19

A delicate squeaking near your foot intrudes on your thoughts and you gaze down to find your rodent companion, Uuntezazk. He had been absent earlier tonight and you hadn't pressed the bond, preferring to leave him here rather than risk losing him in the Anarch conflict. In retrospect, you're certain Uuntezazk would have been useful in scouting the factory and revealing the mercenaries lying in wait. You silently curse yourself for a fool—you'll need to treat future conflicts more seriously. You pick him up, idly stroking his Black fur until he's had enough and bounds from your hand, chittering with satisfaction. You've put it off for too long—eventually you'll need to decide whether he is a friend or simply a tool to be used, but you've had your fill of difficult decisions for now.

You approach your bedchamber with relief, all other details flying from your burdened mind as you focus on renewing your strength by sleeping the day away.

Both your sire and Gerard had been perplexed by your insistence on humble furnishings, but they eventually ceased insisting that you decorate according to your elevated station. You lay back with a deep sigh, gazing up at the luxuriously painted ceiling. It had been commissioned by the suite's former mortal occupant, and though he has long-since passed on, you couldn't bear to have it altered. Abstract shapes cavort in an elegant dance of color in a modern masterpiece that you could stare at for hours if you felt so inclined.

An image floats before you of the mortal you attacked tonight in a rage of Hunger. In your Blood-starved mind, you'd been certain that they were someone from your past, before the Embrace. A lover perhaps, although you can no longer recall the particulars. What you can remember is the intense feeling of wrongness you'd felt, like there was a secret locked within your mind nagging from behind a wall of repressed memory.

You close your eyes and images flood back in quick flashes before solidifying into a scene you'd visited often, but never remembered in your waking hours. A lost memory—stolen from your cold and long-dead mind—but it's resurfacing more frequently now, as if something has shaken it loose to rattle around in your head like a specter.

You'd been chosen by your sire because your mortal abilities fit with her ideals for the Nosferatu clan. The dead have no need of mortal memories, but without some anchor to your past, will your humanity be gone forever? The vision is as vivid as it always is, and for fleeting seconds, you're confused as to why you're so surprised. You've always been here. This is who you are.

In life, before you were chosen by Corliss to join clan Nosferatu, you were…