Damn. It was back.

He couldn't see it, couldn't sense it with any of his normal senses, but he
*KNEW* that it was there -- watching him. It hunched over behind him, its
unblinking, saucerlike greenish eyes boring imaginary holes into the back
of his head. He growled, focussed, and increased the already formidable
array of shields swirling about his aura.

He returned to the book in his lap, a rather confusing Kabbalistic piece
about the Qliphotic reflections of the Sephiroth, trying to make sense of
the connections. It all fit so easily, yet he knew there was something
deeply wrong about the whole process. 

His confusion stemmed not from the book itself, but from the strange
feelings of deja-vu and unnamed hunger that welled up within him as he read
it. Somehow, somewhere before, he had understood all this, and used it. It
was coming far too easily, far too readily. He mustered what will he had
left to put the book down, close it, and refuse to read further.

Then the visions flashed in his head again, of being held upside down by
the ankles by a boy twice his size, as another ravaged his head and back
with an aluminum baseball bat. Flashes of pain and cruelty poured through
his mind, interspersed with brief images of himself -- hands covered in
blood, he stood triumphant atop a mound of skulls, his face curled into a
mocking, animalistic sneer, his eyes glowing red, power and strength
radiating from his physically frail frame. 

"NO! No, no no no NO!" He barely realized that he was speaking aloud, or
that he had grabbed the book and flung it across the room. It hit the wall
and fell on top of his sleeping cat, who awoke with a start and shot under
the bed.

Panic welled up in his throat. "Ohh, I'm so sorry sweetie... come to
daddy... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you... you okay kitten?" He
knelt down and picked up the small, black Burmese, cradling her in his arms
and petting her soft skin as she rubbed her cheek against his hand... and
the urge suddenly overtook him to snap her neck with his hand, strangle the
life out of her, and fling her body to the ground. 

He panicked and stiffened, as the cat looked lovingly and trustingly into
his eyes, and fought the urge off as he always had.

He looked down at his beloved friend, the only creature in the world he
could trust, as a tear fell down his cheek. "Lillith, what the hell am I?
What is wrong with me?" 

The cat only responded with a contented "aiaoouu", and flopped her head
back into the crook of his elbow, purring loudly. His heart melted, and he
sat down gently on the bed to pet her back to sleep. This was all horribly,
horribly wrong.

The feeling of being watched intensified... all his hairs stood on end, and
his muscles re-tensed. The cat stood up, stared at a corner of the room,
and began hissing, backing away slowly. 

The hissing and whirring of the various machinery in the house began slowly
to resolve itself into a barely-perceptible voice... or perhaps it was only
his imagination. It was all so infuriatingly subtle... He closed his eyes
and pulled his perception *outwards*, *slipping* slowly through the
*cracks* in the *velvet curtain*, and began to *perceive*.

The thing sat across from him, its wrinkled, bananna-yellow flesh hanging
loosely off its skeletal frame. Its twin sickly-green eyes stared at him,
its black pupils never dialating, its beak-like rubbery mouth pulled into a
tight V, the corner twitching slightly.

"I've told you to go away. Tell your Master I'm not interested."

Without speaking, the thing slowly began to communicate to him.

*Master created you. You were His before you were even born. It is not your
choice to serve Master. You will serve Master willingly, whether you
realize it or not. I am merely offering you a choice in how your service
will proceed. Surely you understand Master's goals are your own. You were
created thus. It is your destiny to bring to fruition Master's plan.*

"I don't trust your Master. I don't trust you. Go away."

*Master does not like to see you suffer. Master wishes to ease your pain,
like you wish to ease all pain. Like he wishes to ease all pain.*

"Then do it. Have him obliterate me now if he wants me to stop hurting.
Otherwise, tell him to leave me alone and stop making me want to hurt
people. I won't have it. I'm not a pawn, and I won't be controlled by my
own instincts."

*Master does not force. Master wants you to serve willingly and in love.
Master will show you if you just agree. Please come back to Master.*

The thing hopped down off the chair and scampered to his feet, raising one
hand up to take his. He stepped back in disgust and gripped the crystal
around his neck, lancing the thing with a burst of pure black anti-light,
disrupting it into a swirling cloud of yellowish vapours. 

"I said no."

He sighed, knelt, and openned his bag. He pulled out his silver chalice,
studying the celtic knotwork across the top of it, pushing on the lapis
lazuli stones to ensure they were still properly seated in the silverwork,
running his hands over the tiny crack in the elderwood base that had formed
when he dropped it two nights ago. He closed his eyes, knelt over the
chalice, and pulled the brass krys out from his belt. 

The cat watched from behind his shadow as he sliced his wrist and poured
his lifeblood into the bowl, filling it to its brim. He dropped the knife,
screamed out and gripped his wrist tightly with his other hand, as the
wound began bubbling over with black tar. His wrist writhed and twisted,
black worm-like tentacles knitting over each other and fading back into the
alabaster of his skin, leaving a faint but fading scar behind, as his
pupils dilated to fill his irises, then his whole eyes, with an utterly
non-reflective black on black on black.

He opened a vial of blue powder, and poured it into the chalice. He reached
behind him, grabbed his oak staff, and thrust the lower end into the
chalice, stirring the bubbling fluid into a green-black sludge. 

He pulled the staff out from the cup, the end dripping green paste, and
began painting his sigils onto the stone floor of the room... expanding
eccentric circle after eccentric circle with embedded chords and pentagrams
and hexagrams and heptagrams until the floor was covered with a
cosmological map of the Near Realms. He closed his eyes, and stepped into
the strange fractal-like pattern in the far corner...

The room exploded into a thousand shards of glass, falling to the floor
soundlessly. Behind the facade, the familiar warehouse of the Malkavian's
cyber-realm began to peer in from the darkness as his eyes adjusted to the
new lighting.

"It may suck, but at least it's not home."