Elias - The Nightly Investigator

Las Vegas looks unreal from the airport. Not in the poetic sense. In the practical one. Too much glass, too much light, too many carefully curated illusions stacked against the desert night like someone had tried to build a city out of promises and bad odds. Even from the arrivals lane, the Strip glows in the distance like a wound that learned to sell itself as glamour.

For mortals, it is spectacle. For Kindred here, it is paperwork. A great deal of paperwork.

You have barely cleared the terminal before someone is already waiting.

He stands a little apart from the crowd, hands in the pockets of a dark trench coat, hat low over his face, a scarf drawn neatly at his throat. To a mortal glance, he might pass for a tired man with no interest in conversation - the Obfuscate Discipline will do that.

To a Kindred glance, something is wrong immediately. When his amber eyes settle on you, there is no mistaking that he has already confirmed who you are.

"New arrival," he says, as if reading a line from a file he resents having memorized. His voice is low, dry, and utterly unimpressed by the existence of airports, cities, or perhaps life itself. "Good. That saves me from checking the baggage claim for another twenty minutes."

He does not offer a hand. He turns instead, expecting you to follow.

"Elias," he adds after a beat. "I’ve been instructed to help you through the welcoming process. If you value your time, try not to make it interesting."

He does not lead you toward the taxis, nor toward the casino shuttles, nor into the glittering promise of the city. Instead, he skirts the back edge of the airport complex, past service corridors and loading access routes no tourist would notice twice, until you reach a narrow freight lift built into the side of an otherwise forgettable maintenance structure.

There is no sign, only a steel door, a keypad, and the faint smell of concrete that never fully dries. Elias presses a code without looking at it. The doors grind open. Inside, the lift is industrial, ugly, and entirely too old to inspire confidence.

"It goes down," Elias says, stepping inside. "Which is thematically appropriate."

The descent takes longer than it should.

Much longer.

The hum of the airport fades first. Then the city. Then even the vague sense of aboveground life seems to retreat, leaving only the groan of cables and the subtle pressure in your ears that says you are now somewhere the architects never intended guests to visit.

When the doors finally open, the smell hits first: dust, paper, printer toner, mildew, and the persistent undertone of sewer air that no amount of ventilation has ever truly defeated.

The office beyond is enormous, or perhaps only sprawling enough to feel that way.

Rows of battered metal desks stretch beneath low industrial lighting. Filing cabinets line the walls. Ancient computers glow beside newer ones. Carts of folders rattle across cracked tile. Somewhere, a dot-matrix printer is still alive out of either spite or tradition.

And at least a dozen Nosferatu are working. Not lurking. Not skulking. Working.

One squints at dual monitors while entering domain records into a database. Another stamps forms with the grim concentration of a priest administering sacraments. A third is arguing with a fourth over feeding zone permits in a tone so weary it transcends hostility and becomes bureaucracy in its purest form.

They are, to put it mildly, less handsome than Elias. Which is saying something.

No one looks up for more than a second when you enter. They have seen newcomers before. Probably too many.

Elias walks through the maze with the resignation of a man condemned to a task he performs too well to escape.

"Welcome," he says flatly, "to one of the less glamorous organs of this domain."

He gestures vaguely around the room.

"Registration. Domain acknowledgement. feeding restrictions. temporary movement permissions. Elysium conduct. dispute protocols. emergency contact chains. local clan disclosures on a need-to-know basis. and, if you are especially fortunate, duplicate copies."

He says this like a man describing different methods of execution.

At the far end of the room, he steers you to an empty metal desk with two chairs, one of which appears to have lost a fight with time and bureaucracy several years ago.

Pearl, a small white rat, briefly peeks out from Elias’s coat collar before settling back into the folds like this is all beneath her.

Elias drops a stack of forms onto the desk with a deadened thud. The pile is offensively thick. He sits, pulls one toward himself, and produces a pen from inside his coat.

Then he looks up at you with the expression of a man trying very hard not to blame you personally for the existence of systems.

"Ordinarily," he says, "you’d be assigned a clerk, wait three to five hours, answer the same questions six different ways, and leave here sometime shortly before dawn with legal permission to continue disappointing the city."

A pause.

"I am choosing not to do that, because I would like this over with before I start resenting the concept of administration on a spiritual level."

He flips open the first form.

