Sundown, May 8th, 2005

  I don’t know how long it’s been since the Camarilla took me. Time feels... wrong. When I woke, the same four concrete walls greeted me, just as they had the night before. Someone had restocked the mini-fridge. I tore through the fresh blood bag without hesitation, even though it tasted like plastic, and left me only half-satisfied.

  There was nothing to do but lean against the ice-cold wall and try to remember. I thought back to her. That night at the bar, the first meeting. How long had she been watching me before she made her move? Had she been watching me? Was I just a convenient distraction? I saw a pretty face, someone who listened when I spoke, who made me feel seen, and that was all it took. I had been so lonely. My life had been nothing but endless cycles of school, pro-bono law work, bartending over and over and over again for the sake of my mom. School. Law. Bar. Repeat until numb.

  I let my guard down for just one night. That was all she needed.

  She stripped me bare without laying a single finger on me. And just when I was ready to pull away... she used her body to tether me to her. After that, it was too late. I was a man possessed. Every second apart from her felt like agony. I knew she was dangerous. I knew, deep down, that something about her was wrong. But none of that mattered. I needed her.

  The second meeting... She knew what would happen. She knew I’d kill him, she wouldn’t have asked otherwise. And I did it. Because the idea of never seeing her again was more terrifying than taking a life. No sane human would have done what I did that night.

  Had she made me kill him? Or had I always been a monster, just waiting for the right trigger?

  Thinking of her now brought a hollow feeling to my chest. Craving. Hatred. Maybe even love. I didn’t know anymore. What’s the difference?

  I laughed, a deep, frantic sound that echoed off the concrete walls. I hadn’t laughed since my breakdown in the alleyway. It was the laugh you give when the only other option is to cry, and I had no tears left to spend.

  Mama always said to stay away from crazy white women.

  The third meeting was the worst. The waiting was the actual test. Every day without her, more of her burned out of my mind, like a memory slipping through my fingers. I stopped going to class. Stopped showing up at work. I barely spoke to anyone. Every step taken under the sun felt like it tore me further from her.

  I vaguely remember a conversation with my mom. I was nearly catatonic. We might have been in the kitchen? Maybe it was my room. It’s all a blur. My mom was worried about me. She wasnt sure if it was burnout, or if I was on hard drugs. She pleaded with me to get a checkup at the clinic. Tears streamed down her face. I made a woman with cancer cry.

  When Lucena finally sent an address and a time, rage surged through me. How dare she expect me to come crawling back like some lost puppy?

  But I did crawl back.

  Because staying away when I knew where she was... was unbearable. I was addicted to something, like my mom thought, just not drugs. I was addicted to her. I think I might still be…

  Now I’m here. A prisoner of some ancient society that knows more about me than I ever knew about them. A monster.

  Was I always a monster?

  I didn’t have time to ponder it.

  The heavy locks clicked open, and the door swung wide. The two women who had come for me at the church stood there, the Suit and Knife Face. Every muscle in my body tensed, not to run, but out of instinctive fear.

  The Suit raised her hands in an attempt at a calming gesture.

  “We’re not here to harm you. A fellow Kindred has stepped forward to be your patron. We’re here to take you to her.”

  I hesitated. Was this a trap? Had they decided to just kill me, after all? Did I have a choice either way?

  But despite the Knife’s hand lingering casually on the hilt of her weapon, a blade somewhere between a small sword and a large knife, they seemed genuine.

  The Suit spoke again, her tone almost regretful.

  “I apologize for the unpleasantness at the church. Truly. I told Desmond to stay in the car, but he insisted on coming inside. I believe we could have reached a peaceful resolution without his... unsettling presence.”

  Slowly, I rose to my feet, brushing the dust off my clothes.

  “How...” My voice cracked from disuse. “How did you know my name?”

  The Suit tilted her head, confused.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My name,” I repeated, stepping between them as they led me through the dim, winding corridors. “Ransom. That’s the name my sire gave me after the Embrace. I hadn’t even spoken it aloud by the time you found me. How did you know it?”

  She didn’t stop walking.

  “The Camarilla has eyes and ears everywhere. You were embraced and abandoned without guidance. A dangerous thing. We found you while investigating reports of a rogue Kindred near the abandoned church. One of our scouts also recovered the note you discarded.”

