Night's black void opened, stretching up and out into the distance. Silence hung about the indefinable expanse like a black curtain. As the sun's last pink veils faded from the horizon, the darkness was split by a pair of glowing yellow eyes. They rose slowly, as Parker hoisted himself off of a pile of old shoes. After a pause, he quickly opened the door in front of him, prepared for an assault, but all appeared to be silent. Lamplight from another room colored the plaster hallway a faded yellow. Estelle Walker, the elderly woman who called the small Westchester house a home, was nowhere to be seen.
        Parker strolled through the house, not quite ready to start this particular evening's roaming yet. He walked up a wooden staircase, his boots clopping on each step. Locating a spacious bathroom on the house's second floor, Parker began to remove his clothes. Standing before a mirror that dominated the northern wall of the room, he examined his warped body. Human feet rested on black pads, an eighth of an inch off the ground, made to insulate sound and heat. A slender, muscular black tail hung between his legs, ending halfway between his knees and the ground. Black, blunt claws tipped otherwise ordinary fingers. In the mirror stared a face mangled with fangs and black fur, over which peered a pair of sinister feline eyes. Parker's matted, almost-blond hair veiled part of his face as he looked at the thing he was becoming. He looked for a while at the thing he had become.
        The shower spray roared to life, a hot torrent of water gushing from its plastic massage-nozzle. Parker's tight muscles eased at the warmth and the pressure, and he washed away the grime and dirt that had accumulated over his body in recent days. He stood under the scalding water for several minutes, and he thought.
        “I'm an orphan again,” he thought weakly. The suffocating, terrifying, yet altogether seemingly appropriate - and completely insurmountable - force that was Mobea began to slip from his life. Parker felt her dying throughout him, somehow. Her power, the power from which he came, which he would have taken for his own if he could, was gone now. The one apparently static element to the entire psychedelic fucking nightmare that has been the life of Christian Parker had been eliminated.
        “Freedom...is here at last. I wanted it...now I have to find something to do with it.” Parker leaned his head against the shower wall, and allowed himself approximately fifteen minutes to adjust - all that was necessary for a guy like Parker. Radical, horrible change has become almost natural to him at this point.
        Almost stable but still as clueless as ever, Parker emerged from the shower and began to towel himself off - naturally forgetting to dry his tail which would later go on to wet his pants somewhat uncomfortably... after all... who remembers to dry their friggin' tail?
        After donning the new clothes he grabbed from his apartment, to replace those that were utterly destroyed during the fighting of the past few nights (events that Parker's mind already began to place under a heading entitled The Second War...) , Parker cleaned up any traces he might have left in the house, and made his departure, the Harley's engine growling into the northern darkness. In the house's attic, within a seaman's chest, under several folded blankets, the inert form of Ma Walker remained unaffected by his departure.
        For two or three nights Parker had been moving, uncertain whether he would go back to the city that for some godforsaken reason had become his home. It called him in so many ways. Too many mistresses did Christian Parker have in New York. His heart drags him there. His loyalty drags him there. His most seductive, and most deeply powerful mistress of all would not be served poorly, either. The greatest force beckoning Parker back to New York, the very force that he would now learn to command, or let himself be destroyed, as always, was his scalding hunger for revenge. The need for Oliver Blackwell's traitorous blue blood roared in him so deeply, so thoroughly, that Parker feared that he would simply take his best shot at the man in broad streetlight, as it were.
        Parker knew he couldn't let it end that way. Words scented with sunlight and the fragrance of roses whispered in the rear of his mind. “Don't sacrifice yourself,” whispered his Angel. The very thought of the vampiric lady set Parker's mind into turmoil. His body recoiled and delighted, his blood soared at her very thought, rushing in his ears and heart, and somewhere deep in his mind, some part of Parker's self-righteous, indignant conscience moaned bitterly. It chafed at this control, this blood-borne control that he simply allowed himself to fall under. But that little moan was easily drowned out by the beating of Angel's heart, too often close to Parker's own. He could almost feel her velvety brown locks brushing the side of his face as he tasted her wrist in his mind, again, for the hundredth time.
        And in Angel's love Parker could think of little else, but he knew that somewhere his own heart, and not his Kindred passions, was making its own considerations.
        Trying to clear his thoughts, Parker turned to Blackwell. “The prince must die...” thought Parker, somewhat ineffectively. He could think about how much he wanted to kill Blackwell all he liked - but that would hardly do it. It would likely only put him in a more dangerous position.

