Foreword:

The Shadow

by Anna M. Branscome

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act

Falls the Shadow

—T. S. Eliot

Monday, 15 September 2003; 11:13 AM Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Few of you know my face. Few of you know my name. It is better that way, I think.

I am one of those who skulk in the shadows, gimlet eyed, waiting for the chance to slash my way through the stories of other people’s lives, leaving only blood-red marks behind me.

You see, my dears… I’m the copyeditor.

Putting out a series like the Clan Novels, thirteen interconnected books based on such a popular and complex game as Vampire: The Masquerade, over the course of more than two years and with contributions coming from around the globe, requires a dedicated behind-the-scenes team. While the authors contribute the spark and creativity and (most of) the words on the page, those of us in editing and production do the work that smoothes, massages, and outright pounds into being the actual, physical book you’re reading. Plus a little primping towards the end….

I’ve worked as an editor and copyeditor for over ten years now. If asked, I’d say that novels are the easiest to edit, while anthologies are much tougher. Doing the same for a series of novels is the equivalent of living in hell—or at the very least a nice taste of purgatory, which gives you plenty of time to repent your former sins and hope to be reprieved some day.

A good copyeditor is there to provide a safety net for the main editor, keeping an eye on continuity issues, fact-checking, watching out for the oopsies it’s so easy for the eye to skate over. A good copyeditor should be alert to the trailing problems of spelling and usage left by the author, prompt to fix them, and able to drag a leafy branch behind to leave no tracks of his or her own. It can be very tempting to play God with someone else’s work—“I would have said it this way!”—but one of the most fundamental rules of editing is not to interfere with the voice of the author.

Working with a stand-alone novel, one quickly becomes acquainted with the writer’s quirks and preferences. Working with a series of novels by different authors, all writing within a setting with which the readers are already familiar, the choices become more complicated. We wanted different voices in these novels, but we didn’t want that difference to be too jarring.

Hopefully none of you who read this recognize my name—that means I did my job properly.

Game-studio editing and fiction editing at a company such as White Wolf are for the most part separate, and for good reason. Game manuals are essentially reference books for players working in the moment. It’s therefore important for concepts such as “Obfuscate” or “blood points” to be easily visible to someone scanning the page looking for information. In the Storyteller vision of White Wolf, these mechanics are merely a means to an end, a guide, something to facilitate the narrative of the game. In fiction, likewise, the emphasis is on the story. But “gamespeak” is one of the greatest enemies of narrative, both in a Storyteller gaming session and on the printed page. What draws you in further, after all: a tale of lust, seduction and manipulation, or “my character uses her four points of Charisma to charm him”?

A simple enough point, one would think. But it’s not so simple in the execution—at every step along the way, the writer and the editor must decide what ought to be emphasized and what should be allowed to fade into the background. Does someone “Frenzy,” or “frenzy,” or simply run mad, snapping and snarling? Should “the Beast” be capitalized in a reference to “the animal in my soul”? Certainly “he Embraced her” has quite a different meaning from “he embraced her.” It’s always a challenge to balance terminology that gamers will be able to translate into the mechanics of the game with language that will be both readable and enjoyable.

(Speaking of language, I have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here to get some of my own back. One of the hazards of editing is that you find yourself accumulating reference books and mental trivia with which the ordinary, sane person would never burden themselves. In the course of the Clan Novels, I have had to check grammar and spelling in French, German, Welsh, Spanish, a couple of Slavic tongues, and several Indian dialects. But nothing has equaled Eric Griffin’s faux Latin. Never has someone done more with a language of which he knew less. Here’s looking at you, kid. Just don’t look at me to edit your next manuscript!)

There is a tendency for the public at large to look down upon franchise fiction such as White Wolf’s Clan Novels—Norman Spinrad, a few years back, campaigned to disallow writers such as those in our series eligibility in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) because they weren’t writing “original” fiction. I’ve been with the Clan Novel series from the beginning, as well as working with more “established” authors along the way. The men and women who created this universe and saw it come into being in the books you now hold were certainly working out of originality. There was a pre-existing structure, of course, but that’s true of books set in the real world. The challenge, no matter what you write, is to show someone, something, that has never been seen before. These authors labored intensely for months and months to bring it all together, to create a new version of the world.

Even when they couldn’t spell. But that’s what copyeditors are for, right?

I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge some of the rest of the behind-the-scenes team who made it all happen. The indomitable Stewart Wieck and John Steele were the architects of the structure, of course. Thanks should also go out to Richard Thomas, art director, Jon van Fleet, the cover artist, and Aaron Voss, who handled much of the layout. Philippe Boulle has taken on a truly heroic task in synthesizing this epic. And we should all pause a moment in respect for Kathy Ryan, my fellow crazed perfectionist, who not only wrote for the series but orchestrated production for the first few books while writing and drawing illustrations for other White Wolf works and learning Irish dancing.

—Anna M. Branscome

Part One:

Walking Wounded

From Saturday, 31 July 1999

to Saturday, 7 August 1999

Saturday, 31 July 1999, 12:14 AM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

The street was barren, poorly lit, marred with cracks and potholes, and stifled by a rotting summer. Water hung heavy in the air, and carried with it the smell of the upper bay and the mingled Hudson and East Rivers. Feeble, creeping breezes brought the stench of decaying garbage—food, drink, booze, bodies—from between old buildings, from abandoned lots, and from the project houses looming in the distance.

The street was surrounded by the ghosts of dockyards past. Squat, brick warehouses hunkered down on either side of it. Some lay empty; some sheltered those who could afford nothing better. A few had been converted to office space or artist’s lofts, the rest plied their old trade—but stored the unwanted and inconvenient instead of the lifeblood of industry.

Halfway along the street’s length, one building stood slightly apart from its fellows. It was four stories high and distinctively intact. Its first floor sported sturdy metal doors and bricked-in windows. Above the street, the windows were barred and darkened, but very few were broken. The place had an air of habitation; someone would see to any cracked panes. Someone kept bulbs in the streetlights, and replaced them as they burned or were shot out. Now the landlord’s carefully tended lights picked out movement at the main door. A lone man emerged.

He was black and clean-shaven. His scalp was smooth and bare as an eggshell. Angular bones and wary lines complicated his face. He had character. He was not handsome in any analyzable fashion. His appeal—strong and magnetic—had less to do with his looks than with his personality. He was above the average height, but not noticeably tall. His body did not, at this moment, intimidate. His beautifully tailored suit hid enduring, powerful muscles and sinew, but it could hide them. Even rags could hide them, if he carried himself to match tatters. The role of beggar served him more often than the role of bully, but tonight he wore a light, expensive trench coat over his silk suit. He carried an ebony cane with a solid, sterling-silver handle. His platinum watch gleamed dully. The golden rim of his monocle winked from its place in his breast pocket. The bag at his side, however…

Hesha Ruhadze put a hand on the flap of the rough canvas sack. It was not in his public persona as financial wizard to carry such a thing in the city—the rubberized cloth was plain, dirty, heavy, and slightly damp despite its protective coating—but he would have risked far more than mere mortal reputation to keep the bag in sight and at hand.

It held the Eye of Hazimel.

It held the greatest prize Hesha had ever gained, attained only after the longest quest he had ever undertaken, and at the highest cost—in lives, time, sins, and service—he and his had ever paid.

The heavy, windowless portal swung shut behind him, and Hesha listened to the steel bolts click into place with a sense of satisfaction. There was—there had been—a woman, an obstacle to his success. She had troubled him, had distracted him from the true path. Elizabeth (the name rolled softly into his mind, and he nearly spoke it aloud).

Elizabeth Dimitros (he added the last name and felt a clean sense of distance between them). She had been an inconveniently perceptive, interfering, traitorous mortal.

And now we atone, Lord, Hesha prayed silently to his god, Set. She waits for the sun, and I sacrifice her to your will. I am yours, and she is yours, but Ronald Thompson will never be. And that is my fault. Compassion is a sin. Accept this offering and forgive me. Speed my steps in your service.

The devotion brought the need for haste to his mind. He had been waiting for almost thirty seconds. A touch of impatience grew behind his face. It was not permitted to mar his features, but it lay in his mind nonetheless. With Thompson gone, the other servants writhed like a headless snake. The old retainer’s replacements were less punctual, less professional, less accustomed to Hesha’s needs. Competent, of course—he and Thompson had handpicked them from a host of well-trained guards and detectives—but untutored. Hesha knew there would be no time to teach them properly until the business of the Eye lay complete.

If Vegel had survived… Erich Vegel had been Hesha’s lieutenant, his junior partner. He could have seen to the staff. He would have shared the heavy burden of this victory. He might have interpreted correctly the signs that had led to the murder of Elizabeth…. Hesha cut the thought short abruptly. Shortly he would know whatever could be known about the fate of Erich Vegel. He hoped the information would be worth the risk he would take for it.

He felt the bag beneath his hand, and mused. The mud inside no longer sloshed. It had the consistency of pudding, smelled worse than the harbor, and weighed far more than it had any reason to. The ancient inscription that had given him the knowledge to contain the Eye stated that the relic would be safe and undetectable once caked in the mud of a holy river—the Ganges, in this case—but said nothing about the time before the casing dried.

Hesha’s deep brown eyes watched the street carefully. If others could still sense the orb, or knew by other means that he possessed it…

Hazimel himself was said to be a Ravnos. The “gypsy” clan might come seeking to parley or to trick him out of the thing. If the legends were right, the shilmulo had the most claim to ownership and the best chance to find it. He thought of Khalil in Chicago, and wondered how the little Rom had fared.

The Nosferatu were most likely to know he had it despite all precautions for secrecy. They were the most likely Cainites to know anything. Two months ago he would have counted on them as allies—would probably, with Vegel and Thompson gone, have asked their aid in guarding the treasure. But Vegel had lost contact—had been destroyed or captured by the enemy—at a party in Atlanta which the Nosferatu had insisted that Hesha attend. Perhaps the attack that night had been a surprise to them. Perhaps not. If it had been a trap, it had caught the wrong man, and the Nosferatu would try to net their prey in another snare. And if it had been a trap, Hesha would reckon with them in time. He disdained revenge for its own sake, but recognized its beneficial effect on observers.

As for the rest… The Tremere possessed the occult knowledge to realize the Eye’s potential, if they knew of its existence. Any warlock would trade his or her teeth for it gladly—or strike in force. The Sabbat and the Camarilla had their hands full fighting a war for the East Coast, but the first battle had been for Atlanta, and the Eye had surfaced there. Someone might know something. It might even have been stolen from one group or the other. He thought of the reports that the Tremere chantry in Atlanta had been destroyed at the solstice, and wondered.

A black sedan careened around the corner. It sped toward him quickly and rolled to a guilty stop directly before the door of the warehouse. Tinted windows hid the driver, but Hesha knew that she could see his face, and he allowed the shadow of displeasure to cross it. He turned on his heel and walked, pointedly, three yards farther along the pavement. The sedan crept up to park in the new space, and the right rear door opened automatically. Hesha slid silently inside and waited, perched on the edge of the seat, watching the sidewalk. The driver pressed the door controls. The discreetly armored, bullet-proof, flame-proof, insulated panel closed, and the Setite settled himself comfortably in the exact center of the passenger compartment. He placed the heavy canvas sack on his lap, and his eyes fell on the woman in the front seat.

For an awkward moment, the mortal behind the wheel did nothing. She seemed to be waiting for her employer to speak. Her head turned tentatively to the rear—Hesha caught a glimpse of smooth olive cheek, of uncertain coal-black eyes, of simple silver studs in the woman’s ears, of the empty pierced places in her nose and brow. After a second, her training kicked in. The sleek, jetty head checked itself. The chin-length bobbed hair swung back into place around her jaw.

Better to make the car a moving target, Pauline Miles thought, even if I have no idea where to go. She took her foot off the brake and let the powerful engine pull the car forward.

The dead man in the back of the car observed all this with care. He followed quite clearly the progression of his bodyguard’s mind from confusion to conclusion. He had trained servants for centuries. Hesha opened his mouth to speak, noting her tightening jaw muscles and white knuckles. There had been a coachman, in England, who had begun this way.

“Miles.”

“Sir.” Pauline’s voice trembled only slightly.

“You are late.” Hesha’s carefully modulated tone expressed no disapproval. It expressed nothing at all. His driver blanched further. “In the future, do not stop at manholes, sewers, or steam grates. I will not cross them to come to you.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Not at all.” Half a laugh accompanied the curt reply. “I had not mentioned it to you before this,” he went on, tolerantly. “There are some uncommon safety measures you will need to acclimate yourself to. Certain new skills to be picked up.” Miles’s grip on the wheel relaxed, and Hesha heard her breathing slow down a little. “I expect you need more practice with the car, for one thing—

“I have business in the Bronx,” he said resolutely. “Pay attention. Use the Brooklyn Bridge. Head north through SoHo and Greenwich Village. Pick any route you like through Midtown….” Hesha reached out and opened a phone line. “As we go north, maintain, at all times, a distance of at least three cross-town blocks from Central Park. Pass that,” he said, pressing a button, “on the west side. There is limited space between Barnard College and the Park’s northwest corner—do your best to keep an equal distance from both. Then proceed northeast to the Grand Concourse. I will give you an address once we have left the island. Is that clear?”

Pauline Miles’s lips moved slightly, and her left index finger traced a crooked, imaginary line up the center of the steering column. “Yes, sir,” she answered. With clear eyes and sharp movements she made a right turn and started on her chosen course.

The Setite noticed and nodded. The woman’s memory seemed to be everything Thompson had claimed. Hesha picked up the handset and finished his transmission. A bell tone rang once.

“Hello, sir.” Janet Lindbergh’s voice sounded thin and brittle over the tiny transmitter, but it had force. Hesha smiled to think of the old woman, secure in her safe house in Maryland. Here was one of his tools still strong and unbroken.

“Good evening.” He realized there was more warmth than usual in his greeting, and a touch of gratitude. He found both inadvertent emotions disturbing. “Report,” he barked.

