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Emilio gnawed at his fingernail, the same damn finger, the left
ring finger that no longer carried a wedding ring. Every night, he
bit it. Sometimes he worried at it, gnawing until the white edge
came off in a strip, peeling back to the cuticle and needing to be
chomped, leaving a tiny flap that would catch on loose threads and
draw his thumb to fidget. Or he could peel it and then pull, hard,
painfully tearing it out where the nerves were. Or if he was
disciplined he would file that excess length down, or trim it with
clippers. It didn’t matter. Every night, when Emilio awoke, that
half-broken length of left ring-fingernail would be back, the same,
restored like his hair and his immortal flesh.
Some nights, he even managed to leave it alone. Not very often
though. Emilio was restless. He was not the type to let things go.
“No, not ‘Brainchildren,’ ‘Rain Children’. As in, water that
falls from the sky. Yes. Thank you.”
He was sitting on a hotel room bed, with the curtains drawn and
the lights off. To Emilio’s eyes, plenty of light was seeping
through the curtains, crawling under the crack of the door, urine-
yellow streetlight glow was plenty for him to dial by. He was in
Portland and he didn’t like it, but he’d tracked the book to the
coast and now, maybe, to this library…
“You have? Splendid, that’s… now, this next question is a
little, erm, queer. Odd, I mean. Is it Monastic House Press? I
see, good. Can you tell if it’s first edition or second edition, is
that…? Well, the author made some changes, some fairly significant
changes, between them. Hm? Oh, I’ll wait. I’m happy to.”
Emilio had read three versions of Rain Children, he’d done it
even before he died, but he could never have guessed how important
it would become to him.
It wasn’t a terribly popular book. The style was peculiar, inasmuch
as the author, Harriet Becker, had recorded strangers on pay phones and
busses and in restaurants, she had assembled the dialogue out of
transcribed phrases. It read oddly on the page: Living people don’t
talk like fictional ones. That was only the beginning of the oddness
that was Rain Children.
“Both editions? Really, that’s… mm hm? Well, which one’s on
the…?”
Emilio bit his lip, and then bit his finger.
“Checked out. Well, I’ll… yeah, thanks. Thanks anyway.”
He hung up, and sat for just a moment in the darkness that to him,
was not dark. He was steeling himself for a trip to the stacks.
† † † † †
The computers baffled Emilio. He’d gone to the shelf in hopes
that perhaps the first edition was there, that there’d been a
mistake, but of course there was no mistake, of course it was gone.
He’d then positioned himself with a magazine and a chair, watching
the front desk. He’d expected a card system, files of patrons, like
he’d known in childhood but instead there were these bulky white
boxes with typewriters attached, making blinking green letters on
TV screens.
He narrowed his eyes.
To Emilio, the moderate fluorescents in the drop ceiling were
bright as a summer noon. Every edge of every page in every book
stacked half a room away was visible, a line as thin as a thread.
Every speck of lint on every sleeve, every fleck of dandruff on
every shoulder was, to him, as obvious as a boulder. He looked for
something reflective behind the librarians, a book with a plastic
dustcover… no, too cloudy. There was no window behind them, but a
framed picture… yes, he could see the screen reflected there and
read the strange strings of meaningless letters they typed to make
authors appear, titles, call codes…
Ciphers and gibberish. He folded his magazine and approached.
As he did, he listened. It was essential to talk to someone
different, someone who wasn’t answering the phone… yes, he
hadn’t spoken to either of these ladies. It must have been
someone in Reference.
He waited politely and introduced himself and, when she drew back
and looked uncertain, he tried not to lean in and focus on the
pulsing vein in her neck, full and ripe, beating like a drum, as if
he could hear it, the throb of life within her rich and…
He didn’t. He was here for something else. He asked about the
book, politely, and as she looked it up he stared into her glasses,
stared without seeming to stare, reading the name, the address, the
person who had the first edition of Rain Children checked out and
overdue by several months.
Emilio didn’t say thank you or even end the conversation. Too
few hours in the night. He just turned and left once he had what
he wanted.
† † † † †
Monastic House had printed only five hundred copies of the first
edition of Rain Children, the hardback. The paperback second
edition, which had (among other changes) deleted a scene in the
fifth chapter in which the heroine was raped, an event that was
never referred to in the rest of the book, that edition had been a
print run of two thousand. When Rebel Rouser Press had bought the
rights, their paperback, which had the rape scene back in but other
material changed to reflect it, was printed in a 10,000 copy run.
It sold poorly.
Emilio was looking for one of the Monastic hardbacks. As he’d
suspected, the library patron was a dealer who’d stolen it to sell.
He got into the bookstore, and read her records. The buyer had
ordered it through the mail and had it delivered to Tempe, Arizona.