  Eventually, they ushered me outside into a deserted parking lot. A black Cadillac with tinted windows waited for us. Knife Face opened the back door, and without much choice, I climbed in. She sat next to me, while the Suit slid behind the wheel.

  As we pulled out of the lot, I asked, “The Prince's lap dog called me something. Lasombra. What does that mean?”

  She met my eyes briefly in the rearview mirror, her expression unreadable, before focusing on the road.

  “The Lasombra are your clan. There are thirteen major bloodlines among the Kindred, called clans. Each has its own strengths, weaknesses, compulsions. You, Ransom, are Lasombra: the Shadow Clan. You may have supernatural strength or charisma, or the ability to manipulate shadows.

  “I’m Banu Haqim. Z, the one beside you, is Toreador. And that brute from the church? Brujah. Your clan shapes much of your existence among Kindred.”

  I swallowed hard, unsure if I felt reassured or horrified.

  “And my Patron?”

  The Suit’s expression in the mirror shifted, almost... apologetic.

  “Malkavian.”

  A cold pit formed in my stomach.

  “Why does that sound bad?”

  “Malkavians are unpredictable. Some call them geniuses. Others, madmen. All of us agree: they are dangerous. When the Prince called for volunteers to take you in, she was the first one who stepped forward. Normally the prince would hear all comers who would take you in and decide who he thought best suited, but she… How should I put this? Dahlia doesn’t interact with the ivory tower. At all. She abides by its rules, but she doesn’t interact with it in the slightest. Normally this is something the prince would not abide, as if you don’t interact, he can’t oversee you as part of his princedom. The prince has given your patron explicit permission to stay as far away as she likes, so long as she follows the rules. Does our prince strike you as the type of man to do things out of the kindness of his heart? Do you think he would allow just anyone to sit the court out just because they didn’t like it?”

  I thought back to my brief interaction with the prince. He was a domineering man who reveled in the power he held.

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “This could be smooth sailing as far as your Childe phase is concerned... or you might be dead by next week. Hard to say.”

  I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes as I sighed.

  “Dead next week is still better than dead tonight.”

  I stayed silent for the rest of the drive.

  After what felt like an eternity of stop lights and city turns, we finally pulled up outside a small hookah lounge. An old and flickering neon sign told me the name was “Pipe Dreams”. Apt.

  “This is the place,” The Suit said. “Inside, behind the counter, there’s a door. Walk through it. They’re expecting you.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, numb to my situation at this point.

  She smiled, almost apologetically.

  “Tahlia. My name is Tahlia. I never introduced myself.”

  “Thanks, Tahlia.”

  The car pulled away, leaving me alone on the curb.

  I looked up at the lounge. No one was around. In theory, I could bolt, catch a bus, hitch a ride, leave town and disappear. Who knows what kind of batshit fuckery was waiting for me inside? I have yet to meet a vampire that wasn’t an asshole.

  But deep down, I knew they’d find me. They were already watching.

  I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  Smoke filled the air inside, but the building was deserted, as if people had just left moments before my arrival. The air was sweet and choking, and if I could breathe and had functioning organs, I’d probably already have a contact high. I found the door behind the counter easily enough. My hand hovered on the handle, steeling myself before pushing through.

  A faint scent of lavender and old dust, like a forgotten Southern manor parlor, hung in the room beyond. The room was a curated space, overly decorated and far too still. The lighting was soft, yet clinical. Meant to seem inviting while revealing every flaw. Every crack in the walls, every frayed edge.

  The door clicked shut behind me.

  Locked.

  Against the far wall, a massive mirror stood like an altar, framed by wood carved with roses... and teeth. My reflection stared back, blurry and indistinct, like smoke trapped under glass. My sunken eyes, matted hair, and bruises across my jaw were still vivid from the night they dragged me from the church.

  Suddenly There’s a woman sitting near the center of the room. I’m almost certain she wasn’t there a moment ago. Though small, perhaps 5’3", she commanded the space like a queen ruling a forgotten court. Every inch of her feels deliberate: violet gloves shining softly under the lamplight, a black blouse buttoned all the way to the throat, long silver hair twisted into a perfect chignon. Not a strand out of place.