“The ordinary business runs as usual, sir. Would you care for details?” “That can wait until my return, I think.”

“Very well.” Janet mentally turned a page in her notes. “Baltimore,” she began seriously, “is experiencing a slight increase in homicides and in deaths from ‘exposure,’ ‘hemophilia’ and ‘anemia.’ No direct confrontations appear to have broken out, however, and neither your close relatives nor the rest of the Family have tried to contact you through my channels since we last spoke.

“Your new man—” Matthew Voss, thought Hesha. Janet scrupulously avoided the use of any real names over unsecured lines— “arrived safely, and our boys”—The Asp, filled in the listener— “are briefing him on his new duties. The doctor sent a message for you from Alaska—”

“I doubt I wish to hear it.”

“It was complimentary, sir.” Hesha could almost see Janet’s puckered, lined face grinning. “That has nothing to do with the matter.” It was familiar, comfortable banter. A surge of temptation washed over him to leave New York immediately—to take his retinue and his prize and go.

His secretary’s recital lapped at his ears. A thin part of him took note, and saved the information for later, but his real thoughts lay deeper: This trip to the Bronx was a terrible, fantastic gamble, skirting the edge of enemy territory on all sides, carrying what might be the brightest (no, thought Hesha suddenly, the darkest) arcane beacon on the continent. In Baltimore, he had a haven, he had security, he sat at the center of his web and knew precisely the movements of everyone within it, he could finish the Hazimel project and be done with the matter. Every instinct urged him south, to safety.

On the other hand, if Vegel had been captured, not destroyed outright, that safety was pure illusion. The Sabbat could have interrogated him, wrung all Hesha’s shared secrets from him, and made the farm in Maryland a deathtrap by now. The younger Setite had been (and perhaps, still was) strong in body, mind, and faith—but the Sabbat had ways and ways.

The week of the battle for Atlanta, he had made a journey east to Queens to enlist two young serpents, Orthese and Bat Qol, in his investigation. He had given them a private plane to take them to Atlanta, money, support, information, technology, police contacts, and all the weapons their chilly hands could hold. The local temple spoke highly of the team, and Hesha knew them personally. They should have been up to the challenge. Both were smart enough to slither out of tough spots without fighting. Both were capable of understanding that their patron wanted information from them, not a rescue, not heroics, not more disappearances. On the twenty-fourth of June their message suggested they had found a holding area for prisoners caught in the art-museum attack. On the twenty-fifth they failed to report in. Hesha cut his losses and sent no one after them. He assumed them destroyed at the hands of the Sabbat.

And tonight, of all nights, Bat Qol had resurfaced, left a message, and asked to meet him at a different rendezvous, nearer the Setite temple grounds… and closer to known Sabbat territory. It could be a trap. Baltimore could be a trap. Every haven Vegel had known of could be a trap. But if the girl had information about Erich or Atlanta, Hesha had to know it.

A slight catch in Janet’s speech brought his full attention to her.

“Two other things, sir, which I thought you’d wish to attend to yourself.” Janet hesitated. “Amaryllis Rutherford called again, trying to reach Elizabeth. I put her off, but it’s becoming more difficult to do.

“Second, Rutherford House has sent a bill for Miss Dimitros’s services this week. How would you like me to spin this?”

Hesha’s answers were quick and ready. “Go on delaying Ms. Rutherford. Pay the partners. We will devise a suitable, public disappearance for Miss Dimitros when the dust of the current crisis settles.”

Pauline Miles’ hands tightened on the steering wheel. She pinned her eyes to the road, and tried in vain to keep her mind on her job.

Somewhere in the back woods of Maryland, Janet Lindbergh shook her head. She gritted her teeth and swallowed all the things she wanted to say to her employer.

Hesha took notice of the silence. “After my appointments,” he began, “I want every available resource devoted to taking us out of New York. Use the agency for protection and decoys. Have a flight go west… to O’Hare, I think… with my name on the passenger manifest. We are going underground until the Family’s squabbles have been decided one way or another. There is a great deal of work to do to put our own house in order.

“See to the arrangements,” he finished, pressing the button to slide the privacy panel up. He connected the phone through the driver’s intercom and shut off the speaker in his own space. Janet and Pauline could coordinate the details just as well without him, and he had other things to worry about besides their feelings. Whatever the two women thought of the issue left behind in Brooklyn, they had their orders, and they would carry them out.

Riverside Park, Manhattan New York City, New York

Green grass, well-tended, lay dimly gray on either side of the gravel path. Old trees grew black and tall overhead. The waning moon shot feeble rays through gaps in the canopy, wresting the memory of color from beds of flowers all around. The filthy, emaciated husk of a man made his way feverishly up a little hillock, desperately striving to catch a patch of light. He clutched in bewilderment at the silvery space, then moaned in disappointment and hung his head like a beaten animal. His eye (he had only one) closed on bloody tears. Brackish, black fluid rolled down his seamed and ravaged face, making a furrow in the grime and… other things… dried there before it. Wearily, the head came up, the eye opened again, and the wretch pulled himself together and charged off, as best he could, for another bright spot in the distance.

There had been a time—ages ago—when the creature’s name might have been Leopold. What lurched after the moonshine had no word for itself anymore. He moved through formless darkness and recognized nothing. He knew only an unbearable pain deep within, and a vision—a divine and glorious vision—without. Ahead of him, dancing wherever the moon found a way through the thick summer leaves, there was the girl. The ghost.

The goddess. His muse.

Each time he reached his goal, she slipped away from him an instant before he could touch her.

His left foot tripped and twisted beneath him. He had slipped before—often before, as the scraped and ragged skin of his shins could testify. He had caught himself, as he did now, on his torn palms, his raw, open elbows. Road dirt and gravel had embedded themselves under the papery skin. The lover never noticed the pain. He felt only irritation. When the horizon jolted and tilted he nearly lost sight of her. His feet looked after themselves, the spindly legs scrambled back under their body out of habit, and the gestalt propelled itself up again.

To his dumb surprise, he found he had gained on her.

It would be another trick…. How cruel she was to flee him, never to speak to him as she had in that other time, never to lean over his shoulder and help him…. She stood perfectly still now (she could do nothing that was not perfect) and that was cruel, too…. She teased him and taunted him unmercifully….

Suddenly, he was at her feet. She graced the center of a pedestal, white as stone under the moon.

He touched the base— She stood there yet—

He placed a foot beside hers— She ignored him completely—

He flung his arms around her beautiful, beautiful body and pressed his lips to hers—

The goddess accepted him! At least, she stayed where she was. He caressed her flesh with his callused, cracked hands and knew it to be cold, like his own…. He kissed her with abandon….

And wept.

She returned none of it. Slowly, reality filtered through his broken mind. This thing before him was not his muse, not his goddess. He held stone between his two hands, and she did not yield to him because she never could. He sagged away from the statue, and looked at her face. Pure, innocent, youthful, cold, but full of grace…. Beautiful in her own fashion, but lacking the burning half of his idol. The sculptor had left cruelty off this face.

He heard the sweet, knife-like, chiming laughter of his mistress riding the wind behind him. Sweet, bitter, acid. His eye closed again, and more blood flowed from the crusted lid.

The yellowed beam of a flashlight struck him from behind. It cast his stark black- and-white shadow on the girl, and her saintly stone face took on an fleeting, illusory, horrified grimace.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the voice of authority. The thing on the statue flinched. “Yes, I mean you. Turn around, slowly, and climb down here, mister,” said the policeman. “You can’t stay up there, and you don’t want me to have to come up and get you.” In a lower tone, to his radio: “Dispatch… Zamojski? Yeah. Schaeffer here. I’ve got a probable drunk and disorderly down at Joan of Arc.” The handset buzzed back at him. “Looks like the one. Send a car around.”

Slowly, the tramp clambered down off the pedestal.

The beat cop kept his distance, and brought the light up to shine directly into the suspect’s eyes. He saw the blood, the wasted body, and shook his head. “Dispatch, send an ambulance along with the car. Looks like someone’s been beating the shit out of this guy.” Schaeffer, warily, with one hand on his gun, stepped forward to offer the sick and wounded man a little assistance.

Fulton Mall, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Stop, said the deep and dark voice inside Khalil Ravana’s head.

Khalil looked out the passenger window of the car and picked a name off a sign. “Bond Street. This is where I get off, darling. Slow down, won’t you?”

The woman driving fluttered her made-up lashes at him and made a dime-stop in a bold, red, no-parking zone directly before a fire hydrant. “This good enough for you?”

“Perfect, darling.” He gazed into her eyes and shook his head sadly. “If only it weren’t the end of the line.” Khalil leaned in over the stick shift and kissed her.

“It doesn’t have to be—” “I have business—”

“Here.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a silver card-case. She selected a light-blue card and held it out to him with long beige fingernails. “Take this. It’s my work number. Call me.” Khalil took the card and the hand together in his two palms and kissed her again, biting into her tongue this time to distract her—

“Hey!”

He pulled back. “Too rough?” His voice was tender. “You took my wedding ring.”

Khalil smiled ruefully. “I did. I’d steal you, too, if I could. I just can’t bear to think that a woman like you has a husband chaining her down. Don’t be mad… just another of my little tricks, darling.”

Be gone.

The shilmulo reached for his door handle. “My bag.”

They met again behind the car, she unlocked the trunk, and Khalil lifted his case out from beside her grocery bags. He walked her back to the driver’s seat, whispering cheap love in her ears. “One more kiss?” he asked playfully through the open window, and took it, and a good deal of her blood, and her wallet, and her watch. He stood by as she drove off, and then turned down a side street, counting her cash.

Saturday, 31 July 1999, 12:33 AM

A studio apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Elizabeth Dimitros sat in the exact center of her own apartment, and waited.

The collar of her crisp, white cotton shirt lay open, just as he had left it. The blood on her neck had dried, and the tender skin there itched under the sticky crust. The handcuffs, finally, lay still. Tested, the chains and shackles had held, and she was weary of fighting them.

With the irons, he had bound her to and through an old, heavy office chair—solid walnut, too sturdy for her to destroy, even if she wanted to. And, she thought, he would have known that she wouldn’t. Though the ruddy scratches on her wrists pained her, the knowledge that her struggles had scraped the foul and dirt-encrusted bonds over the polished antique—uselessly, by God—hurt almost as badly. Wrist to wood to steel to wood to wrist, the hated things left broad, brick-red stains on her skin, on the shining walnut, and on the center pillar of her home, and there was nothing she could do now but watch, and wait, and remember.

He hadn’t left a light burning in the apartment, but through the windows—the enormous, beautiful, north-facing, morning windows she’d rented the loft to have—the city gave her enough light to see by.

The neon, the cars, the street signs silhouetted the studio, her workshop, and gave the apartment its own skyline. There, the easel and its half-cleaned painting, standing tall above the borough. Beside it, a modern skyscraper, all angles and difficult curves: her quilt stand, stretched with a cavalry flag and draped in mending linens. The workbench, a little apart from the better neighborhood, was a warehouse and factory, the roof busy with neat rows of bottles, cleansers, jars, brushes, boxes of gloves and cotton swabs. The desk, large, straight-lined, imposing, was the—

The desk, dull and dark by streetlight, was real, true cherry. It would glow like copper when the real, true light struck it—when the sun rose, and shone like a god through the beautiful, huge, north windows—

That was the desk, she thought, and remembered it all, one last time.

Leopold walked north through the park on the river’s edge. He knew his name. He knew the grass beneath his feet. He felt the earth beneath the grass, the stone in the earth, the mushiness of buried wood, the obstinacy of old house foundations, the echo of tunnels, the mixture of rock and water, the solidity of living rock, heat, and the plastic, malleable stuff underlying everything… soft, like clay.

More personal awareness returned to him. He saw his rags and determined, idly, that something should be done about that. He saw the muse in the corners of his eyes, but he neither rushed after her like a madman nor forgot her nature. She was angry. He had lost a gift she’d given him. His thoughts spun around recovering the gift, the tool that he needed to fulfill her inspirations. He looked down at his hands—healing, now, for some reason—and wondered a moment at the piece of metal they held. Vaguely, it came to him that the little shield was a policeman’s badge. He worked it in his fingers, trying to shape the cold metal as he used to shape wax… and had shaped stone.

Leopold wandered away from the water, and his clearing brain took stock of his situation. He understood that a piece of himself was missing—not merely the eye that should have filled his empty, torn, and distended left socket. He felt blood flowing to try to heal that, though he would rather have left it open, ready for the great Eye as soon as he might find it.

This loss… not his eye… not the Eye… not mere hunger…. He seemed really astonishingly well fed, considering that he didn’t remember feeding for a long, long time. Not the muse…. She was lost, but still with him, blessing him. She would return with all her favors as soon as he found the Eye again. No, the loss that plagued him had to do with memory. His last clear recollection was of the finished statue in his cave. A flood of pride caught him up. That was worthy of the muse, worthy of the material, worthy, at last, of his talents: a masterpiece. Leopold swore. That masterpiece would be his last unless he found the Eye once more. When had he lost it? The thing had disappeared with the forgotten time and in the forgotten time. From the Adirondack Mountains to New York City… surely there had been many nights and effort spent in travel…. Why couldn’t he remember any of it? Why was the time before the cave so dim? Atlanta, he thought, and there was a picture in his mind to accompany that.

Absentmindedly, he glanced down at the scrap of metal in his hand. The badge had melted beneath his fingers and become a woman’s head in miniature. Leopold smiled. Victoria. She was part of what was lost. He flicked the contours of the cheeks and hair, and another face emerged. My muse. The tiny lips and eyes opened. Leopold found this quite natural. She called him—she urged him onward.

The power to shape had returned to him. Joyfully, he broke into a run. His feet hardly touched the ground—up streets—around corners—across traffic, when that was shortest. Cars crashed around him, and some poor mortals cried out—cursing, jeering, warning each other about the madman in the middle of the avenue—Leopold neither heard nor cared.

The Eye had returned. The Muse had led him to it and it to him, as surely as lovers meeting. So close, now… he darted between two buildings and felt the last obstacles pass by.

