It was nearly twelve hours later when the sun finally set on that strange day in Los Angeles once again. When Sean awoke with a start, he found Lissa at his bedside looking more exhausted than most Kindred ever truly could even feel, under usual circumstances; which these were not. As he sat up in bed looking around the room warily, Lissa gave a quiet nod for his servant to leave them to their conversation.

“What on Earth...?” Sean began, noting that if she were there at his side already, she must have forced her eyes to stay open during the day like she had first done in order to protect them all during their original journey to the city of angels all those years ago.

“I could try to tell you, but...” she sighed before adding, “it would be easier for you to just see for yourself,” she added in a whisper, bowing her head in a silent invitation for him to look inside her mind for all those terrible answers about the day; what few she had managed to even get when they were able to wake Eliot, briefly, late that morning.

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Meanwhile, inside the mausoleum, others were waking with a start as well. Before Awsha could even fully get to her feet, Baron had closed on her, lifting her into the air with that rage that bubbled up so very easily whenever he was displeased. A state she had seen him in many times over the centuries.

“What the fuck was that?” he hissed at her through his fangs, his eyes beginning to redden ominously.

Stammering her words as best she could with his hand nearly crushing her throat, Awsha attempted an answer, “I told you she had a mage, I just didn’t think--”

“Exactly,” he roared, “and now we have no idea what even happened after he made the very sun fucking rise! We know Claire’s as good as dead, but she was never the real threat at all. Her husband will be crushed, as he deserves to be for the inconvenience alone that he’s caused me over the centuries. But I do not want to find out what other tricks that little magical bastard has without being prepared, again!” he growled the rest of his words angrily.

“You can’t tell me you’re actually sca--” Awsha began, but seeing his eyes and feeling his hand crush her throat that much more tightly, she knew better than to even entertain the thought of finishing that sentence.

“One more word, and you really will get a taste of Claire’s life... at least the one she has now, what’s left of it at all,” he grinned maliciously. He then added, “And this isn’t fear you see, it’s rage. Now go use your little tricks to find out if the mage is even still alive, and if he has any intention of trying for a round two. Maybe by the time you return to me, I’ll have decided the appropriate and most deserving... and of course, creative punishment for your latest failure.”

It wasn’t much later that Awsha had retaken her astral form and once again arrived outside the gates of her once home, which now belonged to her brother. The Prince. The favored childe of her now long dead sire. As she moved her wisp toward the property, as she had done on so many nights before to attain all the information she could, she found the wards to now be suddenly impenetrable, even in this form.

She was immediately flooded with anger, rage, and of course fear. Her first thought was to try and determine when and how the wards had managed to be changed to no longer allow her spying to continue. Her second was of course, of what Baron would do if she didn’t find some way to get him the information he had asked for.

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After having eventually left their secret hiding place behind, Kirielle had hailed a taxi once she had reached the street again. During her trek home, she tried as best she could to block out not only the incessant tune always playing in her head, but also, what Eliot had said about Lucian that morning. Losing the battle to keep that thought from her mind, she soon directed the driver to take her to her childhood home instead. She needed answers, before any more dark thoughts drove her madder than that constant tune already tried to make her on a nightly basis.

Trying to find any sort of strength or composure once she had arrived at her old home, Kirielle slowly made her way toward the door. Though she was soon to be distracted further by what seemed to be the sound of a young girl crying amidst the shrubbery that ran along the wall in front of Lucian’s medical practice.

Kirielle quickly turned to find a crying young girl who looked to be in her very early teens, if that. She appeared to be nearly on death’s door as she stepped away from the shadows of the bushes, sniffled, and looked up at Kirielle.

Stolen story; please report.

“Are you his?” she whispered, with the tiniest trace of a British accent making its way through her hoarse whisper, as she stood wrapping her arms protectively around her shaking body.

“His?” Kirielle asked questioningly as her eyes scanned the area for any signs of who or what or why this girl was here outside Lucian’s office. And, more importantly if anyone else was there with her.

“His ghoul?”

“Gh---” Kirielle swallowed at such a question. Though it did let her know that this emaciated young girl was at least aware of their world, if nothing else.