  And her eyes.

  Violet, like the gloves. Not bright. Not vibrant. Violaceous, the color of a bruise, the kind you don’t want to look at for too long. When the light catches them just right, they almost look like cracked mirrors. They flick up from the book in her lap when I hesitate.

  “Sit. Please. You look like you need it.”

  Her voice is syrupy-smooth, dipped in that Southern lilt that somehow makes kindness sound dangerous. I sit. Not because she asked. Because pretending I have a choice feels stupid.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  A phonograph hisses in the corner, an old record spinning Etta James low and slow. The kind of music that gets under your skin and stays there.

  Her tone is gentle, even, and soft. Like she’s soothing an animal caught in a trap… right before putting it down.

  “You’ve had a hard week. Bit of a blur, I’d imagine? Blood. Running. The smell of ash and gasoline. No one explains the rules, just the teeth. That’s how they do it, isn’t it? The Sabbat. Chaos always comes first; questions never follow. All the misery wrapped in a box wrapped in a newspaper from tomorrow.”

  I scowl and say nothing. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about.

  “They call me your ‘Patron.’ Ghastly little term. Makes me sound like a nursemaid. Or worse, a bureaucrat.”

  She tilts her head to the side just a little, her eyes sharpening like needles as they reflect the light like a cat.

  “I am neither. I am the scalpel that will cut the rot out of your soul.”

  I think about that for a second. If she removes all the rot, how much of me will remain?

  “You’re not beyond saving, Ransom. Not yet. But you’re so close, aren’t you?”

  She stands, and somehow it feels more like gliding than walking. Her heels don’t make a sound on the floor. When she circles me, I realize my hands have curled into fists without me noticing. I keep my eyes forward, locked on the mirror. What is it with these people and circling? Are they incapable of having a conversation without stalking like sharks?

  “Do You think they pulled you off the street to be kind? No. You are smarter than that. You think you’re here because the Camarilla needed another soldier. No. No, darling.”

  Her voice drops to a purr. She’s behind me now, and in the mirror, I can see her reflection perfectly, but not mine.

  “They smelled you. Like wolves to blood. They saw your anger, your guilt, the way your pain shines through your arrogance. But most of all... they saw how they could use you.”

  “This is the first lesson. The only one that matters, truly.”

  She pulls off one glove, presses her bare fingers against the mirror. Leaves a smudge right over where my heart should be. A human fingerprint on an inhuman reflection.

  “You must learn to see yourself. Not the surface. The cracks. The breaks. The way the Beast is shaping you. If you can learn to see it, I can teach you to wear it like armor.”

  “You will sit. And you will stare. And when you finally see what’s rotting inside... you’ll tell me. Not for my sake. For yours.”

  My throat is dry. I haven’t blinked in what feels like minutes.

  She leans in close, face to face, too close, too intimate.

  “You hate what you’ve become, don’t you?”

  Her voice turns childish. Singsong. I say nothing. She frowns, like she already knows the answer. Then she slips her glove back on with practiced grace and walks to the door.

  “Look deep and find the cracks, Ransom. I don’t want to repeat myself.”

  The record skips as she leaves. The click of the phonograph ending matches the soft click of the door closing. Then the silence sets in. Heavy. Crushing. Like I’m Atlas, holding up the sky.

  No music now. No Dahlia. Just me and the mirror.

  At first, it’s just… nothing. I stare at the reflection. The strange way it distorts me. How the color seems to drain the longer I look. My eyes are too dark. My jaw looks too sharp. The mirror warps everything just enough to be wrong, but not enough to scream fake.

  Then it starts.

  A voice. My voice, distorted and snarling.

  “You’re wasting your second chance.”

  I jolt in my seat, head snapping around, but there’s no one there. It wasn’t out loud. It was inside my skull. My own voice, thinking.

  I shake my head. Try to reset.

  Another thought slithers through. Cold. Unbidden.

  “She pitied you. That’s why she picked you. You were never special. Just convenient.”

  I glare at the mirror now. Breathing shallow, If I’m even breathing at all. Do I even need to?

