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She awoke thinking about the sun.

She was not sure whether she had been dreaming.  Opinion differed on whether her kind could dream, but when she opened her eyes the image dancing before them was not that of the darkened bedroom but rather that of a golden eye glaring down at her from an azure sky.  She looked up at it, mesmerised, even as her eyes streamed with painful tears.  She could feel the grass between her bare toes, almost uncomfortably warm, and smell the pollen blowing across the fields of Picardy.

And then the vision was gone, replaced by blackness.  How long had it been since she had truly seen those sights, smelled those smells, felt the sun upon her face?

She knew how long, of course.  She simply did not care to remember.

She closed her eyes again, lying as still as she had during her daytime slumber.  Her cheek was pressed against the pillow, which was exactly the same temperature as her dead flesh.  She was still thinking of the sun, of its splendour, of the pleasure and pain that came only from beholding true beauty.  Some nights, she thought she would like to gaze upon it again; to luxuriate in its magnificence even as it burned the flesh from her bones.  For that to be the last thing she saw before she crumbled to ash…  What experience could be more exquisite than that?

No, she had too much to do to indulge herself like that; too many things still to see and admire.  And one reason in particular to continue her existence for as long as possible.

She felt him stir behind her.  She remained where she was, unmoving, even when she heard the snap of the beside lamp and felt its light penetrate her eyelids.  He turned over as he reclined once more, loosely putting an arm around her waist.  He nestled against her back, his bare skin just as smooth against hers as the silk sheets that covered them.

“Are you awake, my love?”  His mouth tickled her ear, as light as the breeze in her dream.

“Oui, mon Chèr.”

He kissed her on the shoulder, threading icicles along her spine, and she turned her head to meet his next kiss with her mouth.  She rolled into his embrace until they lay facing one another in the soft lamplight, their faces inches apart.

“Another night,” he murmured.

“Another night together,” she replied.

“Another night of tiresome people expecting me to solve their stupid problems, to listen to their petty worries, to soothe their troubled brows.”

She smiled, somewhere between adoringly and teasingly.  “And you do it so magnificently…my Prince.”

He laughed at that, but the laugh faded in an instant.  “But when will it all end?”

“It never will,” she told him.  “Not if we are careful and clever and never turn our backs on danger.”

“But I’m…tired, Suzie.”  He threw his head down onto the pillow with a despairing sigh.  He only called her that when they were alone together.  And as it did now, it always made her snarl disapprovingly.  “Can’t we just…stay here tonight?  Just the two of us?”

She shook her head slowly, sorely tempted for a moment.  He looked so youthful tonight, not that his appearance could ever really change, his hair a wild tangle of unruly curls.  It was almost like the feeling that came over her when she gazed upon some work of art; she was transfixed, fascinated, her dead heart swelling with adoration.  She knew he would no more insult her by trying to use his powers of presence to influence her than she would try to do the same to him.  They did not need those disciplines with each other.  When she saw him wearing that boyish half-smile, she felt herself melt inside.  She wanted to laugh and cry and clutch him to her and never, ever let him go.

Instead, she said: “Firstly, how can one so young say he is tired?  You do not yet have three hundred years.  Secondly, you will address me as Madame la Sénéchale, as befits my dignity…”

He laughed again.  “Mais bien sûr, Madame la Sénéchale.”

She tried her hardest not to laugh too, but could hear her own voice shake with barely-suppressed mirth.  “And thirdly…my Prince…we have a city to run.”

“Very well,” he agreed, mock-grudgingly.  They had this discussion, or one very like it, at least once a week.  It seemed to come more frequently in recent years.

There had been a time, maybe a century ago, when he had leapt out of bed each evening, eager to enforce his praxis over the city and its denizens, ready to wash his hands in rebellious vitae if that was what was required.  The Anarch uprising in Los Angeles during the 1940s had only redoubled his zeal.  Challengers had risen and fallen and met their final deaths; Jochen Van Nuys, Julian Luna, Sara Winder; none had been able to take his crown.  That had been before, though; before the world started to change and change, ever more quickly, ever more frighteningly.  She herself had seen so many wars, reformations and revolutions during her long existence…but this Twenty-First Century was different.  They all felt it, those of them old enough to remember the previous ones.  She thought maybe even the kine felt it in their insensible way.  They were stumbling their way through interesting times.