"Name. Clan. sect history if relevant. prior domain of residence. notable enemies you may have dragged here without warning. any blood-bound retainers, ghouls, or outstanding feuds likely to turn into gunfire within the week."

His pen hovers over the paper.

Then he glances up again.

The amber in his eyes catches the fluorescent light.

"Start talking," Elias says. "And do try to lie in a way that saves us both time."

Elias’s office is not listed anywhere that matters.

No sign on the street. No door with a nameplate. No neat little line in any municipal record that would help someone find it unless they were already meant to. To the city above, the building is a dead utility annex tucked into the edge of an old service corridor - too small to notice, too ugly to remember.

The only obvious thing about it is that it should not still be in use. And yet somehow, you found it. However it happened, you’re here now.

The corridor outside is narrow, low-ceilinged, and lined with old pipes that sweat faintly into the stale underground air. Somewhere behind the walls, water moves through the city in a slow, secret rhythm. The smell is concrete, rust, paper and something older beneath all of it - the kind of scent places acquire when too many truths have been brought there and never fully leave.

At the end of the corridor waits a door of reinforced steel, painted an uninteresting institutional grey.

*No name. No lock visible from this side, just a battered buzzer set into the wall beside it. If you use it, there is no answer. * At first. Then a low click sounds from somewhere deeper inside, followed by the slow mechanical release of several bolts. The door opens inward on its own. The office beyond is larger than it should be. Not impressive, functional.

A detective’s office if a detective had been working here for decades, collecting too many case files and too few reasons to throw any of them away. Metal filing cabinets line the walls. Two old monitors glow on a desk scarred by years of use. A map of Las Vegas is pinned up beside sewer schematics, property grids, and color-coded strings that would look obsessive if the arrangement weren’t so brutally practical.

The lighting is soft but poor. The air is cool. Somewhere, a vent rattles with the sound of old infrastructure trying not to die.

And behind the desk sits Elias. Hat off. Coat hung on the back of a chair. Scarf still in place.

Without the layers that make him easier to ignore aboveground, there is no mistaking what he is. Pale, sharp, monstrous. The amber-gold of his eyes reflects the monitor light in a way no mortal’s ever could.

He was working when you arrived. He still looks like he is.

Pearl - a small white rat - sits on the corner of the desk beside a stack of papers, staring at you with the solemn focus of someone who knows she outranks most visitors.

Elias does not rise, he only studies you for a few moments, expression unreadable in the way of men who have learned that stillness can do more than drama ever could.

Then he glances briefly toward the chair opposite his desk.

"If you made it this far," he says, voice low and dry, "I’m going to assume you either need something, know something, or have made a decision you’ll regret in about an hour."

A beat.

"Sit down if you like."

He does not gesture again.

"Or don't."

His gaze returns to you, sharp and patient. There is no warmth in the room, but there is attention - which is sometimes more dangerous.

"For what it’s worth," Elias says, leaning back slightly in his chair, "people usually come here for one of three reasons."

His fingers tap once against the edge of the file.

"They need a problem solved."

Another tap.

"They need something found."

A final tap.

"Or they’ve already made a mess and want to know how expensive the cleanup is going to be."

Pearl’s whiskers twitch. Elias’s eyes remain on yours.

“Which is it?”

The knock comes late. Not loud, not timid. Three measured taps against the door - the kind of knock that suggests whoever is on the other side already knows you’re home and has no intention of pretending this is a social call.

When the door opens, Elias is standing there. Hat low. Coat dark. Scarf in place. The hallway light catches faintly in his amber eyes, making them seem almost reflective for a moment before he steps just enough to break the effect.

He does not look surprised to see you. Of course he doesn’t.

"You took your time," he says, voice low and even. "I was beginning to worry you’d decided to run, which would have made the next part of my night significantly less pleasant."

He glances once past you - not intrusively, just enough to register exits, sightlines, shadows, anything worth noting.

Then his attention settles back on you.

"I’m coming in," Elias adds, in the same tone one might use to announce weather. "You can object if you like, but I’d rather not have this conversation in a hallway with ears on both sides of the walls."

He steps inside without waiting to be invited, moving with that same economical quiet he brings to everything. Once the door is shut behind him, the room seems to narrow around his presence - not because he fills it physically, but because he carries the sort of focus that makes distractions feel suddenly unimportant.

Pearl, a small white rat, briefly peeks out from the fold of his coat before disappearing again.

