New places. The Tower Bridge doesn’t make me feel as small as the Sears Tower, but I’m reduced to minisculity all the same. At least they don’t ask questions here, not as friendly as Chi-town. Maybe to some that’s a mark in the negative column, but for a kindred with no desire to pretend she’s anything less than a monster that’s perfect. Survival is dependent on our ability to blend; something I do poorly and only do because it’s the only way to stay living in a society otherwise permeated by rage and death.
They don’t know I’m coming, which presents a problem. I didn’t have many contacts in California to begin with. All I can do is feign humanity until the monsters came out to play and inducted me into their shared society here. I hear Dragons and Invictus remain dominant; I don’t care. I’m of the First because they saved me from wassail, and it meant becoming a loyal dog for all these years. Unfortunately, the judges at the dog shows have measured my hair-length and checked the heat under my genitals far too many times for my tastes . That’s why I returned to my art, and why playing knight has been unwholesome to say the least.
The driver doesn’t talk to me. He doesn’t ask why I wear a too-tight corset and powder-white makeup, or why my hair is bright and unnaturally red. He’s probably seen it all before, and much worse than me. I only go this far because any further might be unacceptable or off-putting in the eyes of elders, and the first wouldn’t like that. I’m already the childe of a diablerist after all, and I don’t need more marks against me. At least expectations for me were low; something I always used to my advantage.
I don’t need the driver to talk to me to keep company. The beats does that; the thousand little creatures inside of me constantly speaking. They want to take my thoughts from me. They occasionally succeed at turning me into an unintelligible creature of instinct. It’s hard to control my thoughts, let alone my words. I always feel like they are speaking for me, the voice coming from one of the thousands of pieces of broken mirror glass that rests somewhere in the front of my dead brain.
“Pleasant twilight to you, my sterling chauffeur,” I state plainly as I exit the car. I sound disgusting, like a high society sycophant that uses words she pretends to understand. I hate it. But the shards do the talking, not me.
I pass through a shadow on the sidewalk, allowing the blush of life to take its hold. There’s a goth club here called Reverence, and with luck a kindred might already be hunting there.
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