[FlashBack-Star] At The Hillton in Manhattan

Star went up the elevator straight to the hotel room she had shared with Madison, there she found the lights on although the bed seemed to be unused judging by its look from the main door.

As she slowly walked in the room a noise became more clear, someone was crying or at least sobbing somewhere in there. After crossing the second arc in the hallway of the room she found Madison holding her knees while sitting on the room floor devastated: her eyes were red and soared for hours of sleepless crying.

When Madison set her eyes on Star she said between crying and soared throat noises.
"I... I don't know... what have I done?!"

The woman inconsolable held strongly to Rebecca crying out loud grieving for her lost family. No words would came out but nevertheless Star felt the knife deeply sink into her heart forcing her to empathize with the monstrous woman.

Right at that moment Star cellphone rang. It was Phillip.
"Are you Ok? is she with you?"

Then he said.
"We have a vehicle under the Hilton for you two. Come down whenever you can."

The vehicle was indeed a black van. Lawless was in front of it dressed with a pair of black jeans and a long sleeve dark blue shirt with golden cuff-link on its wrists. He opened the sliding door letting the mortal inside who sat quietly on a sit there in a corner; inside were two other men, dressed in black, neither of whom was known to Star.

The sliding door closes before Rebecca could get in it and Phillip offered her to sit on front with him, as he drives out of the Hotel. He had a worried expression.

With the car on the move as they went out of the basement parking lot he said.
"You've really worried me with that call. Can you explain me what is going on?"

I want to get her a good defense attorney, try to get her a insanity plea . Spending the rest of her life in a Asylum compared to the death penalty or consecutive life terms in a correctional prison where she could get killed my the inmates for killing child red has to be better. Maybe she could even get some serious psychiatric help? God knows she needs it.

Lawless heard everything carefully and kept silence for a long minute before saying.
"What worries me the most about this whole thing is how upset you seem...

I mean, you're not responsible for what she did. For what you're telling me you never ask or even wanted her to kill anyone, so that's not your fault."

He turns left in a close corner, making a short silence to focus on the driving for a second. Then continues.
"I think is a good practice. Your idea to spend time practicing your 'people skills' with her but ... I mean you really need to detach, you know? This shouldn't affect you this much. Its not healthy."

" ugh... Now I have to worry about this bitch talking and dropping my name in court!

So what now?"

Phillip shrugs and replies like he is thinking outloud.
"You could just erase her memory. I mean there's Dominate, isn't it?"

Then thinking more deeply about it he continues.
"I thinking killing her just rises more questions, unless it looks like a suicide or something...

...also if you consider sending her to an asylum is a waste of all the time you've invested in her, either way her life is ruined and her whole family dead because of her, there's no turning back from that.

My point being, you can either kill her or make her look dead, because turning her to the authorities means to ask for a big boon from another Ventrue to erase her memory and gain nothing in return..."

" No, what kinda Ventrue would I be if I can't even deal with a simple mortal...

Phillip seemed to be in favor of such line of thought...

I'll kill her and give her some cement shoes , drop her in the river...

.... No.. Better yet .. i'll dismembered her body and cement her into the fucking walls of my club. Less risk of being seen dumping her body.

When suddenly he reacts with an expression that said 'are you fucking with me?' Trying to figure out if Rebecca was kidding or not. When he realized how serious she was he said.
"I thought you were trying to show how Ventrue are you, about controlling the mortal but you sound like a Giovanni" he says joking at the end.

He takes a second to focus on the driving again as they passed by Central Park and went straight to Trump Tower then said.
"I mean, how is it going to look? That you have to kill her to control her? You know?"

" ...I want to handle this matter quietly. And I don't want the FAMILY finding out. God knows I dont need any more strikes against me while I have been trying to make progress.

Lawless smiles and says.
"A little too late for that, you called The Count first. If you ask me that'd be the last vampire I would want to find out about this mess. After all you have an image to take care of, don't you?"

I WISH I had the ability to just wipe me from her mind. but I dont...

He nods and replies.
"My Sire would said first you need to learn how to deal with the human mind before using the power of the blood on it."

...I would utterly destroy her mind

He shrugs.
"That leave no mind to control."

Then donate her to the "kitchen". I mean a child killer has to be someone's feeding type and its more profitable to keep her as such. She would simply vanish from the public eye, having her existence serve a better purpose in the end.

Phillip replies.
"Is not the public eye the only one you need to worry about. Giving your toys to the kitchen won't get you permission for a new one, that's for sure."

