Marco thought for long moments, the thug had earned his pay this time around. He held up twenty two hundred dollars. The thug ripped the money out of Marco's hand and was gone down the street in moments.

Marco looked up towards to the star absent night sky. He hated cities, especially big, sprawling, loud, void of all soul and culture, cities like this one. This 'City of Angles' was anything but, especially when demons like he and his kin were allowed to roam freely every night.

His lead was a rich brown guy, who liked hanging out at the Skybar, and liked spreading his money around. Yeah, that was a good place to start. Still, spotting a specific Arab, regardless of what he drove, especially if the owner liked showing off his cash, might be a little more involved than a simple snatch and grab job. It was more than he had to go on a few minutes ago and it was the most promising lead he'd gotten since being handed this task.

What in the hell was Simon doing? Marco had worked with the man on many an operation and had done a lot of things together. It wasn't outside the scope of his experience to work with one rival house over another. In that it made sense. They were seven people in unfriendly territory and their leader had taken on an almost unhealthy obsession with taking down an entire House. Not just Kenneth, the murderer of Alessandro, but all of House Dukart. That was something they had never tried, and for good reason. The Duces would never allow a vampire House to have open war against another.

Oh, those pompous ass Europeans were happy to let the minor Houses squabble over scraps, feud, do battle with, and kill members of each other's House's, that was perfectly fine. But the outright eradication of a House by another? That would be met with swift genocidal justice, that special brand of justice that only vampires seemed capable of.

Still, he knew that Simon had to know that House Himura was only using them to get the most profit out of the situation. If that bitch, Fumiko could disavow any wrong doings in the eradication of House Dukart, and focus that blame on the seven of them, she stood to gain control over the entire western United States coast. That might be a bad thing, or it might be an ok thing. Call him old fashioned, but he always preferred a diffusion of power rather than the consolidation of it under one umbrella, regardless of who's umbrella that proved to be.

He looked up at the almost blemishless black curtain that was the night sky, only a few of the brightest stars shown through the surrounding lights of the city. He sighed heavily and shrugged his shoulders. If this was their course, then so be it. He had been with Simon too long to second guess his friend now.

Stolen story; please report.

He picked up his phone and dialed Sofia. The phone rang once before he heard the woman's voice on the other end, "Have anything useful this time?" she asked distractedly.

"Hi babe," Marco responded cheerfully. "Did you miss me?"

Sofia's tone changed, her voice dropped a few octaves taking on a deep silky timbre, "Oh baby, you know I always miss you. Being apart from you is only bearable for me because I get to imagine all those things that seeing your hot sexy body of yours does to me."

"Damn girl, if you're that hard up all you had to do was ask?"

A laugh met his ears, "You wish, Marco. So, seriously, what have you got?"

Marco smiled a bit to himself as he thought, another time and place, if we had met under different circumstances… "Yeah, well ok yes and no."

"Oh jesus, Marco!" Sofia actually sounded irritated, "what sort of needle in a stack of needles, crazy wild goose, deer, and marmot chase have you signed me up for now?"

"It's going to sound like a stretch, I got a target, an Arab male, 'jihadi looking mother fucker' that drives around in a black Mercedes Benz," Marco said matter of factly.

He was met with dead silence on the phone. He checked his phone to see if the phone had dropped the call. No, he was still connected. "Sofia?"

Still there was silence.

"Sofia? Are you there?"

He couldn't hear anything and just when he was about to hang up and redial, he heard Sofia.

"Let me get this straight, you want me: in a city of four million people, to find a singular brown Arab man. And the only thing you have to go on is, he's a jihadi looking mother fucker, and he rolls around in a black Mercedes Benz. Is that all, Marco? Would you like me to fly you in some wine from Tuscany tonight, straight from Italy? Maybe renovate the Queen Ann's Revenge to be your new summer yacht? How about I straighten out the leaning tower of Pisa while I'm at it?"

"Well, you know The Queen Ann's Revenge would make an awesome yacht. She was originally built as a merchant ship which means tons of room under decks for all sorts of contraband, weapons, love shacks, rum…"

"Cut the crap, Marco!" Sofia actually sounded pissed. "I'm not doing that! I'm not going to waste hours of my time looking for a single brown guy in this damn hell hole that poses as a major city!"

"Damn girl, you need to get off of whatever you've been spiking your blood with lately. You didn't even let me finish. He frequents a place called the Skybar."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Marco didn't bother asking this time, he knew that Sofia was still there, he just didn't want to catch another of her rants.

After several long minutes, and he knew it was only minutes because he had checked his watch several times during his wait, "Alright, I've linked in and got the IP addresses of a couple of security cameras that surround the place. I can put in an id program that will ping me whenever they catch a Mercedes Benz. It might be easier for you to just go stake out the place for a couple weeks, if you're so sure of this lead."

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