tremere have magical abilities and rituals-actually, I think her words were "They're into some heavy duty weird shit"-that can enable Kindred to endure the daylight. So somebody must be going to that funeral. Interesting. What's in this for the Tremere? We arrive in Salem, and indeed the Tremere chantry is our destination. We park a discrete distance away and keep speculating. Calliope finally says "there's only one way to find out-want to go pay our respects at the funeral?" I look at her like she's gone mad. I thought I was the drunk one here. "Are you friggin' nuts?" I ask in the most polite tone I can muster. She looks askance at me for a moment, and I tense, but she seems to be in a good mood now. "I mean, how can we? We'd burn up! And how could we stay awake?" "Oh no, there's ways. We can stick to the shadows and stay hidden-it might get uncomfortable at times, but it won't kill us. And as far as staying awake…" she reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a ziploc full of white powder. She smiled. "This will keep us awake for days on end." Jesus, I haven't bought coke lately but that must be several hundred dollars worth. Well… why the hell not? Who knows what we might learn about the Toreador or the Tremere, and besides, it would be my first funeral. Well, not "my first funeral," but you know what I mean. We drive back down to Boston and ditch the car near Copley.
We walk right into the church-well, the door was locked, but that didn't really pose a problem. I half expected to feel sick or be burnt by the shadow of the cross or something melodramatic like that, but nothing happened. Maybe it's only when there's somebody around to believe in it that these things hurt us. We hide ourselves in a confessional-"Have you anything to confess, my childe?" asks Calliope. "Bless me, sire, for I have sinned," I reply, and from there we spend a hilarious night in mockery of religious rituals, getting more and more coked up as the dawn approaches. I'm sure if I were mortal this much coke would have killed me hours ago, but as it is, it's just enough to keep us awake. I carve obscene graffiti of priests, nuns and altar children in the booth walls to while away the hours till eleven.
I'm working on particularly involved scene, with Calliope playing art director ("no, the nun should be holding the whip!"), when people start arriving dressed in their finest. A posh crew it is, too. And looking just as posh as the rest of them, Eleanor sweeps her way down the center aisle, bold as you please in the broad daylight, right up to the front of the church, accompanied by a rather less posh looking Leonardo Trebinski. They follow what must be a family member into a side chamber.
Calliope and I are glued to the ventilation slits in the confessional, trying to see and hear what's going on, when we hear purposeful footsteps coming closer to us, and a funny, sniffing kind of noise-we shrink back together as the door is flung open, expecting to be burnt to a crisp. We aren't, since this side of the church is in shadow, but the large man who opened the booth is dragging us out, and there's nothing really we can do about it-we can't attack him in front of all these people, and even if we said Masquerade be damned, there's fucking nowhere for us to run, not with the sun streaming in through the stained glass all around us. I am more terrified than I've ever been in my life or unlife, I can barely keep my feet moving as the man drags us down the side aisle to a small room, shoving us in ahead of him. There's windows, but they're covered. Eleanor and Leonardo are both here, looking shocked. At first I think it's just us that have shocked them, and I have to admit, Calliope and I are a shocking sight after all that cocaine. But from the atmosphere in the room, it's clearly more than that.
The man who found us out starts ranting at all of us, but particularly at Eleanor, about the horrible creatures that we are, and how we are to be killed, and how all our kind should be killed. Eleanor is trying to reason with him-brother, she called him? The more he rants, the larger he seems, shit, I think he really is growing taller! The two of them are arguing, the brother spitting out insults, Eleanor pleading for our lives, when he grabs her and thrusts her ahead of him through another doorway, barely squeezing through himself, and locking it behind them.
