Something to Believe In

After everything is done
I hate myself for what I've become...

-- Nine Inch Nails

You approach the table where the young artist is seated. He doesn't notice you at first, intent as he is on his work. You look over his shoulder at what he's drawing -- a breathtakingly detailed portrait of a young man possessed of an almost unearthly beauty. Clearly, he's very talented. And you're not the only one who's noticed that -- a small handful of club patrons are hovering nearby, snatching peeks from time to time at the progress of the work. Some of them glare at you jealously as you approach, and move in a little closer to the artist as if staking a claim.

He is pale and slender, a little malnourished-looking, with misty grey eyes and a streak of purple paint in his uncombed blonde hair. His clothes are of the mildly trendy thrift-shop variety; a faded pink dress shirt tucked into worn jeans, with a battered black leather trenchcoat draped over the back of the chair. You can see a pewter rose pin on the lapel of the coat. Virtually everything he's wearing has at least a few smudges of paint, charcoal or plaster on it somewhere. He has an air of nervous intensity, almost obsession.

His eyes appear to be fixed on someone across the dance floor; he's barely glancing at the paper as the sketch takes shape almost of its own accord. He seems to be almost entranced by whatever he's seeing. Following his gaze, you see a red-haired young man who almost resembles the image on the paper, although nowhere near as exotic-looking, talking to a tall, strongly-built woman in what looks like designer travelling clothes. As the drawing becomes more detailed, you see the artist adding decidedly fanciful touches -- pointed ears, an uncanny luminescence in the eyes.

But he also seems to be becoming increasingly frantic and upset as he sketches, and eventually, with a violent motion, tears the page out of his sketchbook and throws it away. Instantly, the waiting observers lunge for the discarded page. Two of them grab it at once, and immediately begin to fight over it.

"Let go! You got the last one!"

"Screw you! Go find your own dreamer!"

The artist glances sadly at them, then back at the young man he was drawing, who, absorbed in conversation with the woman at his side, doesn't seem to have noticed any of this. The ragged traces in the sketchbook show that this is only the latest of many works to be torn out and discarded, and you wonder, if a drawing of that quality wasn't good enough for him to want to keep, just what would be? Still without noticing you, he glances down at the now empty sketchbook and buries his face in his hands, his shoulders trembling slightly. Since his fans are still distracted fighting over the drawing, you take this opportunity to approach.

"What's wrong?" you ask

Without looking up, he murmurs softly "No matter what I do, I can never show them as beautiful as they really are..." This seems strange -- it looked to you as if his drawing showed the young man as much more attractive than he really was. Certainly, he was easy on the eyes to start with, but the image on paper was more than human. "Sometimes I wish I'd never seen them at all... Everything else in the world seems so drab by comparison. But the damage is done -- I could never tear myself away from this place now." He looks up, directly at the man he was drawing. "And the worst of it is, he doesn't even know I'm alive..."

"You're not!" says a voice from behind you, and you look up to see a garishly dressed young man with shocking-pink hair and a mischievous smile. He's wearing a jeans jacket that appears to have been spray-painted lime green over a black T-shirt that says "Vampires Aren't Real. Grow Up!"

"Oh, Mick, don't start picking on me now. I really can't deal with it. Kieran's been off talking to that... that thing all night. He hasn't even looked at me!"

"Thing?" You're confused -- the woman he's pointing at looks perfectly normal to you.

"His fuzzy, furry lady friend!" replies the newcomer.

"Uh... 'fuzzy furry'?" You're even more confused.

The artist looks up with an expression of hopeless despair. "A werewolf. He's dating a werewolf..."

The other man grins, showing slightly pointed canines. "Not just dating -- she's going to have a little furry-fairy baby!" You notice that the woman's stomach is in fact a bit rounded, showing the first signs of pregnancy. "Now, what do you get when you cross a Sídhe and a werewolf? Maybe a wolf-Pooka? Hey, now that'd be cool! I could have fun with one of those! Full of tricks, and teeth! There's advantages to these mixed marriages! Hey, you know, I wonder if she ever accidentally changes shape when they're -- "

"Mick! Stop it! I don't want to have to visualize that!"

"-- Oh, now that'd be one serious set of scratches on his back!"

"Stop it!!!" The pencil in the artist's hand snaps in half and his eyes flare red for just a moment before he gets his temper under control.

Mick jumps back nervously. "Hey! Chill, Clarence! You been drinking Redcap blood or what? I was only trying to make you laugh -- I mean, someone's got to cheer you up when you're depressed -- which is most of the time, after all."

"That wasn't the way to do it," the artist mutters sullenly, staring down at the pieces of the pencil. On impulse, he picks up one jagged fragment and, with a sudden, sharp movement, slams it into his other hand, pinning it to the sketchbook. He watches the blood well up around the shard as you turn pale.

Mick glances down, then over at you and grins again. "You know, I think it's true what they say over on the Malkavian Clan Page. Arikel and Malkav were twins. Brother and sister and sister and brother and all that... I mean, you gotta admit, this boy's batshit as the best of us... The really creative ones always are. And they're the only ones the Changelings can stand. Them, us Malks, and maybe the occasional Ravnos." You're not sure what all this means, but you smile and nod anyway, hoping things aren't about to get even weirder than they already have. He claps Clarence on the back. "So! You gonna introduce me to your friend here, or not?"

Clarence looks up, startled, as if he'd forgotten you were there. He looks down at his hand, hastily pulls out the splintered piece of pencil, and sweeps the fragments and the pooling blood off the table with one hand, which he then absentmindedly wipes on his jeans, where the blood mingles with the paint stains. The wound, meanwhile, heals up without a trace. "Oh! I'm sorry. I was a bit -- distracted, I guess. I'm Clarence Connolly. And this is Mick -- of no last name as far as I know."