  My eyes find the bruises still faint on my neck. The black veins that haven’t fully faded. The hollowness in my own stare.

  “You liked what she did to you. The power you felt when you drained that walking blood bag dry.”

  “You said no… eventually.”

  “You are not the victim you pretend to be.”

  My fists ball. Nails biting into palms. The mirror watches.

  Time stretches weirdly. It could take ten minutes. Could be an hour. Could be a lifetime stuck on a broken reel. I whisper, rough and raw:

  “Shut up. Shut up. It’s not true.”

  And the man in the mirror grins.

  Not really. But it feels like it. My reflection twitches, just a little. Just enough. A second too slow. A heartbeat off.

  Until it doesn’t blink when I do.

  Until it tilts its head just a fraction too far.

  Until it opens its mouth — and I hear myself say:

  “You’re not afraid of the Beast inside. You’re afraid you need it.”

  I lurch to my feet. Chair scraping violently across the floor. I want to smash the glass. Shatter it. Bleed on it. Scream.

  But I don’t. Because I’m not sure I’d be breaking the mirror, or myself. That’s when Dahlia walks in. Silent as a ghost.

  A slow clap. Not mocking. Praising.

  “Well done, Ransom. The first cut is the deepest.”

  I don’t turn. I’m still staring at the mirror. Drenched in something, sweat or something worse.

  “Tomorrow,” she says, “we’ll talk about the voice you heard. And the part of you that agreed with it.”

  That night, she showed me my new home.

  An apartment above the lounge. Lanterns and light sources were everywhere, hanging from the ceiling like trapped fireflies. Not a single inch of the wall left undecorated. It’s a lot. Too much, honestly. A constant assault of color, pattern, and texture that all clash with one another. My head hurts just looking at it.

  The bed’s piled with a dozen fresh blankets. Different sizes, different styles, different textures. Chaotic. Smothering.

  Still... beats sleeping in a half-rotted church pew.

  That night, when the void took me, I didn’t dream. Not really.

  It was something else, something heavier, something that almost felt… dreamlike. The void had been empty since my embrace, a black nothingness where even nightmares couldn’t cling. But this time, I saw her.

  Lucena.

  She hunched over a massive book, its pages ancient and too wide for a human desk. She muttered words in a language I didn’t know, her fingers tracing invisible lines across the text. Searching. For what, I didn’t know. When I drew closer, the surrounding air shimmering like a heat mirage, she lifted her head and smiled.

  “You’re getting there, childe,” she said.

  When the day-sleep ended, it felt like being exhumed from wet earth. My eyes snapped open. My lungs dragged in stale air that did nothing for the icy knot clenched tight in my chest. Instinct had me clawing at the mattress, fingers digging into thin, cheap bedding, before my mind even caught up to the fact I was awake.

  She had been there again. Laughing and dancing around me in that sideways dream-space where time bent and snapped like brittle twigs. Her voice had brushed my ear, warm and close, promising things that curdled the second they took form. Her smile was a knife wrapped in silk and haunted the edges of my mind. I hadn’t seen her since that night. Not in the waking world, anyway. But in the dream, she’d touched my face with hands still warm with my blood.

  I barely noticed the figure crouched beside me until I felt the press of her hand against my chest. Light. Cold. Perfectly still.

  “You always dream of her when it rains,” she cooed.

  Her words dropped into the basement like a stone plunging into still water.

  I froze.

  I looked up.

  Dahlia.

  She crouched like a gargoyle beside the bed, her heavy coat spilling around her like wings stitched from shadow. She tilted her head slightly, like a bird. Not curious, but listening, like she heard something just out of reach. The overhead lanterns flickered. When the light caught her eyes, they flashed, reflecting a pale, unnatural gleam. For a moment, the whites of her eyes looked fractured, spider-webbed with fine cracks, as if her gaze might shatter if I stared too long.

  I blinked hard. The cracks were gone.

  “I said nothing,” I muttered. It didn’t feel like the right thing to say, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

  “You never do,” she said, voice a soft croon. “But your dreams scream like feral children behind tempered glass.”

  I tried to sit up, but her hand remained on my chest, not restraining. Just… reminding.