Finally the vehicle arrived to the last level of the underground parking lot. Lawless found a place to stop the car, allowing everything in it to get down and start walking down to the elevator.

Madison seemed very off, confuse and depress to the brink of suicide. She hasn't stop crying or find any comfort whatsoever. At the first opportunity she went to hug Rebecca's arm cuddling like a cat around it.

I just dont understand how a sweet, timid inexperienced, repressed religious housewife fucking snaps like that ... And people wonder why I dislike mortals.. .."

Phillip smiles but keep his thoughts to himself thinking that Madison could hear him, now that the van had stop. A second later he adds in a much cryptic way.
"Not everything is what it seems."

The following went without any trouble, allowing Madison a room where she could have a bath and sleep a little while Lawless and Rebecca went to a different location inside the Ivory Tower hotel to talk privately about the situation.

Lawless closed the door behind Star. The office was simple and quite ordinary, specially since Rebecca wasn't really in the mood right now to pay attention to meaningless details at this moment.

Phillip said.
"Well Madison will stay put until tomorrow, I have my man doing turns to guard her door. She's not going anywhere."

Phillip and Rebecca went talking for more than an hour about different angles and possibilities. As the conversation went on she got more and more aware of the real power the kindred had over the city.The influence that she and him had over the police department was stunning.

Star started to relax a little seeing things in a different way. Eventually the brainstorm gave her a stroke of genius, it was all so clear in her head that she acted right away: asking Lawless in exchange for a Boon to give a false information about Madison being spotted getting out of the state by Buffalo; instructions to the Ivory Tower to change Madison's look; and finally standing to talk to her, promising her that now they were together everything was going to be just fine.

As the night was over, Madison got medicated with some sleeping pills that'd help her sleep also comforted and changed in her looks with a darker hair and different hairdo.

After six weeks of daily contacts and visits to Madison in her hotel room. Some romantic, others to simply catch up and get closer. For Star it was obvious was emotionally dependent from day one but why she'd kill her entire family was a mystery.

Listening to her story, made Star aware of how sad her life was, her husband abused her and her two children, both physically and emotionally, a kind of rape that wasn't sexual perse but equally diminishing: always insulting, humiliating and undermining any resemblance of self confidence.

The elder son was already abusing his younger sister and would have been scolded to defend herself. Since that's not a woman place to say 'no' to a man. She should always respect her brother, no matter what. Madison not allowed to work and even social services had to come one to order her husband to send his daughter to primary school.

They had seven years of marriage, gathered together by the congregation. God Madison really hated the congregation now. The communications sent by the religious group described Roy (Madison husband) as a pillar of their community and her as little more than a conflictive whore.


That night when Star and Madison met was the first time she got the courage to defy her husband and try to escape him. She had considered suicide many times but that'd leave her children alone with who she considered a monster. She really felt alive and free for the first time, realizing in contrast how sad her life actually was.

The night of the murder her husband came home angry as sometimes it would happened, yelling at her to the top of his lungs how worthless she was. It was in front of their kids, she cried when she admitted it, she dare to say something, she doesn't quite remember what it was but a second later he was all over her lashing her with his belt like a whip.

Star had seen the bruises and the lashes wounds the first time they were together after the incident, deep cuts done with brutal force using the leather belt.

Her kids did nothing, didn't even cried or yelled. She knew from that moment they had broke inside. She had to do something, she had to. She cried inconsolable.


Star realized as a Ventrue the power that emphasis on words had on the human mind but what would she do when a simple word wasn't enough. How to hold that emphasis long enough for a phrase?

David reminded her about the connection given by eye contact was more than just a mere requirement. It was a window to the human's subconsciousness. He told Star that humans were often controlled by subconscious drive, an unstoppable force.

Rebecca remembered her conversations with Madison with great detail, her words of empowerment and resolved desire to be free went deep into the woman subconsciousness, compelling her to defy her husband despite the consequences. She remembered the connection, she felt like she was talking to someone hiding deep inside Madison.

David gave a collection of books about psychology to Star, one per week that they'd discuss in the next meeting. Jung, Freud, Winnicott and Rogers theorized the existence of a True Self, the Master of the Persona, the social face that people often confused with their true self but also the shield that protected the True Self from thing it could not accept or deal with. That true self in many books is call the 'Id'.

A stroke of genius came to Star on a night of the week six. Dominate allowed the Vampire to address directly the receptor's unprotected Id!!