"We have got to get the fuck out of here," Calliope says. No argument from me, although I can't see how. Leonardo looks at the two of us and wants to know what we're doing here at all. Yeah, I'd like to know too. It seemed like a good idea at the time… Leonardo says he can't leave without Eleanor, that his clan sent him to be her guardian. "And a fine job you're doing," I think, but don't say it out loud, seeing as how Calliope and I can't even leave this room and are fine ones to talk. Leonardo says his car, driven by a ghoul, is safe for us to travel in, but the car is out front, and we're stuck here. An idea strikes me though-if the sunlight won't kill us instantly, and if there's a clear space to drive the car alongside the building, the ghoul could drive around, we could break the window, and run for it. The others think it's a good idea, and Leonardo sends a psychic fax, or whatever it is that these Tremere do, to his chauffeur to drive around.
We can still hear brother ranting and raving at Eleanor, until he cuts himself off with a roar. We hear a thud and screams-Leonardo's pounding on the door, but it's locked. "Open it!" he yells at me. I really would rather not, but he won't leave without Eleanor, and we can't get out of here without him. I pick the lock and fling the door open-what the hell has happened to her brother? He's some kind of animal, a what, a frigging werewolf? He turns to us, growling; Eleanor doesn't look hurt, she looks more angry than scared, to give her credit. Brother Thomas shrinks down to presentable proportions and leaves us, promising he'll be back to kill us all. Even without the sunlight, this is not a fight I'd relish… As Leonardo explains our plan to Eleanor, Calliope and I bundle up in priests' robes, to try to minimize our exposure to the sun. "OK," says Leonardo, "the ghoul is outside now-" he's cut off by the sound of smashing glass as Calliope throws a chair through the window. "Wait…" he says, knowing it's already too late. Calliope's out and running for the car. There's sunlight in the room now, and I, I need to run into it, but I can't, I can't make myself, I'll take my chances with the werewolves, that's ok, you guys just go on without me-I'm pressed as far away from the sunlight as I can get, and I think I'm babbling out loud. "Run, Electra, run!" both Leonardo and Eleanor are shouting at me, but I can't, I can't! Leonardo grabs my head in his hands and I'm ready to club him for it when-suddenly I'm moving out the window, and it hurts, it burns, I can't do this but my body won't let me stop until I'm in the car, in the trunk and the ghoul is closing the door and Calliope's there and I think I'm still alive although all I can do is curl up against Calliope and shiver even though I'm far from cold.
I'm not sure how long we spent in the trunk before we heard the doors slamming and the engine starting. Not knowing what's happening is horrible, and I don't like being this dependent on the others. Once the car is moving, a panel in the front of the trunk slides open-I draw back, but it seems ok even though there's light coming in, Calliope's already climbing out so it must be ok. I follow her into the back seat of the limo. Leonardo and Eleanor look at the two of us in horror, and Leonardo offers me blood, bottled blood, I need it so badly but can I trust a Tremere? What little blood I have left in me is pounding in my forehead telling me to drink, and I'm faintly aware of Calliope promising to rend Leonardo limb from limb if it contains anything that would hurt me. I'll just trust her to keep her word then… I drink and drink and drink beyond the point of satiation. Eleanor's looking down her nose at me-yeah, well, it was your brother that got me into this situation, Cinderella. They tell us that Leonardo has seen somebody take Eleanor's mother, and wants to follow the car she was driven off in. Eleanor at first is reluctant to, but in the end we do make pursuit. Still hanging on to my palmtop, so I hack the RMV to find out who the car we're chasing belongs to. It belongs to Eleanor's father. Somehow, I doubt it's him driving it. Although with this family, it wouldn't surprise me a bit at this point to learn he was a zombie. We follow the other car until it becomes obvious that they know we're there, the limo hardly being an unobtrusive shadow. Eleanor says she wants to go back to the church, to find her brother and tell him about their mother-is the girl fucking nuts? He wants to kill us all, remember? She has an email address for him and wants me to mail him using my uplink, but no way in hell we're doing that-I don't want him using that to figure out where we are. Eleanor's cell phone rings as we're turning back to Boston and before I have a chance to tell the technological illiterate that she can't answer it, she does. From her face, it's something dreadful. She doesn't have a chance to say anything before the connection is terminated-"It's Gwendolyn," she says haltingly. "She's in trouble." She doesn't know where she was calling from, but I can figure that out easily enough. People will never learn how insecure their lives really are… I hack her cell phone provider and trace the call back to an apartment on Comm Ave. Eleanor's clearly torn about what to do, but it seems obvious to the rest of us-forget Mummy, help Gwendolyn, and in the end that's what she decides as well.