  “She was your first tether,” Dahlia said, almost absently. “And your first knife. Most people don’t get clarity so soon. It’s… poetic, really.”

  She withdrew her hand and rose in one fluid, silent motion. The bed creaked beneath me as I struggled upright. Dahlia crossed the room, slipping through a dusty shaft of streetlight spilling in from the high window. For just a heartbeat, her shadow twisted longer than it should be, arms too thin, head cocked at a wrong, broken angle, and then it was normal.

  “I straightened the mirror,” she said, almost cheerfully. “It was showing teeth.”

  She paused at the doorway; her face half-swallowed by shadow.

  “And Ransom?” She smiled without warmth.

  “Don’t lie to the glass tonight. It already knows.”

  She vanished up the stairs, leaving behind a lingering ghost of lavender, paper, and smoke. I sat there, staring at the space where her eyes had gleamed like a cat’s. I can never quite make sense of what the hell she’s talking about, but it feels like what she’s saying has weight.

  The mirror waited. And for too long, so did I. Until finally, with a knot of something dark twisting inside my gut, I followed her.

  It was the earliest I’d been up since the Embrace. The room buzzed under the sickly hum of a bare bulb overhead, casting a jaundiced halo across the cracked concrete. I sat stiffly in a hard wooden chair, hands knotted in my lap. The mirror loomed before me, smudged with breath and fingerprints, but never quite dirty enough to clean. It distorted the sharp angles of my face into something grotesque. A monster poorly remembered.

  Behind me, Dahlia perched on another chair, legs crossed neatly at the ankle, a battered copy of “The Interpretation of Dreams” open in her lap. She hadn’t spoken a word since we entered. She didn’t need to.

  Her silence pressed down heavier than any command.

  I stared into the reflection. At first, it was just me. A little paler. A little more dead. I reassured myself that it was fine. I had almost survived law school. I had survived my first feeding. I hadn’t lost control. Not yet.

  But the longer I stared, the more the reflection shifted, and the more that last statement felt like a lie.

  Its lips parted, too slow, too deliberate. The eyes didn’t blink with mine. There was always, always, that faint blush of blood under the gums, waiting to spill if I smiled too wide.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  “Keep looking,” Dahlia replied. Delicate and dispassionate, Like she was correcting a child’s math mistake.

  “You’re not meant to see what’s there. You’re meant to see what you’re hiding.”

  “And what if there’s nothing left to hide?” I snapped before I could stop myself. My voice cracked, bitter and raw.

  “Then you’re either lying,” she said, eyes still skimming lazily over the book, “or you’re already lost. And I don’t believe you’re either of those things. Yet.”

  In the mirror, my reflection twitched. Its lips curled into a cruel sneer. I swallowed hard. My fists dug into my thighs.

  “I hate this,” I whispered.

  “That’s a start,” Dahlia said.

  Her chair creaked. She shifted, the noise loud enough to rattle my bones.

  “I don’t want to be this,” I said. “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t agree.”

  My throat burned.

  “No,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “They stole you.”

  She set the book down in her lap.

  “And that makes it worse, doesn’t it? The lack of choice.”

  I nodded, feeling every muscle in my body drawn taut. I hadn’t made an actual choice in weeks, not since that night in the bar with Lucena. Others pushed, pulled, threw, hit, threatened, and used me. I was so fucking sick of it.

  “So,” Dahlia said, standing and moving behind me. She placed her hands, surprisingly strong, on either side of my head, locking my gaze to the mirror. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

  Her voice was calm. Crooning.

  I stared. The reflection smiled at me, a predator’s grin dripping with malice.

  “Myself,” I said.

  “Wrong.” Her hands tightened just slightly, enough to make breathing sharp and deliberate.

  “Again,” Dahlia said.

  “Myself,” I repeated, trying to sound sure. It came out brittle and weak.

  In the mirror, my reflection smirked. Its eyes gleamed too dark, and a shadow slid behind it, something that wasn’t in the room.

  “Liar,” the reflection hissed through the glass. “You’re just a skin puppet clinging to old dreams. You died whimpering like a dog.”

  I flinched. My reflection didn’t.

  Dahlia’s hands steadied me.

  “Again,” she murmured.