A final sprint—like a bow from an arrow—faster than the corner-lurkers could follow. He saw the prison of his prize—a black sedan—and leaped after it.

He lifted a finger, and felt the Eye jump toward him.

He opened his mind to the power and brought the essence of the earth up from the asphalt to hold the fleeing car in place.

Pauline Miles checked her rear-view mirrors roughly every five seconds as part of an automatic pattern. It was her training. It was completely reflexive. It rarely resulted in anything more than slowing down—if the scan showed a patrol car—or a change of lane, speed, or direction, if a too-familiar vehicle encroached on her comfort zone.

Side, side, center—Miles squinted. There, on the right side. Not a car… She turned onto a larger street, and the figure showed itself again.

“Sir,” she began. The privacy glass started its glide down. “There’s a man chasing us on foot. Unarmed, but unusual.”

Hesha pulled a convex mirror down from the upholstered roof. He watched their follower for a moment, and then said, speculatively, “Drive faster.”

Miles laid her foot to the gas pedal and wove forward. She found a gap in the cars around them, and managed, by ignoring two lights, to bring the car up to forty miles an hour despite the weekend traffic. The headlights of the cars she’d left behind glared in her mirror through the window tint. She saw the silhouette of the running man eclipse the nearest, and frowned. “He’s keeping up with us,” she complained, and slammed her foot on the gas.

The black sedan shot ahead.

Hesha felt a movement in the bag on his lap. The canvas pressed sharply down and back, into Hesha’s abdomen. He lifted the bag by its strap and watched it swing just once, like a magnet on a string, toward the rear and whatever monster chased them. A baseball- sized bulge formed in the fabric, in the spot closest to their pursuer. Hesha frowned. The Eye within had been pulled (or had it burrowed?) out of the center of the soft mud. Hastily, apprehensively, he flipped the sack around and put the bulk of the river muck between the Eye and the force grappling with it.

Instinct overtook him. “Stop!”

His driver, confused but obedient, tried to comply. The brakes squealed and then ground with the effort—the pedal shuddered under Pauline’s foot as safety systems kicked in. Beneath the metal shrieks something else began groaning. Miles cocked her head to one side to get a better listen. A second later the rumbling was ear-splittingly loud, and she grimaced against the pain. She remembered artillery making noises like that, thought of earth-cracking shellfire, and gripped the wheel more tightly.

Slowly, without an explosion or shrapnel, the blacktop in front of the car rippled and slanted up like a crashing wave. Hesha stared, alarmed, at the phenomenon, and plied his memory in vain for anything like it in the whole history of the Eye.

Miles yelped and swerved. Her left foot slammed down on the emergency brake pedal. The car skidded sideways down the median for a moment, then banked against the lower slope of the ten-foot wall of tar and gravel. For an instant, the black sedan shot along like a surfboard, and its driver fought for control of the wheels against the slippery, uncertain surface. She jammed one arm through the steering wheel to brace herself, reached for the emergency brake’s hand-release, yanked the cord up, stepped on the accelerator again, and regained traction again in time to take the car out from under the “breaker.” In grim silence, Miles outran another growing hill of asphalt and drove up onto the sidewalk. The sedan passed through a crowd of pedestrians without quite hitting any, and tore around a corner.

“Stop,” repeated the voice behind her. Pauline checked her mirror in disbelief. Her employer readied his hand resolutely on the door latch.

“There’s another one coming—”

“Good. I’ll use it.” He gathered himself in the corner of the seat. “Get yourself away. I’ll call you when this is over.”

Her hands and feet went to work on the controls. “Sir!” In evading the wave, she was forced to slow down, and she saw his door open.

“You cannot help me against this, Miles.” He disappeared in the curve, and the door shut automatically behind him. Pauline bit her lip, surged over a dying wave, prepared herself to wrestle with the road again…

… and found herself alone in a silent-running car on a perfectly ordinary city street.

The tar swept after the sedan for only a moment once its quarry had left. It moved hungrily but blindly, subsided into low ripples, flattened out, and then vanished.

Hesha Ruhadze didn’t see it.

From the instant he hit the pavement, his precious bag cradled in the center of rotation—couched between his stomach and his arms to protect it from the impact—the Setite had neither looked back nor stopped moving. He put as much distance between himself and the car as possible—partly to protect his fleeing servant, partly to experiment with what he had begun to think of as “the disturbance.” He heard wheels spin, then nodded in satisfaction as the engine-whine sped away.

The listless breeze picked up, bringing the smell of burning rubber with it.

Downwind, thought the Setite, as good a direction to take as any… better than most… and it’s northward… toward the temple, if I need it. He emerged from the sidewalk-narrow alley he had taken and fell into a loping stride that ate space but gave him time to react to the pedestrians. Women dressed for commerce called out to him shrilly. Men in shabby clothes cried scorn and hooted at him. Ahead of him, a group of young bucks in expensively ill-fitting costumes turned to check out the noise. They sported strips of bright cloth on their heads, necks, arms, or legs, and despite the flamboyant differences between each one, they were frighteningly similar to each other: carbon copies of themselves and of sword-rattling children Hesha had known in Africa, India and Europe. The same pairs of eyes looked down the sidewalk as had looked out of the wadis of Sudan in his youth.

The boy in the lead—not the leader—stepped aside to give his betters a chance to see more clearly and shoot first, if they cared to. Short words flew between them, and hands crept to pockets, waistbands, and sporty little packs slung low over their guts.

Hesha called on Set to lend him divinity, and never broke stride. He watched the gang’s group face turn from belligerence to uncertainty to uncomprehending respect. He darted along the suddenly clear path amongst them like a god—ignoring them completely, as modern gods do—and their ranks closed behind him in awed silence.

The boys recovered cat-fashion, pretending to themselves, as one, that nothing had happened that they had not allowed—hell, wanted—to have happened. They began to talk again. They drifted north now, instead of south, and were unconscious of the reasons why. No one mentioned the rich brother who had passed through them. The closest anyone came was the most ambitious, who put forth, tentatively, the idea of hooking up with a higher echelon of organization—if and when they found someone worth their time. In all their minds, the running man in the long coat and dark suit rose as the very type they might be willing to oblige.

Full of speculation, the ambitious one kept his eyes on the fleeing figure. It crossed the street at high speed and disappeared into a crowd. He frowned and glanced back. What made that man run?

It was an apparition. He had to blink and look again before he believed in it. There was a tall, stick-thin white tramp coming down the street at a walk that was faster than an all-out run. When the boy slowed the image down in his mind, he felt a familiar contempt: The bum moved like a junkie right before the last crash. On either side, the boy’s friends began to notice. The first one shook his head. The speed… it must be some nightmare effect of the new batch of stuff they’d tried tonight. He stared as the thing came closer. He could see now why this freak had caught his attention. It had one eye unblinking on the right, and an open hole the size of a baseball on the left. The skin where the lid should be flapped in time to the thing’s pounding feet. And the color of his skin… stark white, paper white, glowing by the streetlight… with dark, dark streaks everywhere. Red streaks. Red clothes. Soaking wet red clothes, and shining red arms…. The teenagers watching the oncoming mystery had seen blood before. They had killed, had had friends shot away from beside them, had brought hamburger in to emergency rooms. They knew how much fluid the human body gave up on bleeding to death. This man chasing their man must have swum through a pool of the stuff. Long stiff hair wrapped around his arms, and flecks of gory tissue spotted his death-colored rags. The gang stepped out into the road to face down the thing coming through their territory, killing where it was their prerogative, hunting their people.

Hesha found time to survey his surroundings. So far, the ground lay steady under his feet, but a faint rumble from the south warned him that the disturbance, whatever it was, had followed him, not the car. When the asphalt closest to him began to ripple, he leaped and made the next sidewalk. It comes for the Eye, he confirmed in his own mind. The slab beneath him began to tilt, though the concrete and cement didn’t flow like the tarry street had.

He caught sight of the gang in a window. They had moved to the center line; they radiated the arrogance of ignorance, numbers, and guns. The Setite ran on, following the glass storefront west.

The young men fired at the intruder.

The screams of bystanders filled the narrow road.

The hoarser agonies of the young men, not quite dying, tore through the shrill wails. More shots, more screams, more death cries.

In dim, jumping, mirrored images, Hesha saw the bodies of the boys melt and run together. Silver-gray bone sprouted from the horror. Twelve shades of black skin swirled and blended. Foamy, yellow fat erupted and ran down to the… ankles… of what was left. Rifts opened near the top of the gestalt, and blood spurted twenty feet into the air. The fountain sprayed buildings on either side, and rained down fine red mist on the frozen or fleeing Saturday night crowds. Hesha watched, stunned—his feet ran on of their own accord—his mind caught up an instant later.

Fleshcrafter. The Setite’s brain rolled the implications over as he chose a new route— one paved with sturdy concrete, not soft tar and gravel. Fleshcrafting means a Tzimisce. Hesha set aside for the moment the creature’s ability to shape the earth to his will. And a Tzimisce means the Sabbat. The question is, how many Sabbat? He knew himself to be capable of destroying entire packs of the sect’s rabid, thin-blooded shock troops. He felt sure he could master a handful of such cannon-fodder, even with the interference of the thing behind him.

A fleshcrafter of such power itself…

Perhaps, in a fair fight, on good ground, if the Eye were not an issue. He prayed fervently to Set that his enemy not be an entire war party of elders with inexplicable powers like that thing.

The sidewalk took him past an empty lot, and the earth heaved. A shower of trash, dirt, and rubble fell around him. Hesha thickened his skin with tough scales and ran faster. Whatever power his pursuer used, it affected the bare ground even better than the asphalt. The building ahead… no… the foundations of the new, cheaply built shop were shaking open under the stress. Hesha looked to the street—just here, there was a median— concrete—he jumped even as he saw it, and landed on the opposite corner while the shaking cinderblock façade collapsed into the road and the ground beneath it swarmed up through the cracks.

Earth moving… tar moving… but the cement holds together… safer on stone? The Setite twisted north and caught a glimpse of spires and scaffolding in the distance. A cross jutted up from the tangle, jet black and unlit against the smoggy orange night sky. A cathedral… holy ground…. The man chasing him looked European. Yahweh’s blessings had never hindered Hesha, but they might have some effect on the other man. And Christians built their larger temples out of rock.

He rushed forward while the road sloshed sluggishly after him. The stuff was fast, once it was under way, but its—Hesha searched for a word—reactions were slow. Corners bothered it a little, and swift changes in direction confused the thing’s blind mind even more. Hesha made as many switchbacks as he dared, then fled straight for the block on which the huge church was being built.

He hurdled onto and over a low shed. From the top, as he lunged forward, he surveyed the cathedral in front of him. The closest corner, a tower, nearly brought a smile to his thinned- out lips: Four finished stories and a foundation at the least… a ground vault and extra basement reinforcements, if he guessed correctly. It was perfect. If he could reach even the second level—he dropped off the roof of the shed and into a small quarry-like area—he would be above the height of the tallest ‘waves’ he had seen so far—he leaped from stone to stone in the little enclosure—with a staircase… two, at the most… to defend from within, and breaking glass to warn him if any adventurous Sabbat minions tried to attack him from the outside. His boots crushed marble chips underfoot. Small puffs of stone dust swirled in the small breeze of his trench coat’s passing. From the tower, he decided, he would call the Setite temple, and gather reinforcements. Morningside Park would be full of snakes this time of night. He sprang up a stack of yard-high arch-stones as if they were stairs, and vaulted to the top of the fence.

Hesha looked down on good green earth, and cursed.

The mason’s area was an island of rock in a large, open garden. He could cut across it. He could run to either side and try for the sidewalks (thin ribbons of cracked cement… no use). Or he could fight where he stood.

He hurled himself without hesitation at the closest bend of the garden path. His boots clicked comfortably against the hard slate. He followed the stone flags between white rose bushes and through an evergreen hedge, and found a grotesque figure blocking the way forward. It had flaky, red skin, twiggy limbs, and nothing that resembled, even remotely, a face on its near-spherical head. Hesha dropped into a crouch, ready to fight the Tzimisce’s war-creature….

It remained peacefully stock-still.

The waning moon cleared a cloud, and Hesha saw the twisted form for what it was: modern art—iron rebar welded into the shape of a woman, left in the weather to rust and illustrate… reverence? It gave the impression of bowing or kneeling before something greater.

Hesha’s gaze flicked away and he rushed round the little group of worshippers. He’d lost time. He was only halfway to the church when the squares beneath him started tilting. The Setite jumped straight up, narrowly missing having a leg swamped by rolling turf. The path floated on the green grass like scum on a wave. Hesha landed on one foot and pushed off the spongy morass onto a concrete platform. Two sculptures flanked him— the silhouette of a man, and the slab of metal the artist had cut him from. Part of his mind recognized the image of the blast-shadow of Hiroshima; most of it concentrated on the next solid structure in line with the tower, a tall, multi-tiered thing whose meaning he couldn’t even guess. It was close enough to reach, if he could trust one step on the drifting slates for a single push. The earth rose like a wave—a flagstone washed up the hill— Hesha sprang to it, jumped up, and caught himself on the upper bowl of a waterless stone fountain. A mockery of the sun looked down at him. He grimaced back at its ugly face. The strange statue was covered in small, anemone-like projections that made excellent handholds. The Setite wasn’t sure what he held, but he used them to gain better footing, pulling himself higher, scanning the billowing garden for another stable perch on the way to his goal.

All around, the hills rolled in. If he were going to jump, it would have to be—

Hesha’s neck muscles twitched as though someone were watching him. He whirled round, and got his first good look at his pursuer.

No… The Setite’s eyes widened in shock. This matchstick man was the creature he had left in torpor in the mountains. This was the Cainite who had possessed the Eye before him. This was no elder, no Tzimisce… this creature had been so weak that a mere mortal had taken the Eye away from him. He should have lain unconscious for years. He should have been caught in the rockfall….