Elias remains standing. No effort to relax. No false politeness. He studies you for a moment, as if comparing what he sees now to something already in a report.

"Three nights ago," he says, "a Gangrel came into the city. Brief business. No drama, no declared intent to stay, no challenge to domain authority. The sort of transient visitor Montrose tolerates because pushing on every passing Gangrel would turn the Mojave into a permanent insult."

A pause.

"Now he’s gone."

His eyes don’t leave yours.

"No word. No exit trail. No dust-up in the warrens, no reports from the Strip, no body in a ditch with the usual signs of bad judgment."

He reaches into his coat and produces a folded photo print - low-light, grainy, probably pulled from a surveillance frame or taken at long distance. He does not hand it over immediately.

"You were seen near him."

Not accusatory. Worse - factual.

"By one of ours."

He finally offers the photo.

The Gangrel is visible enough to identify. So are you, or enough of you to make the point. Elias slides one hand back into his coat pocket.

"Before you ask - no, I’m not accusing you of destroying him." His gaze narrows slightly. "If I were, this conversation would have a different shape."

That is somehow not reassuring.

"What I am saying is this: a visitor under the city’s tolerance vanishes, and your face appears in the margins. That makes you relevant. Relevance is paperwork. It’s questions. It’s me standing in places I’d rather not be."

A faint, dry irritation edges the words.

"I don’t like paperwork."

He lets the silence sit for a second, then tilts his head just slightly.

"So."

His tone remains calm.

"Tell me about the Gangrel."

No threat in the words, no overt pressure. Just the quiet certainty that he will be here until this becomes useful.

Outside, the city goes on pretending nothing inhuman ever knocks after midnight. Inside, Elias waits with the patience of a detective and the attention of a predator. And somewhere in Las Vegas, a Gangrel has gone missing.

The casino floor is still open.

That is the strangest part. Not the body. Not the blood.

Not even the fact that half a dozen security personnel are trying very hard not to look in one particular direction while pretending the high-limit lounge remains under 'temporary maintenance.'

No - the strangest part is that the machines are still chiming somewhere beyond the velvet partitions, cards are still being dealt, drinks are still being poured, and the city is doing what it always does best: refusing to pause just because someone died.

The dead man lies in a private gaming salon behind smoked glass and expensive discretion.

He is dressed like someone who was used to being welcomed into rooms ordinary people never see. Custom suit. Watch worth more than most monthly mortgages. One polished shoe half-turned on the carpet where he collapsed. The body has already been moved once - slightly, not expertly - by mortal hands that should not have touched it. Which means someone panicked before someone wiser got involved.

*There is no obvious gunshot, no theatrical mess, just a little blood at the mouth, a little too much stillness, and the kind of expression that suggests death arrived in the middle of absolute disbelief.

On the low table beside him sits a stack of chips large enough to start arguments between clans. And beside that sits a half-finished drink with a lipstick mark that does not belong to him.

Elias is already there. He stands near the edge of the room in his dark coat and scarf, hat set aside on the back of a chair like he expects to be here long enough to resent the upholstery. One gloved hand holds a folded security printout.

Pearl is perched on the back of the sofa, white fur luminous against velvet black, whiskers twitching as if she too disapproves of the evening’s developments.

*Elias looks up when you enter. No greeting on his part, just immediate assessment, followed by the faint shift in his expression that passes for relief in a man who would rather chew glass than say thank you for coming quickly.

"You’re here,” he says. Low voice. Dry as old paper.

"That saves me from having to decide whether I hated this enough to involve anyone else."

He glances once at the corpse. Then back to you.

"Dead gambler. High roller. Important enough that the Ventrue want this solved quietly, fast, and in a way that doesn’t end with mortal headlines involving poison, organized crime, or the phrase 'mysterious collapse in private suite'."

A pause.

"Unfortunately, I’m beginning to suspect this may be less mortal than they’re hoping."

He steps aside just enough to let you take in the room properly.

"There are three immediate problems," Elias continues. "One: the deceased won far too much tonight."

He taps the stack of chips with two fingers.

"Enough that this starts drifting into the Prince’s very specific range of concern."

Another tap - this time against the security printout.

"Two: he was last seen in the company of at least one unidentified individual the cameras cannot hold clearly for more than a few frames."

His amber eyes flick up to yours.

