Pitch Black Heart (London, 2106 AD)

[Sansa]

Sansa Martin stood in front of her full length mirror, adjusting her dress with a critical eye. With the right augments one would be able to see the holographic iridescent raindrops cascading down the black fabric of the bodice and pencil skirt and flowing into a faux train that dripped and pooled around her feet when she stood still. And anyone who got into her club, The Gallery, had the right augments.

She blinked to check the time on the overlay her corneal implant projected into her vision, and smoothed her chin-length dark hair one last time before exiting her office. Her penthouse was relatively quiet, but the bump of the music downstairs still permeated as she got into the elevator.

Sansa prepared a smile as she stepped out into the noise and chaos that was The Gallery after dark, walking to the crowded railing so she could look down on the dance floor. One of her employees appeared at her elbow and put a drink in her hand, a delicate glass of deeply red wine. "You have a visitor," the kine said into her ear. "Godfrey sent them into one of the pavilions."

On the other side of the club, accessible only from a private staircase, private booths draped with luxurious fabrics marked the VIP area of the club. Sansa looked across at the pavilions, seeing a few familiar faces in one that had its curtains pulled aside, and nodded.

"I will make my way there, then." She took a moment to gaze into the young woman's eyes, her senses picking out the one heartbeat in the club full of hundreds. "Thank you for the message."

The woman gasped as Sansa broke the eye contact, melting away into the crowd as the Toreador took the stairs down to the dance floor.

[Sansa]

She sipped her wine, the liquid staining the inside of the glass and revealing its strange viscosity. Sansa finished her drink and set it down, threading her way out into the dance floor, surrounding herself with writhing bodies. For a moment she let the music fill her chest, the thump of the bass line becoming her heartbeat, and she closed her eyes, lifting her face toward the shifting lights.

Her body moved gracefully in the throng of revelers, and hands grasped for her as her Presence drew in those kine around her. She let them press in close -- men, women, non-binary -- they were all beautiful and part of the dance. Sansa could smell the earthy realness of the humans around her, their desire and their sweat, and she ground against them as if they could impart some of that life back to her.

As she danced she moved across the floor, like a magnet being pulled across a table of iron filings, until she was out the other side. Smoothing her dress and hair, Sansa made her way to the stairs that led into the VIP area of the Gallery.

[Xander Crane]

“Martin!” Xander squeezed past the bouncer and mounted the stairs beside Sansa. His black suit was impeccably understated — in a sea of neon and holograms he cut through the visual noise like an obsidian knife. “Still no comment on my missing person’s whereabouts?”

She paused halfway up the steps to look up at him, and he flashed her his most endearing grin. Ms. Martin was a tough nut to crack, but he’d been cracking …nuts …for quite a while. Xander inwardly frowned at the strained metaphor and nearly missed her response.

”Don’t you have better things to do with your life, Crane?” She peered at him from under her heavy bangs. “Holly Prescott might have been a server at the Gallery a few months back but I don’t keep track of every single employee.”

She moved to continue up the stairs and he interposed himself in front of her, his extra six inches of height increased by the additional step. “Come now, we both know that isn’t true. And the unfortunate Miss Prescott isn’t the first missing person with a connection to your little club.

”Baron Isaacs isn’t happy. When I get to the bottom of this your rotten termite mound will be thoroughly kicked over.”

[Sansa]

Her security was climbing the stairs toward them, intent on doing their job even if Xander Crane could take them both apart without breaking a sweat. Sansa waved off the bouncers, Crane mimicking her gesture to the men as irritatingly as possible.

”My coterie’s existence here is at the whim of the Baron. We are loyal to Isaacs, and he knows it.” Sansa stepped up until she was eye-level with Crane, her tone cool. “I’ve instructed the staff to cooperate with your investigation, even if a Brujah with an investigators license is something of an oxymoron. If there’s rot here I want it found as much as the Baron does.”

She put a hand on his lapel, brushing some imaginary lint from his jacket. “You’re far too pretty not to be a Rose. A shame.”

[Xander Crane]

“What, and spend all my time swanning around crying about how beautiful the latest indecipherable piece of art is? No thank you.” Xander smiled at Sansa. If the woman was hiding a pile of dead bodies somewhere it was likely he’d never find it. Still, everyone made a mistake sometime. Even calculating bitches like Sansa Martin.

”I’ll be in touch, Martin. The rest of your coterie will be seeing me as well.”

”I’m sure they’re looking forward to it. If you’ll excuse me?” Sansa looked up the stairs, and he stepped down and away from her.

”I wouldn’t want to get in the way of business.” Xander sketched a mock bow and disengaged, taking the stairs two at a time to the ground floor. He saluted the bouncer and snaked his way to the bar to pretend to drink a scotch while he watched the club.