Hesha abandoned what “ought” to have happened. The earth-waves closed in around him. In another moment he would be swallowed or mauled or crushed. Hesha launched himself from the tip of the grotesque sun. His hands grew long talons. He arched them, ready to dig into the heart of the stranger. Needle fangs slid down from thin gray gums. The Setite’s tongue transformed itself into a thin, forked, razor-edged whip, and coiled to strike. His elongated, serpentine body drew together and poised for the impact. The long coat fluttered and snapped like a flag in high winds, and everything Hesha bore fell free with him… even the weight of the Eye was lifted in the everlasting second before he reached his prey.

Hesha landed heavily. His claws tore in and down along the hollow chest of his opponent—the man’s ribs were better than a ladder to him, and his curled legs found purchase on a folding knee. The snake tongue flicked out and sliced open the only cornea the Cainite had left. The bag holding the Eye slammed into Hesha’s back, and the trench coat swirled treacherously around his enemy’s shins.

The matchstick man staggered.

Hesha let the momentum take them both rolling across the grass—suddenly stable, flat, unmoving grass—and gave an extra tug and shove with the left side of his body, ensuring he landed on top. He felt his face sag as one of the Cainite’s claws tore through the muscle above the cheekbone. It began to heal immediately—a scratch with no force behind it. He took his right hand out of the thing’s chest, splayed his fingers as wide as possible, and pulled them through the unprotected abdomen and bowels. Atrophied organs spilled from the wounds, and where the five little scythes came together and scissored out of the body, large chunks of dead flesh tore away. He kept his left hand firmly wedged between the slats of the ribcage and twisted the claws to be sure nothing mended around them.

The matchstick man flailed about and shredded Hesha’s clothes. In one arm and one thigh, he dug deep enough to breach the slippery scales and rend muscle.

The Setite let the flickering claws go by unchallenged. His opponent was such a novice as to strike flesh and leave tendons intact—to ignore the eyes, and try to wrestle for control of hands—to try to rip the throat of a dead man open, instead of tearing away the spongy blood-storing tissues of the torso. Speed could win over skill, but it would not tonight. Hesha licked open a wound in his enemy’s left shoulder and severed the sinews. The limb hung loose and twitched for a second, the opposing muscles contracted, and then the matchstick man’s forearm curled uselessly under.

Hesha heaved the useless carcass off the ground. It was in his mind to talk to the poor leech, to give mercy and utility a moment. The creature must know something valuable about the Eye, and the question of that earth-power nagged at the Setite. Hesha cut through the other arm, and considered whether the matchstick man would survive being hamstrung or perhaps staked for a day.

Accomplices, thought Hesha, and then wondered why the danger came back to him so abruptly. Was it movement? The garden seemed empty, except for the prisoner, himself, and the statues.

Something nudged him gently from behind. He turned—still holding his man by the ribs—and saw another cut-metal piece, a good one, standing there. Nothing else.

The statue… A moment ago, he would have sworn to the position of every obstacle and bit of cover on his battleground. Know the field, he remembered the priests teaching him. But the statue had been two feet further back. He was sure….

The Setite, disconcerted by his mistake, turned and scanned his surroundings. He saw other pieces, still on their pedestals, but all seeming, from his angle, to be placed off- center. Closer to him. Wrong.

Hesha backed toward the stone fountain uneasily. Something brushed softly against his coat.

Hesha sprang forward, too late. Jagged bronze caught at the rough canvas sack on his hip. Tiny cotton threads parted, the waterproofing stretched and tore, and mud oozed out of a hole the size of a dime. A thick stream spouted from the gap.

The canvas sack burst apart under the pressure, and a gummy sphere dropped to the ground at Hesha’s feet. The matchstick man opened the eye he didn’t have. A pale, cold light emanated from the lid of the still-shut Eye on the path—

Wrought-iron fists pounded into Hesha. His long bones broke and tiny slivers cut through his flesh in an agony of needles. He damned the pain and forced blood to the limbs to heal them. He darted sideways on shaky legs to avoid the rusty stumps the worshipping sculpture had for hands. A third enemy—a fourth, a fifth—and evasion was impossible. From the corner of his eye he saw twisted steel swinging toward his face. He dropped and turned. His skull caved in across the back, from ear to ear, and thought itself became torture. The force of the attack wrenched the prisoner’s body away, and Hesha watched it sail through the air with only faint regret. The matchstick man landed on the grass two yards from the Eye. As Hesha crab-crawled, dully and stupidly, to the safety of the stone fountain, his enemy lay motionless.

Iron and bronze and copper closed in. Through the hail of blows and the thick, mobile, statuary veil, Hesha thought he saw his enemy roll closer to the Eye. It meant nothing to him.

A blast of something unrecognizable—not acid, not flame, not poisoned blood— flew up from the ground. It moved like a bullet, slower by only a blink. Hesha saw a livid blue-white bolt like lightning rushing toward him and closed his eyes automatically. The stuff hit, and he could not open his eyes again—either the lids had fused shut, or his face was simply no longer there. Pain and fury clamped their fangs into him and stole what remained of his mind.

Garden of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine New York City, New York

Beneath Calcutta, there was a sense of inevitability, and a determination to fight. Deep beneath Manhattan, a murky intelligence stretched itself and ceased to care.

On the lowest tier of the Tree of Life—a sculpture voted Ugliest in New York City by the Morningside Heights residents’ association—Hesha Ruhadze came out of oblivious frenzy. He listened to the echoes of Calcutta and Manhattan through a white stone he wore around his wrist. With a red stone around his neck he knew precisely at what moment the Eye stood up, and he felt it turn away as though it were part of his own body.

Atlanta, Georgia

Suddenly, a lone Malkavian stood up with the unexpected but unquestioned certainty that he should go for a walk.

Garden of the Cathedra of St. John the Divine New York City, New York

Leopold finished patting his skin back in place and let himself rest quietly for a moment. His arms and body knitted together nicely. He watched the sky pass by, and amused himself by looking at it winking left, winking right; with both lids wide open; and even with both tightly shut.

Fully healed and quite complete, he walked down the path toward the sidewalk. The fight was dimming already for him; the doubts he had held died as his vision restored itself. What was missing? Nothing: He knew where she would be as he turned the corner.

The muse stood in plain view, in the center of a circle of yew hedges, simply waiting. For him.

Journeys end in lovers’ meetings… a snatch of some song old and sweet ran through his head.

Perfection held her hand out, and Leopold’s grisly face lit up. His expression reflected her beauty for an instant, the way ruins reflect the palace that died for them. In total rapture, he stepped forward. A soft bar bent beneath his foot. A bone twisted out of shape in the corpse that lay there. Leopold took his muse’s delicate fingers and touched them to his lips. She led him—demurely, without her devil’s tricks—away from the battlefield and into a world of her own. The earth disappeared, and the two walked off into the silver mist.

A studio apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Elizabeth Dimitros sat in the exact center of her apartment and waited. She was through remembering. She could not even guess how much light would be too much— twilight, or the glow before dawn, or the full rays of the sun—but she would know, soon, just how much was needed to kill a vampire—how deadly Ra was to the body of an infant Child of Set.

From time to time she listened for footsteps in the hall. If one of the other tenants passed by, she could yell and try to find shelter before sunup. Antonio sometimes started his rounds at five o’clock—would that be too late? If Hesha were going to come back (Hesha isn’t going to come back, she thought bitterly) he might use the door, as he had in leaving.

The sky grew paler.

Perhaps it was best this way….

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Khalil Ravana sauntered pleasantly down the back streets of Brooklyn. The earlier exchange with the desperate cabbie had only been the latest of a series of such encounters that had brought him from Chicago (where Hesha had dumped him) to this place. Two nights of real travel—catching buses, cadging lifts from sympathetic lorry drivers (Truck drivers, in the local vernacular), telling the tale to lonely sales reps driving late, picking up women who ought to have known better and just couldn’t resist him—had settled the Ravnos’s nerves. He’d fed well, he’d amused himself, he’d come up in the world. His clothes broadcast money, and class of a sort… though none of them fit him as well as they had their original owners. Amazing, these Americans. They’d give you the shirt off their back just for asking (he smirked), and even the clumsiest Calcutta cutpurse could make a good living off the unguarded wallets in this country. A clever shilmulo like himself could make a fortune.

He swung his ‘casket’ happily, the large case Hesha Ruhadze’s man had stuffed him into back in Calcutta—before shipping him off to Chicago. It had been a convenient prop for his pose as a stranded tourist. When the traveling-musician idea came along, he’d conjured the image of a broken saxophone into it, and picked up sympathy and a little cash from fellow “artists.” Bus passengers needed luggage. Business types carried cases. It held his wardrobe and growing cache of valuables by night, and his sun-shy body by day. What a gift Hesha had given him… he’d have to thank the Setite properly.

And as soon as possible. He began whistling.

A sudden urge drove him down a dark alley and out onto a clean-swept, well-lit little patch of sidewalk. “All right,” muttered the walker. “You don’t need to hit me with it.”

I wasn’t sure you would hear me over your own boasting. The voice felt dry as drought tonight. This is the place.

Khalil slowed casually. He set down his luggage without a glance around, and felt in his pocket as if for keys. With one eye on the lock and one on his bag, he pulled two bits of wire from his right coat pocket, and from his left, the forcing pin. All three entered the keyhole at the same moment. Any ordinary observer would have sworn the young man, coming home very late, or to work remarkably early, had grasped his key ring with both hands and was having trouble with a rusty, cantankerous lock.

“You’d better be right,” he whispered. “The sun’s rising any minute now.”

Trust me, the voice said.

Khalil was sure he would. The old Yale gave way beneath his probing picks, and the door handle turned in his fingers. Beyond the heavy steel portal lay a dreary, uninviting corridor. That its ceiling was high only made it seem more narrow; that it was casually swept clean only made the dust neglected in the corners more evident. The Ravnos picked up his case and strolled down the hall with something like contempt. He studied the doors as he walked by, and his thoughts rolled along familiar paths: A photography studio— That meant cameras; he’d have to find a fence in this city. Next, something with “imports”

in its name—that could cover a multitude of sins, he knew, and wondered just what they were smuggling. A law practice.—Khalil hated those damn busybodies.

“I can see the stairs, you son of a bitch…” Khalil whispered as his “employer” prompted him to steps going up. Tall, many-paned old windows let a little dirty light filter into the stairwell. A new hall took him down an outside wall. Raw brick and crumbly mortar faced him and the floor underneath was splintery old wood. Somehow he doubted rich snakes would live in this dump. He came to another stair, and another window. So far, only the streetlamps shone through. Khalil looked up, and saw more glass: skylights in the roof—very nearly a roof made of skylights. He stepped out onto a metal walkway and tried not to clank along it. His borrowed shoes betrayed him. They were new and hard leather (the very best Italian leather, the donor had bragged), and clopped audibly at each footfall.

The Rom winced but went on.

The last item on the catwalk was one huge, rolling steel plate the size of a barn door. Khalil came to it and felt its edges, looked at the rusty wheels in the top and bottom tracks, and felt an inner pull directing him away. The tug would not be satisfied until he stood a few feet back, before a far less interesting object: a plain, unmarked door the mate of the one he’d picked through downstairs.

“Here?”

Here.

“The sun’s nearly up. This place—”

Open the blasted door.

He set to work, and the thing swung open on a room with—he couldn’t help but notice—two enormous walls of nothing but windows.

From the door, it looked as though someone lived in the big lofty space. There were books and chairs and other furniture, innocent of dust, and arranged into little groups as though separated by walls into rooms. But there were no walls. If he had to sleep in that fucking box again…

A studio apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Footsteps—coming closer. Elizabeth’s heart leaped. Should she call out? No, the walker was already coming to her place—there was nothing else at this end of the hall. She turned herself in the chair and looked desperately at the opening door.

She didn’t recognize him at first—she only knew she wasn’t seeing Hesha.

The man smiled, looked her up and down, slowly, glanced at the shackles, and licked his curling lips.

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Khalil Ravana. He grinned evilly. “Did you miss me?”

Saturday, 31 July 1999, 4:22 AM

A studio apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Hesha’s pet mortal, Elizabeth D-something… Dim-something…. Hesha’s girl, anyway, sat silent, frozen, and pale as death in the center of the place. She looked terrified. The Ravnos regarded her thoughtfully. She was not only sitting in the chair, she was chained to it. Her hands rested peacefully enough on its arms, but there were shackles fastened to her wrists—Khalil’s eyes scanned down—and ankles.

If Hesha were here, he was a long time answering the door. If Hesha weren’t here… the Ravnos licked his lips.

He shut the door with two lazy fingers and stepped down into the room. With a definite swagger, he approached the fettered girl and gloated down at her. He stopped just close enough to make her twitch, which, gratifyingly, she did. At this range he spied out more detail than he had before. There was blood on her neck. A human being’s frightened pallor should have changed by now to something pinker—red rage, flushed indignation, even ugly mottled fear. Elizabeth’s face remained white.

“Been promoted, I see,” Khalil bent over her condescendingly. “Welcome to the Family, darling.”

The girl’s lips and throat writhed as though she would be sick. “Thank you,” she managed weakly.

Khalil took advantage of her immobility by walking out of sight. Three oval, peg- work boxes lay on a slim table directly behind her chair. He picked up the largest, and it gave a promising, monetary clink. The Ravnos dragged a dirty fingernail through the coins: British… German… small change, and no good to him here, anyway. “So,” he asked chattily, “where is Hesha this evening, little Lizzie?”

The second box held a mismatched lot of loose buttons, keys, pins, and clips. Khalil fished among them. He recognized two friends among the junk: a Yale that appeared to fit the warehouse door, and a Schlage that matched the apartment’s. He slid the spares into his trouser pocket. On the other side of the steel support column, Elizabeth Dimitros stared east. “I don’t know,” she answered.

“Is that so?” he murmured, taking the lid off the smallest container. “Why don’t I believe you, sweetheart?” Gold and silver flashed back at him: earrings, a bracelet, a pocketwatch. The Ravnos emptied the lot into his jacket, and looked about for more.

“He’s gone,” replied the girl. Her tone grabbed Khalil’s attention; he knew genuine despair when he heard it.

