Samantha Moon

Waking up with a headache and the enormous urge to ralph was not something new for Sam. Arizona was a party school and she tried to attend as many as she could. But as she struggled to open her eyes--each eyelid felt like it was glued shut--she started to remember. She hadn't been at a party. She'd been...where?

It came back to her in bits and pieces, like the images between flashes of a strobe light, each one progressing, but a stillframe all the same. An art exhibition. Most of it not to her taste. Bronze sculptures of nudes. Mostly old men. Paper-machete icons of toilets and dishwashers. The kind of art that was trying so hard to be edgy that it was stupid. Meaningless. She'd decided to leave early, to head back to campus. The bus stop was deserted. And then suddenly...suddenly there was an arm around her chest. And a hand clutching a wet cloth over her mouth and nose.

Chloroform!

Sam's eyes popped open, which was a mistake immediately. Dazzling overhead lights glared down at her, momentarily blinding her and sending a shooting pain to the base of her skull and her temples. She felt sick all over again and wanted to throw up, but there was nothing but bile churning in her stomach. A few dry heaves and the pain began to lessen to an aching throb. Greedily, she sucked in the air-conditioned air. It felt good. Soothing. And it helped clear her senses.

( She started to become... )

From the outside, the Kindred Shopping District looked like a warehouse. It was as if someone had cast some kind of Harry Potter spell over the place. It said, ‘Nothing interesting to see. Move it along.’ Which, of course, was the point. On the inside, the KSD was more like a mall, with a gigantic courtyard in the middle, open to the sky. The shops catered to the needs of the more supernatural residents of Los Angeles. Sam’s favorite was Crazy Ivan’s Magic Emporium. It was the most cluttered thrift shop she’d ever seen, filled with miscellaneous items that were supposedly enchanted. She’d once considered purchasing a paint brush there. But then she remembered every movie she’d ever seen and thought better of it.

The KSD was neutral territory, where any vampire, regardless of covenant or clan, could hang out. It was also, at the moment, a hub of activity around the newest bit of legislation working its way through the Kindred world: Dropping the Masquerade. The most vocal opponents and proponents of the idea congregated, giving long-winded speeches, preaching mostly to their respective choirs. Sam herself had accidentally raised a bit of hell a month ago, just having a lively discussion with some of her friends. Neutral territory or not, you had to be careful what you said. There were always people listening, waiting for the chance to form a good, old-fashioned mob of one kind or another.

( Anyway, Sam wasn’t here to talk… )

“I didn’t realize being dead came with homework.”

Snark was always Sam’s first, best line of defense, especially when things got too real or confusing. Although she had to admit, she wasn’t sure which this was. When Karen summoned her into her study and sat her down at the desk, she’d been expecting another lesson in mind control. She hadn’t anticipated Karen setting a spiral-bound notebook and a number two pencil on top of the desk in front of her. That definitely fell outside of the new norm.

The last month and a half had been trying, to say the least. What with the dying and the coming back as a vampire and the dropping out of college. It didn’t help that Karen seemed more like a vice principal than a vampire. She wore her hair severely short, cropped close to her head. And every night, she was in the same hideous suit, a dull, gray blazer with a dull, gray pencil skirt. The only thing that changed was the blouse underneath and that was always in some shade of black or white or gray too. It was like Karen had stepped out of a black and white TV and had yet to notice that the world was now live, in living color.

( She stood on the opposite side… )

Thank fuck that was over. Going to the Ventrue clan meeting—which could just as easily have been called the Old White Guys in Suits Convention—had been a huge mistake. The ones that didn’t look at Sam with open disgust had stared at her like some kind of carnival sideshow freak. Was it justified? Maybe. Was it polite? No. Did it make it abundantly clear that she didn’t belong? Hell yes. She shouldn’t have gone at all. It was only that Daniel Jericho, who as a Ventrue and a Carthian had taken it upon himself to show her the ropes, insisted. How could she say no? Karen stressed to her the importance of making friends. So she’d tried to make friends.

And by and large, she’d failed.

After the meeting was adjourned (did anyone actually still use that word?) there was the expected lingering. The other members of her clan chit-chatted like old friends. Some of them, she suspected, had probably known each other for hundreds of years. If not more. And that was a delightful, fresh reminder of how very, very out-of-place she was. There were no other…what was the word Jericho had used? Neonates. She was probably the only person there still within the span of her mortal life.

( As she lingered near the back of the room... )

There were nights when Sam's life felt like life and there were nights when it felt like a movie. And not just any movie, but a really, really shitty movie. Way worse than a B-movie. Even Bruce Campbell wouldn't touch that shit. The sort of movie where you saw the puppet's strings, the zippers on the backs of the rubber suits. Things were just falling apart, like the facade of reality had been splashed with turpentine.

Obviously, it was going to be one of those nights.

They had a plan. It wasn't a good one, to Sam's mind. The idea of Avery volunteering himself as bait left a bad taste in her mouth, but she supposed, if she was trying to be objective, he was their best bet. He hadn't just mastered the Coil of Rhea. He'd friggin' invented. Well. No. That wasn't the right word, exactly. More like...he'd discovered it?

( In the way that Columbus had 'discovered' America... )