Jack laughed and cursed, kicked off the front door with a strength so brutal that it smashed right onto Bridget's head and back, then scattered into pieces. This old, beardy cowboy as well as Nines and other Anarchs behind them were covered in blood—obviously, they'd had quite a fight with the Sabbat on their way here.

Now the situation became…subtile.

Apparently, collecting "specimens" like Alice was something very important to do, even for Bishop Bridget, and she was really pissed at her mission being destroyed by one unworthy-of-mentioning Neonate…and from Tremere, the clan whose sole existence is a sacrilege of the ancestors of Tzimisce. And before those Anarchs broke in, she could just take out her rage as she pleased, even though Issac could be of some trouble, that Neonate and ghoul won't be a big problem…

However, they got the luck to have someone come to their rescue.

"Why are you here?" Bridget asked, looked at these unexpected guests with eyes that could eat them for dissatisfaction.

"I have to give you the credit, really, now you Sabbat really get to think and plan, but your foot soldiers are disciplined like crap." Nines scoffed, "Apparently you other plague-bearer used his power for personal revenge and went sloppy about the task you gave him, left quite a trail."

Bridget grinded her teeth, obviously reluctant to just walk away in frustration like this: "So what? You find me, not him, do you think you can overpower all of us?"

"I would love to find out, but it's 3:30 already." Nines pointed at the watch on his wrist, "We LA locals can dilly-dally our way home, but you would need a long time on the road, So unless you want to see the sunrise, keep moving."

Unable to deny what Nines said was true, Bridget spitted on the floor and waved her head, beckoning retreat to her soldiers. One of the Sabbat cannon folder tried to do a sneak attack on Nines, but got his head hit off the neck by the baseball bat of a red-haired, twenty-something chick in crop top and camo-trousers.

"Fucking Sabbat shovelhead…" She kicked the head to the side of Bridget's feet, gave the Bishop a fearless, provocative look and cheered, "Yay! That's a home run!"

"Stop it! Damsel…"

Nines muttered her name and gave her a tough look, as if not very satisfied about her further upsetting the enemies, while Jack simply grinned and rubbed her hair, like a dad spoiling his daughter. Luckily, Bridget didn't take the girl with a funny name too seriously and left without even looking at them, so for now, they were safe and sound in this chalet, alone.

Noticing Nines and Jack caught up with Issac and Mercurio, started to talk about "men's stuff", Damsel squiggled her mouth in boredom and looked around the room, searching for something more interesting.

And she saw Leona.

Not that Leona was interesting to her—In fact, Damsel never really liked this Chinese-American Tremere: All Tremeres were scheming blood mages to her, and now Nines had saved this girl's ass TWICE without any worthy repayment, which just…made Damsel extra dislike her, for some personal reason she herself couldn't even explain. But Leona did them Anarchs a few favors and showed enough respect for a Cammy—that's how her addressed Camarilla Kindred, so she didn't hate her anyway.

The thing about Leona at the moment that attracted Damsel, was that she was facing the darkest corner in the house, sat down and huddled up her trembling body, kept murmuring something again and again.

Creepy. Just like every Tremere. Damsel thought, but she overheard Issac's words and learnt about what happened before Nines' people came, so she still felt bad for Leona.

"Hey, you ok?"

Damsel approached Leona, asking, came closer to bow down and tap her shoulder after getting no response. Then she heard what Leona had been saying:

"Don't look at me…don't look at me, Alice…Don't look at me…don't look at me…"

Leona's mind wasn't really…in the reality. To her, the world now was covered with Alice's eyes: on the wall, on the floor, on the ceiling…everywhere, just in the way they were questioning her, accusing her when she shot Alice dead. So now, all she could do was to hide, and beg them not to look at her.

"Leona…Leona…"

Garrett's voice pierced through her vail of fear and reached her. Leona raised her head and looked, found out it was her Sire squatting down and holding her in his arms. It was like she grasped a thread of light in the ocean of darkness, Leona puled: "Garrett…help me…please…"

"You are having a psychotic episode, Leona, because the guilt is too acute and fierce for you to take in such a short period." Garrett placed his hand on Leona's head, "As your doctor, I can give you some medicine to suppress it and let you get a hold of reality right away, but remember…you will have to digest it afterwards."

"How can I…how can I do that…after...this..."

"You can," Garrett comforted her, with a stream of warm whiteness flowing from his palm into Leona's brain, "Through time…and revenge. Trust me, vengeance can be therapeutic in cases like this."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The warmth from Garrett was reassuring, like a kite lost in windy day was finally grabbed by its owner. The demented fright dissipated in Leona's eyes, and rationality was regaining control in her mind. However, there was something else planted in that rationality, too—a suggestion, from her psychiatrist:

"Turn that guilt into hatred, because hatred is energizing, and it will be the power to keep you climbing up…you know you can't hide anymore. Not after this." And that suggestion was very convincing, "You are remembered by a Sabbat Bishop. There's no way you could run away from that."

So Leona opened her eyes, stood up, faced all the people who were gazing at her in concern about her state of mind. She was back to her old self again, in an astonishing speed:

"We don't have much time left until daylight." She said, "Let's talk on the way."

After saying, Leona walked out of the chalet earlier than everyone else. But her composure wasn't…pure composure, it was armed and weaponized, thus cold and deadly like a necklace being turned into strangling tool.

It was armed with the longing for payback.

