Collab with [@Ruby]

[center][IMG]https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b29df1e/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1878x1056+0+0/resize/1486x836!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F4d%2Fbd%2Fdf5cdebc49bd3047a06f2bf8d5de%2Fla-1560297442-5pmb6bz599-snap-image[/IMG][/center]

“It’s a little fancier than Joe’s Diner, my turn to look out of place.”

The process of sending the text message over to Rachel chimed even as Henry placed the device back into his pocket, his location shared with the female kindred as he approached the front desk of the Lounge. Despite his words to the Ventrue woman, and indeed, she would no doubt look far more on theme, neither of the receptionist staff offered protest as he moved past them, a card of gold pressed to the electronic sign in as he did so.

He was dressed in the style of what some would consider truly, vastly, wealthy. Smart brown leather shoes tapped across the wooden flooring, but such expenditure was paired with Levi jeans and a white linen shirt against the LA Heat. This was not the attire of the corporate traveler, but the old money that had them on their payroll. It was also a lot more comfortable for him, and so the insinuation suited him fine.

Even at this hour the lounge would usually be open to a relatively high number of red eye travelers, but for now it had been cleared. No doubt a flurry of complaints would have resulted from the minor inconvenience of having to share the One World Alliance lounge instead, but all would soon have impressed on them the importance of not kicking up too much of a fuss. If it had been up to Henry, he’d have closed the place with the excuse of emergency maintenance. The upper echelons of the Germanic Camarilla had a different style altogether. The Masquerade was important, but so too was the principle of hierarchy. All would know the risk of a complaint, even if they didn’t quite understand why.

Henry didn’t pause as he moved through the interior of the lounge. The tables and countertops were even more pristine than normal, the glimmering, minimalistic opulence of the catering areas made all the more needless and beautiful for the lack of the culinary delights that they would usually host. That did give him pause, before the man beckoned over one of the few, oppressively pale and smartly dressed, staff.

“I’ll have the chicken burger, I’ll be outside.” The request took more than a few moments to register on the surprised waiter. Henry wasn’t entirely sure how much these elite servants would know about the nature of their masters, but they knew enough to be surprised at the request for something solid to consume. He savored the reaction for only a heartbeat, before heading out onto the truly outdoor decking, ignoring the secondary internal deck. This area was truly abandoned, although the light of the propane fireplaces already danced in the night air. He drew himself up a chair next to the lit bar top, tapping his fingers on the marble top as he watched a plane scream through the air above. He focused for a few moments, allowing his exceptional eyes to filter through the light pollution to drink in the night. By his calculation, it would still be some time before their favored guest would arrive at the lounge. Might as well enjoy the view.

And his burger.

"The Star Alliance Lounge is closed?"

Rachel blinked at the question. She'd barely had time to get out of the car before the other woman was on her, saying the words in the form of a question. LAX, the airport, wasn't titled such on the management side. It was part of a larger entity; the Los Angeles World Airports. The managing group for more than one of the area's airports. The re-organization had been in place by Rachel's mortal predecessor before she had even met Eva, though it didn't take Eva long to allow Rachel to get her hands on it and work on the efficiency of the operation. 

"Yes," was all Rachel said through her blink as she stepped out of the backseat of the Cadillac, though the woman just stared at her with a pained, forced, smile on her painted lips. The woman was Lauren Bradley, red hair, pale skin, mid-thirties, the Chief Airport Operations Officer for LAX, and the Chief of Staff to the LAWA CEO. Where Rachel was dressed in skinny fit style black wool pants, enriched with gold-tone Medusa button closures on either hip, black heels, and a magenta wool blazer with a black silk tank top under it. 

For those familiar, it was all part of the latest runway line from Versace, although that line wouldn't be shown to the public for a month in Paris. Lauren Bradley wore something else; some kind of blazer and skirt combo, it looked older, maybe Calvin Klein? Rachel didn't care. Rachel just stared in return, forcing Ms. Bradley to finally get brave, and say something else in the scene that was quickly becoming awkward as they stood just outside one of the VIP entrances to one of the terminals. 

"It's just, along with the added security--"

Rachel didn't need the woman to continue, happy to cut her off with a stiff, professional, half-smile. "Ms. Bradley, I assure you we wouldn't be doing either of these measures if they weren't necessary. My goal wasn't to make you apologize to everyone in LAX for us tonight...but at the same time I'm afraid this can't be helped. I'll let you know the moment we can open the lounge back up."