A note abandoned on a sofa caught his eye: a quick scrawl with ‘Lizzie’ dashed out at the top, on a pile of letters addressed to her. This is her own apartment, he realized with a shock. He frowned. There was only one other door in the great room, and it clearly led into the water closet. There were no signs of a struggle or a break-in (besides his own, of course). What in hell’s name was a freshly dead Setite doing alone, unguarded, and trussed up for the sun? Khalil glanced outside and decided he had enough time to ask a few questions and dig up what he could. It would mean sleeping in the case today, but—

“Really?” he said aloud. “That’s very odd. You were thick as thieves last time I saw you… and you’ve obviously grown—” he laid a feather-light finger on the bloodstain at her neck, and she shuddered— “closer since then. It was him that did this, wasn’t it?”

“Yes…”

It was, the voice in Khalil’s head said.

Khalil examined the thick chains where they crossed the column. The girl had fought—once it was too late. There were deep scratches in the painted surface, and her straining muscles had knocked the rust off some of the links.

“And these chains?” Elizabeth said nothing.

Yes, confirmed the voice. Another question sprang to the young Ravnos’s lips. He stifled it and walked away. Out of the girl’s hearing, he whispered irritably:

“Where is Hesha?”

Unavoidably… detained.

“Then why in all hells am I here?”

For the woman.

“You knew he wasn’t going to be here, and you didn’t tell me a damn thing—” Khalil lowered his voice again. “You didn’t tell me anything. I’m getting tired of that.”

She is bound to him. The voice spoke as though Khalil had not. She will be useful to you in tracking him.

“Wait a minute. I thought you knew where he was. You could tell me, right now, where he is—”

Do not interrupt me, whelp. Of course I know where he is… but Hesha may dispose of the stones at any time if he realizes their other powers. Why should I exert myself to hunt him down when you will do so just as well with the proper tool in hand? More importantly, I have neither desire or leisure to lead one demon to one snake by the hand. I have other affairs besides this to attend to, dog.

Khalil’s back hairs stood on end, but he managed to keep silence.

You are going to ask her about her “true love,” and you will threaten her to find out what she knows. Then you will suggest to her that she can know Hesha’s whereabouts, if she tries, even though she has not been told. Get this information from her and I will tell you if she lies. Go.

Khalil knelt beside the girl. His hands crept spider-like along the chain from link to link. He followed the fetters up her arms. Elizabeth’s skin tightened to gooseflesh, but she held steady. His fingers reached her wrists and caressed the heavy metal bracelets; he crooned into her ear with less breath than a whisper:

“Tell me… are you still in love with him? Worship him? Adore him madly? Do anything for him?”

She gritted her teeth and hung her head. A dark red tear crawled down her cheek. Her master was late, Khalil realized, and the wretched slave was lonely….

“Cards on the table, darling. I am looking for Hesha. You help me find him, I bring about the joyous reunion of two star-crossed lovers. You lie to me, you cheat me, you try anything, and I leave you for the sun. Deal?”

“But I don’t—”

“But you do know, and you will be able to help me find him, because you love him.”

Elizabeth’s eyes opened wide, then her face fell back into frightened lines. Her voice trembled. “What will you do to him if you find him?”

“Let me ask the questions, darling. Not many minutes left in the night.” Khalil reached into one of his pockets and pulled forth a plain gold ring set with one cloudy green stone. He opened Elizabeth’s right hand and placed the gem on her palm. “Tell me the truth, and the stone will turn clear. Lie to me,” he said menacingly, “and the stone turns black.” The Ravnos squinted hard at the green cabochon, and prepared himself for a little easy illusion.

“Hesha loves you, doesn’t he, sweetheart? Even I could see that in Calcutta. So— why would he do a thing like this to you?”

Elizabeth stared at the ring and said nothing.

“It’s going to be a beautiful morning. Why don’t I just leave you here to enjoy it?”

Elizabeth opened her mouth quickly—and bit her lip again just as suddenly. Khalil watched a struggle go on behind her eyes. Her expression… what was it? Not fear, entirely, though she checked the windows just as often and as apprehensively as he did himself. Good god, the light… Was it pride? In what? Why? Was she fighting to conceal her feelings? No—Khalil knew there was enough on her face to read. He simply didn’t understand the language.

“He didn’t want me to follow him!” she cried out, finally and desperately.

True, the voice confirmed. Khalil wrapped the stone in a clearer, paler vision of itself. Elizabeth, gazing into its depths, looked shocked. The Ravnos, surprised at her surprise, fought to keep it from showing. She went on:

“He… he had something to do on Long Island.” The gem lightened further, and Elizabeth stared at it in apparent astonishment. Khalil preened himself, mentally. This little lie-detector had been a spur-of-the-moment idea, but evidently a damn good one. “He wouldn’t tell me what, but I knew he was going to do something dangerous. He had a look on his face—a hopeless look,” Liz nearly sobbed. “I didn’t want him to go alone… but he didn’t want me in the way. I… lost control. He had to… to put me down… like he put you down in Calcutta.”

True, said the unseen listener. Khalil dropped a flaw or two from the image of the emerald, but grumbled, “I remember that a little differently.”

Elizabeth laughed in near-hysteria. “Why waste a stake when you have such nice shackles handy?”

“Yes,” The Ravnos agreed pointedly. “Very nice.” “He took the key with him,” she began hopefully. All true. Now release her and get under cover.

“And I think something terrible must have happened to him—he hasn’t come back yet, and there’s no time left—” She swallowed hard, and gestured with her chin toward her workshop. “There are bolt cutters under the bench. I keep them for old locks, but they might do for this.”

Khalil jumped up and tore over to the table. He looked at the long-handled steel blade and drop-forged anvil of the cutters, thought for a moment, and then he seized a coffee can of pliers and watchmaker’s tools from the shelf above them. “Oil?” he barked sharply.

“On the top shelf in the blue tin. Hurry!”

He set upon the locks with his own picks and a few useful things out of the girl’s stock. In two minutes he had open the fetters on her left ankle and wrist. Shaking, she pulled herself free of the chair. The Ravnos unwound the chains from the column and the wood. He put an urgent hand under her shoulder and propelled her toward the bathroom without waiting to free her other limbs.

Elizabeth hobbled along painfully, and Khalil had to help her across the floor. What little light dawn had begun pushing over the horizon stung and drowned their eyes; it seemed to strike her harder, and he was glad his own first nights were far behind him. He slammed the door closed and twisted the knob locked. With a door between himself and the morning he felt a little better. Liz fumbled toward the light switch; Khalil brushed past her and shut it firmly off. He snatched down a hand towel and stuffed it frantically under the door. The blinding, inch-high strip of day grew brighter, and his skin itched. The girl made some kind of movement behind him—a large towel was pressed into his grasping hands. He shoved it into the crack and reached back for more. The washcloth, a T-shirt, the bath mat, the shower curtain—together Khalil and Elizabeth tore the room apart and built a barricade against the sun. It took thirty seconds; it took thirty hours. In the darkness afterwards, he laid his hands on her arms and dragged her down toward the floor.

Khalil slipped out of his jacket and rolled it into a pillow. Wordlessly, he put it under the girl’s head, and she let him. He arranged his new companion’s body under the sink and around the toilet pedestal as comfortably as he could. He dragged the shackle chains out of her way. He waited—fighting the urge to lie down where he was, as he was—until the girl’s eyes had closed and her face slackened into the day’s sleep.

Then Khalil passed the chains through the naked pipes beneath the sink and bound the girl hand and foot once more. He staggered and fell into the bathtub, and oblivion washed over him.

Beneath 114th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan New York City, New York

Mouse had been just a few blocks from the subway when he’d heard the world rumbling. He’d been rummaging through the sewers. Such treasures down here, and he didn’t have to worry about the upperworlders seeing him. Nobody to hide from, nobody to mistake him for a big dog if they did see him, and no Sabbat, thank goodness. Both times the Cainite gangbangers had seen him, he’d been able to ditch them pretty easily, but it made him nervous, and being nervous made him shed, and shedding made him itch. Or maybe that was just the multitude of critters that shared his shaggy coat with him.

He’d been shuffling along in the shin-deep sewage to see what he could dredge up. And there! The brief glint caught his eye but then submerged again. So he reached down, cupped his hands beneath the surface of the gray-brown muck, then raised them, letting the liquid run through his fingers. There. He smiled. He was left holding a fairly intact pile of feces, and sparkling up at him was a partially buried, perfectly good, wonderful, silver button. He plucked it out and dropped everything else back into the flow. The button he rubbed between his hands until it was clean, then wiped his hands on his fur and clothes. The button wasn’t actually silver, of course. But he could pretend. It was white plastic, but it was shiny, and therefore a treasure. Mouse favored shiny treasures. He dropped it into his pocket, almost as pleased as if he’d found a few tasty kernels of corn.

That was when he’d heard the rumbling. It wasn’t the familiar regular purr of the one train; that was a sound and vibration that Mouse didn’t notice anymore, like the ticking of a clock that, after time, becomes more conspicuous by its absence than its presence. This sounded more like the buildings above ground, or maybe the streets, were tearing themselves apart. Not explosions really… maybe an earthquake? Except the disturbance seemed localized—not distant, but contained.

Mouse took a minute to set his bearings. He was nothing if not curious, so off he set. He moved purposefully through the sewers, up a rusted metal ladder, and then along a narrow access tunnel that brought him to the storm sewers, where there was easier and more frequent access to street level. By the time he reached a rain-gutter opening, the worst of the rumbling had ceased, but there was still something going on. He was less than a block from the big church that Mr. C. had said to stay away from. But the last Mouse had heard, that Anatole guy was gone, disappeared. So it shouldn’t matter, Mouse figured, if he went a little closer, because that seemed to be where the noise was coming from now—window-rattling thuds and whomps, like somebody was dropping boulders off the scaffolding around the church.

Mouse didn’t see anyone on the street, but he made sure to hide himself as he climbed out of the sewer and made his way down the block, just in case. He noticed at once the cracked and broken pavement—not potholes, which were nothing new, but stripe after stripe after stripe of crumbled asphalt, like ripples on a pond.

The noise grew louder the closer he got to the church. Mouse still couldn’t place what he was hearing—it sounded like a pile-driver, distinct pounding blows but at irregular intervals. Each whomp clattered deep in his chest.

Mouse slowed as he drew closer to the church’s gardens. He was feeling increasingly that this little expedition was not a good idea. Something about the violence of the sounds he was hearing put him off. There weren’t any screams—screams were always a bad sign—but he thought he might have heard grunts and moans just below the pounding. As often was the case, his curiosity got the better of his prudence. Profoundly puzzled, he peered hesitantly around the stone wall and into the gardens.

He could do no more than stare dumbfounded at what he saw. Until he finally turned and ran.

The Dragon’s Graveyard New York City, New York

Leopold placed each foot carefully, deliberately. Like a novice dancer, he picked his way among the jagged spikes of bone. His sandals would prove little protection against the wicked shards underfoot. He had no doubt that at the first misstep the flesh of his feet would be adorning someone else’s bones.

He crept forward across the Dragon’s Graveyard. Leopold tried to force himself to patience, but he was exultant. He had cornered his prey and the Eye was his once again.

The snake was a fool to ever think he could ever steal the Eye away for himself. Leopold focused his newly reclaimed Eye on the small stretch of ground where his next footfall must land. Grander details of the landscape were lost to him, beyond the scope of his world. His attention was consumed by an area precisely one pace long by one pace wide that lay directly before him.

Within that area, a diverse landscape spread out before him, played out in shades of black and white. The stark white of new bone, recently picked clean, thrust up sharply in cliffs and bluffs. The off-whites of bones left too long out of ground, exposed, rolled and tumbled upon themselves like hills. The stark black of each shadowed space between the bones lurked like ravines, gullies, badlands, ready to swallow the unwary.

Gazing into these pools of darkness puddled between the bones, Leopold could see that the bones ran deep. The field was made of layer upon layer of bone. The layers shifted, clashed, parted at each footfall.

A fistful of knucklebones rolled slightly underfoot. Some of the dislodged pieces slipped away into the gaps between larger bones. Rattling, rolling, sifting into the unknown depths. Leopold paused midstride to listen to the bones trickling down and away. He guessed that the layers of bone must go down at least the depth of a man. Leopold imagined slipping between the bones himself and sinking from view. Sidestepping the cruel sun. Gliding to rest a cool six feet under.

But there were other noises among the bones. Leopold couldn’t help noticing (focused as he was upon the minute details of the ground in front of him) that sometimes the bones seemed to shift of their own accord.

As if some unseen footstep had passed ahead of him.

Leopold, however, suspected another source for these disturbances. His keen hearing had no trouble picking out the faint chattering beneath the surface strata. Crawling, scuttling, stirring on the undersides of the very bones he trod upon. Thousands of tiny footfalls that mirrored and magnified his every step above. Leopold was reluctant to put his foot down, lest it slip into the dark spaces between the bones. There was no telling what a single misstep would conjure up from the dark recesses.

As intent as he was upon his feet, Leopold only noted the bone outcropping because he felt its shade. A most welcome break from the deadly rays of the life-stealing sun. He leaned against it with one hand, summoning up his reserves of strength to continue his journey.

Instantly, he drew back, finding the surface he touched seething with life.

Nearly invisible white mites scattered in all directions. He wiped the back of his hand repeatedly on tattered jeans, but could not seem to shake the feeling of tiny legs scurrying across his skin, picking their way over the parched and broken landscape of pores and follicles.

With a cry of pure animal triumph, Leopold knew he had, at last, realized the great reversal and found a way to transcend the inferno of the boneyard.

“Hello, Leopold. I have been looking for you. My name is Nickolai.”

Leopold turned to face the familiar voice and saw, in the flesh, one whom he had previously glimpsed in fevered sleep. “You are the one who awoke me in the cave. The keeper of the past. I remember you, although you once tried to eat those memories. It was you who...”

“Slowly, Leopold. There is so much you must know. But you must learn how to stalk knowledge—with calmness, detachment, patience. If you are ravenous, the prey will sense your hunger and escape you.”