  “It’s me,” I said, stiff as iron and ready to snap.

  “You mean the coward?” the Beast sneered. “The fraud? The leech who gets hard off of the sound of someone else’s heartbeat?”

  Each word landed like a fist to the chest.

  “Why are we doing this?” I choked out, trying to turn, but Dahlia’s hand forced me forward, forced me to look.

  The reflection writhed, smoke bleeding off the figure like a sickness. I could feel that feeling in my chest again. Not quite hunger. The knife twisting in my heart as something stirred and tried to break free.

  “Again,” she said.

  “I said it’s me Hijo de puta!” I shouted, voice cracking under the strain, my whole body a hair’s breadth from breaking into a million pieces.

  “You’re nothing but a dressed-up corpse with delusions of control. Your soul flaked away days ago. All that’s left is me.”

  The words came like claws across my spine, low, guttural, snarling from the shadow in the mirror. It lunged at me, smashing itself against the glass as if the pane alone held it back. My reflection twisted, writhing. The sharp pain in my chest got sharper, more frantic, like a gorilla trying to rip its cage open, or a wolf caught in a bear trap.

  “Why do you care!?” I barked at the image, my voice cracking in the room's stillness. “What do you want from me!?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. I could feel it in me. Scratching, raking against the inside of my ribs. I could almost hear the wet scrape of claws on bone, the way its snarl rippled through my chest.

  Then Dahlia moved.

  She leaned forward, pressing her head to mine until our foreheads touched. Her face was beside mine in the mirror now, close enough that our features blended in the faint light. She stared straight ahead, at the creature, the shadow in the glass, as if she saw it, too.

  Her voice was quiet, almost tender.

  “Because you already suffer the most dangerous affliction, any Kindred can: self-loathing.”

  Our eyes met in the mirror. Hers shone, luminous, feline, like glass catching moonlight.

  “Because if you loathe yourself,” she continued, “you’ve already accepted it. Accepted that you’re just a monster in a borrowed name and coat. You’ve accepted that you can’t be anything more.”

  Her gaze didn’t flinch. “And I know you can be much, much more.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was pressure. Dense and suffocating. I didn’t know how long we sat like that, breathing in unison, though neither of us needed to.

  Eventually, she pulled back, but not away. She stood, moving behind me, her hands finding my shoulders. No restraint. Reassurance.

  “Again, Ransom.”

  I turned back to the mirror. Smoke now poured from the figure, thick, writhing, obscuring its form. It hissed and snapped like a cornered animal. My chest burned as the creature thrashed, trying to claw free.

  Begging.

  It was begging.

  I looked it in the eyes again, eyes that were mine and not, and for just a moment, it faltered. Shrinking, just slightly.

  Dahlia’s voice, low but clear: “What do you see in the mirror?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I closed my eyes and reached inward. Focused on the chaos, the gnashing hunger within me. I willed it back, back into the pit where it came from. Its screams echoed behind my ribs as I forced it into retreat.

  In the mirror, the shadow raged. It pounded the glass, but it was a prison now. Not a gateway.

  When I opened my eyes, I was breathless.

  “My hunger,” I whispered. “Desperate to be free. Clawing at my chest and begging for control.”

  Dahlia sank to her knees beside me, her hands gliding down from my shoulders, wrapping around my chest. It wasn’t intimate. It was something deeper. Warmer.

  “Good, my childe,” she murmured. “We as Kindred call that The Beast. It lives in all of us, edging us toward being the monsters we could be. Tonight, I will teach you to hunt safely.”

  Her embrace tightened slightly.

  “You are not your Beast, Ransom. It will always be there, but you… you can still do good. You just have to remember that violence for violence’s sake is its way, not yours. Never lose your convictions. Never forget your touchstones. They’re the only things standing between you and a life of unliving hatred. Of others, and of yourself.”

  My hand lifted, grabbing one of her hands around my chest, uncertain, trembling. I hesitated, unsure whether I meant to push her away or pull her closer. But she made the choice for me.

  She squeezed.

  And I stayed.

  In the mirror, the smoke cleared. My eyes, wet with crimson, watched the tear trace a path down my cheek. I didn’t look away.

  I couldn’t.