He glanced at the ornate ormolu clock ticking on the bedroom mantelpiece.  “But it’s still early, Suzie.”  When he spoke to her alone like this, his long-suppressed Virginia drawl came out, drowning the clipped, icy tones of the Prince.  “Chaz will not come calling for at least an hour.  We do not have to rush.”

When she looked at him now, she saw the man he was when they first met, at Versailles on the night the Bastille burned.  He was already Kindred then, but not yet hardened by it.  She had had to teach him how to be hard, how to survive the tides and tribulations of time.  She had pulled strings and whispered in ears for decades, until finally that night in Atlanta the Ventrue Jan Pieterzoon, Hardestadt’s cold-eyed lapdog, had arrived bearing tidings from the Inner Circle.  The Camarilla, he had informed them, was looking for an agent to represent its interests in the new state of California…

The rest, as they said, was history.

When she looked at him now, though, it was as if all those years had never passed.  He seemed lost sometimes, filled with uncertainty.  He, whose name was dreaded on the streets of this city, looked like a frightened child to her.

She wondered sometimes exactly what she had done to him after Versailles, whether any of it had been worth it.

Of course it had.  Like her occasional yearning for the sun, such thoughts were an idle indulgence.  A weakness.  Even so, she could not be hard-hearted where he was concerned.  She simply could not.

“No,” she said, moving closer until their naked bodies touched beneath the sheets.  “No, we do not have to rush.”

He tightened his embrace on her, showering her with kisses; her mouth, her shoulder, the hollow of her neck.  She gave another snarl as she uncoiled like a tiger, pushing him onto his back, raising herself above him with her hands pressing against his sparsely-haired chest.

“Why, M-madame la Sénéchale,” he stammered, grinning widely enough to show his ivory fangs.  “This is most, uh, unexpected.  All of a sudden, you seem to be in quite some hurry indeed.”

She let him see her fangs in turn.  “Oh, do be quiet…my Prince.”

“Make me.”

She pressed her wrist over his mouth, hard, feeling the softness of his lips, hissing a little as she felt his fangs pierce her skin.  He seized her forearm, holding it to his face as he drank, even as his other hand traced shivering patterns across her back.  She managed to resist the burning urge inside her for a whole two seconds, before she threw herself down across him, skin against skin, and buried her own teeth deep in his neck.

They had been together, intimately, for two hundred and twenty-nine years, one month and nineteen days.  It was the one thing she was absolutely sure about when it came to her long and complicated past.  In all that time, they had never once coupled after the manner of mortal men and women.  They could probably have accomplished it, had they ever desired to do so.  She thought she could still manage, if she really tried, to summon the blush of life into her cheeks, her skin, her heart, her lungs; she thought he could still rise to the occasion too, if he wanted it enough.  The truth, however, was that the first time they did this, in the sea cave near Toulon as they waited for the boat from the British ship-of-the-line that would carry themselves and François into exile from the nascent First Republic, had forever ruined any other form of intimacy they might have tried.

She remembered, hazily, what it was like to be a mortal woman, so long ago.  She remembered the lovers she had taken, men and women both, the sensations she felt in her warm, human flesh as they groped and fondled and explored together.  Compared to what she felt now, though; his vitae on her tongue, as sharp and overpowering as the finest vintage, even as the throbbing golden agony of his bite flowed through her veins like cleansing fire and their mutual bond grew ever deeper and stronger; nothing could compare to this.

Sex really was vastly overrated.