“No...” she looked down at the girl worriedly again, noting her trembling despite the warm night. “Would you like to come inside?”

“You have a key?” the young girl asked, as though trying to determine who or what Kirielle was if not a ghoul, like herself.

Kirielle nodded and attempted a smile as she gestured for the girl to follow her to the door as she unlocked it and led her inside. “Why are you here tonight, uh...” she asked, hoping to get a name from the girl as she closed the door behind them, still keeping the girl in her gaze.

“I was hoping someone would be here, who I could tell,” she whispered.

“Well I’m here,” Kirielle said gently. “I grew up here as a matter of fact,” she added with an attempt at a small smile, regardless of the fears racing through her brain after that bizarre morning, and Eliot’s words.

“The new daughter,” the young girl whispered as she looked down and her tears welled up, what little she even still had left after so long.

“The new...” Kirielle shook her head and attempted to move on despite the shock of her suspicion about who this young girl could be, somehow. “What did you need to tell someone?”

Then all the girl’s remaining tears came all at once. “She made me do it. I didn’t want to, but she made me. I had to,” she sobbed as she brought her hands up to her face.

“Lenore?” Kirielle made herself ask, though her voice was choked as she did. “What did she make you do?” she formed the question, despite her terror over what that answer might be.

Choking on her tears, Lenore’s words came out broken then, “I had hoped that someone, anyone, would come along and... save him. And then he’d be back and I’d finally... finally be,” another heavy sob wracked her body. “And then the sun came up and he... he was gone,” she forced the last words out as she fell to her knees with another wave of uncontrollable tears.

“You mean your... our...” Kirielle began, but even she couldn’t finish that sentence as her own bloody tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’ll never ever be free now, ever. And I can’t... I just...” Lenore looked up to meet the other girl’s crying eyes. “Please kill me... please...”

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After taking all the knowledge about that fateful day from Lissa’s head. Sean had made his way down to the main hall. Though that night, he appeared more shaken, and broken and devoid of any and all hope than any of his peers had ever seen him in the entire 130 years he had been their Prince.

Upon delivering the most essential, and terrible, facts about the day to all those present who had been waiting for some explanation from him, Sean once again returned to his chambers, wordlessly. None there even dared to try and say anything at all to him that night, as there was simply nothing any of them could say after the tragic news he had just given them.

Lyka was simply numb after hearing Sean’s words, as if the realization of what she now was hadn’t been traumatizing enough already that night. She followed Lissa somberly outside again, where her sire was doing all she could to keep herself from falling apart either.

“You can’t leave, not now,” Lyka whispered as she followed Lissa into the guest house reserved for their clan.

Lissa tried her best to keep her expression blank as she packed what few worldly possessions she even had. “It’s the law, Lyka,” she told her in a near whisper. “And the law is something that you need to accept too, now that it’s your job to enforce it instead of me.”

“But, this isn’t right. It isn’t fair,” Lyka pleaded. “And I don’t know if I can enforce anything,” she whispered, forcing back her now red tears.

“But it is the law,” Lissa stated as firmly as she could as she closed her suitcase, and started back through the door to leave her home of nearly three centuries for the last time that night.

Lyka quickly moved to follow her toward the estate’s gates, “How can I enforce anything? I don’t know anything. And now... with Claire gone too...” she just shook her head, forcing back all those emotions as best she even could.

“You’ll always be able to find me though, my childe. I won’t be far. I just won’t be... here. But you can always come to me. I just can’t come to you... anymore,” Lissa assured her as she gently wiped a red tear from Lyka’s cheek before making herself exit those gates, and the very city of angels itself, one last time.

Having spent nearly an hour trying to find any weak spots in the wards surrounding the estate, Awsha was of course drawn to the enforcer and Claire’s apparently now former ghoul, as they stepped outside. From her wisp’s spot outside the gates she listened to their words, trying to glean any information she could to bring back to Baron. And when she heard those words: ‘with Claire gone too,’ she couldn’t help feeling that she had at least won one victory at last, finally, after over two long centuries.