10

Tucson, Arizona.

Night of November 3.

Sunrise: 6:29 a.m.

You never wanted to come back to Tucson. It's been a black spot on your personal map for years. But here you are.

You have to avoid the good neighborhoods—the big stucco houses on their little plots of land, with their raked-out front yards and blue recycling bins. For a few minutes, a black-and-white Mustang with a thin blue line Punisher decal on the hood creeps behind you in first gear. You can't tell if it's an actual police car or some kind of patriot group, but you cut through a park where they can't follow. There's a public bathroom there where you might be able to clean up a little. The mirror is cracked and someone shit in the urinal, but the water works.

You spend a few minutes scraping trash off, then look around for either threats or opportunities. But no one shows up. You're not that hungry—yet—so you keep moving.

That's when you recognize where you are. This abandoned building was the lair of Lampago—a thing of legend that was probably one of the Kindred, though no one knows for sure. A shapeshifting monstrosity, destroyed by hunters as the Second Inquisition rose to power and began their dreadful crusade against all vampires.

The age of wonder is always passing, isn't it? You are immortal—must you spend eternity in stuffy little rooms trading bons mots with stuffed corpses?

Which reminds you: the Elysium awaits.

Elysium is one of the defining ideas of the Camarilla. It is a neutral meeting ground where violence and the use of vampire powers are forbidden. In many Elysiums, Kindred are allowed to exist as they are, not as the Masquerade demands they be. The Tucson Elysium is located on the roof of a nightclub called the Viper.

You can hear the pounding industrial music from the parking lot, but you're not here for the party. You've been outside the Viper before, but never in and never up. You scan the rooftop and wonder whether to approach first or try to hunt. It's bad form to arrive in an Elysium hungry, but hunting nearby is often forbidden, since it attracts notice.

An eagle settles on a fire escape. You remember the way that eagle looked at you a few nights ago, and you suspect it's the way in. You follow it up the fire escape.

You don't know what shadow-art this place employs, but you reach the top step and the empty-looking rooftop of the Viper disappears, replaced by a sprawling patio covered in cacti and desert shrubs. Footpaths lead through the secret garden, and small stone bridges cross narrow rivulets of cold, flowing water. From here, the lights of Tucson are invisible, and the night sky is the way it is deep in the desert: shades of purple and blue and black, with the Milky Way brighter than you've ever seen it.

Next

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 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.