My first foray into fan fiction: naturally I don't own any of the characters or themes. For more on obscure terminology please visit the Vampires Masquerade wiki (White Wolf). I'm still figuring out the formatting tools so please bear with me.

Update: This is the new improved short first chapter: ugh, lots of work to rejig everything. Anyway, hope this makes it easier to read.

I'm finding writing this is getting harder as I go. Partly its because I seem to be drawing on some less savory memories of my past, partly cos apart from following the outline of the game, it seems to be starting to gain a direction of its own. I admit, at this point I'm winging it.

Also....reviews! Please give me some! My stats page tells me quite a few people have visited, it would be awesome if someone could give me a critique or even just a one liner.

It all started the night I got picked up by some sleazy guy. I don't really remember much before that, but I recall that night clearly. The city was rainy but warm, with the smell of greenery in the air. The glow of bar lights threw strange coloured shadows on him. Looking back I realise what happened, but at the time I thought it was odd that I wasn't that attracted to him and yet still felt compelled to go back to his hotel room.

This strange compulsion made sex quite surreal; it wasn't exactly fun, but I couldn't seem to stop. The cheap overhead light, neon strobing outside and the moldy smell of the mattress gave the experience a nightmarish quality. And then of course, he bit my neck and cut himself and made me drink it. I'm no prude, but if I'd been able to break away, I would've.

Afterwards my guts cramped in agony and I found my muscles contracting in a mockery of the worst kind of withdrawal. I was dimly aware of him watching me intently from the chair before I slipped into darkness. When I came to, it was to the noise and confusion of a break-in. Shadowy figures burst through the door and impaled my new lover. I was grabbed and dragged and hit over the head. The fluorescent lightbulb seemed to explode before plunging me into unconsciousness again.

Waking up with a headache is never pleasant, and when it's while you're kneeling on a stage in front of an audience, as rough hands grip you, well, let's just say, I've had better times. In front of me a man in a suit strode up and down the stage. I tried to listen to his voice, but things were still so blurry and confusing. The faces of the crowd were far clearer: pallid faces even in shadow, with bright eyes and an intensity which seemed to pulse at me. One gaze, angry and brooding, caught my attention, but I was quickly distracted by the white flesh and lingerie of the woman in the front row.

With a jerk I realised the suit wearing man's soliloquy had come to an end. He motioned towards my sleazy pick-up and before I knew it the poor guy was headless and disintegrating into a pile of ashes. Whoah, I tell you, I was pretty freaked out. Mr. Suit started talking again, "And now the question of the childe…" A cold knot formed in my stomach as I realised he was talking about my fate. Getting my head cut off was starting to seem like it was in my immediate future. I struggled a bit, but the men gripping me had hands of steel, and the biggest guy I'd ever seen in my life was looming over me with a sword that looked more like a gigantic machete.

"This is bullshit!" shouted a man's voice from the audience. I focused on a man and a woman holding back a third. The brooding angry man was on his feet, shaking his fist at the guy in the suit. Hope leapt in my heart: someone out there was rooting for me! Fuck knows why, but if it meant I got to keep head and body together a bit longer, then who was I to question.

The suit stopped in mid-speech and scanned the crowd. Others were following my advocate's lead and the mood was turning dangerous. The suit (his name was something LeCroix) seemed well aware of this, and I felt him change mental tracks. Threat was replace by concern and fatuous altruistic babble about teaching me the 'laws'. I was hauled to my feet and hustled backstage while LeCroix convinced the audience it was all over. Dirty and torn and fragile, I only half-listened to LeCroix telling me that I would be sent to Santa Monica and observed to make sure I deserved his clemency. It was only when he left that I had a chance to look around me and realise that the movie theatre I was in was pretty old-school and had obviously been deserted for a long time. Everything I saw seemed to radiate intense energy. The red velvet hangings seemed to glow in front of me; I'm not sure how long I had been fixating on them before Jack turned up.

That's how he introduced himself; just Jack, and he was a scraggy dude for sure: ex-biker type, looking about 45-50, with a salt and pepper beard and shaggy eyebrows. But he had those same piercing bright eyes that the rest had, and his slang talk didn't diminish his experience. I listened to him tell me I was now a vampire, and go through all the basics of feeding, and disciplines and Camarilla and what not. None of it seemed real, but I couldn't deny that blood now tasted sweeter than Japanese plum wine, or that I felt capable of jumping to the moon. Vampire society seemed complicated and archaic; kind of like an undead Mafioso. Camarilla, Anarchs, Sabbat, factions within this underworld: I gathered LeCroix was Camarilla, Sabbat were bad – mad dogs killing without need- and Anarchs were the punk revolutionaries of the vampire world. I didn't ask what faction Jack belonged to; at that point in the conversation all I could hear was a pounding in my ears. I guess Jack noticed. "You had a drink yet, newbie?"

"Uh, you mean, blood? Yuck, no." The moment I said it I realised I no longer felt that way and imagining the hot copper taste started me salivating.

"Guy round the corner there," he indicated with a movement of his chin, "just don't kill him."

"I'm no killer."

He chuckled, "Good sentiments to start with kiddo, but we'll see how long they last."

I shrugged, thinking that I was going to have a hard enough time just convincing someone to let me drink their blood. I'd never exactly been intimidating to others, and getting screw tops off jars was usually the most physically challenging trial I faced. I trotted round the corner and down the alleyway towards the figure, then stopped bemused. He was in shadow and all I should've been able to see was the glowing tip of his cigarette. Instead he glowed with a pulsing aura of red life. It was incredibly beautiful.