The woman apologized, prattled on about something, but by that point Rachel had to move. What Eva had told her about the Ventrue Inner Council seat holder was that he was something of an act that took himself too seriously, and Rachel didn't figure it would do well to make Henry wait for her long, let alone deal with Hardestadt on his lonesome, making them both wait. Black suited security flanked her, one white, one black, both looking like commandos wearing a suit. She had met both before; they were good gents. Some of Andre's inner circle, highly trained, and impeccably positioned to cover her if it came to it. Yet the short walk to the elevator, and the shorter walk to the front of the longue were both uneventful. She didn't go in through the front door, she went in through the kitchen service, meeting two more armed men that let her and her guards in. The guards peeled off as Rachel found him outside. 

"Hey," was all she said as she walked outside to the lounge's Terrace. Something inside her wanted to say more, but her voice wouldn't betray her, and nothing about her appearance suggested anything of the sort. She ditched the magenta blazer and draped it over one of the barstools, before moving closer to him, sneaking a peek at the smart phone the Digital Thaumaturges that they financed and protected had provided her. It felt like years ago her lips and hands were all over his body, not days. Yet so much had happened in between, and they hadn't seen him. 

"You talked to her, didn't you?"

Somehow, someway, Rachel just knew.

The sudden charge in the air around him at her arrival wasn’t something he hid, although whether it was purely body language and pheromones or something that spoke of his nature was another matter entirely. The fact she was immediately lost in her phone didn’t dissuade him at all. A slightly more wholesome memory of laughing at the sight of her desperately craning for signal while balanced atop a run down cadillac on a dirt road sprung to mind and he didn’t hide the smile from that either. He didn’t hide the brush of intimacy, his hand tracing her hip for the moment, as he leaned in both in greeting and to reply.

“In a sense. It’s the mages who took her, but they need new tricks if they’re to hide someone from me. She wants to stay with them for now, get them onboard. I think that’s what we need, but I could touch her mind for long enough to get my marching orders.” While he efforts to hide whatever rivaling forces of emotion within her may have been successful, the unspoken question of his presence wasn’t hidden from him, and so he carried on, still not putting space between them. “India. I couldn’t not act.” It wasn’t an apology, but the tone was there. It risked his exposure, but Henry could no more sit back and watch a continent die than he could have submitted to the will of his father when it crashed against his compassion. “And I wasn’t alone, Caine is on the move again, which means I can find him, talk to him. You all have given me hope I might be able to reach him, this time.” His words had nothing to do with the geography and everything to do with his efforts to win the heart of another being cursed to wander.

“But, I still probably need a minder for a meeting with King Ventrue.”

Rachel chuckled, "I almost pity the mages; no one makes an impression like Eva. Grace told us they have her at..." Rachel's brown eyes darted there and here, and back again, a sliver of a shrug rolling her porcelain shoulders and the shoulder length dark hair with the slight wave parted down the middle. Surveillance had her a touch nervous. "Well, you know, I'm sure."

She almost didn't want to speak the next sentence. She remembered what happened the last time Henry saw the creature, and the violence in the man's eyes that day. "We, uh...we saw Nathaniel. He's been stalking us. It sounded like he's been stalking us because he couldn't find Eva anywhere in, or around, the city. You should have seen the stare he gave Yanci. I thought he was going to leap for her throat, then and there. Luckily Andre and Mihail are quite the, uh, dissuasive force."

Rachel ignored the Caine mention. Based on everything she knew, it was better just to keep it to herself.
In the same way he didn’t hide the lingering intimacy, the hand left drifting at her hip or the warmth of his smile for her, he didn’t seek to conceal the sudden tightening of his shoulders, the tautness in his build at the mention of the Nosferatu. The last time he had met Nathaniel he had run him through with the Blade of Eden, and only Eva’s pleas for clemency had prevented him from igniting the divine blade and scattering the kindred’s ash upon the wind. 

“Tell me if you encounter him again, please.” The intensity came with his fingers pressing into her slightly, before with an exhalation he relaxed. “I won’t hunt him, but I’ll stop him from taking her.” He didn’t need to add who he meant. His bond was Eva was like nothing else in the cosmos, even he didn’t quite understand what burned, or perhaps had burned, between himself and the woman beside him, but Yanci had been the first of them all for him.