Emilio didn’t dare kill the bookseller after making a scene in
the library, so he killed a man who lived two doors down.
It took him a year to get to Arizona, and that’s where he
discovered that the purchaser was, like him, a vampire.
1996
Emilio – now known as “Leo Taylor,” a shy and minor part of the
Tempe Kindred scene, woke up and thought, Tonight’s the night. He
grinned, and got up out of his box in the pet-store basement. He
said a few kind words to the rattler that slept out its days on his
cold chest, gave it a little kiss, then stood and stretched.
He looked at his left ring finger for a moment, and wondered
where his wedding ring was now. “Until death do us part.” His grin
became a smirk. “Sure.” He bit the nail clean across, in a single
practiced movement.
The pet store was two blocks from 2200 Flatbrush Avenue, the home
of Byron Bass, the vampire who had, eleven years previous, bought
that first edition Monastic copy of Rain Children. Leo happened to
know it was signed by the author, too. He’d done plenty of research,
years of it, and he could tell you more than anyone living about the
fate of each of those five hundred hardback books. (Eighty-seven:
Destroyed. Three hundred and thirty: In private collections or
European libraries. Eighty-two: Unaccounted for, but sold in the
United States. One: On the bookshelves of Byron Bass.)
Tonight was the night Leo would steal it, using abilities that he
had been scrupulously careful, for the eight years he’d been in
Tempe, to conceal.
He went up the steps into the stink and chatter of the closed store,
puttering about as kittens mewled and dogs woke up to bark, monkeys and
lizards and even the fish moving to the corners of cages and aquariums
to get away from him until he turned those undead eyes on them, muttered
soothing nonsense, calmed them. Then he flared his eyes and moved his
blood and began.
He emerged from the store’s back and immediately jumped up to the
top of the garbage dumpster, springing across a short alley to
another building’s wall, clinging with the effortless ease of a
squirrel. He scrambled to the top in moments and scampered across
the roof, his muscles twitching and bouncing with unaccustomed freedom
and vitality, the urge to move to spring and grasp and climb and fly
nearly overwhelming but matched by his more personal drive to get the
book. Rooftops blurred beneath him as he made his way and he was
midair, a twenty-foot leap in the dark when he heard…
“What the…? Didja see that?”
“What?”
“Something up there!”
“The streetlight?”
He felt a lurch of fear, wondering if two dense yokels were going to
spoil everything but he couldn’t allow himself to stop, not even to
slow, not even to worry about it, he was going, he was moving, he was
getting the book. A leap from roof to tree, easily clotheslining the
palm trunk and sliding down, a quick scuttle through the dry grass to
Bass’s fence. It was wrought iron and pointed on top, but he got
between the bars with ease. Then a bolt to the house, and up it.
Byron Bass, known as ‘Judex Bass’ to his colleagues, had a fairly
secure home. There were decorative (but heavy) iron frameworks
over the windows. Not too many cameras or motion detectors – they
were unreliable against Kindred. His protections ran more towards
tripwired flame-throwers. Not real napalm or anything, just a
sudden flare of ignited propane at chest height. They wouldn’t
catch a house on fire (at least, not this house, not in the hallways
designed to be trapped) but more than enough to scare the fight out
of most vampires.
Leo was not most vampires. He avoided the triggers he could and,
in one case, simply steeled himself and ducked under the flames.
He’d gotten to the library and was dismantling a little wax-and-hair
figurine on a red twine noose (he wasn’t sure what it did but theorized
it would make the skin and meat slough off his bones, as if he’d been
boiled at high temperature for a day or two) when he heard footsteps
behind him. Footsteps and Byron Bass’ impeccably in-tune humming.
For a moment, he couldn’t believe it, but while he wasn’t believing
it, he nonetheless hoisted himself – silently! – to the top of a
bookshelf and tried to be motionless and small.
Byron Bass should have been judging disputes among his Invictus
cronies. Every other Tuesday since Leo had come to Tempe, Bass had
been out of his haven, doing just that. Yet in he walked, wearing
an outdated smoking jacket and… yes… fuzzy slippers.
Leo was forced to conclude he’d picked the one night when no one
was making a stink.
Bass entered and unlocked his shelves, looking through the books
and Leo had a moment of thinking he’d get away with it before the
other vampire paused.
Then he sniffed.
Vampires don’t have to sniff, don’t have to smell, don’t have to
breathe unless they want to. But Bass sniffed and then turned around
and then Leo bolted for the door, leaving the book, just trying to
get the hell out.
He made it down the hall to the first floor before overlooking a
traps. As he reeled back from the sudden rush of light and heat, he
heard a bang and felt a sledgehammer impact on his back.
Then he opened his eyes and was back in the pet store.
Bill Bass irritably waved pistol-smoke out of his face and looked
down at a dead capuchin monkey. “What the holy heck?” he mumbled.