When it was all over, she rose from their four-poster bed and walked to the enormous wardrobe that lined one side of their chamber.  The bedroom was richly appointed, all glistening red silk and dark, polished wood; partially to conceal the fact that it was a room without windows, but mainly for her own comfort and ease of mind.  It was the bane of her clan that she genuinely could not bear to be surrounded by ugly things.  The massive door to the room, black iron and brass secured by a plethora of bars and locks, would not have seemed out of place as the entrance to a bank vault.

“Now, what should I wear for Elysium tonight?” she mused aloud as she slid the wardrobe open.  It was filled to capacity with fine clothing, a multitude of different fabrics and cuts, everything from vintage items that had been in fashion a century ago, and would be again, to the most avant-garde modern designs and unique pieces she had personally commissioned from the city’s most skilled tailors and dressmakers.  She ran her hands along the rows of hanging garments, luxuriating in the different colours and textures, the perfect counterpoint to the last lingering sensations from their mutual suckling.

“Something plain,” he advised, languidly, from the bed.  “Your beauty needs no adornment.”

“I was not asking for your advice,” she shot back. He was lying with the covers thrown back, proudly displaying his nakedness.  She was not the only beautiful one in the room, she reflected, captivated again for a moment.  He looked as though he had been sculpted by Michelangelo.  “You should probably get dressed too,” she suggested playfully.  “Unless you are planning to hold court like that.”

“And what if I did?” he wondered.  “Which of those lickspittles would dare point out that the Prince had no clothes?”

“Get dressed.”

“Very well.”

“I dreamed about the sun again,” she told him as she finally selected something airy and flowing in peacock blue.  She looked over in time to see the fear he could not keep from his face.

“A premonition?” he asked, seeming like that frightened child again.  He knew her greatly developed power of auspex occasionally gave her glimpses and forebodings of things yet to come.  It was something that had stood them both in good stead over the years.

“I do not know,” she confessed.  That disturbing thought had not really occurred to her.  “I hope not.”

“I…”  He hesitated as he rose and crossed to his own slightly smaller wardrobe.  She watched him move, unable to help herself, bewitched by the interplay of muscles beneath his alabaster skin.  “I worry sometimes.”

“I know, mon Chèr.”

He started to leaf distractedly through shirts and suits.  “We…we are old now, Suzie, by the standards of modern nights.  You are older than I am.  We…  You have heard rumours of this…beckoning some of the elders feel?  So many of them have left these shores…”

“Yes,” she admitted with a shudder.

“If you…?”  He paused.  “If you did…?”

“I would tell you, of course.”

“Of course.”  He was silent for a moment, pretending to consider the clothes in front of him.  “You would not leave me alone…would you?  I could not bear to be alone.”

“Nor could I,” she assured him.  She forgot getting dressed, crossing the room to put a hand on his shoulder, turning him around and then gathering him to her with comforting arms.  “We will not be alone.  I do not know what the future holds, but I do know we will face it together.  Those vows we made to each other, two centuries ago…  I will not break them.”

“Nor will I.”  And when she looked into his face, she knew he meant it with every fibre of his being.

When they were dressed, she in shimmering blue from neck to ankle, he in an exquisitely tailored mouse-grey suit, a black silk shirt and matching tie, his chaotic hair scraped into some semblance of order and his gold signet ring shining on his finger, they finally emerged from their chamber into the even more opulently decorated anteroom.  Half a dozen respectful, liveried ghouls were already waiting to attend upon them.  One was seated at the baby grand piano in the corner of the room, tinkling the ivories with a little Mozart for the Prince’s pleasure.

“My Prince, my lady Seneschal.”  The butler, a kindly-faced man who appeared to be perhaps fifty years old despite having served them for eighty or more, bobbed his head in greeting.  “Today’s newspapers, my Prince.”  He indicated where they lay stacked upon the side table beside Vannevar’s customary high-backed leather armchair.  “The evening editions.”

“Thank you, Hudson,” the Prince graciously acknowledged as he settled into the chair.  “We will take some refreshment before we go out for the evening.”  Feeding from each other simultaneously left neither of them any more or less hungry than when they had started.

