Yeah, sorry. I almost had it done, then my sports team lost and I had to go cry into a beer in Westminster (while strolling past and researching some cool future locations!). Those pics are badass, BBC, btw - if you're happy for me to do it, I'll copy 'em into the OP.
Chapter 3 - A Game of Words
You awake early – almost before dusk – and help yourself to a blood bag from the fridge in your polished, unlived-in Primrose Hill apartment. Peeling back the plastic lip, you drain it, slowly, without finesse, enjoying yourself. The blood of a duke, once wealthy and well-respected, now too impotent and deranged in his expensive nursing home to prevent the warders from draining him every week.
Delicious.
The day’s papers await you, as ever, in a heap at the front door. The Mail goes with ‘IT’S WAR!’. The Times and The Guardian appear concerned with the budget crisis. Finally, in a small item on the second page of The Evening Standard, you find it;
Civil servant’s daughter missing: Peter Glenville, (43), alerted the police to the disappearance of his daughter, Lucy (7), early this morning. Mr Glenville was taken in for questioning but released later this afternoon.
Your lip curls, with something not unlike satisfaction.
*
“Oscar?” you snap, neatly leaping over the outstretched legs of a drunk, dead or unconscious, on the pavement.
A muffled voice, amused and not nearly as respectful as you’d like it, responds in a fake Cockney accent from your phone,
“All right, guv?”
You picture Oscar’s beastly little red eyes glinting with mischief; his misshapen paws rattling away at two different keyboards in the dark dank of the Under-Underground.
“Pay careful attention,” you tell him. “Usual fee. Doubled if you find something I consider useful. A Kindred was snatched up in Whitehall last night.” It probably isn’t necessary to tell him the victim’s identity. “Black Land Rover. I want the licence plate, I want the identity of the kidnappers, and I want to know where they went if you can suss it. Got it?”
A deliberately theatrical sigh.
“Aye, sure, blueblood, sure…well, I’ll do my best, y’know? Got a lot on my plate right now. Clan business an’ that.”
“Just get it done,” you snap, and hang up on him.
*
A few minutes later, crossing the deserted concrete stretch of Baker Street, you make out the faint lights of the one place in this all-too respectable part of town that appears to be open. A dusty red awning overhangs a couple of plastic tables, laid out on the pavement. The sign reads, in faded gold lettering, ‘Kama’.
And, perched awkwardly on one of the small plastic chairs, but with every sign of being comfortable, sits an ogre of a man. Not simply tall, but also quite monstrously fat, with matted black hair and a neatly curled beard, trussed up in a straining tweed suit; the hookah is entwined around his thick arm like a serpent.
Karthik beams at you as you take the nearest seat.
“And so,” he says, huskily, “the great wheel turns. And the Patrician of Whitehall – keh-heh-heh-heh-” He halts, wheezing out white gulps of smoke, to let out something that is not quite a cough and not quite a high-pitched, girlish laugh. “-and you come to visit me and smoke a pipe or two with me and exchange a few tales.”
“I’m here on business,” you respond. His eyes twinkle.
“Of course,” he says. “Of course, of course. This is about the upcoming war – correct? – between you and Baron du Marchais?”
You do not blink. Which is just as well, because he’s watching you intently, a little smile lingering on his mouth.
“Naturally,” he tells you, “as a friend to a friend, I will help in whatever wretched ways I can. For only a small return, I will happily turn over the contact details of a friend of mine. A kine – Russian. His men will fight your corner – no question. Stupid muscle. Plentiful muscle.”
A business card appears in his left hand. And just as quickly, another appears in his right. He lays them out, reverentially, across the table.
“Or perhaps,” he continues, “you’d prefer more of a…a hidden weapon, yes? Dangerous. Difficult to control. The Prince mustn’t know, though. Oh, no. Something in the sewers. A long trip. And you choose your card, Patrician, and – keh-heh-heh-heh! – perhaps I will give the other card to my other friend, du Marchais. If he happens to stop by.”
“I’m not here about du Marchais,” you insist. You lean forward. “You know a lot about what happens in London, Karthik.”
He shakes his head, mock-modestly, and takes another puff of the hookah.
“Untrue,” he says. “I know everything that happens in London, Patrician. Smoke? I get them to drip a little blood into the water. It doesn’t satisfy…but it gives a tickle of pleasure, keh-heh-heh.”
You refuse the proffered tube. Karthik pretends to be offended.
“Well?” he says, with a shrug. “What do you want to know? Last week the Centurion found three Sabbat boys beating up a Camarilla thug. He slaughtered two of the shovelheads and the Camarilla stooge, knocked the fourth on his arse – and then, and then, keh-heh-heh, he pressed a bloodied spine into his hand, said, ‘Sero venientibus ossa’, before wandering off into the night.”
You gaze at him, evenly. He’s trying to get a reaction out of you.
“They do say,” Karthik continues, as if in a world all of his own, “that the Centurion is the only person in the city Sheriff Erika Schiller is afraid of, don’t they? Well, what else do I have for you? Slim pickings, I fear. You’ll already know, for instance, that there’s a Follower of Set in London.”
You blink, betraying your surprise. You can’t help yourself. And Karthik grins, delighted to have caught you out, and claps his enormous hands together.
“Enough,” you snap. “Enough games. What do you know about Terence Rannigan being kidnapped in Whitehall the night before last?”
He gazes at you for a moment. An odd little smile crosses his face.
“Well, I’m sorry, Patrician,” he says, eventually. “But I don’t know anything about Terence Rannigan being kidnapped in Whitehall the night before last.”
You pinch the bridge of your nose.
“You just said,” you tell him, weighing every word, “that you knew everything that happens in London.”
“Oh, I do, Patrician,” Karthik says, eagerly. “I do know everything that happens in London. But I don’t –keh-heh-heh- know anything about Terence Rannigan being kidnapped in Whitehall the night before last.”
He meets your stare.
He knows something, you think…or, perhaps, he’s winding you up, as his clan are so prone to doing.
A) (DOMINATE.) Attempt to Dominate him to find out more. No more playing around.
B) Try and charm him – flattering him if necessary, using a little Presence – into being clearer. Play his game. Give him some information of his own to chew on.
C) Leave, of course. He’s already told me everything I need to know.
D) Leave. I’m wasting time with this blowhard.
E) A little threatening could go a long way. There aren’t many Ravnos left. Many of them live in poverty in the inner city. If worst comes to worst, violence itself might not be *too* extreme, mightn’t it?
And while you’re about it, what about Karthik’s offer of help?
A) His Russian kine thugs sound useful.
B) This secret in the sewers is just too tempting to pass up.
C) Neither. I just can’t trust him.