Leila Monroe

Leila Monroe clawed her way through a brutal Creation Rite and stepped naked from the earth with the precepts of the Sabbat etched in her heart. She saw her holy mission was to share with the City of Angels the dark nightmare that is life under Sabbat rule. Leila served as a ghoul under a Lasombra archbishop in southern California and endured beatings and humiliation as the virtual slave of this twisted monster. She lived through more than 15 years of training and indoctrination before her Embrace. Her sire saw Los Angeles as a rotten plum ready for plucking by the Sabbat’s talons. The anarch free state was nothing but a loose collection of coteries, and the Camarilla presence was negligible. Leila was to be the instrument that brought L.A. to heel. Embraced in the early 1940s, Leila, a stunning beauty, moved into L.A. society and cut through the crowds like a knife. She turned down numerous offers of screen tests and studio contracts while drawing many film executives into her web. She established her base of operations within the studio system, and she had a string of horror films made in the early 1960s that clearly broke the Masquerade, including The Vampire Prince and the horror classic They Are Among You. In the late ’60s, she extended her feelers into the anarch and independent spheres. Finding the vampires of L.A. to be an undisciplined bunch, she easily used her charm and poise to bring coteries under her influence and remold them into Sabbat packs — at first. By acting as an egalitarian, accepting Cainites of every type including Caitiff, she was able to secure the nominal support of the lawless vampires. This openness made it even easier to attract the outsiders to her call. Leila encountered problems when she tried to exert some control over the vicious anarch packs in the inner cities during the early ’70s. These packs were gangbangers Embraced as muscle, and they had only slightly more respect for the Sabbat than they did for the Camarilla. Leila’s packs lost numerous skirmishes. The failure to consolidate the inner city cost Leila the Bishopric of Los Angeles. She had to simmer quietly as the title was given to a Pander who was held up as a symbol of the Sabbat’s acceptance of all Kindred. Leila smiled during the ceremony, as a bloody bile rose in her throat. She decided then and there that, titles and honors be damned, her influence would still be what got things done in Los Angeles. Leila spent the rest of the ’70s and early ’80s consolidating her interests in the B-movie and adult-film industries, and she began to move into illicit drug activities and other areas. It was during a heroin deal gone bad that Leila’s sphere of influence first brushed against with what she would eventually refer to as “those Eastern bastards.” A group of buyers vanished from a dock in the harbor and wasn’t heard from again. When Leila investigated, the only clue she discovered was a six-inch talon. Although Leila never paid much attention to L.A.’s large Asian population, except as a source of drugs, this new development prompted her to look more closely. Unfortunately, every tentacle of influence she attempted to extend into Chinatown returned as a bloody stump. The consistent co-option or outright vanishing of her agents sent Leila into a panic. Was this a new Camarilla incursion? Or perhaps something more sinister? Her questions were answered when a wizened Asian man arrived and claimed to be an emissary from a group of vampires known as the Kuei-jin. All that is known of the meeting is that at its end a trembling and pale Leila and the old man left the room together. She has received orders which forbid interference in Chinatown and which make it clear that Cainites are welcome for two hours after dusk only, no feeding allowed. Westerners who break these rules are typically never heard from again. Currently, Leila is playing a waiting game. The bishop is making angry noises that are being met with disapproval by some of his superiors, and Leila has brazenly claimed the title of priscus for herself, to the bishop’s consternation. Her biggest active concerns are the rumors that the Kuei-jin are moving out of the Asian neighborhoods and are beginning to stake new territories in areas controlled by her sect’s packs. Continual agitation by the anarchs and Camarilla agents keeps Leila busy putting out brushfires before the bishop can take action of his own. She remains certain that she can CHAPTER ONE 27 eventually claim the entire city for the Sabbat — and prove her claim to pricus — but under all the mounting pressures, her devotion to the precepts of the Sabbat is becoming shrill and unsteady of late.

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