She wondered if she was supposed to feel honored, that he had introduced her to his mortal brother’s very mortal granddaughter. A delicious meal assuredly, but connections to the kine world, connections to family if you had the luck to be so young to as still trace such things, were not something Lily focused on. Her eyes stayed on the mirror, her hands ran over the red locks until, frustrated, she pulled it out of its ponytail completely.
The kindred turned at last, flipping her head as she did so to gather her back tight and sleek once more. Satisfied, she stood not far from where Saxon now sat, a hand on her hip. “I have seen kine destroy hotel rooms more in pursuit of sex. I was not going to hurt her too much.” With ease, she bent over to set the table to it’s legs.
Mention of her sire brought a low snarl to her throat, and seeing the look Saxon had in his eyes, Lily set herself down in a chair opposite him, her arms tightly crossed against her chest. “Despicable.” She muttered, Lily had nearly always hated him for what he did to her, and while she was not overly fond of the Camarilla or even the Anarchs, she loathed the Sabbat. “Let’s.” She snapped, eyes searching Saxon. “What’s in the warehouse?”
“In my efforts to gather information on all of the city’s Primogen, I found the hints of a connection between your sire and this warehouse, a purchase run through several different bank accounts and the ghoul of another childe being involved. Rather than stop due to the Sabbat moving in on the property, the two connections seem to coincide. If my suspicions are correct, then your sire has been dealing with the Sabbat, but I cannot act on suspicion alone.” Saxon did not pause in his explanation, commencing as soon as he question was uttered, ignoring her previous statement about the state of the room. It didn’t matter that kine could be worse, kindred had to be more careful.
“If the connection doesn’t exist, well then, you’ll simply have done a great favour for the Kindred community, and I have more on your sire than dodgy connections to the Sabbat. Perhaps enough to unseat them, or at least weaken their power base among the Toreador.”
“Son of a bitch.” She snapped. It was rare for Lily to use vulgarities...vulgar as they were by design. She crossed her legs and then uncrossed them a moment later. On edge, perhaps more so because of her recent meal, perhaps only because at long last she had something that could bring down her sire. Something big. If the connection wasn’t there, she quickly wondered if she could manufacture it. Weakening him wouldn’t be enough, but neither did she have the connections to pull to fake evidence of it.
“You know our numbers, you wouldn’t ask this payment if you thought failure was certain.” She leaned forward, not entirely sure that that logic was truthful. He might, if someone else needed them out of the way. It was a fantastic story to spin to one such as herself. If she thought that way though, all was lost. “Two trained fighters, no matter their previous defeats, myself, a gangrel we barely understand, and a Malkavian. And our ghouls, of course.” Lips pressed together, her eyes flicked back and forth as if she was reading something that wasn’t there. “Who owns the neighborhood in the kine world? Crips, Bloods? MS-13? Lasombra inside?”
“MS-13 have a loose hold of the area, but they have no presence in the warehouse. From what I have gathered, the operation is lead by a single Lasombra, with two gangrel antribu, a trio ghouls from out of town, and twice that number in ghouls ‘recruited’ off the streets. The Gangrel lack any real mental stability, perhaps they do not even know they are truly kindred, it would not suprise me with the Sabbat. Everything is an attack dog except the Lasombra.” Saxon ignored, even in terms of a simple subconscious reaction, here outburst, instead following with a response to her question. He had hardly expected her to remain perfectly level headed with the stakes at play, and even if her coterie were of reasonable strength, this would hardly be a walk in the park.
“I will be sending an associate of mine, an Assamite, to accompany you. In part to assist and, honestly, to make sure every aspect of the deal is upheld. Beyond that, she will...probably, do what she is told.” At the corners of his mouth the briefest, minute impression of a grin formed, before being replaced with his previous mask of business. “If this information proves correct, you might find yourself in a race among the Kindred of LA to grant your sire a final death, a fitting end no less.”
Lily let out a low growl. She was not the one to plan the battles, Ivan and Vadim would do so, once she shared this with them. But it did seem manageable, by the numbers at least. And they would be smarter than the pack that had taken up in the warehouse, it had been a long time coming, the boys would jump at it, and Betty would do as she was bid. But an Assamite? That was not a pleasant though. Sending someone to keep an eye on them was one thing, a creature such as that, entirely another.
Negotiating, she reminded herself, was not really a possibility. “Very well.” Her displeasure was not well hidden for that moment. The death of her sire would make it all worth it, it was almost serene, the thought of the long nights that could be spent without his specter hanging over her. The frown morphed into a cruel smile. “As you insist.” But he will be mine. After going through all of this, there was no way in heaven or hell that she would allow anyone else to grant him his demise.
“Delightful to be doing business with you.” She rose, her mind tackling how she would need to present this to the others. There was little time to waste.
((Zach and Vanq))
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