The butler bobbed again.  “Very good, my Prince.  I will send somebody up presently.”

“Amelia,” Suzanne decided, stalking over to the French windows that stood open to the room’s wide balcony.  “We have not tasted Amelia in a while.”

“Mm, yes, young Amelia,” Vannevar agreed, showing a fang.  “Such a sweet girl.”

“My Prince,” the butler acknowledged.  “Also, Mr Price is waiting downstairs.”

“Of course he is,” the Prince wearily observed.  “I suppose we should see him first.”

“I suppose we should,” Suzanne echoed.

“Very good, my Prince.  I will show him up.”  The man exited the room, leaving them alone with the pianist and the other servants.  They paid them no more heed than they would the furnishings around them.

“Chaz is eager tonight,” Vannevar said, picking up the New York Times from the pile and grimacing at its front page.

“Making himself indispensable as usual.”  She stood on the balcony, looking out over the blackness of the bay as she listened to the music.  The Golden Gate bridge was strung with lights, marking the entrance to their city, and the lighthouse on Alcatraz Island winked brightly out in the darkness.  The evening air was cool and fragrant, stirring her hair and the intricate folds of her dress.  All in all, her craving for beauty was more than satisfied for the time being.

She heard the butler’s gentle knock but did not turn around.

“Mr Charles Price,” the servant sonorously announced before withdrawing.

“My Prince,” she heard Chaz ooze, as oily and cloying as ever.

She left the balcony to see Chaz stooping beside Vannevar’s chair, head bowed to kiss the Prince’s outstretched ring, a gesture of fealty that he somehow managed to make look vaguely mocking.

“Good evening, Chaz,” Vannevar sighed.  “I’m glad you could make it.”

“The pleasure is all mine, my Prince.”  Chaz turned his snake-eyed gaze on Suzanne as she re-entered the room.  He was dressed, as usual, in the height of men’s fashion, a fresh pink rose in his buttonhole, folded designer sunglasses hanging from his breast pocket and his black hair greased back from his cruelly handsome face.  “My lady Seneschal; you look simply ravishing tonight.”

“Chaz.”  She extended her hand too, even though the touch of his lips upon it made her skin crawl.

“Is that by Pucci?” he asked, eyeing the dress as he released her hand.

“Hardly!” she retorted.  “It is a bespoke piece.”  Every conversation with Chaz was like this; a circling, dainty-footed duel of one-upmanship and unspoken insults.  She was sure there were some members of her clan who were not this way around one another, but she did not think she had ever met them.

“Well, my compliments,” Chaz countered.  “Not everyone can carry that look off, you know.”

Vannevar cleared his throat theatrically, to forestall the cutting reply that was already forming on her lips, she knew.  Sometimes it was very useful to be able to anticipate one another in that way.  “And what brings you out tonight, Chaz?”

“Oh, the normal business,” Chaz replied, his eyes lingering on Suzanne.  “Elysium commences at midnight, although I assume you will want to make an entrance after everybody else has arrived…”

“And tonight’s venue?” the Prince wondered.

“Oh, we’re at the de Young again,” Chaz confirmed.

“The de Young…”  Suzanne could barely contain her distaste.  “That new building is so…gauche.”

“It’s modern,” Chaz conceded, “but surely better than that faux-Egyptian pile they used to have?  That place used to bring me out in hives.”

“You Toreadors can argue architecture later,” Vannevar cut in impatiently.  “What else do I need to know?”

Chaz deigned to look at the Prince again, wearing an expression of sly amusement at the reaction he had managed to provoke in Suzanne.  She wished she could knock it off his smug face.  “Markos informs me he will be a little late to Elysium.  He’s running down some leads on those thin-bloods in North Beach.  He said he should have some solid information for you later tonight.”

“Good.”  Vannevar nodded, stroking his beard thoughtfully.  “I will speak to Markos when he does arrive.  I am…concerned by this thin-blood question.  We need to do something about it.”