Leopold smiled. “How will my prey escape me?” In an instant, he had worked the Great Reversal. He was the Dragon’s Graveyard. Nickolai and the city’s millions of inhabitants scurried across his skin—picking their way over the parched and broken landscape of pores and follicles.

Deep within the bedrock of the city, something vast and unreasoning stirred in answer. Nickolai felt the ground tremble. He took Leopold firmly by the shoulders, grounded him, anchored him. Leopold snapped back within his own bones. He suddenly looked very frail and shaken. “It seems the question is rather,” Nickolai replied, “how will you escape it?”

Khalil Ravana paused for a moment on the path his master had set him. From the street corner opposite the looming, mountainous bulk of the church, he scanned it cautiously. A few upturned floodlights illuminated the carved stonework walls. They cast long and pitch-black shadows everywhere else. The Ravnos could feel his feet urged toward the darkest, most tangled and indecipherable place in sight, and his brief pause lengthened and became a true and nervous halt.

Pensively, he rubbed the stubble on his chin, stroked his beard and mustache, and glanced down at himself. He felt a bit better immediately. He’d changed the sharp suit for an outfit more to his taste. A flowing, wine-colored silk shirt with wide lapels and rolled sleeves was left wide open to show off his muscle-girt stomach and the curly black hair on his chest. Khakis, which he had always despised for their lack of color and military lack of imagination, had been turned around in America. He wore them in a style he had seen and coveted coming out from Chicago: unbelted and slipped nearly below his hips, revealing a bright and beautiful band of silk—fine, printed satin boxer shorts, slung low like the trousers. A short gold ball-chain graced his neck. The cloudy emerald ring swung on a longer, black leather thong. His shoes were cheap—suede as cheap as it came, with thin, nearly sponge-rubber black soles—silent, and without socks, nearly as good as bare feet to him. And the entire ensemble (the clotheshorse smiled to himself) had been bought with the money he’d got pawning Hesha’s childe’s jewelry. Khalil licked a finger, curled his forelock more tightly, and stepped across the street toward the churchyard.

“Talk to me,” he muttered in the crosswalk. “What am I doing?”

The Eye changed hands here last night.

Khalil’s eyes narrowed. “Hesha was unavoidably detained—here?”

Yes.

The young Ravnos gnawed his thumb in suspicion. He said nothing, but resolved to find a map of the city as soon as possible. This cathedral seemed a considerable distance from Long Island. Perhaps Hesha had covered a lot of ground last night. Perhaps the old bastard didn’t know as much as it pretended to…. Khalil touched the pendant ring, and wondered.

More doubts rose like cankers. Why, if Elizabeth was supposed to be so useful, had the voice insisted she be left behind tonight? Khalil hated leaving his cache (which included the girl, now, in his own mind) unguarded. What if Hesha came back to gather her ashes? What if one of his men had been waiting in the wings last night…. The Setite had been surrounded by absolute gaggles of minions in Calcutta. Why not in New York? A shudder ran down the Ravnos’s spine. Thompson—or worse, the Asp—could have been in the apartment while he himself slept. The thought stopped him in his tracks.

Move. Khalil’s gut surged forward. He ignored it.

He had to find another source of information. This reliance on the thing that called itself his master was intolerable.

Go, you filth-covered rat. The voice spurred him forth just like a horse. Khalil determined to stand still a while longer, if only to see whether he could. To the spurs was added a whip—pain in old wounds. The servant shook a little under the assault, but found it possible to resist. He smiled. The old thing’s reach might go around the world from Calcutta, but its powers weakened with the distance. Khalil, deeply satisfied, let the force send him on.

As he reached the opposite corner, he blinked and scowled. There was a faint light in the distance that could not, quite, be accounted for by any mundane lamp or reflection that he could see. Curiosity took him toward it, in a circumspect and roundabout way— flanking it, in fact. A thin ribbon of pale blue, misty glow curved out of an alley two or three blocks down the other north-south street that bounded the cathedral compound. It traced an arc onto and down from a low building, and disappeared behind a fence.

“Are you putting that there, or is it really there?” Khalil asked his unseen master.

Your lack of clarity and articulation astounds me. I assume you refer to the residue given off by the Eye, not to the sky, the ground, or any other of the ten thousand things in your immediate vicinity?

“The blue glow,” said Khalil, from between clenched teeth.

It is there. I merely enable you to see it. It would take a very rare pair of eyes indeed to mark it without my assistance.

Khalil paced along the outskirts of the holy precincts. He passed under the arching stream of light, and subjected it to the minute scrutiny he gave everything offered him by his clansman. It was only a few inches tall and deep. It described a very crooked and erratic path through the night, though the arc, from a distance, looked perfectly smooth. A hand thrust into the trail felt slightly chill. An eye peering straight into the light saw nothing but street and city, but sighting along the thread gave a better idea of the color of the phenomenon. It was a kind of venous blue, the tint of drowned skin or of a dead man’s lips, but far paler. The Ravnos accepted it as real (with reservations) and walked to the other side of the fenced-in area to see whether the Eye had come out again.

It had, into what seemed to Khalil’s untutored eyes a cross between a garden and a junkyard. The death-blue light moved down, up, across, back, and through the hedges and flowers on a clearly impossible trail. In one place, the will-o’-the-wisp plunged beneath the smooth, unbroken turf. In another, the Ravnos saw two arcs—jumps, he would have guessed—that were joined, presumably where a person carrying the Eye had landed and taken off again, twelve feet off the ground.

“I never knew snakes could fly,” he commented darkly, and set out to follow the puzzle to its end.

A girl, dead, alone, and wary, watched him from underneath a thick yew hedge. She had darted into its black shadow and hidden her pale hands and face in the mulch the moment the stranger came to her notice. There had been the hope, for a short time, that he was an ordinary denizen of the city—that she could, if she chose, slip away through the garden, taking no more trouble than to avoid the few working lights local vandals had left.

The knowledge that he was not harmless, not human, not here by chance, grew on her with each step the stranger took. She could see, quite well, the ghost light in the air—and she could see that he saw it, and took a definite, sinister interest in it, as well. Now she dared not move. When he had first appeared, she had been doing a little tracking of her own near the ugly fountain-thing. The air around it was thickest with the glowing stuff, and so, at this moment, the stranger stood not a yard from her. When he backed up to look at the light-maze from a different perspective, his bare ankle came within six inches of her nose. He smelled of the grave, as she expected. She wished she knew whether sinking into the earth made a noise, and whether, once in the soil, her body could be dug out or staked or fired. She wished she knew how much longer the trace in the air—the fog that was no fog, not in this heat wave—would last. If it began to fade, she would have to come out. No matter who the stranger was, what he was working for, she couldn’t let her only clue just melt away.

And if he’s a clue? she asked herself.

The stranger stopped over a brighter spot, a patch on the ground. From there, the shine rose up—To a man’s height, thought the girl under the bushes—and took a straight, uncomplicated line toward the street again—

And disappeared completely before it reached the sidewalk. The stranger stared at it for a good minute, then threw his arms up in flamboyant and furious anger. He said something, and the girl strained to listen.

Saturday, 31 July 1999, 10:17 PM The Cathedral of St. John the Divine New York City, New York

“What the h-h-hell is g-g-going on?!” Khalil stammered with pure rage—close to the edge of his reason.

It has been taken and very cleverly concealed, the voice said. “What—even from you?”

The presence loomed large and threateningly in Khalil’s mind. He cowered unconsciously. Of course not. It is mine. I can see where it is. I merely do not know where it is. Behind the stark tones, the young Ravnos felt something unexpected: admiration. There is nothing in its surroundings to tell me its location, either. Someone has been intelligent.

“So why the fuck did you let me trace this goddamned neon all the way to the end? Why the hell couldn’t you drop a single bloody hint?”

You did not ask, said the voice maddeningly.

Khalil’s hands began to twitch. With a supreme effort of self-control, he asked, quietly, “Who has it? There was a fight here. You said it changed hands. Therefore—” he took a breath for breath’s sake— “Hesha hasn’t got it anymore. So. Who has the Eye,” and only the faintest emphasis on the next word betrayed his frustrations, “now?”

Leopold.

“Leopold.”

The Toreador from whom Hesha and his household took the Eye. The voice paused, and a new note came into it. Watch your back.

It took a fraction of a second for Khalil’s mind to change tracks—then he whirled around, frighteningly aware that an enemy could have taken that instant’s delay to attack. Yet there was time enough to find his balance, and look at the lone figure standing near him, and take her measure, and still no blow fell.

She waited for him. Her hands hung loose and free, though with talons extended. Her eyes were on him, but her ears were obviously everywhere. The taut tendons in her neck flickered, moving her head to catch the slightest sound. She stood calmly enough, but for all that, her stance was unusual, casual. The feet turned out at right angles to each other like a dancer’s, a sailor’s, or a trained fighter’s. Unlike the martial artist (long dead) she’d reminded him of at first, she chose to stand on up her toes. In fact, her weight lay so far forward on the tips of her feet, Khalil wasn’t sure how she could still have her ankles bent, and useful, at all. That was wrong… he had a feeling for combat (though he rarely stayed to join in it) and he concluded that, however good she might be naturally, she was completely untrained. He felt a little—a very little—better.

What light there was counted against him; he knew she saw him more clearly than he saw her. There would be a better exit behind him, too, if he could change their positions a little. He stepped counterclockwise, and was gratified to see her do the same. Again he circled slightly to the right, and the girl kept her distance from him. Another step, and she was just in the glow of a small flood-lamp illuminating a rust-colored statue.

The girl was dirty. She wore a tight, thin-strapped tank top, a pair of jeans that did nothing for her figure (except, perhaps, allow it to move). Dry leaves, burrs, and needles clung to her clothes and stuck in her knotted, curly, jet-black hair. Her face… dark, set in sullen lines… there was something about it…. Khalil chivvied her around the circle and into the full glare of the bulb. It struck her from below and cast macabre shadows up her face. A scar—no, an open wound—showed on the curve of her cheek. And the light picked out, in beautiful detail, the pointed tips of her inhuman ears.

A Gangrel. What heart Khalil had sank—he’d come to the largest city in the world, and practically the first leech he’d met was a jungle lover. Between his clan and theirs seethed the oldest, fiercest feud the Rom had ever spawned—a quarrel he had never, in his entire death, understood. By all accounts it had spread to the new world with the Gypsies it centered around. Still, she couldn’t know that he was a Ravnos just by looking at him, could she? He began to regret his change of clothes. Why dress to impress your living cousins when you aren’t sure you have any and wouldn’t know how find them in this city even if they were there? Damn.

The Ravnos realized he was now standing in the spot that had been his goal. He’d had his look at her. A fast and uncomplicated route out lay directly behind him. Now, he could back away, revealing that he was afraid of her—turn confidently and walk away, expecting the amnesty to last or hoping to force her into an attack at a time of his own choosing—or turn and bolt. He looked again at her misshapen feet. She was probably the faster runner. Khalil opened his mouth. Speech was his best weapon, generally.

But the Gangrel got the jump on him, conversationally speaking. “You can see the trail,” the wild girl said in a sharp, urgent, and very young voice. She went on, insisting, “You were following it.”

“Was I really?” Khalil forced as much BBC into his voice as possible. Fake British, fake Brahmin, fake Babu… anything but a guttersnipe’s Rom accent…. “What trail?”

“I watched you the whole time. I heard you, too,” she added accusingly. “Tell me. Who the hell’s Hesha?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said Hesha had the… had it. Then you asked, who had it now? And you answered yourself a second later: Leopold.” The Gangrel took a step in Khalil’s direction, and he shuffled back as inconspicuously as he could. “So who’s Hesha? Who’s Leopold?”

Khalil licked his lips. “That depends on who’s asking, doesn’t it?” Hells knew that was true. The girl frowned. “Ramona.” A bit of the tension dropped from her, replaced by a somber pride. “Ramona Tanner-Childe.” She hesitated, as if about to add something else, but shut her lips on it decisively.

“Hesha is a Setite, Miss Tanner-Childe.” Her face didn’t change. “Do you know,” Khalil continued thoughtfully, “what a Setite is?”

“It ain’t a Toreador.” And though the sentence was undoubtedly a statement, her tone made the faintest query of it.

“No,” he replied, stroking his mustache. And why did you think it was? he asked himself. “You’re quite right there,” he said aloud, ignoring the doubt in her voice, smiling as though she had told a faintly funny joke.

The Gangrel’s body relaxed a little farther. “I’m looking for a Toreador. He had the… he had it, the last time I saw either of ’em.”

Khalil looked her up and down, then decided to chance a little truth. “Your Toreador’s name is Leopold.”

Her ears pricked and eyes narrowed. “How the fuck do you know?” she threw at him. “I’m hunting him myself,” said the Ravnos blithely, reverting to type. “I have come all the way from India to track this Toreador and destroy him—with my bare hands, if need be.” A hollow little chuckle started in the back of his head; he ignored it. “I have,” he lowered his eyes modestly, “a considerable reputation for demon-hunting and lupine- slaying in the cities of my homeland.”

Her reaction caught him off guard. She laughed once, alarmingly, like a bark. “You? Alone?”

Lying idiot, the voice inside Khalil’s head barked. She can see the trail; she has the mark of the Eye on her. She knows what it is capable of better than you do.

Khalil hid the bitter reaction behind his black eyes and smiled sagely at the girl. “Of course not.” He took an ordinary, walking step toward her, and pretended that the possibility of a fight was over. It seemed to work. “I’m no fool,” whatever you may say, you old bastard, “but I had to test you. Your wound—” His hand rose, still several feet from her face, and indicated the open gash. “May I look at it?”

“You can see it fine from over there,” said Ramona.

“It’s proof that you’ve been near the Eye.” He paused. “And survived. And I might know a way to heal it….”

I know a way. What are you doing, boy?

Her face twitched in pain, but she came closer and let him peer at the mark. He brought his hands up, talons withdrawn, and touched the skin just above and below the open sore. “Sorry,” he said as she flinched. Quite naturally, he put a hand to the side of her neck to steady it.

