Editing Avery Darling (section)

== The Kiss of Death ==
For, as it turned out, there was a secret conspiracy after all, an occult lodge for the 1% of the 1%, a game room for the true initiated elite, modeled on the debauched Hellfire clubs of old, who served a vampire at the center of the network - a mixture of herd and influence network for the Mekhet elder, the ever respectable, absolutely insidious Alistair Niall, High Sheriff of London in the all-night society and puppet master of the officials of the mortals’ city government (see Clanbook Mekhet).

Elaine headed to the secret meeting place to gather the final evidence to bring them all down. First she found the dreadful truth and half the cabinet assembled; very soon after she found herself strapped to a table, ready for consumption, killing two birds with one stone, getting rid of the witness and slaking the thirst of the master. Thus came the one time in her life when she couldn’t talk her way out of trouble and she had to face the horror all alone. She found what goodness and bravery there was inside of her in that red room where she knew Cassie had died when she saw the instruments of her demise.

When Alistair finally came into the circle of his loyal servants and immediately saw the truth about ‘Allan’ he was more amused then offended. One of the few living, active Mnemosyne - a lineage of the Mekhet obsessed with thoughts and memories contained in the blood of the owner - he couldn’t resist drinking the impressions of so interesting a life. But, as she lay dying the Mekhet elder reeled from the psychic feedback loop when he drank Elaine’s vitae. Feeling himself consumed as he consumed her, Alistair was overwhelmed by curiosity and questioned his victim. 

He offered her the opportunity to avenge herself on the rich old men assembled in the ritual chamber, explaining that Cassandra had only been one of many and that many more would follow. Elaine demurred, however. Any of them deserved death, she said, but looking at the facts she had uncovered in her journey into darkness, she concluded that they would just be instantly replaced, probably by mortals long groomed to step up once their predecessor was gone. For the same reason it was useless to kill Alistair, for he himself was probably only a cog in the machine himself.

Alistair told her she was right, that the Kindred were above the law and beyond human morality because by God’s decree they were the sinner’s blight, a perfect perpetuum mobile of hell on earth, cogs and wheels, forever turning in the night from here to eternity, consuming the wayward and keeping the faithful obedient. Boundless, merciless perfection in which everyone and everything had its place, gods and monsters, wolves and lambs, all was according to the divine plan visible in the smallest details, secrets revealed in anything from holy scripture to the patterns of the cracks in the pavement. It was inescapable. It was inevitable.

Elaine broke down from the enormity of the revelation but she had to admit to the old Mekhet that he had been right and that she was both horrified and horrifically intrigued by that concept. Elaine asked Alistair to become his student and he, seeing much potential he would rather not see wasted, embraced her on the spot. 

She spent the next year learning the basics of Kindred existence and being taught about the true nature of the world. At her sire’s side she saw behind the facade of mortal society and saw how much deeper the rot went than she had ever suspected in her most cynical moments. As Allan she accompanied her sire into the hidden places of the all-night society and absorbed all she could about how the predators lived. Soon she made good progress and would be a valuable addition to the tribe.

Alistair never suspected that even then Elaine was just doing what she had always been doing, performing that old trick of cold reading, following and leading, first mirroring the thoughts and desires of his mark to then subtly manipulate them. For Elaine was not done with vengeance for Cassie and stopping the abuses of the red room. She had not fallen to despair, had not accepted that the dark reign of her sire and his ilk were inevitable. In that dreadful moment of truth she had looked through the fallacy in the old Mekhet’s argument and decided to pass her own kind of judgment. 

Finally, there was to be a reckoning on the night when they were all gathered in the red room and she would be the beneficiary of the blood sacrifice, accepting it in her sire’s stead, becoming party to the guilt and the secrets and being anointed by dark ritual. The old men were confused when she released the captive girl from her bonds and told her to run. They were horrified and when she side-stepped their pursuit with ease and locked the door. When Alistair arrived at the lodge that night, rising late from his slumber, he found every single member of his mortal network dead. Instead of his wayward childe, the enraged Mekhet found a letter pinned to the sacrificial altar. 

“Just because evil is inevitable doesn’t mean I have to be its accomplice. Just because I can’t right all the wrongs in the world doesn’t mean that I can’t do something about the one that’s right in front of me.”

Alistair Niall survived the sudden fire at the exclusive gentlemen’s club that police later reported took the lives of some of London’s finest, upstanding citizens in a tragic accident. It took him weeks to recover from the damage and his bruised ego (and the second tradition) wouldn’t allow him to admit to anyone that his prized new childe had succeeded in killing a great many of his mortal puppets and had almost cost him his unlife. Instead he told everyone, Allan had died in the accident as well. Meanwhile, he searched for Elaine with furious anger, imagining all kinds of unspeakable things he would do to her. But he couldn’t find her anywhere and in time he somehow forgot she ever existed as if something had blotted her out of existence.

Elaine had been found by the Moirai…