“I thanked Comet for helping Ben. He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. I don’t think he knows what to do with gratitude. I told him we’d visited Prentiss’s haven. I didn’t give any details. We both knew what she kept in the attic. Who she’d kept in the attic. I asked what he thought of Nathaniel. He shrugged. Comet said he was profoundly indifferent. Maybe he felt bad for him, a little. Nathaniel was one of her appendages. He seemed to shy away from speaking her name aloud. 

“Comet asked if she was “dead-dead.” I said she was. Nathaniel had had a vision of her falling off Chain Bridge and into the Potomac. A large, insectoid creature had ripped her chest open, severing her heart. Nathaniel had searched along the bridge and riverbank for days. He’d found nothing. Comet relaxed. He’d felt her anger shake the Cobweb when she died. I suppose it can be hard to believe the monster under the bed is truly gone, even after checking with a flashlight.

“I took a breath. Strange, listeners. I’m a vampire who doesn’t need to breathe in a shared psychic realm that only contains the idea of air. But breathing helps. I asked if Cedric and Joan had known. He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “People are people. They do what they want. Cedric made her let me go.” I nodded. Prentiss was hundreds of years old. And she was a powerful agent of the S’eth A’dar. If she’d been given permission to Embrace, she could probably “teach” her Childer however she saw fit until they were presented at Elysium. Cedric and Joan might not have known the extent of her…depravity or had the power to stop it. I don’t know, listeners. Cedric and Joan have taught me so much. They’ve sacrificed so much for me. I need them. I don’t want to believe they’d let Prentiss hurt her kids…her Childer if they could’ve stopped it. 

“Comet asked if we were done. I nodded. I let the Temple fade and opened my eyes. I was lying on the bed. Ben had stayed, waiting for me to wake. I smiled. I told him to take the bed. I’d take the floor. He protested, but I told him I’d probably soak the sheets in my own blood, and we’d have to do laundry again. I’ve done so much laundry since being murdered, listeners.

“Joan ran to me on the train tracks. The Bubble pink and hot and angry between us. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Then, the man from Enoch. Marcus. He appeared behind her. Ruth’s claws cut him into ribbons. Grey bled out from him and into the bridge and Bubble and river and sky. They rippled. Cracks in the universe. Light exploding between them. The universe ripping itself apart. I am the last thing left in existence before it tears me into nothingness. Joan running. Marcus. He slices Ruth apart with a blade that hurt my eyes to look at. Grey rippling. Cracks. Light. Explosion. I am torn apart. Joan. Marcus. Ruth. Grey. Light. Explosion. 

“You get the idea, listeners. It wasn’t a good dream. I had known Joan died. Joan knew she died. And I got us killed trying to rescue her. Marcus had to undo time to save us all. Ripping the fabric of the universe itself. Perhaps the dream was a warning, listeners. We couldn’t be cavalier in rewriting the universe to fit our paradise. Each change we made risked ending everything. 

“These were all thoughts I had much later, listeners. When I woke, I was covered in blood. It dripped through the floorboards. The Beast inside me raged, scared and hungry. Ben knelt beside me, mimicking my breathing exercises. I was shaking and babbling about Marcus and Joan and the universe. I could smell blood in him. My blood. I needed it. It was mine. Ben was mine. My fangs grew and I covered my mouth. I wanted Ben to hold me. I wanted him to pull me close. I wanted to sink my teeth into his neck and hear him moan beneath me as I drank to completion.

“I ran out the door and to the kitchen. Rose was there, speaking with Gwen. She recognized the look in my eyes and pulled out a knife from one of the drawers. She calmly sliced her own wrist. Blood welled up and dripped to the floor. I didn’t have the time or willpower to debate.

“It’s hard to describe, listeners. What I felt first didn’t have words. It was raw energy. Strength from the Gangrel she had been. Flying wild and free. Alone, without any chains holding her to the earth. Then the warmth of the Sisterhood. Family. Safety. Companionship. Love. 

“Then, the memories. Rose had bounced around foster care. Desperate for scraps of affection from her foster sister and father. Praised for fighting. Beaten for not acting more like a man. A fire. Shitty apartments and jobs. Then, a family. Distant. But comfortable. Fighting, but not for her life. For sport? Money? Then, bleeding out in a park. Waking up to a dog she loved very, very much. It did not recognize her smell. It barked at her. It fled. She thought of giving it blood. Keeping it forever. But she let it go. She was no longer human and could never be again.

“Rose pulled her wrist away. Listeners, thank goodness, I was in control enough that I did not try to hold her back. We talked in the kitchen, telling Rose and Ben about the plan to trap George by using Asa and I as bait in Manassas. Gwen suggested Ben be bait as well. I should have argued harder, listeners. But Ben was on board from the moment Gwen suggested it. I think he would have demanded it if she hadn’t. And, listeners, I didn’t want to leave him behind. I wanted him at my side. I belonged with him, and he with me. Why do I need him so much, listeners? Why do I feel incomplete without him? Is it our friendship? Is it because he is my last connection to the human I was? Is it the blood? Because he is my Childe? Because he has part of Malkav within him now, and I have Malkav within me? I don’t know, listeners. I don’t know.”

Canticles of the Prophet Zachariah:

Premonitions and Preparations

Notes by Anthony

“I mimed offering the microphone, and Cedric took it. He said: “the hour grows quite late” and suggested we rest. I nodded and turned to Comet. We had something to discuss. Ben gave me a concerned look. I told him I’d be there soon. But Comet didn’t need an audience for this.

“For those listeners who caught our last broadcast, I told you about Prentiss’s apartment. Nathaniel, the ghoul. The stuffed animals and China doll. The walls covered in paint and charcoal and crayon. The chair bolted to the floor with restraints to hold down someone’s arms and legs. The hole in the seat, and the metal pot beneath smelling of bleach and blood and waste. Prentiss was the Childe of Cedric. Prentiss was the Sire of Jinx and Comet.