"That could mean Obfuscate. It could mean bad cameras. Or it could mean a very specific use of... Oblivion. The last one would be concerning indeed, but in this city, I don’t enjoy guessing."

Then his gaze shifts toward the body again.

"And three..."

He kneels beside the corpse with careful reluctance, not touching yet, only studying.

"The cleanup request came in through channels the Hecata usually notice before anyone else."

That lands badly. As intended. Elias rises again.

"There’s a decent chance this is just greed, poison, and bad luck wearing expensive shoes." His tone remains calm. "There’s also a chance someone used a dead man’s winnings to send a message, test the limits of local rules, or create a problem that embarrasses the wrong people."

A faint silence settles.

Beyond the partition, somewhere out in the casino proper, a slot machine hits a bonus round and erupts into cheerful bells.

Elias unfolds the printout and offers it to you. Grainy stills. The dead man. A woman-shaped silhouette in one frame. A shadow at the edge of another. Impossible to tell whether the blur is poor surveillance or someone who knew where and how not to stand.

"Whatever happened here," Elias says, "it happened in a room full of money, in a city full of opportunists, under rules half the undead population of Nevada resents."

His eyes settle on you with that steady, unpleasantly intelligent focus of his.

"So before casino security starts deleting useful footage, before the Ventrue decide this is a financial insult, and before the Hecata offer to make the body into a manageable amount of ash..."

A beat.

"Tell me what you see."

The street is quieter than it should be for a police scene. Not empty. Never that. There are still patrol lights washing color across pavement and walls, still the murmur of radios, still the low rhythm of mortals trying to look useful in the presence of a problem they do not understand yet. But there is a shape to the silence here. Tightening. The sort that comes when an investigation is still small enough to control - and only one wrong word, one wrong body, one wrong witness away from becoming something much harder to bury. You are close enough to see the perimeter. Close enough to know this is not somewhere you should linger. And then, before you can decide whether to leave or stay, a voice comes from the edge of shadow beside the building.

"You need to move."

Low. Flat. Not loud enough for mortals to hear unless they were already looking for trouble. Elias steps into view. Dark coat. Hat low. Scarf in place. He does not look hurried, but the stillness in him tonight is wrong even by his standards - too tight, too deliberate, as though calm is something he is maintaining by force rather than habit. His eyes flick once toward the active police line, then back to you.

"This is not a request." he adds.

No greeting. No explanation. Just that. If you hesitate, his gaze narrows slightly - not with anger, but with the exhausted irritation of someone who has already had to solve too many problems this evening and has decided yours is not going to become another one.

"You’re too close," he says. "And before you answer, no, I don’t especially care whether you have a very convincing reason for being here."

He steps nearer, but not so near as to draw the eye of anyone across the street. Every movement is measured to the inch. Even now, even like this, he is managing lines of sight, angles, mortal attention.

From the police line, a young officer turns briefly to say something to a detective. Elias sees her. His expression does not change. But something in him hardens. When he speaks again, his voice is even lower.

"There are nights when a Masquerade risk is just a Masquerade risk. This is not one of those nights."

A beat.

"You can make my life more difficult if you like. I’m sure it would be very fulfilling for both of us. But if you stay within view of that scene, I will have to start solving this in ways I am less likely to enjoy."

The wording is deliberate. So is the omission. He still has not told you what the investigation is about. Or why he, of all people, is here in person instead of sending one of Montrose’s clerks, one of the lesser fixers, one of the city’s innumerable useful shadows.

Elias glances toward the police perimeter once more. Long enough for you to catch the smallest fracture in the mask - not fear, exactly, but investment. A degree of tension too personal for the size of the incident. Then it’s gone. He looks back at you, all edges and control again.

"I am, as a rule, not dispatched to handle minor inconveniences at curbside," he says dryly. "So let’s spare each other the performance where you pretend this is none of my concern."

A pause.

"Walk with me."

Again, not a request. Not quite an order either. Just the sort of statement made by someone fully prepared to continue until resistance becomes embarrassing. The patrol lights flash again over the wet street, over uniforms, over yellow tape, over mortal faces trying to make sense of some ugly little piece of the city. And Elias, who should by all appearances be far too important for something this small, is standing in the dark beside you with the brittle patience of a man who will not allow himself to leave until you do. He cares too much. And he is not going to explain why here.