“Are you American?” he asked conversationally. “Yeah.”

“From New York?” Khalil kept his eyes on her cheek. He turned slightly for better light. “No,” Ramona answered shortly, then relented. “California. That was… before all this shit. Lived here about a year, I guess.”

“You know the city well, then?” “Sure.”

“You know the Ravnos here?”

A moment’s pause. “Sure,” she answered confidently. “Street gang from Queens.”

“Just so,” said Khalil. He took his hands off the girl’s throat and sat down a comfortable distance away from her. She followed suit, perching on the edge of a planter. “This Leopold—I really am trying to find him. I know things about the Eye and I have allies who may be able to help me, but I don’t know this city. I have to find someone who knows the territory. That could be you. Maybe we can help each other.”

For a minute, Ramona sat silent. She hiked her knees up and hunched her arms around them, staring at the stranger. A bitter frown crossed her face, and her shoulders fell in a little more; her eyes dropped to the ground. Khalil watched in fascination as the grimy hands stroked the stiff denim jeans, picking at the threads absently. She held herself together—she set her jaw, and the hands turned to fists—she looked up at him again, and he returned the gaze with his best earnest honesty. “’S going to take more than you and me to stop that thing.”

“I know,” he said. “I know. But someone has to.”

Ramona stood up and came closer to her new acquaintance. “What’s your name?” she demanded.

“Khalil.”

The Gangrel nodded as if in approval and stretched herself elaborately. To Khalil she seemed just like a cat that had agreed to adopt an “owner,” or a mark who thought he’d found a good deal, or a woman ready to take him home: still wary, but still his. He thought of his ride into town, of Elizabeth chained to the pipes—watched Ramona studying the track though the air—looked past them all to the city. All his.

And the voice, too softly for Khalil to hear it, whispered also, Mine.

Sunday, 1 August 1999, 1:18 AM TheMalecón

Havana, Cuba

“I have a proposition for you.”

Anastasz di Zagreb, justicar for the sorcerous Tremere vampires, tilted his head, encouraging her to go on. “Yes, and it is…?”

“You and I, we are much alike,” Isabel Giovanni began. It was a thread that made the Tremere none too comfortable—he was familiar with the debased Kindred of Clan Giovanni and he was aware of a certain quirk that this one in particular indulged while feeding. He wanted nothing more at the moment than to be as little like her as possible. “And our histories share more than one sympathy.” Anastasz hated this part. The Kindred and all of their petty games irritated him, and his preference was to be either “in the field” or in his own sanctum. No doubt what would follow this pretty-but-cold woman’s requests would be some unpleasant request couched in the form of a favor. The Tremere was familiar with such double-bladed social engineerings—his own august position was the result of hidden favors and boons exchanged. His predecessor, the potent Karl Schrekt, had been miraculously left unconsidered for reelection to the justicar’s title. Instead, at the assembly of the Camarilla’s Inner Council in 1998, the Tremere had put forth the dark horse di Zagreb. Isabel’s pending offer was surely some similar ruse, carefully couched in eloquence and deceit.

“Our clans have both risen from the ashes of others. We both hail from long, distinguished lines of sires who saw weakness and chose to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. I don’t pretend to know the secrets of those fateful nights”—don’t patronize me, you florid bitch, Anastasz thought—“but I do know that our clans both rose like phoenixes from the folly of others. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“As much as it displeases me, I concur. Where are you headed with this, Isabel?” Such insolence! Moments like this allowed Anastasz to savor his position. To think that one as young as himself—a Kindred for only one century—could speak with such insouciance to a scion of the Giovanni! But then, Anastasz remembered, it was only the strength of the Camarilla that allowed him this luxury. Were Clan Tremere as removed from Kindred affairs as the Giovanni, his title would have meant nothing. She would have crushed him like a beetle, if only he hadn’t had the ubiquitous ivory tower behind him.

“Patience, Justicar. Do not leap to judgment. Allow me to explain.”

“Then be about it, Isabel. The summer nights are short and I am hungry.” Masterful!

Dismissive yet authoritative! Perhaps the game of politics had its benefits after all.… “Very well. Surely you are familiar with the fate of the Ravnos?”

Anastasz nodded. Earlier this very month, the Kindred world had shaken at its very foundation as one of the original, Biblical Kindred had awoken from its sleep. The founder of a clan had risen too early for the end of the world and was destroyed, dragging his childer screaming into Final Death with him. Or so the tale was told. No one who was there had been too eager to step forward—and most who had been there had been destroyed. “I am.”

“Then you understand that they stand poised to retake their fallen status, much as our own sires claimed the mantle of clanhood. Once again, as the rest of the Children of Caine watch the death of their siblings, they mutter their own thanks that it was not they whom fate conspired to harm. But you Tremere know, Anastasz, as well as we Giovanni, that those who are dismissed as weak or few can turn the tables and snatch victory from the jaws of oppression.”

Good Lord, thought Anastasz, she certainly is painting this in epic strokes.

“Many Ravnos escaped the madness at the end of last month with their unlives. The few who remain may take advantage of the weak light in which others see them. Clans have fallen before, and never without dire repercussion. Your own clan and mine came as a result, and it is whispered that the formation of the Sabbat had similar circumstances.”

“Are you suggesting that the Tremere and the Sabbat—”

“Of course not. I am suggesting that we strike while the iron is hot. The Ravnos are crippled. Our work is almost done; we must simply finish the deed.”

“Destroy the remaining Ravnos?” Anastasz considered this. It certainly had its merits. A line of mystics and scoundrels, the Ravnos left trouble in their wake. Many Kindred princes of Europe and the New World refused to allow Ravnos in their domains. The Ravnos had no allies, nor did they want them. They practically begged to be extinguished. Such a tactic would not only remove a lingering thorn from the Camarilla’s side, it could consolidate the sect’s strength and allow it to focus on larger threats. And if he played his cards right, he could prove his worth to an Inner Council that harbored doubts about his ability.

Anastasz stopped, shocked at his thoughts. Was he actually considering genocide? Did he honestly think that his reputation was worth the death of other Kindred? How blind and instinctual a creature had he become, that slaughter and murder were subjects so easily entertained? Even as a predator, he retained a sense of his own humanity—it was the only bulwark he had against the bestial urges that lurked in all Kindred. If he gave in completely, he would no longer be a conscious being; he would become wholly a monster.

“Yes.” Isabel’s response snapped Anastasz out of his reverie. “They offer nothing, and it is in the interests of all Kindred that we isolate and remove the threat they are still quite capable of posing.” The moon shone down on Isabel’s face, making her look ghoulish, and her suggestion compounded the discomfort Anastasz felt.

“This is murder, Isabel.”

“No, Justicar, this is survival. Death is part of the cycle of all life—and unlife. Perhaps more so for the latter. I assure you, no Ravnos would hesitate to deliver you to your final reward.”

“That’s impossible to say, Isabel. We are Kindred—our motives are our own. Not all of us are murderous monsters.”

“You don’t think so, Justicar? You are fooling yourself. The Ravnos progenitor arose from its slumber and destroyed its own children! What more argument do you need to convince you?” “I suggest you hold your tongue, Isabel.” The discussion had taken a turn for the ugly. Anastasz whispered tersely, “Whether or not you and your clan claim membership in the Camarilla, we still claim dominion over you. Your words show little regard for the Masquerade, and we are in a public place with mortals about. I will not hesitate to take the necessary recourse—”

“Listen to what you are saying, Anastasz,” Isabel returned, equally as quietly. “You apply your Masquerade and crusade selectively. The deceitful Ravnos are a far greater threat to the Masquerade than I could ever hope to be—”

“I’m not going to suggest mass murder based on your cajoling, Isabel. I won’t take a stance against the Ravnos because some bigoted Kindred doesn’t like them. Their witchcraft and illusion are less damning than your own behavior—we know about your little predilection, my dear. We know that you drink vitae only from your victims’ severed heads. And I can assure you that not every Kindred is as jaded and callous as you. I will not be used, nor will I allow my position to be exploited by a clan that refuses to accept the responsibilities of undeath.” “I see that I have misjudged you, Justicar. You condemn me with petty, mortal conceits.

This political correctness, as they call it, is not a product of the times during which either of us were Embraced. Modern does not mean better, and all your arguments crumble beneath the cold truth. For I know members of the Tzimisce, with whom your clan has struggled since your earliest nights. It is a sorcerer’s war, with both of your bloodlines putting each other to death for personal power. You and the House of Tremere are far worse than any course of action I suggest, because my motives are utilitarian. You slaughter each other over eyes of newt and forgotten spells, and yet you claim a moral high ground when I suggest removing a problem before it becomes dire. Your hypocrisy disgusts me.”

Anastasz closed his eyes and rubbed them, signaling his weariness to Isabel. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and peered out over the Atlantic Ocean, as if to encourage Isabel to make her final argument or let him go. She saw his growing frustration and played to it.

“I know all about the situation in New York, Anastasz.”

The justicar turned, his eyes flashing hotly. “And what does that have to do with what you’re putting before me here?”

“Pieterzoon told me everything. Well, not directly, but through his liaison, Jacques Gauthier. They asked me to convince the body of Clan Giovanni to help. That’s a dangerous position to take, Justicar. The Sabbat are not pleasant enemies. We Giovanni have maintained our independence by not taking sides—at the request of your Camarilla, if my history serves me correctly—and we’re now being asked to act in direct opposition to that.”

“Pieterzoon is power mad and Gauthier is a buffoon.”

“Yes, well, your personal opinion is secondary to the facts of the matter, Anastasz. Whatever esteem you hold for Jan and his compatriots, you have common interest in the Camarilla. That’s why I’ve bothered to talk to you at all. I’m sure you can understand the value of knowing as much as you can about a situation before acting on it, no? I’m not willing to drag other Giovanni into your Jyhad for the sake of Pieterzoon’s ego. But I am willing to strike a deal with the winning side.”

“New York is part of the means. It’s not the end, Isabel.”

“I understand that, Justicar, but Jan has placed a tempting offer on the table. I’m sure you’re no stranger to the unattainability of Boston.” Isabel couldn’t resist the dig. Di Zagreb, as well as anyone else who dirtied themselves in Kindred politics, knew that influence in Boston was divided into a seemingly unbreakable three-way impasse between the Camarilla, Sabbat and Giovanni.

“So then, what are you doing here, Isabel?” “Talking to you, Justicar.”

“No, you Giovanni. What are you doing here?”

“What everyone in Havana is doing. Waiting for Castro to die.” “And why is that?”

“Pure economics, my dear Anastasz. Once the old man goes on to his final reward, this whole country’s going to become the biggest free market in the western hemisphere.”

“Triangle trade, Isabel.” “What?”

“Triangle trade. It’s what the Fat Man wants to do, and you’re going to back it with him. When, as you say, Castro dies, this whole country’s going to be the biggest black market in the New World.”

“So?” Isabel smiled sweetly. “When the change to capitalism comes, greed won’t be a crime anymore—it’ll be standard operating procedure. It won’t even be a black market, because Cuba will establish itself as a governmentally backed international shopping mall. Anything goes.”

“But that’s only part of the equation. Cuba’s still going to maintain some severe antidrug legislation, because it’ll be in their best interests. Half the government will be against drug trade and keep it illegal while the other half will be on the take, so keeping it illegal will make them rich on bribe money. They couldn’t go too lax on drugs, anyway, because the United States would crush them politically.”

“Where are you going with this, Anastasz?”

“Well, if I know you and the rest of your clan, the simple, legal investments will only wet your beaks. Sure, you’ll make millions—probably billions—in the tourist boom, but it’s also part of the triangle trade. You’re going to run heroin from Italy to Cuba, where you’ll either send it in to the U.S. through Boston or sell it and convert the profits to coke and marijuana, then move that through Boston, because that’s where you have the customs vice in your pockets. Then, the money goes back to Italy, where it buys more heroin, which again goes through Cuba, etc.”

Isabel’s eyebrows rose and her mouth curled up a bit at the ends. “Not bad, Justicar. Not bad at all. But it won’t affect you at all, will it? Boston’s already a Giovanni haven, Venice has always been one, and we only need a few Kindred handling the operation here. It doesn’t matter if Cuba becomes a Sabbat or Camarilla playground—both of you will shut your mouths for a few points.”

“But we don’t have to, Isabel. That’s where I’m headed with this. It would be equally profitable for us to watch every import-export company that sets up in the area and shut down any that smell like Giovanni. In fact, it would be more lucrative for whoever comes out on top to run you gravediggers out of business—because they could then charge you whatever they wanted to keep the lanes open.”

“I’m willing to play that game, Anastasz. The Kindred have long been masters of such maneuverings, and this is simply one more. Who knows—Cuba may even turn out to be Utopia, where Kindred can go about their business without that awful, artificial baggage that your ideological war seems to thrive on. The Giovanni are glad to take such risks, Justicar. It is our bread and butter, our vitae, and we have done it for more than a thousand years, since the nights of the crusades and before. Dealings like these are our raison d’être. Can you say the same? Cuba is ours—it is only a question of when.”

Di Zagreb turned his shoulder away from Isabel, remaining silent.

“As I said, though, Justicar, we are willing to deal with the side that wins. We have no illusions as to your superior numbers, and in truth, we would prefer to deal with the Camarilla, as it is almost universally more civil and urbane than those cackling lunatics of the Sabbat. But don’t think for a minute that you have any influence that we don’t allow you to have. It would be a bitter fight between us, and one that you would almost certainly win. But at what cost?

“Keep that in mind, Justicar. For the time being, the Giovanni side with no one, but our sympathies lie with the Camarilla. And also keep in mind that we offer our sympathies by choice.”

With that, Isabel turned and walked away. The Tremere Justicar thought on the meaning of her words. Perhaps he still had much to learn, after all.

Robert Gainesmil, the Toreador primogen of Baltimore, had mentioned it so casually: “My houseguest, Ms. Ash, asked me to invite you over. She hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting you.”

“Victoria Ash wants to meet me?” Fin had asked.