Finally he pulled away from her, just a little breathing room. Perhaps to her relief, certainly a relief for the neatness of her outfit no longer presented with the risk of his grip. The interruption was preemptive, as the glass doors out onto the deck slid open. There was a roar overhead and suddenly the outer deck was engulfed in the dazzling light of a plane’s headlamps, a brightness so intense it momentarily obscured vision. Once the glare faded, he was standing there.

Henry knew that the moment of light had no doubt equally obscured the flash of red sights as unknown marksman dialed in on any perceived threat to the man in the dark suit. Exquisitely tailored from an Italian fashion house no one on the American continent could hope to secure an appointment for, the man was slightly too leonine to be considered truly handsome, no matter the pleasant smile on his face as he approached the pair. He appeared unaccompanied, but that was never the case for a man such as this.

“Miss Fields, it has been some time since your name graced my desk, such a pleasure to see life is treating you well in the interim.” His hand extended to her as he drew closer, palm horizontal to shake, a greeting of respect, rather than expected subservience. The man’s blonde and shortly cropped hair framed a face of powerful edges, atop a form that was equally angular, with just enough substance as to not be lanky despite his near-exceptional height. Hardestadt had made a career of orchestrating the unknowable web of the Ivory Tower, mastering far older elders simply from his ability to master information. It was no surprise someone as promising as Rachel had been an object of interest, even before attaining anything that could be considered greatness by the Camarilla. His cold, grey-blue eyes settled on Henry the moment after, with only a simple nod of greeting. “Mr Locke, a shame to hear about your bar.”


Rachel's physical response to the hand shake was demure, even if the look upon her fine dark features were closer to glacial: he was her blood, she was Ventrue, she would be demure for him. More than anything, Rachel resisted the urge to ask the man about Thaddeous. Mr. Carter hadn't been unkind, and their partnership had provided a huge problem for the Sabbat on the East Coast. She knew they lost every gain they'd had save for D.C.. In a bittersweet moment, she also had an idea that the Camarilla had used some of the analytical information Rachel had composed against Eva and the Anarchs from San Francisco. 

Yet she never took it personally, and she had simply never heard another thing from Thaddeous. It wasn't hate Rachel felt for the Camarilla, it was just...indifference. Funny thing when you ran one of the largest money laundering rings the world had ever seen and had a contact spreadsheet that could make even a Ventrue elder blush. Hollywood was the kind of soft power the Camarilla would never achieve, Eva the kind of elder that the Camarilla just simply could not produce for someone like her to serve. 

A slight perk of her brow was all the suggestion that she wandered, this close to the man, how Gehenna affected him. The Coterie had Eva's blood to protect them, Hardestadt had nothing of the sort. She hoped it wasn't along the horrible rumors she had heard coming out of Chicago. 

"Welcome back to Los Angeles, Mr. Hardestadt. I hope the modern nights have been kind to you."

There was a crackle of amusement in the air at her tone of greeting, Henry's hand passing in a stroke down the indent of her spine, the tone of someone enjoying such a radical change in her nature, even if his gaze towards the opposite kindred remained serious.

"As kind as any have been." The elder Ventrue responded with a smile that lacked any true warmth. "New challenges require new solutions, but that in of itself is a constant." As the male spoke, a waiter arrived with a tray bearing decorated champagne flutes, although the liquid within lacked any sort of sparkle and possessed a deep crimson rather than hints of gold. Hardestadt had collected his own glass before they were offered towards the pair, notably long before Henry's summoned burger had arrived. "I would be most welcome to invite you back to aid in such solutions, those who still speak of you still speak very highly, if with regret." Piercing eyes never left Rachel as the man supped from his drink, the promise of both wrath and opportunity all at once. "But I suppose you will continue to decline the offer, and much as there is always interest I did not come all this way for a hiring prospect." He did not expand on this further for the moment, content to study the pair as he had before.

"No, thank you," Rachel all but beamed at the waiter, dark eyes sparkling with a vibrant warmth that matched the smile she flashed. A brilliance that disappeared  within a single beat once the waiter moved on. Instead, confusion riddled her darkly fine features as her head tilted just the barest of angles to the side, her brown eyes fixated on Hardestadt, her voice sprinkled with a cheery amusement atop the sound of confusion, "Why would I downgrade?"

