Blood Potency
Gilded Cage Ritual:7 successes
Feeding:
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The heart of the city thrummed in his veins and filled him with something that might have been called elation in someone more human. It tickled along his mind – he wasn’t inhuman, per se, but nor was he uncomfortable with his nature and his place within the scope of the world. He was a predator among prey – and the rules and structures of the First Estate gave him a means of doing so without becoming monstrous; monster he might be, but Kindred of Quality had to have manners, after all.
A quiet conversation here, a murmured flirtation there; the beating heart of the city was as open to him tonight as a lover’s most ardent and private moments. He was careful, as he always was, to go lightly; a sip here and a nip there. Never enough to harm, never enough to be noticed as anything more than a bad hangover in the morning.
That was when he saw the ghost.
The elation and vibrancy in his heart froze like instant ice; his eyes glancing over towards the door as he leaned against the bar of whichever watering hole the ritual had led him to that night. He was momentarily thankful, some part of him noted, that he was not actively trying to feed at that moment or engaged in conversation; he’d been scouting his next sip for the evening.
His eyes locked onto the face of the man as he walked into the bar and it was a face which he’d murdered a thousand times in the privacy of his own mind. The moment passed, and he let out the breath he’d been needlessly holding. The clothing was all wrong – the posture all wrong. The face was right, as if of a descendant or the simple random nature of creature where the gods only had so many facial options to consider.
But the face, he mused, took him back. The vampire’s name had been Ford and he’d been a member of the then-new Carthian Movement. Quartermain, then under the name Harry Tudor, had hated him from the moment of first meeting. He was the worst things about the Carthian movement all wrapped into one being – possessed of a simple composure and grace, well educated, and well spoken. Ford was able to quote poetry as quickly as philosophy and debate the merits of political structures with ease.
In short, he’d had made a wonderful addition to the First Estate, and Quartermain had always pondered if there was some Estate sire back a generation or two to account for the man’s clearly good breeding and training.
And yet – they’d been instant, quiet, rivals. Contenders for a niche of quiet dignity and true belief in the ideals of their movement – movements which were diametrically opposed. It had never come to blows – both of them too rigid in their adherence to the courtesies and politeness required of a culture of monsters but the one upmanship and gamesmanship of the 1920’s business tycoons had infiltrated into the Danse and changed the steps for the time.
The soldier shook his head, clearing the cobwebs of memory from his mind as he turned back to his drink, sipping it and letting the alcohol burn bring him back to the here and now.
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