The apartment has a carport underneath, and once inside, we're able to leave the car. Seem like this was set up for our kind… Leonardo and Eleanor move first through the garage and up stairs to what seems to be Gwendolyn's apartment-or what was her apartment before somebody trashed it. The place is a disaster and there's no sign of Gwendolyn. There's a filing cabinet that has steadfastly refused to open despite the brute force that was evidently used against it. Treat a lock gently and with finesse, and it will respond to your desires… I have it open in no time, it's full of letters. Love letters, too. Why were these so important? I start reading a couple, awful florid stuff, just what a Toreador would want to hear, but look at the signature… seems like Daddy had something going on the side! We're all reading the letters, Eleanor is mortified, Calliope and I are in hysterics reading these godawful letters aloud to each other, and Leonardo is moving around the apartment touching things and mumbling. One thing has become clear though, and it's that whatever has happened to Gwendolyn must be linked to the events at the church. The disappearance of the dead man's wife and mistress at the same time is too much of a coincidence.
Eleanor tries to make me and Calliope stop reading the letters, but entertainment value aside, I think we need to know what's in them to understand what's going on here. The letters mention Springfield, Connecticut several times, and Eleanor says her family has a summer home there. It seems logical to all of us that Springfield is where at least one of the women was taken, or if not taken there, that we'd find some explanation of what's happening at Daddy's love shack in the sticks. Nobody can agree on what to do next, though; Calliope wants to head down to Connecticut now, despite the daylight, Leonardo wants to wait for nightfall, and Eleanor is fluttering like a chicken with her head cut off. I side with Calliope. If we're going to go there, we might as well have the advantage of surprise, and we don't know what could be happening to Gwendolyn or Mummy while we wait. Besides, the Toreador would owe us big time, and that would be a good thing… Calliope shames Eleanor into siding with us by pointing out that it's not the Brujah primogen or her mother, and if we're willing to go, so should she be. Besides, Leonardo admits that he doesn't know what will happen when darkness hits and the spell cast over himself and Eleanor fades, and Calliope and I, well, we'll only get more and more strung out as the day goes on. I email Brujah Central to tell them where we've gone, Eleanor leaves a tearful message at ManRay, Leonardo does his psychic fax thing again, and we're on our way. This is madness really, but a full stomach has gone a long way towards restoring my normal sense of invincibility.
By the time we get to Springfield, it's dusk, and Calliope and I are heartily sick of climbing in and out of that goddamn trunk every time the car stops. Leonardo the occultist thought to have silver bullets made for his gun; just hope he can use the damn thing. The love shack turns out to be a mansion; should have known. The ghoul pulls up the car, and as he turns to ask Leonardo for instructions, the car is slammed by large, hairy bodies. Lupines are in the car before we know it, teeth and claws flashing, the ghoul has bought it, Calliope's being dragged out of the car-suddenly automatic gunfire fills the air around the car, and the werewolves fall, one on top of me. Nasty breath these things have. Next time I'll remember some Milk Bones. They aren't dead, but Leonardo finishes them off with his silver bullets. After that, silence. Calliope's in really bad shape; I don't think she can move at all. Who the hell is out there?
A voice calls out, telling us it's ok to leave the car. None of us move. I shout back, "Who are you?" The voice petulantly gave a name I couldn't catch, then said he was Brujah, tenth generation-well, if he's Brujah, that's ok then, he's not one of ours but he's not any lupine either, and he did save us. We step out of the car; automatic gunfire chatters again, we all join Calliope on the ground…