The confusion wiped, her head upright, head and shoulders tall as the real Rachel threw off the facade, her hands with clear polished manicured fingertips coming together in front of her, "Your new challenges pale in comparison to our new challenges. You want to save yourself, we want to save everything and everyone. We are not the same, Mr. Hardestadt. She has never asked for your help, and while we certainly don't believe Matthew Lubbock is your doing, it must be said we do consider this another red mark among a long list of them in our ledgers concerning the debts incurred with our group by your organization. Recompense is of no interest to us, long past is the time for that. I have come simply in the hope your organization wishes to discuss ways in which to collaborate on solutions to the overarching challenges."

Her lips were smiling again by the end of her addressing of the man with such a pleasant and warm tone, the subtle and secure smile of the clear eyed and supremely confident.

Rachel’s words certainly had their sting, and it would be impossible to suggest they were entirely expected, at least in the manner in which they delivered. Nevertheless, as Hardestad paused to sip the offered wine, savoring the unexpected taste of elder blood, if not quite questioning where it had originated, his reaction registered as little more than a twinge across his features.

“A warning then. The past is littered with the unnecessary fallen of those who considered their challenges unique and refused the advice and support of others. I should know, I was there in North Africa when this continent first learned the cost of these Modern Nights, failing to heed the advice of their own allies.”

“That’s entirely why I’ve come from our stronghold, and left the rest of my Coterie, to talk with you, and give you that.” Rachel said, motioning with a nod to the glass in his hand, “it doesn’t long for the effect to kick in. It’s hard to say exactly what it will do to you, you’re the first of your clan and generation to taste it. For certain you’ll notice any lingering Beckoning to be gone, completely. I’ve noticed my mind clears faster and there’s a certain…serenity to it. My Coterie fellow, Andre, has also mentioned he feels a touch more humane after. In that drink is Eva’s blood. We have but a tiny supply of it, yet the effects are good for about a week, give or take, depending on the individual. When she told us her blood could help us remain free of the immediate pull of Gehenna, we didn’t believe her, I’m embarrassed to say. Sounded too good to be true. In either case, a token of our good will and desire to collaborate, should you decide your organization would be best in alignment with our goals.”

Her eyes flicked to Henry, waiting on the man to say…something.

“It’s all true, Hardestadt, not just what Rachel is telling you about Eva, but everything the mad prophecies the Camarilla have worked so long to suppress have warned you. I know you suspect, but I’m telling you, it’s worse than you fear.” Henry finally spoke following the look from Rachel, his focus having not wavered, at least in the line of his eyes, from the man for the length of the conversation. There was a crackle in the air between them, an unspoken [i]something[/i] that spoke to an established acquaintance, or at least reputation.

The German Kindred’s attention had, in the meantime, slipped to the drink, tilting his head slightly as he examined both the visual appearance of the glass as well as the sensation Rachel described working through him. It was something of a social and political affront to feed another blood of a potentially dominating elder, but for now the slight would be forgiven. “Some have already been dismissed by the march of time, the millennia came and went, the world still stands.” Hardestadt’s cold gaze fixed Henry Locke for a moment longer, before he spoke. “My father-in-darkness knew you by another name, Mr Locke. Whatever your reasons, you actions in such times were fruitful for the Ivory Tower, for that, we have listened to you both thus far.” Had the elder kindred known the full story of quite how far back the machinations of Henry ran, he would likely act far more decisively, but for now they remained nebulously vast. “There are two agents I trust to be of use to you in this city, I have grown unimpressed with the works of Vannevar, you may dispose of him and I will not act. Genevive Dieudonné and Violetta Kyborowski, I will instruct them to aid your efforts in this city in the interim. What information I have that may be of use to you from the Old World I shall share. Stay out of New York, a great death is building there that I cannot prevent, should it wake no amount of chosen blood will save you from the initial annihilation.” The aid and warning provided, the suited Kindred finished the remainder of his wine in a short gulp. “If that is all?”

Rachel looked unimpressed; or maybe it was just the Ventrue blood in her. “Bye.” She didn’t wait, just flashed a look of rare irritation to Henry and left, only scooping her own blazer on her way out, her last word a word to the security team, “you’re done the moment they leave this airport. Start the hunt for Lubbock. Intel and logistics go through Andre, and we don’t care how much it costs, or who you have to intimidate or hurt to make it happen.” 

There was a surge to the loudness of her steps, as she all but buzzed with the fact that she had just unleashed hundreds of their own trained people equipped with an overwhelming surveillance capability, the largest kine and Kindred intelligence and influence network in the state. The only reason she stopped at the door? To turn around, look at the security detail, and add, “Vannevar is dead before midnight tomorrow, and anyone who would try to harbour or protect him, no matter their affiliation or status.”