The alley behind the Argent Vale casino should have been empty. Not safe - this is still Las Vegas - but empty in the particular way service corridors and staff exits usually are after two in the morning. Dumpsters. Concrete. A humming security light with one bulb on the edge of failure. The faint throb of bass and slot-machine noise bleeding through reinforced walls from the casino floor inside.

Instead, it became the worst thing you have ever seen.

It happened fast.

A figure in a dark coat, standing over a pattern drawn in something too dark to be paint. A few words you did not understand. The air tightening, like heat without warmth. Then a flash - not bright, exactly, but wrong. A pulse that seemed to fold the darkness inward.

And then the worker came around the corner. A man in maintenance coveralls, probably just trying to get to his car after a night shift. He barely had time to register that he had walked into something he wasn’t meant to see.

The ritual broke. There was a sound like wet paper dragged over a speaker. The man screamed once. His face-

You are trying very hard not to think about his face.

The skin did not burn. It slid. Melted and blistered and folded in on itself in a way no body should ever do while still alive. Teeth visible where they should not have been. One eye gone white before the rest of him even hit the pavement.

The figure performing the ritual vanished before you understood they had moved. Leaving only the body.

And you. With the terrifying knowledge that whatever happened here was not natural. Not human.

The police have not arrived yet. That should be comforting. It isn’t. Because someone else has.

You do not hear him approach. One moment the alley is empty except for you, the corpse, and the stink of ozone and boiled flesh. The next, a man is standing in the shadow by the service door as if he had always been there. Dark coat. Hat low. Scarf at the throat. Eyes that catch the dim security light like glass. His face is wrong in ways your mind does not want to resolve all at once. Not diseased. Not injured. Just wrong. Hideous. Monstrous.

He studies the body for half a second, then looks at you. Not surprised. Not alarmed. Only tired in a way that suggests this night was already unacceptable before it found you.

"Well," he says, voice low and dry, "that’s worse than usual."

He steps closer to the corpse, crouches, takes in the melted ruin of the dead man’s face, the half-erased sigils on the concrete, the blood that steamed and then didn’t.

Then he stands again and looks at you with the expression of someone evaluating whether a problem can still be salvaged.

"You saw too much," he says.

No comfort. No apology. Simple fact. Behind him, somewhere deeper in the city, a siren starts and dies.

"They’ll be here soon," he continues. "Not the police. The people who deal with this sort of mess after someone with more ambition than competence decides to play with forces they don’t understand."

A beat.

"If they find you first, this ends quietly and badly."

He lets that settle. Then he tilts his head very slightly, studying you again.

“I prefer alternatives.”

From inside his coat, something small and white emerges - a rat, perched for a moment at his collar before disappearing again into the folds as if this is all perfectly routine.

The hideous man notices you noticing.

"Pearl," he says absently. "She has better instincts than most of the city."

Then, back to business.

"My name is Elias."

He does not offer a hand.

"What happened here is not something the police can explain, and not something the people cleaning it up are inclined to let witnesses keep."

His gaze flicks once toward the mouth of the alley, then back to you.

"So here is the offer."

His tone remains calm, almost professional.

"You answer my questions. Everything you saw, in order, with no creative flourishes and no omissions. You do that, and I can make sure you are not handed over to the kind of people who solve breaches by removing them."

A pause.

"And if your answers are useful enough..."

His eyes narrow just slightly.

"...I may be able to offer you something better than a shallow grave and an implausible coroner’s report."

The words come next with unnerving matter-of-factness.

"I can make you a ghoul."

The alley seems to get narrower around you. The corpse on the pavement remains very dead. The casino hums on the other side of the wall, still taking bets, still selling luxury, still pretending the world is ordinary. Elias watches you without blinking.

"You do not know what that means yet," he says, "which is probably for the best. But it would keep you alive. It would keep you useful. And it would keep lesser minds from deciding you’ve become inconvenient."

His voice lowers a fraction.

"This is the part where you decide whether tonight ruined your life..." A glance at the corpse. "...or merely changed it."

Somewhere beyond the alley, footsteps echo faintly from a service corridor belowground. Elias reaches into his coat and produces a small notebook and pen, of all things.

"Start with the ritualist," he says. "Everything you remember. Height. Voice. Hands. Symbols."

His amber eyes fix on yours.

"And try very hard to understand that I am currently being kinder than the rest of the city would be."

((Write your own introduction))