His blood whispered to him: “Mobea is dead. Long live her Childe.” In his mind's eye, Parker saw New York City aflame. Oliver Blackwell's ashes scattered to the wind, his blood drying on Parker's lips, the Gangrel sat on a rooftop of Staten Island, the sovereign of New York City, and he commanded all he could see. The image stroked Parker like a mother's kiss, and he yearned deeply to bring chaos and terror to that traitorous bastard and all who would prosper under his wing. Parker groaned with the weight of his self control, and he forced himself to think, to consider, to wait.

        On his left, the Catskill Park loomed like a dark green goliath. Parker could almost smell the wind sifting through the trees, and briefly considered whipping to the left and going through, maybe find a nice rock to sit on or something. After some consideration, he decided that the risk of potential vivisection was that much greater off the main roads, so he continued to follow the asphalt strip into the night.
        Forty-five minutes later, Parker saw a sign for a town called Ravena, and decided that it was as good a spot as any for his next stop. For the last two nights Parker had trekked north from New York City, carving out safe houses in which to spend the day. New City and Newburgh (everything in 'upstate New York' was either 'New Something' or named after some ancient Greek city-state...what the fuck?). Both were fairly comfortable. Neither were worth staying in. Cities were OK places, if one didn't spend enough time to be noticed by local vamps. The last thing Parker needed was another city's worth of fucking vampires to put up with.
        Ravena was a fairly small place. A main road stretched through most of the town with some surrounding neighborhoods. Parker drove through it in just under ten minutes, then looped around to the outskirts. After stashing his bike on a side street, Parker took to the pavement, slipping through the dark, quiet streets looking for a place to go. Dawn still several hours away, the deep and familiar boredom returned to Parker's mind. Boredom too, wanted to drive him back to New York City, but he just couldn't bring himself to return yet. Traitorous allies, dangerous enemies, and worthless friends were all things he needed to be away from right now.
        The house sat like a mausoleum at the end of a one-way street. Rotting wooden shingles peeled away like scabs, and one lonely light burned in a second story window. In five minutes time, the house was Parker's and his belly was full again.
        Sitting at the elderly woman's (they are often elderly women, somehow) kitchen table, Parker gazed out the window into the leaf-littered yard, and the freshly turned patch of earth near the back. Reflecting on the uselessness of this trip, and the problems brewing on his doorstep, Parker winced at the thought of his coterie, whom he would have to face in continued disgrace. Their lack of respect and trust for him burned like a hot coal in his gut.
        Her thought of Hannah. Beautiful, self-serving Hannah. She'd follow you into hell and back if she got something shiny enough out of it. She'd always be there to bail you out, if she had the time. She was a tough little bitch though, and that Parker liked. She was a woman who could get stuff done when necessary.
        He thought of Cliff. Wonderful, humanitarian Cliff. Cliff, who would do anything for a friend, so long as it didn't raise too many uncomfortable questions for him. Cliff, who wanted so desperately for everything to be good and nice and comfortable. His stomach soured at the naiveté that the young Brujah constantly displayed. He also lingered bitterly for a moment on the sheer duplicity of his friend's feelings. Not to mention his own. Cliff seemed oddly overwhelmed with concern for Parker's well being. Sadly, that did not extend towards any attempt at understanding him. The end result was little more than Parker's indignance over such feigned emotion. Then there was the subtle (and not so subtle) sense of judgementality that the Brujah exuded. He simply didn't understand. Not that Parker could claim to be the most understanding individual in the world. He found it somewhat difficult to relate to people with relatively normal lives and mainstream values. There were no easy answers for Parker, and he had little time to waste on those for whom there were.
        Still, they were, for better or worse, his friends. They had saved his life, and chances were that he had largely only served to cause them trouble. But paranoia crept into his thoughts as he considered Ethan, who worked for Blackwell even now; Ari, whose loyalty apparently remained with the Tremere; and Nathaniel, who for reasons he found difficult to explain, he missed more and more every night.
        He leaned into the wooden chair, and stared up at the ceiling, helpless. Parker was alone, with nothing to draw on. All his enemies, and even his less trustworthy associates, stood like iron giants, and Christian Parker, a scrappy little ball of fur and claws, was pretty much waving his tail around in the wind. Slowly, he curled his body forward, chin resting on his knees, fingers massaging his skull, a dull growl rising in his throat. Sometimes there was just too much. Too much powerlessness, too much trouble, too much to worry about, too much to protect, too much to pay for, too much to deal with. It made Parker want to kill. More.