"Get going!" I heard Jack whisper behind me. Dutifully I walked towards the well, human, I suppose I should say. He was tall, way taller than me, and I reflected ruefully that I would probably end up sucking on his wrist rather than his neck.

"Ah…excuse me?" I muttered, feeling like a bit of an idiot. The red aura around him was pretty intoxicating this close. I held out my arm in a half-hearted effort to pull him towards me. To my surprise, he leaned towards me, inclining his head as if to catch my words. Instinctively I grabbed behind his neck and bit down. It was a weird feeling, made stranger by the fact that he didn't resist. I stopped quickly, and backed away from him, waiting for his "what the fuck?!" response. It never came; he just stood there with head drooping and eyes closed.

Once back around the corner I looked questioningly at Jack, "Why didn't he fight me?"

"Kid, don't you know we vampires are all seductive and shit?" He leered. I raised an eyebrow: I was no supermodel, and I found it hard believing even some drunk biker-mama would've found him seductive. "No, really. Part of the power: some have it more than others, depending on their clan."

"Clan? What clan am I?" I asked a little guiltily. I probably should've been listening more closely when he'd gone over things earlier.

As I expected, he rolled his eyes and bonked me on the forehead with his knuckle. "Listen up, newb, this shit'll save your life. Your sire was a Tremere, and that makes you one too, although you didn't exactly follow the usual channels."

Seeing that I still looked completely confused he added, "You can see auras and shit, tell people what to do, and throw blood magic around like it's going out of style. Happy?"

"Are you -?"

He cut me off quickly, "No I goddamn aint. Proud to be Brujah, baby. Most of you Tremeres are stuck-up blood sorcerers who spend years kissing ass before they get embraced."

"Uh, ok." I looked around more hopefully than I felt. "So, um, are they going to pick me up later, or something?" Before I'd finished, Jack was shaking his head, and if I'd thought it was possible for that scarred cynical old face to show it, he was looking at me with something like pity.

"You're on your own kid; if you survive LeCroix's bullshit, you'll have to find your own way."

Well, that didn't sound very promising, but I was still buzzing from my quick drink and figured there was no point dwelling on it. Jack didn't seem to be either; he was sniffing the air like a bloodhound, his face crinkled in disgust.

"Sabbat!" he spat, "Get inside."

Feeling like I'd unwittingly signed up for some surreal gang-banger's existence, I entered the warehouse he pointed out to me. He pointed to an overhead walkway, and to my amazement, proceeded to jump up there like the pride of some Chinese acrobatics school. He motioned me to follow, and I did my best, but my muscles were acting like they were springs only half under my control, and I ended up knocking over a couple of crates on my way up. Jack rolled his eyes heavenward and sshed me impatiently. Feeling a complete clumsy dork I crawled after him as he sneaked his way over to the window. Again he indicated with his chin out the window. I peeked over the ledge into the street below and saw my first taste of proper vampire on vampire violence.

There were three guys: two looked fairly normal in a dime-bag drug-dealer kind of way, but the third was teetering on the edge of monstrous – elongated hands with claws and protruding fang teeth. It made me wonder how he got around the city without seriously causing a panic. They faced LeCroix's machete wielding associate, who didn't seem at all put out by the odds of three to one. As I watched, the two opened fire with automatic weapons, phasing machete man not at all. He held up a hand and squeezed eldritch blue fire from it. It was all I could do not to cry out when I saw ghostly wolf-forms materialise and worry their throats until they disintegrated in a shower of glowing ashes. He dispatched the last by breathing on his hand, air that showered his opponent with insects who vanished with the ashes of his death. Lastly he looked up at our window and nonchalantly acknowledged Jack with a gesture, before disappearing into the shadows.

"Holy fuck." I breathed, trying in vain to wrap my brain around what I'd just witnessed.

"Welcome to unlife." The humour in Jack's voice was hard as stone.

I opened my mouth for some stupid quip rejoinder, but he'd already moved on, explaining the Sabbat in curses while he navigated a locked door, a safe and finally led me down to a basement.

"Sabbat between us and the exit: I'm taking the scenic route, you take that fucker out and join me on the other side." He scaled a wall and vanished through a vent before I could protest. I considered trying to follow him, but I'd already proved to not be the best climber in the world. When in doubt take the direct route. I shrugged and sneaked through the door.

There was indeed a Sabbat between me and the exit: he resembled a younger weaker version of the clawed guy on the street. He didn't know I was there until I already had my hands on his throat. It was sickeningly easy to crush everything under my hands, and his death rattle was followed by the dissolution I was becoming familiar to. I stood there stunned for what seemed like ages: all my life I'd believed life was sacred and now here I was snuffing it out without a second thought. I wondered if he'd been like me, an unwilling unknowing forced recruit.

Even from the other side of the door I could hear Jack's impatient sigh, so I forced myself out of my reverie. More than anything up until that point, walking through that door and leaving the ashes of someone I'd killed behind me, signified my entrance into a new existence.

Jack showed me some non-vampire skills before I left for Santa Monica: how to shoot a gun, basic lockpicking, and the ground rules of the Camarilla. Uphold the Masquerade above all. Count your link to humanity as infinitely precious. Make sure you fed enough to hold off the Beast. That part scared me the most: the idea that lack of blood would drive me to a violent frenzy, completely submerging my conscious self. But hey, on the plus side I was getting set up in some dingy apartment in Santa Monica, with some undefined goal I had to reach to stay alive. Good times! Yeah.

Anyway, Jack's last words before the cab from LeCroix picked me up were, "If you live long enough, come to the Last Round and I'll fill you in on the politics. Kid, that's what'll kill ya."