There’s one memory that I keep going back to. It plays in my head over and over until I feel I’m going mad. It only makes sense: It was a moment of stark failure. And betrayal. Lots of pain. A well thought-out plan that didn’t work, and it was all my fault. My friends, such as they were, followed me into it and I let them all down. Worse, actually. I might have been able to live with all that, except I didn’t get what I wanted, and that has always just raked my coals. I’ve never been much of a one for guilt or blaming myself, however, so I’ll just let you judge me as you like. Do your worst. 

It begins in the Hall. It was a massive Gothic monstrosity, and it was disgusting. It was about a hundred feet long by 60 feet wide. The vaulted ceiling towered another 60 feet above the cement floor, and was dimly lit by sconces made of entire human skeletons tacked tens of feet high along the walls. A huge wooden door (I assume this was an act of hubris, since vampires can be killed by wood) was imported at some point from an ornate foreign government building and hung on a frame of cemented skulls. Some of the grins familiar, they stared at me without sympathy as I swung the door open and stomped through, clenching my oversized fists, rage bending my unfamiliar spine forward almost to the breaking point.

I barely registered the packed audience, elite dignitaries in designer clothing milling about with their uniformed captains, female dominatrixes (present for entertainment later, I presumed), Xenogen servants with their mismatched limbs bulging under their leather clothes, dour secretaries of this and that clotting in the corners with their files and cigarettes, and scores of dreaded Hunters, who dressed in black to hide the stains and never cleaned their boots. All of them turned their heads when I walked in; but there was no way in this hell they created I cared what anyone thought of me and my mission tonight.

“Hawthorne!” I shrieked, my voice echoing, one of the few parts of me I still recognized. “How DARE you!” I scanned the faces that turned toward me as I wound my way into the room. I knew he was there. He knew I had come for him. I had traces of his thick, reeking blood in my veins, keeping me alive, and it bound us together. I lurched through the crowd, shoving aside enemies who bared their fangs and gestured obscenely.I shoved the last body out of the way, smearing a bit of black blood on its pristine white shirt, and there he was. 

Hawthorne was waiting for me at the back of the room, with the rest of the Clan convened around the imposing Seat of Blood. His tall, wiry frame made him appear a hulking, angular mass, bones poking at the shoulders of his black shirt. His tight leather pants and dark, stringy hair falling over his pale face never ceased to make my upper lip curl in disgust, but it was his smile that enraged me the most. After everything he’d done to me, to my family, my friends, hell, the whole world, his smile was like a rotten moon over a pile of corpses. I was finally ready to face him; to enact the plan that had been carefully laid out over the last several months with the members of my Cluster. Every member of my sawed apart, stitched together, oozing, battered body was thrumming with the anticipation of it. 

Hawthorne was going to make it up to me, or die the Death du Mort. Both, if my plan proceeded without errors.

And then I saw who was standing next to him, and the remaining shredded pieces of my carefully coagulated plot fell away.