Things are Screwed Up All Over 2

Things are Screwed up All Over 2: The Lamentations of Renny

Midnight’s dead. A fact that I greet with some ambivalence.

Not because I liked the guy. I didn’t. We only had one conversation where he didn’t scare the crap outta me and even then I was more interested in the things he knew than in the person itself, and I do mean ‘it’. Anything human disappeared a long time ago.

Not that he didn’t deserve to die. With my own eyes I’ve seen him burn down a house and order the deaths of a bunch of innocent kids for no fucking reason than he was either too stupid or impatient to come up with a simpler solution and I don’t doubt that this wasn’t the first time or even the 100th time he’d killed simply because it was easy or he enjoyed it or whatever.

Not because it upsets the applecart. Frankly, seems like Natchez is a cart full of rotten apples. We’d all be better with a few fewer. Frankly, given what I’ve seen since coming here it’s likely that there will be fewer killings and less collateral damage because of it.

And not even because I had a part in his death. I ain’t no emo self-hating Vamp. Frankly, killing a monster like Midnight, or helping out with it, is a righteous act and I should feel good about it, even if I don’t.

No, my ambivalence is because I was wrong about why he needed to die.

Here’s why. When I first get into town, I am doing my looky loos around town and around Court and Midnight strikes me as odd, dangerous odd.

Not the killing stuff. I’ve seen into too many heads to have a terribly high opinion about most folks’ morals and Vamps are innately driven to do stuff that ain’t good. Bad as the arson and murder was, it wouldn’t have me signing up for the lynch mob. Baba Anya (and Galina, to be honest) raised me to be too much of a “good boy” coward for that.

Don’t misunderstand me here. All Vamps are dangerous, in the little‘d’ sense. No Vamp in existence hasn’t drunk blood, doesn’t want more blood, doesn’t revel on some level in the sensation of drinking; consuming the life, if you will, of others. Nor do they lack the ability for mayhem. On top of that, there’s always that desire, that need, to do more of it, all of it. I know ‘cause it’s the life I have. The mark of Caine’s on all of us, whether that is literal or not is immaterial. It’s real and it’s there.

Damn, I’m waxing philo-fucking-sophical here. Sorry about that. Back to Midnight and his big ‘D,’ Dangerous Oddness.

It started with his looks.

According to what I was told, Midnight was a Nozzie and as every good Vamp school kid knows; Nozzies are cursed with the serious ugly and not just ugly but different ugly every night. So ugly that I ain’t ever met one that didn’t use one ability or other to hide it, or at least make it consistent.

The thing is that no matter how good you disguise something like that there’s always flaws. Illusions that’re just a little different night to night. Smells that weren’t perfumed over as well as you thought. Masks that shift slightly or wrongly when you weren’t being careful. Tiny things.

That’s where my specialties come in. Just as I never met a Nozzie that didn’t hide their ugliness, I also never met a Nozzie whose disguise I couldn’t look right through. Typically, my Sight blows right through the illusion and when it don’t, well, as I said the little flaws still come out and I’ve always been good at finding ‘em, at least until I met Midnight, apparently.

The other part was his skin tone. To be frank, Midnight was well named. I’ve met plenty of Blaculas in NY, some even older than Midnight, but the lack of blood circulation really looks weird on ‘em. It makes the skin look dark grey rather than brown or black, especially as they get older and Midnight was supposed to be an Antebellum Vamp, so over 150 years old.

The exception to this of course bein’ Settites. Their preferred recruitment tends to go for Africans and their curse actually makes them darker as they get older. Their MO also goes for infiltration and corruption with an Egyptian twist.

Of itself, that wasn’t any skin off my nose. I was new to town and these days, hell, anything goes. Camarilla and Settites livin’ together. Dogs and Cats co-locating in harmony. Surely the End Times are upon us and all that happy crap.

So Midnight’s appearance twitched me, but heck I know I’m twitchy and if that was the only evidence I had it wasn’t enough to do anything.

Then there was the Prof’s house. The Prof was the Tremere that got killed and kicked off that whole string of ghoul Vamp killings. The Prof’s spirit was trapped in the house. Trapped by an Egyptian glyph, no less. The spirit was also real talkative about who did him and what happened since, especially after I agreed to free him afterwards.

Seems the hitter was none other than Midnight. That ain’t so odd really, just a sheriff killing an unauthorized vamp. It’s doubly not odd if the vamp’s a Tremere. They’re always up to something nefarious under the guise of something innocuous.

What is odd is that:

A) – The Sheriff apparently never bothers to tell anyone about it. They usually make a big deal of it, heads on spikes big, to remind others who’s in charge.

B) – Midnight doesn’t question the spook about other vamps, ghouls (and look how great that turned out), Tremere plans or that sort of thing.

C) – He does torture the spirit for all he knows about Magic. Which as you can imagine is a bit, though apparently an unsatisfying bit, given that he wasn’t released.

So not just a Settite, but one more interested in learning Tremere Magic than in the dispensing of Camarilla justice, such as it is.

The next thing is that someone’s blood bonded the Prince. Given the first two items, hell that was a no-brainer. It certainly sounded like the opening moves of some Settite plot. Replace the Sheriff, kill off anyone who might be competition, blood bond the Prince and you’ve got run of the town. The only question would be why a Podunk town like Natchez?

The corker, though, I only found out about a couple of days ago. I was looking around Astral Space and saw a couple of Wraiths on the hunt so I watch ‘em for a bit. They get distracted by some pretty lights turn out to be something that eats Wraiths, Spirits and free floating souls right outta the Astral. Eats Them! It tried really hard to eat me too. I barely got away. Things are bad enough, but we apparently got an Astral Lantern Fish living nearby.

And where, pray tell, might the physical addy of this thing be? None other than a crap shack on the black side of the tracks known as Midnight’s house.

So now we got either a backwoods thug Nozzie Sheriff, who’s learned Egyptian sorcery, Tremere sorcery (apparently), is better at obfuscate than I am at the Sight and has something in his house eating Astral energy just cause he likes exotic pets or we got a Settite girdin’ his loins for a showdown the likes of which I don’t wanna think about.

I shaved with Occam’s razor and apparently nicked myself.

Me and a couple of locals took out the thing in the basement. Midnight apparently kept it awfully weak, because I actually took it down with my Beretta, crap shot that I am. Then one of folks with me, a Teenage Tramp Tremere not even a Vamp for a year yet, decides to diablarize the damned thing. Great plan there, Napoleon.

Even after that, I didn’t realize how quick the local Gangrel would go after Midnight or how successfully. Heck, the thing in the basement wouldn’t’ve been of any help against them anyway.

So, in the end I failed to judge an inherently deceitful book by its thuggish, murderous cover. Instead, I determined that under the thuggish vamp cover lurked a treacherous sorcerous devil. Hell, in the end he probably would’ve been better off if he was.

So, thus cracks an ignoble heart. Good night dark Prince, and flights of demons carry you to your eternal damnation. You deserved to die, but sorry about you being better at magical stuff than I gave you credit for and less good at protecting your own hide.