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He's already a ghoul," Pattermuster says, struggling to hold the dying man down. "And I couldn't get more blood into—"

The man vomits blood and rolls off the desk. He dies, legs kicking, on the linoleum floor.

"You know," Pattermuster says, "there's no reason to let it go to waste."

Pattermuster and the thin woman dive on the corpse, draining it in a matter of seconds. When the Brujah gets up, he dabs at his lip with the dead man's handkerchief and says, "You must work for Lettow. He mentioned a name. Are you Dmitri? No, he's dead. Krarr, right? I guess you did a better job than Miguel here." He gestures to the withered corpse.

"If it makes you feel better," Pattermuster says, "Miguel here was one of Lettow's ghouls, and ghouls are worse than we are. Of course, normally they can be trusted to do basic courier work, but Lettow must have known things would be difficult, so he sent you." The Brujah rummages around in the dead man's pockets until he finds a card for the Viper nightclub with a four-digit code written on the back. "Gimme what you brought," he says.

You toss him the lock. He punches the code on the card into the lock, and it opens, revealing a USB.

"Rita May, get all this cleaned up," Pattermuster tells the thin woman. "Krarr and I need to talk."

Next

Image Description: Pattermuster, Brujah Hospital Administrator

Pattermuster has done everything he can to make his large, low-ceilinged office look impressive. He's cluttered it with a century's worth of executive power idols, from the art nouveau furniture in shining mahogany to the midcentury modern lighting fixtures to the little chrome clicky balls on the desk. The result is a confused agglutination of talismans with no consistency or power to impress. You're dealing with someone who doesn't think ahead.

Currently wearing scrubs so he won't draw attention, Pattermuster settles himself in an Aeron chair behind the desk, so his head is haloed by a water stain on the concrete wall. The walls are otherwise lined with vintage automobile ads, like in Jay Leno's garage. He opens a laptop and plugs the USB in. He leans back and two katanas appear in his hands as if from nowhere. You blink. "It's a trick Stercorius taught me," Pattermuster says. "These are my friends, Duncan and Connor."

He swirls the blades through the air. You almost laugh, but—shit, he really knows how to handle them. Getting on the wrong side of those blades might be a bad idea.

The blades vanish just as suddenly as they appeared, and Pattermuster turns his attention to what's on his screen.

The Brujah takes his time reading whatever Lettow sent him. You wait. Finally he leans forward and says, "I know that Lettow didn't just send you to deliver a letter. You're supposed to see how we're doing here. The Eagle Prince isn't happy with us."