Several hours later, the sun rose and shone upon the land, casting all nightly creatures into their caves, and Bishop Bridget barely made her way back to hers before flaming under the light of day—it was a Sabbat stronghold built underground in the north of San Diego, where the Camarilla presence was slightly weaker. Spots like this were hard to find, for right now LaCroix had moved his power center to LA, and traditionally the south and the east were where the Sabbat gathered.

They simply built it because…a place on the front line was needed, to keep a close watch.

Though the entrance on the surface was one ugly, dirty cave hidden in grasses and trees, once she went into the bulkhead door, it would show the true face: a clean and majestic rock fortress, heavily guarded by Sabbat soldiers.

And in front of the gate into the interior, Ulysses was waiting.

"You are late. Reverence Lucia and Reverence Adonis had finished meeting." He said, "What got you delayed?"

Ulysses usually wasn't type who would probe into Bridget's business, but…few things could slow her steps like this.

Bishop Bridget sneered and dropped Alice's corpse on the ground, started complaining: "This piece of shit got me delayed. Fucking Toreador asshole, got sensitive and wasn't willing to let this bitch go, and guess what? She had a Kindred friend who was investigating her whereabouts, a Tremere shit called Leona, and she brought Issac and LaCroix's watchdog into this…"

What Bridget was unable to notice, however, was Ulysses didn't listen to anything she said after the name Leona. The mask helped conceal most of the emotions he was harboring, but his body still quavered for a moment, and that spooked the Lasombra Templars behind him, because to them, their Knight Commander was always…motionless: not brutal or morbid, simply mechanical, a killing machine—a perfect one, though.

"So what did you…do with the Tremere?" Ulysses tried to hold himself and asked.

"That's the worst part: nothing!" Bridget stumped her foot on Alice's body repeatedly, again ignored the strange relief in Ulysses' right eye, "Nines' people fucking found me because that Cainite we picked up on the street! Outsiders! I knew they can't be trusted!"

Looking at the poor Alice, who still needed to suffer postmortem mutilations from the Bishop, Ulysses reclaimed his usual indifference and inquired: "Then why did you bring the body down here to Reverence Adonis? If she was dead before the transformation, she would be no more useful than others to him."

"I'm going to use this stiff." Bridget smiled, out of her sweet, sick indulgence in some fantasy going on in her mind.

Didn't know what to say about her pathology, Ulysses just went directly to his point: "Go see Reverence Adonis then, he will want to hear about this. I will report to Reverence Lucia."

Then he just turned around and demanded the guard to open the door, while Bishop Bridget joked loudly behind his back:

"Sure, sure! Go do the Humbert-and-Lolita kinky play with your Sire…By the way, do you guys videotape the whole thing? You know, porns with underaged girls are very popular among the lowest level of long pigs! I could make a huge amount of money out of that…"

There was only disgust on Ulysses' face when Bridget talked about that.

He proceeded into the grand hall with two arrays of Roman columns standing on the side, walked upstairs, turned right and opened the door into Reverence Lucia's suite. Unlike other parts of the fortress, where simplicity was the core aesthetics, her room was literally decorated like a dollhouse, with laces, bow ties, porcelain dolls and plush toys piled up on the furniture, and everything was in candy-like colors.

Hearing him approaching, a soft, childish voice of a girl acclaimed in excitement: "Ulysses! Come on in! I'm in the bathroom!"

He hesitated, but the girl called out to him afterwards for several times, so he just did what he was told.

The bathroom was decorated in pink-and-white ceramic tiles, with a huge heart-shaped bathtub in the middle and preserved fresh flowers in the corners, whereas Reverence Lucia was still bathing herself…in a whole tub of blood.

It was all human blood.

Despite the horrifying scene of blood bath, Lucia looked a 14-year-old lass with a marvelous, almost otherworldly beauty—her wavy, light-golden hair was glimmering a nearly silver brightness, her face was more angelic than any doll of her collection, her eyes were violet gems hidden under the eyelashes that would flap like the wings of butterflies, and her skin was snowy and spotless.

This was the kind of beauty…that would start a war and bend the knees of a tyrant.

Ulysses lowered his head and got down on one knee, began to report about the "incidents" happened on Bishop Bridget's path, and Lucia was leaning over the edge of the bathtub, observing him with a infantile curiosity, but he never looked back at him in the process.

So she stood up, naked, flushed all that blood carelessly down into the sewer, knowing that this amount of food could feed several soldiers for a week, and showered herself in water, let the fluid washed away the remaining stains. In the whole process, she didn't shy away her body in front of Ulysses for one bit, while acting with such innocence, as if she was completely unaware of what her deeds could do to usual males. But she knew. Ulysses knew she knew. That was what made her dangerous and even more tempting to men with certain taste.

"Dress me."

She stepped out, humming a joyful melody, while pointing at her lavish princess dress beside the tub and making the request.

Ulysses paused for a while and satisfied her demand. It was not the first time she did this, and she always tried to move around to let the clothes or ribbons fall and expose her skin, making these already troublesome procedures of wearing a complex gown like this even longer.

Until finally, he put the bonnet on Lucia's head and tied it to an appropriate fit.

"I like your mask." Lucia reached out for his wolf face out of the blue, "Did you do this for me?"

That question was so hard to answer, because both yes and no would be…bad for Ulysses. Then he thought of Bishop Bridget's rapid rage when she spoke of Leona, and decided his response:

"Yes."

And Reverence Lucia giggled in happiness upon his reply, sounding like the crisp bells on Christmas tree.