        Sharply, he leapt across the kitchen and put his fist through the wall opposite him. The fist was undamaged. Parker gripped the stove and continued to growl, froth dripping from his jaws, desperately attempting to control himself. Parker flipped on the gas jet in front of him, and blue flame sparked to life. Parker's eyes shone in awe of the fire. This stuff that his kind were terrified of. This stuff that the Tremere could throw at will. This stuff that couldn't hurt him.
        Parker screwed up his courage, tightened his fist, and held it into the gas jet. His eyes went wide with pain and he held himself still for a fraction of a second before roaring loudly enough to shake the house and throwing himself onto the floor. His hand, a pink, white, and slightly blackened mess throbbed with a hot ache.
        “Shit,” Parker thought, and clutched the burnt, but still largely intact limb. “So maybe it can hurt me a little.” He lay on the ground in silence for several minutes, listening to the sound of the burner, watching tiny rivulets of blood glisten on his mutilated hand, feeling, within the back of his mind, the beast pace the floor of its cage, shocked and appalled at this treatment. A line from an old monster movie played in his head. “The villagers say he's afraid of fire!” He thought of the power in Mobea, to withstand the light of the sun for an entire day. He would be strong, but if he wanted to survive, he would have to be even stronger.
        As the sky faded from black, to blue, to the inevitable piercing golden rays, Parker curled up in a corner of the house's basement. The moment the sun struck the horizon, the strings suspending the body of Christian Parker were cut, and he laid still, wrapped in a few shreds of blanket.
        Fleeting dreams of a fierce, fanged mother fading into ash danced through Parker's mind as he lay comatose. A sword flashed, suspended into eternity on its inevitable course. When he awoke he knew he dreamt, but restlessly.
        The next evening, Parker lay in the cool, dry darkness of the basement for several hours after awakening. He considered the few options that seemed available to him. Maybe Angel could help him. Maybe if he could scrape some money together he could start to develop a little leverage for himself. That really seemed to be what it was all about. Finding a way to maximize the amount of stuff you control or own, and making other people dependent on you... fucking bullshit. Make money, own people, get big nasty claws and scare the crap out of 'em, get them addicted to drugs, get them addicted to blood... there had to be a thousand ways to control people. Parker revolted at these thoughts, then laughed at himself. Controlling people was probably a little kinder than slaughtering them with little discrimination. Though his distaste came not so much from the thought of the innocent people he'd be manipulating, but from the idea that this is just what the elders wanted. Spend a few months rebelling and hating the authority, figure into a few people's schemes, then grow up and get a respectable job controlling local newspapers or something...The Ventrue and the Tremere and the Toreador's silly Camarilla... with its power for power's sake... its precious order; its pathetic arts. He wouldn't have any of it. Fuck the Camarilla.
        'But fuck 'em slowly and fuck 'em hard...' Parker thought dryly. He would see how the climate of New York City developed in the infant days of Blackwell's regime. He would see how much freedom of action he could manage... he would see if he could kill Von Brauer, if the opportunity presented itself.
        “Easy, Parker,” he reminded himself. “Can't fuck this up with impetuousness. That's exactly what they're waiting for...” Parker would try to make some connections... look up some old friends... try to make some money... talk to Angel... he would need to plan. It would be an ordered chaos that Parker lay onto New York City. He would control himself. Parker looked to his skills... wondering what he could possibly offer anyone. His near-claws flexed slowly at his sides, testimony to the bloodshed that was his specialty. He could kill for money. He could help the Giovanni run drugs through Queens. He could use the street gangs, somehow. He could use Slant, somehow. Slant always seemed like a potential ally waiting out there in the dark. He came off as a guy way out there on the fringe, more than happy to help his fellow malcontents stir up some shit. He could do all these things. If Blackwell planned to shift feeding grounds closer to Manhattan, it might be easier for Parker to act in the outlying boroughs... unless Sabbat activity picked up... which, if Parker's hunches about Blackwell paid off, it likely would.
        Parker's confidence began to swell. If he could manage to be just opportunistic enough, he might have a chance at making it... if he couldn't, he'd either have to go underground, out of town, or just let himself be killed. Christian Parker, not one to give up easily, gathered his clothing, his weapons, his bike, and began to head south once again. There were things he needed to do.