Leo looked at the hole in him, mimicking the monkey’s dying
wound. Animal possession wouldn’t work again. He’d have to try
something else.
Even though the left finger was bitten to the nail bed, he
nibbled at it anyhow.
2004
Leo looked at Bass and said, “Make me an offer.”
Bass rubbed his chin. “Your haven,” he said. “Another copy –
signed, of course. You leave Tempe, forever.” He paused.
“Is that all?”
“Not even close. A two-drink Vinculum.”
“One.”
“So you’re not willing to give away the store. One then.”
Leo said nothing. Bass continued. “That ghoul of yours, Melissa.”’
“She’s not a ghoul, but I’ll give her to you. And?”
“And an explanation.”
“My haven, another signed first printing copy of Rain Children,
banishment, one drink, Melissa. And an explanation.” He put out
his hand. “Deal.”
Bass took it. “So start explaining. I must say, I am dying to
know what the hidden formula or secret message or, or magical
revelation is in that crazy darn book.”
Leo looked around. The others stood and left so it was just the
two of them. For a while, Leo was silent.
“You know about the visions,” he said.
“I know some vampires see visions,” Bass replied.
“It doesn’t always… show you what you want to see. I learned the
trick when I was just starting out. Something to give me an edge.
I was new, I was being a monster. You know.”
Bass smiled.
“Then I learned more. How to make objects give up their
stories. That was when I was older. When I was trying to stop
being a monster.”
Bass’ smile began to fade.
“One night, just from being curious, I read my wife’s wedding
ring. My dead wife.”
“Bad idea?”
“Not at all.” Leo looked down at his left finger. It was
perfectly manicured. It had been perfectly manicured since 2002.
“It helped me remember. But there wasn’t all of her. I didn’t know
how to get all of her. And the parts that weren’t on the ring were
fading out, like we do in pictures and mirrors.”
Bass wasn’t smiling at all, now.
“Then I had a vision. Not of the past, or what was in front of
me. Sometimes they come, unannounced. Sometimes you just know. I
knew I needed her book. Her favorite book.”
Bass slowly reached down into the satchel by his side,
past a wax-and-hair figurine, past a $350 fighting knife, and
produced a worn copy of Rain Children. He opened it and read
the inscription.
“For Rachel, good luck with the poetry, enjoy! Harriet Becker.”
“I never read any of Rachel’s poems. She burned them when she was
nineteen. But with that book, I can get them. I can get her.” He
started to reach across the table.
Bass pulled the volume back. “Sorry,” he said. “Demand just
went up.”
By Justin Achilli, David Chart, Ray Fawkes, Will Hindmarch,
Robin D. Laws, Ian Price, Brand Robins, Jesse Scoble, Jared Sorensen,
Greg Stolze and Jeff Tidball
Vampire created by Mark Rein•Hagen
Credits
Special Thanks
Written by: Justin Achilli (Clanless), David Chart (Hunter’s
Hunted, Transcendence), Ray Fawkes (Espionage, Isolated), Phillipe has gone off to be all Canadian and stuff. He was an
Will Hindmarch, Robin D. Laws (Bottle , Operatic, Proce- angel on our shoulder, way outnumbered by the other side.
dural), Ian Price (Becoming, Vampire Kings), Brand Robins We wish him the best. Also, we wish him to have a comfort-
(Damned, Generational), Jesse Scoble (Vampire Familia, able couch and food for us.
War Stories), Jared Sorensen (Monster Garage), Greg Stolze
(The Other) and Jeff Tidball (Political, Solo)
Vampire and the World of Darkness created by Mark
Rein•Hagen
Developer: Will Hindmarch
Editor: Scribendi.com
Art Director: Pauline Benney
Book Design: Pauline Benney
Interior Art: Samuel Araya, Avery Butterworth,
Marko Djurdjevic, Tomasz Jedruszek, Vince Locke,
Torstein Nordstrand, Conan Venus and Cathy Wilkins
Front Cover Art: Aleksi Briclot
© 2006 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Re-
production without the written permission of the publisher is
expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for
blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal
use only. White Wolf, Vampire and World of Darkness are reg-
istered trademarks of White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights
reserved. Vampire the Requiem, Storytelling System and Re-
quiem Chronicler’s Guide are trademarks of White Wolf Pub-
lishing, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places
and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.
The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the
trademark or copyright concerned.
This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural
elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature con-
tent. Reader discretion is advised.
For a free White Wolf catalog, call 1-800-454-WOLF.
Check out White Wolf online at
http://www.white-wolf.com
PRINTED IN CHINA.
Table of Contents
Prolgue 1
Introduction 10
Chapter One: Designing a Chronicle 12
Chapter Two: Chronicles 22
Chapter Three: Antagonists 168
