This is Jezebel in Hell

From the private journal of Catherine De Volanges

We are all being used and so, it is only in that pile of remorseless excrement that our own ability to use others grows out of, stronger, thanks to the very fertilizer that fed it. And if your elders are of the Tremere, you best cultivate your interests out of their own, allowing the roots of your treachery to curl around their ankles and eventually drop them back into the shit they slung your way.

I am nothing else but a survivor able to weave my wants through their demands. And that is everything.

My world is not simple. It is fraught with unseen malice which floats just below the surface of one’s happiness. It collides not only with ones hopes but rips a hole through the hull of strongest soul to drown one in the coldest gush of reality—theirs. I do not crave power for the sake of power. I actually never have. I crave it for the freedom it promises. Even then I must adapt my definition of freedom for not one of us can ever truly be free. That is simply a fact. Unless you are one of us, you cannot understand the full extent of that assertion, that simple not exaggerated truth.

Those of us who have accepted that thread of knowledge have spun a world within it for ourselves. The rest, perish.

I have survived what would have ended most. And I will continue to do so. I will flourish from the decay of their souls, the waste of their ignorance and the light of their cold indifference.

And when it is too late, when they are lost, they will see…my roots were stronger then theirs.


( What is there to see?  )

You cannot walk away from love. But you can run away from yourself once you have destroyed every last vestige of love that you had. Aidan would say that you can replace it with hate, a stronger emotion, more potent and useful, like a poison that turns your soul black. I would have liked to say that no one had control over me then, but that would pride clouding over the truth. Aidan had control over me, Marc had even more and both them wished for the Catherine that had been turned--cold, calculating. I, however, always wondered whether there was even anything else other then that Catherine, twisted through a prism of black glass, a vestige of everything that could have been decent in society's wide definition of it, but was not--ever--for as far back as I can remember. I came to believe that some people were just born evil. He made me believe it, but whereas everyone else hated me for it or channeled my energy for their ends-ends they could not themselves fathom to accomplish-only he understood it and nurtured it like a wild orchid. Ah, the men in my life and unlife. Mmmm. With him, I felt that it was alright to be myself. But his price is so high. Still, I wonder, will I end up paying it to have even the darkest light shine onto me? I dare not tell him that his pursuits frighten me. A tout prix, he says. A tout prix. I know that we will lose. That I will lose him. He who is brother, father, lover, friend, mentor, enemy, to me. And then what? Then what? Then the world truly ends. The last somber refrain in an opera that only I can hear. Then I would have completely lost myself for I doubt that Marc will have the patience to save me from myself. Forget those that cross my path.There are few men that truly accepted me, even less whom I respected. Most of them are dead now, or I, dead to them, so I believe.

( Run like wild horses )

Versaille, Paris, Pre-Revolution, February 1789

"Oh! That infuriating...tart!" Spat out Madame du Barry as she stormed in with her entourage on her tailcoats or train, rather. "She is wearing another new Rose Bertin gown. I must change. Help me! Undo my corset." She barked out to her gaunt servant girl, who had not eaten anything in four days except the remains of Profiterole that was hardly bursting with cream, flaky Pain au Chocolat and, a dry Éclair that was downed with flat Champagne, never-mind the fact that she never actually owned anything even remotely resembling that of the wardrobe of Du Barry or even her former apprentice, Catherine du Volanges.

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