“And…”  Even Chaz looked uncomfortable for a moment.  “Regent Strauss requests a personal audience at your earliest convenience.  He has some…Tremere business to discuss, but of course he wouldn’t tell me what it was.  You know what the warlocks are like.”

Vannevar grimaced again.  “That doesn’t sound good.”

Suzanne suppressed a shudder, picturing the Tremere regent’s hard, grey face, the pale inhuman eyes lurking behind the tinted glasses he habitually wore, that unbearable stillness he affected.  Strauss was one of the few Kindred in the city who genuinely unsettled her.

“Tell Strauss that if he comes to the de Young tonight, I will make time for him,” the Prince decided.  “Although I am sure I will end up regretting it.”

“Very good, my Prince.”  Chaz gave a little bow, again just short of open mockery.  “My lady Seneschal.”  And then, as oleaginous as ever, he slithered out of the room.

When he was gone, Vannevar rose from the chair, pacing nervously around the room as the piano continued to play.  “What can Strauss possibly want?  He only acknowledges my existence when something…awful is about to happen.”

She laid a hand upon his arm, making him stand still.  “Do not worry,” she told him, soothingly.  “He will want to beg some boon from you, although of course he will not lower himself to do so openly.  The Tremere are weak these nights; you know this.  Since Vienna fell, they are a shadow of what they were.  They are nothing to worry about.”

“You’re right,” he replied, stroking his beard again, his tone that of somebody trying hard to convince themselves.  “Yes, they’re weak.  Weak.”

Another discreet knock at the door heralded the butler’s return.

“My Prince,” the servant intoned.  “There is another caller downstairs.”

Vannevar spun to face him, visibly discomfited.  “Another caller?”

“A courier, my Prince.”  The butler did not look too happy about it either, giving Suzanne a nervous glance as he continued.  “He says he bears a message from the Prince of Paris, to be delivered only into the hands of the lady Seneschal.”

“The Prince of Paris?” Suzanne asked, perplexed.

“My lady.”  The butler reluctantly stepped forward, extending a hand to show something he had been holding concealed at his side up to now.  “He offered this as a token of his bona fides.”

She took the small round medallion the butler held.  It was in rose gold, with an intricate flower pattern picked out upon it in tiny rubies and emeralds.  And, in silver, it bore the elaborately-curled letters “F. V.”

“Yes,” she said, with mounting disquiet.  “François gives such tokens only to his most trusted servants.  Send this courier up.”

The butler nodded.  “My lady.”

“François…?”  Vannevar sounded scared again.  “How long has it been since last we heard from him?”

“Too long,” she replied.

“What can it be?”

“We will see very shortly.”

The courier, when the butler ushered him into the room, was another ghoul.  She could smell it on him.  He was a smooth-faced, apparently young man dressed in elegant black, with full pink lips, sharp cheekbones and shining blonde hair piled on his head.  Just François’s type.

“Monsieur le Prince said I should give this only to you,” he announced, producing a plain white envelope from about his person and offering it to Suzanne.  “He said I should also bear your personal acknowledgment back to him.”

“Merci,” she said, taking the envelope, turning it over to see the crimson wax seal imprinted with the Prince of Paris’s personal crest.  She broke the wax and removed the folded sheet of notepaper contained within. “Ma chère Suzanne,” she read aloud, before trailing off into silence as she saw the rest of the message.

A terrible hush fell over the room, broken only by the quiet tinkling of Mozart.  She was aware of Vannevar’s eyes, fixed upon her.

“What does it say?” he asked, softly.

She let the note drop from her suddenly nerveless fingers and flutter to the parquet floor.

“What…?” her Prince impatiently urged.

“It is a warning,” she said.  “We need to get Chaz back in here at once.  We need to cancel Elysium, summon Strauss here too; Markos, the primogen council…”

“Why?” Vannevar demanded.

“There is a terrible danger coming to San Francisco,” she told him, and the stark terror she saw written on his face broke her still heart.  “We have to leave the city.  We all have to leave as soon as we can.”

END?