Driving with the Devil as Copilot

-Narrated by Mikha-Two-Heads, Nosferatu antitribu, deceased in early 1999.

Yeah, sure, you think controlling all the Sabbat beasts that made up the Zoo of Horrors was as easy as slapping muzzles on their big mouths, right? Try bringing order to a snow avalanche and telling people to "leave calmly and peacefully..." (clearly mocking tone). Let's see how you'd handle twice as many Cainites as are usually involved in a siege, plus their war ghouls, who are not exactly known for social grace, plus contacts, allies, bootlickers, fixers, and shovelheads who had no clue what was happening and were already twitching because they could smell fresh blood in the air. Worst part is, Sabbat believe if you want something done right, do it yourself. Which means "no ghouls." So imagine how we managed to keep eyes, ears, and tongues in the city without the rest of the body attached.

We watched key Camarilla havens, like Elysium, to learn who was in town. Tell me, who would suspect that cockroach plague in the Elysium bathrooms was our doing? And who would suspect the pest-control technicians were a pair of Bratovich revenant bruisers, previously "conditioned" by their Tzimisce masters to pass as normal people, just a bit too built?

The Setites, grateful we kept our enraged Serpents of Light from jumping at their poor defenseless necks, repaid us by squeezing information out of the ghouls of almost every Camarilla Cainite with endless sex, alcohol, and drugs. That's how we found small-time Camarilla havens, because of course they'd rather take that prostitute home than dine among cockroaches in some frozen alley flat. You should have seen their faces when they walked into their little love nest and found a Sabbat pack using their bathroom, drinking their liquor, and enjoying home cinema on their Dolby Surround setup. Then it was just a matter of dropping the Camarilla leech quietly... well, quietly enough. Sabbat need to vent aggression now and then. After that we asked our Lazarene friends for a little soul swap: put a Sabbat spirit in the helpless Camarilla body, replace him, and let the rest be acting. Voilà. A full-performance Sabbat-brand spy.

Then came mapping the Nosferatu highway to see what was brewing below. We used "accidental" gas leaks, power cuts, drains clogged by ice, and so on, all conveniently inspected by our ever-helpful revenants. Then a couple of tips to Prague police about black-market warehouses, making sure the law-and-order boss was tied up elsewhere and couldn't react in time, plus a healthy dose of street violence in central bars, clubs, and parties. End result: cops dropped all the same, and fewer pawns for the Camarilla.

The bad news was that damned Vassily was a first-rate paranoid, and an insufferable fop on top of that, and he had built a real airtight defense around Prague. Aside from the Independent Ghetto in the old Jewish quarter, the little Prince had watchers all over the city. Coupled with Camarilla economic and territorial control, that meant we could barely secure havens for Sabbat infiltrators. So almost all of them ended up in the Ghetto with the Independents, and that was volatile as hell: either we'd get sold out, or both we and the Independents sheltering us would get burned. Lucky for us, they were never too interested in looking inside the Ghetto, only making sure no one inside poked their head out where it didn't belong. That was enough for them.

The Giovanni did not like working with Sabbat, especially after what happened with Genevra, but we still had unsettled accounts. Forgiving those accounts and sweetening the deal with a fat stack in their belligerent fingers made them put differences aside... for a while.

Best part was the Ravnos antitribu business... local Ravnos do not trust antitribu one bit. Then again, who trusts a Ravnos, from anywhere?

Thing is, Ravnos are clear on one rule: "cumpanya is cumpanya." The antitribu picked fights with nasty Camarilla vampires, and then cumpanya law kicked in. You piss off one cousin, now you've got a whole pack of Ravnos furious at you. Blood is blood, and the one who screwed who he shouldn't gets screwed by the Tradition of screwing the one who got screwed. Hell.
Long story short, the Sheriff and the Scourge got so busy taking down Ravnos after Ravnos in their mission to cleanse the city that they were exactly where we wanted them: too occupied to look elsewhere.

What happened later with the Ravnos... well, friend, it saved us a lot of favors and a lot of money. You know what I mean, right? Heh heh heh...