"I had one once, but I lost it," says Mick happily. "Left it in a hotel room somewhere, I think. I should check Lost and Found for it one of these days."

Clarence sighs. "I'm sorry if I'm not very good company right now. I'm just a bit depressed..."

"About your, uh, friend going out with the werewolf?" you ask.

"Mostly about just being a vampire!" chirps Mick. "But unrequited love is always a plus. Preferably with about six different people, just to make sure. Toreadors are never happy unless they're miserable!"

"Well, I never wanted to be a vampire!" Clarence retorts, pointedly ignoring the bit about unrequited love. "You've heard the expression 'mercy fuck', I presume? Well, I got a Mercy Embrace. I was, well, a little depressed one day, and tried to kill myself -- succeeded, really -- but one of my patrons found me before I was quite entirely cold, and well --" He shrugs. "He was a Toreador elder, and this was the result. Of course, he insists that he didn't want to let someone with my talent die, but please! I'm not that special!" You start to say that the changelings seem to think he is, and so do you based on what you just saw, but he doesn't let you get a word in. "I'm nothing! He just felt sorry for me, that's all. Or maybe he felt guilty because the last time I'd seen him, he'd said he thought my latest batch of paintings weren't quite as strong as some of my earlier work -- I don't know. None of it matters now."

"The thing is, people will tell you that the Toreadors only embrace the most talented artists, that the clan's whole mission in unlife is to choose the best and the brightest and keep their talents alive for all eternity, all that nonsense, but they don't mean a word of it! It's all bullshit! Most of them are complete hypocrites who only care about art as a status symbol. They don't go to openings because they actually give a damn about what someone's created -- they go to show off their stupid designer outfits and make sure they're seen talking to all the right people. Just like the mortal art world, only worse!"

"I mean, think about it!" He leans forward across the table, warming to the topic, which you sense is a favourite one of his. "If you woke up tomorrow and found out you'd been given eternal life, what would you do with it? Work to perfect an art form? To learn the inner secrets of science and maybe find a cure for cancer? Or eliminate world hunger? Devote yourself to philosophy and religion and try to find some way of living that makes sense and could stop this fucking world from falling apart around us? Or at least try to use what you'd been given to change the world, somehow, for the better? You'd do something worthwhile with it, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? But nooooo! Not vampires! They spend centuries on stupid little power games and petty politics that don't mean anything! I hate them! Of all the people who don't deserve to live forever! Why couldn't it be the changelings, or even the werewolves? Why us? There is no fucking justice in the world! None!"

You're a little confused. "But I thought you hated werewolves?"

He sighs. "Not really. Just that one." He indicates the woman you were looking at earlier. "And even her -- I don't know, she seems relatively reasonable for a werewolf. If she weren't with Kieran, I might consider her a perfectly nice person. It's all circumstantial. Werewolves -- I don't know. Certainly, they hate us. But who wouldn't, really? And most vampires are terrified of them, myself as much as anyone. But the thing about them is... at least they believe in something! They have this beautiful religion, and the spirits talk to them..."

"My Rice Krispies talk to me!" Mick chimes in. Clarence ignores him.

"...And they devote themselves, totally, to saving what's beautiful in the world. The world is their goddess. Everything is alive to them -- everything! Trees, rocks, rivers -- the Glass Walkers even think computers are alive and have spirits in them! I just wish -- I mean, I know I'd make a pathetic werewolf, even more so than I do a vampire. I can't fight worth a damn. But sometimes -- sometimes I just wish I could live in the world they live in, just for one night, with everything alive and beautiful, instead of this cold, empty, fucking wasteland..." He sighs. "Just for one night...."

"You're over-romanticizing, as usual." Mick sounds serious for the first time. "They're holy rollers, Clarence! Like a bunch of shamanistic Jerry Falwells! If their religion says you're evil, then it doesn't matter whether you're an absolute saint of a vampire -- and you damn near are -- they'll kill you just as quick as they'll kill the worst Sabbat psychopath. They aren't even capable of independent thought! They're just pagan-fundamentalist killing machines. Same damn mentality that brought us the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Jonestown, and fuck knows what else! When someone starts saying 'God told me to kill you', they're bad news, far as I'm concerned."

"But they're not all like that!"

"Oh, sure, you've got your little Glass Walker buddy who fixes your computer, but he's like the exception that proves the rule --"

"Mick! Shut up! Don't tell people about him! Do you have any idea what would happen to him if anyone ever found out --"

Mick grins. "I think you just proved my point."

Clarence sighs again. "Well, all right. So perhaps they are a little... intolerant. But at least they believe in something...."

"Yeah, and I can think of at least one vampire that did, too. You finish translating that thing yet?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I almost forgot. The manuscript! I haven't finished it, but I've gotten a fair bit done. She does tend to ramble on a bit... By the part I've gotten up to in the translation, she hasn't even started in on the title topic yet; she's just recounted how she got to be a -- well, an 'angel', as she puts it. It's really quite fascinating." He turns to you. "I found this old manuscript hidden away in an old trunk I picked up from an antique store. The manuscript is much older than the trunk was -- it's apparently from the 12th century -- so someone must have found it earlier, and been hiding it there. It's in Latin, so I had to ask the help of a Classics professor at U of T, and then of course I had to blood bind him so he wouldn't talk about it. I hate having to do things like that, but I really couldn't see any alternative. Anyway, we've gotten the first half done. Would you like to see it?"

• Read the manuscript
• Ask what else he's been doing
• Go talk to Daria Lunardon
• Or talk to The woman in the ripped jacket and her friend
• Back to main page
• Other options to be added shortly...