[Corinne Delatour]

The Gallery’s lights strobed, pulsing in time with the beat of the music that reverberated through its walls and floor. Each rolling strobe of light painted the club for an instant, illuminating a single frame of the constant motion that engulfed the dancefloor. Each frame was a picture of rapture, every face frozen in open-mouthed delight. Almost every face, at least.

Flash. Xander Crane standing beside the foot of the stairs to the VIP area, mid-way through a salute.

Flash. Crane navigating around the edge of the dancefloor, obscured behind a throng of bodies with hands thrust into the air.

Flash. Crane approaching the bar, his face fully-illuminated as he looked back, expression implacable, towards the VIP area.

Flash. Crane lifting a glass, his eyes on the crowd, looking for... something, anything to latch onto.

Flash. A woman watched Xander Crane, her face in muted darkness at one moment then lurid neon the next, but all the while expressionless. Like Crane, she was almost conspicuous in the simplicity of her attire, a black dress lacking any of the gaudy adornments or embellishments favoured by some of the Gallery’s patrons. If she was noticed by anyone, however, their attention naturally shifted away from her as she crossed the club, heading up the stairs to the VIP area without so much as a glance at the bouncer.

As she reached the top of the stairs, Corinne approached one of the private booths, brushing aside its curtains and stepping inside without invitation. The interior of the booth had been equipped with sound baffles, to keep the drone of the music out and the sound of the conversation in.

"He's persistent."

[Sansa]

Sansa turned as the curtains twitched aside, an eyebrow raising at the site of Corinne. “Not as persistent as whoever it was I was told was waiting for me here.”

She gestured at the otherwise empty pavilion, and sank into the soft white leather of the spacious booth. The raindrops of her skirt shifted to a pink hue and dripped silently to the hardwoods. “Xander will be poking around the Gallery for a few nights. To make sure Isaacs is satisfied we don’t have anything to do with that missing dancer.” Sansa paused, glancing at the other woman. “We don’t, do we?”

[Corinne Delatour]

“I’m…”

Distracted by the changing colours of Sansa’s clothing. The pink raindrops falling in an endlessly repeating artificial loop, like cherry blossom petals caught on a restless breeze. Corinne took a seat, glancing back towards the booth’s entrance for a moment, picturing Holly Prescott drawing the curtained door closed and looking back over her shoulder with a playful smile. A few months of absence had blurred Holly’s face in Corinne’s memories, rendering her recollection of the dancer's appearance into a crude caricature.

Behind pursed lips, Corinne pressed the tip of her tongue against one sharp fang.

“Not sure.” A pause. “Perhaps. I don’t know where she is.”

[Sansa]

“I don’t like not knowing things.” Sansa closed her eyes briefly, massaging her temple. “And I definitely don’t want Xander to find out before we do. Maybe Simon can dig something up about Ms. Prescott’s last day of work.”

Their Nosferatu coterie-mate never let himself be seen in the club. He was usually lurking in the corners, watching the life he lost go by, unable to move through the crowds like Sansa and Corinne could. He often saw things others missed.

As far as the cameras and anyone Sansa had talked to could tell, Holly worked her shift and went home. The other dancers thought the girl just decided not to come back. It happened from time to time. The dancers who worked the private booths were also sometimes serving themselves on the side to the Kindred customers. Had Holly been doing that?

”Not what I wanted to be dealing with tonight, regardless.”

[Corinne Delatour]

​​“Staff come and go. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

Simon would look into it. He'd tap into the connections he had throughout the city, and in no time at all he'd have footage of Holly Prescott stumbled drunkenly onto a tube station platform. The tides of life, and the city, had simply carried her on elsewhere. There was no shame in that. No reason for concern.

Unless...? If Corinne’s thoughts were a calm, glassy lake, that thought - that word - was a pebble hurled into it’s centre, small enough to be inconsequential really, but large enough to send ripples fanning out across the surface and disturbing the dark waters beneath. There was nothing to worry about, unless there was something to worry about. It was a ridiculous thought, the kind she ought to have dismissed but, of course, some compulsion forced her to latch onto it.

Corinne chewed the inside of her cheek, too-sharp teeth worrying at soft flesh.

“You don’t think this could be anything to do with the Faceless, do you?”

[Sansa]

“They know better than to operate around the Gallery.”

Sansa didn’t like the Faceless. While they were fairly harmless as far as London street gangs went, their aesthetic was garish and decidedly not to her taste. They utilized all sorts of ways to render facial recognition useless, from plain grey masks to clashing patterns and something called “dazzle camouflage” makeup. Truly awful.

“Besides, they peddle in second-hand tech, refurbished implants, that sort of thing.” She thought for a moment. “Though perhaps we should find out what hardware Holly was running around with.”

She stood up and walked to the curtains, parting them just enough to look out on the heaving dance floor. Sansa bit her lower lip as the Beast stirred in her belly, craving something warm.