Gainesmil had assured him that it was true, and so here Fin was at the mansion. No Kindred in the city other than Gainesmil or Prince Garlotte, Fin’s sire, would dare be so ostentatious, but the Toreador’s loyalty to the prince over the years wasn’t without its perks. For once, Fin felt scruffy in his shiny leather jacket and black boots. He followed a formally attired servant into the atrium as the valet pulled away in Fin’s Camaro.

“Right this way, sir.” The butler or manservant or whatever the hell he was led Fin up a massive, curving staircase and along a spacious hall adorned with portraits and wall- sized mirrors. A few brass fixtures provided plenty of illumination, reflecting in the infinite regression of the mirrors. Fin was uncomfortably aware of his boots squeaking with each step along the highly polished tile floor.

Finally the man opened a door into a relatively small, intimate parlor, and there sat Victoria Ash. As the servant let himself out, she rose to greet Fin and took him by the hands. “Come. Sit with me.”

A cheerful little ditty popped into Marston Colchester’s mind, as he watched Victoria work her wiles on young Fin: Sit on my face, and tell me that you love me! But he restrained himself.

“It’s so good of you to come visit me,” Victoria said.

“I guess you’ve been pretty busy since you got into town,” Fin answered.

Colchester watched them from the far side of the room. Victoria had been a busy beaver since taking up residence with Robert Gainesmil, Baltimore’s foremost native Toreador. She had put the bug in Gainesmil’s ear that she would like to meet Fin. Gainesmil had obediently passed the word along, and now here was Fin. He was a beautiful boy, young and handsome. Somebody might as well have wrapped him up and put a bow on his head. Victoria was going to eat him alive. And not in a way you’re going to enjoy, buddy boy.

“Alexander speaks fondly of you,” Victoria said.

Funny, he speaks of fondling you.

There was a pause. “He did? Of me?” Fin asked incredulously.

“He most certainly does,” Victoria assured him. “As for my being busy, there’s actually very little for me to do here. You know how men are… all wanting to protect me from the grueling and dangerous work of defending a city.”

I’ll give you some gruel, baby.

“Well, the Sabbat’s nothing to mess around with,” Fin said. “Have you ever—”

“So it was very thoughtful of you to come see me,” Victoria interrupted. “You know,” placing a finger to her inviting lips, “Alexander hasn’t said as much, but I do believe that you are the one he’s grooming to succeed him as prince some night.”

Colchester clapped a hand to his forehead, but no one took notice of him. Fin laughed. “You must have me mixed up with Isaac.”

“No. Isaac is an able sheriff, but I think Alexander has grander designs for you. I mean no slight to your blood kin.” Victoria reached over and brushed aside a lock of Fin’s hair. “But there are depths to you that I don’t see in Isaac.”

Fin’s mouth dropped open. Colchester sighed, shook his head back and forth. Then he saluted, as if an unseen bugle were sounding Taps.

Fin faltered momentarily. Her words, so absurd just a moment ago, seemed to gather merit upon reflection. Fin compared Victoria’s impression with his own recent determination to take a more active role in the affairs of Baltimore’s Kindred population. Still he had never before heard anyone else articulate thoughts so similar to his own. “I… I’ve been meaning… for a while now, to take a more… to be more assertive. I’ve… I’ve tried to talk to Katrina about it…”

“Katrina. Hmph.” A frown darkened Victoria’s countenance. Fin suddenly wanted to massage the furrow from her brow.

“You’ve met Katrina.”

Victoria’s scowl deepened. “I have. We spoke, but the conversation was brief. And not particularly rewarding.”

“She can be like that.”

“I suspect she’s too absorbed with her childer.”

Again Fin missed a beat, then he realized what Victoria must have meant. “She stays with Jazz and Tarika, but they’re not… ” he shook his head, “Prince Garlotte never gave us permission to Embrace anyone.”

“Oh, of course they’re her childer,” Victoria explained patiently. She was smiling sweetly again, and that made Fin feel better. “Alexander may not have given you permission publicly. You know—favoritism and all that.”

Slowly it dawned on Fin that Victoria could be right. He’d kind of wondered in the past, but he’d never gone so far as to ask anyone. He’d just assumed that Katrina’s companions were… well, just that—companions, not childer. Fin thought of Morena, of how his heart ached for her to join him throughout eternity, but still he couldn’t manage to picture her face. There was only Victoria, sitting so near, leaning close and so concerned for him.

“Katrina,” Fin said with crumbling disbelief. “She Embraced them. You really think so?” “I do. I think that stubborn streak is what endears her to Alexander. He prefers assertive childer.” Victoria’s words flowed like honey. They lifted Fin up and helped him see the heights he could hope to achieve.

Colchester had called it: Fin was way out of his league. He’s awfully cute, but not too bright. A perfect vehicle for Victoria’s spite. She was feeding him a steady diet of lies, everything that he wanted to hear and was only too willing to believe. She filled him with a grossly exaggerated sense of his own importance, and patently absurd ideas about what he should expect from his sire the prince.

Garlotte, prefer assertive childer? Ridiculous. The prince went out of his way to surround himself with yes-men. All he wanted from a childe was for him to bend over and take it like a man. Thank you, sir. May I have another? That made Colchester think of Garlotte’s middle childe, Katrina. There was a hottie. I wouldn’t mind bending her over and—

“So you think I should confront him?” Fin was saying. “In front of the entire council?” “I think he would respect to no end such a public display of confidence.” Colchester sighed. This one was a lost cause. But then a smile came to the half of the Nosferatu’s lip that wasn’t pierced by his over-sized, upward-pointing tusk. There was no urgent reason, really, for him to tell Garlotte about this little meeting. After all, there was no way the prince could expect him to keep up with every single conversation that Victoria had. And if Fin was so stupidly determined to go down in flames, there might as well be some entertainment value in it for the rest of them.

The truly difficult part for Colchester came several hours after Fin’s departure. Victoria spent the rest of night quietly in her rooms. She sat for much of the time with a coffee-table book about Baltimore architecture in her lap. She turned a page occasionally but did not seem to read the words or see the pictures; her gaze was distant, her mind on other things.

Colchester had little to occupy him—little except his own thoughts, and those he had trouble corralling. The perverse quips rang hollow when there was no one present for him to enrage or abuse. There was only the object of his desire. He could have left. It seemed increasingly unlikely as the night progressed that Victoria would go out or receive another visitor. She didn’t seem to be expecting any news in the immediate future. She had wound up poor, dense Fin and sent him on his way, and now there was nothing to do but wait for him to collect his reward from the prince.

Victoria stared at the book in her lap—in the direction of the book in her lap. She said nothing. Colchester could not read her thoughts; he couldn’t tell what memories or plans caused the hard, almost pained expression that crossed her beautiful features. There was nothing for him to learn, yet he was unable to tear himself away. He didn’t want to tear himself away—he did, but he didn’t. He could only watch and keep watching.

She wore a loose-fitting satin blouse, off-white, and pearls. Her knees were tucked beneath her in a long, clinging skirt. Sheer stockings covered her feet and ankles.

As the night wore on, Colchester began to creep around the edge of the room. Inch by inch, he drew closer to Victoria, closer to her physical perfection. He positioned himself to her left. Her blouse pouched out slightly between buttons. Colchester stared at the downward curve of her white breast, he imagining his finger tracing that line, down to the edge of her bra. He struggled with his thoughts, making sure not to slip too far into fantasy. He was still concealed from Victoria’s notice. He was skilled with the gifts of the blood, yet even with his expertise, the trick required a certain amount of concentration. A younger, less-practiced Nosferatu would never have pulled it off, but Colchester remained hidden.

He caressed her a thousand times as the hours passed, and all the while, a great ache was growing within him. Not hunger. Not even lust exactly—Colchester was well acquainted with that, his most frequent of emotions—though lust was certainly the seed of this deeper, more profound distress. He wanted almost desperately to reach out and touch Victoria, to stroke the satin of her blouse, the silk of her skin. He wanted to undo one of the smooth buttons, and then another, and another….

“Is there anything I may do for you, Ms. Ash?”

Colchester’s every muscle tensed. Blast his infatuation! He had not heard the butler’s approach, the door to the suite opening—the door directly behind him. The Nosferatu’s black eyes grew wide with alarm, but he held his position. He was crouched exactly between the door, to his rear, and Victoria, to his front. The butler obviously did not perceive him—his voice and question were too casual, too routine—but now Victoria was turning to respond to the butler.

She looked almost directly at Colchester—looked through him. “Nothing, Langford,” she said.

Colchester held his tense pose. He heard Langford withdrawing from the room, gently closing the door behind him. For the longest of moments, Victoria stared after Langford and through Colchester. For those drawn-out seconds, the Nosferatu allowed himself to believe that her green eyes—they were flecked with gold, he could see now—saw him and loved him. She did not flee in revulsion or attack him. She looked upon him, saw him for what he was, loved him.

It couldn’t happen. Colchester couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t allow her to see him. If she had, she would have responded with shock, anger, fear, some combination thereof. She could never see him for anything other than a deformed freak. She or anyone else. But for those seconds, he could imagine—

And then she looked away. The illusion faded, and Colchester, hidden as ever, felt more keenly the ache.

He wasn’t prepared when Victoria shifted in the chair, set down the book, and got up. Had she turned toward him, she would have tripped over Colchester. He was lucky she went the other way, and he knew it. He cursed himself, not for the first time, for nearly making a complete muddle of this job.

That’s what it is, a job, he reminded himself. There was too much going on in and around the city for him to turn the job into a voyeur’s wet dream. There’d be plenty of time for that later. All the time in the world, he thought, and the notion made his chest seize up, the ache growing unbearable for an instant. He tried to climb to his feet but staggered; he caught himself just before he crashed into an end table and lamp. He feared for a moment that his distraction had unmasked him, wasn’t completely sure that it had not, but Victoria was walking the other way, into the bathroom. She clicked on the light.

Colchester stared after her, the open door calling him, inviting him.

There’s nothing else to learn here, he told himself. His legs felt weak. He knew he should go. He had more than pressed his luck already. Both Garlotte and Pieterzoon had asked him to watch Victoria, to report back to them. A twisted smile came to Colchester’s lips. Both of the Ventrue envied him. He knew, he could tell. Each of them wished, in this one instance, that he could switch places with Colchester and watch. Only watch. Not have to put up with or avoid Victoria’s schemes. Only watch.

If they only knew! Colchester thought. He was doomed for eternity only to watch. Garlotte showered gifts upon her, and Pieterzoon—Pieterzoon! She had thrown herself at him! He could have had her, and for such a small price.

Idiot! Colchester wasn’t sure whether he meant Pieterzoon or himself, as he took awkward steps toward the bathroom door. There’s nothing else to learn here. But he kept moving forward. He paused at the threshold, took another step, and another.

Victoria’s clothes were draped over the edge of a counter. She sat before a vanity mirror, a plush, white, terry-cloth robe belted tightly at her waist, and with a wash cloth and cold cream was removing her makeup. She rubbed small circles on her face, gradually exposing more and more of her skin. The skin of one of the kine doing the same thing would have turned rosy from the rubbing, but Victoria’s face, a portion at a time, changed from the pale tone of her makeup to the blue-white complexion of a corpse. Colchester thought the change made her only more beautiful. Her emerald eyes shone more brightly in the mirror, and her fine auburn hair was more strikingly rich in contrast to the pallor of her skin. She took on the beauty and perfection of death, leaving behind the pretensions of the living.

Colchester felt that he was seeing her for the first time, that he was seeing her as perhaps few others ever had. She cleaned her nose, cheeks, and upper lip, then her chin, the rest of the right side of her face, and then up and around her forehead, the left side of her face. Colchester watched the transformation as it unfolded; he watched this woman who would retain her place among the kine as she shed the mortal coil and became a queen of ice and pure snow, a goddess of elemental beauty.

But then a scowl chased away the serenity of her features. She was still rubbing the wash cloth in small circles, but now with more pressure and speed. Her motions grew more fierce, as did her expression. She scoured the left side of her jaw, hard enough that it seemed, if she continued with such ferocity, her skin would begin to peel away. She stabbed the wash cloth violently into the cold cream and attacked her jaw again. Colchester watched with growing curiosity.

Only when she finally threw down the rag in frustration could he see the tiny blemish that so enraged her. It was a strange shape… was it a curled snake? He leaned closer… no… not a snake, but… a dragon, twisted round in a circle, swallowing its own tail.

Victoria was leaning close to the mirror looking at the mark herself. Colchester drew back as an animalistic growl sounded from deep within her throat. As the growl grew louder, Victoria reached out. The mirror had perhaps three dozen light bulbs set into its frame. She grasped a bulb in each hand and squeezed. The bulbs exploded with a loud pop!

She did it again and again. Shards of thin glass showered down on the makeup table, and all the while her throaty growl rose, grew louder, more intense, until it was a deafening, bestial screech. With the crescendo of the primal scream, she smashed a fist into the mirror.

All was silent.

Victoria stared into the ruin of the mirror, triangular shards of glass in a web pattern emanating outward from the point of impact. Colchester, never taking his eyes from his winter goddess, stepped carefully toward the door. He had seen enough and the night was growing late. As he did so, Victoria abruptly stood and whipped around from the mirror. The Nosferatu’s blood froze, but she did not see him. Her scowl was hardened like a ceramic mask, but not directed at him. She crossed the small room, hands clenched into fists, and ignored the fragments of light bulbs on the floor that sliced into her feet and peeled the skin from her soles.

Colchester, ready to take his exit, found himself suddenly unable to move as Victoria turned on the hot water to draw a bath. The ache, subsumed momentarily by his curiosity about the mark on Victoria’s jaw, claimed him again. He could not overcome his urgent desire. There were plenty of mortal women he could watch, he tried to tell himself. He could watch them as long as he wanted, and then have them—in a way; he could claim their blood. But that, he knew, would not satisfy his longing.

As he debated, Victoria untied the terry-cloth belt around her waist. Colchester clapped a hand over his open mouth lest he moan aloud. She pulled the robe off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Colchester blinked. And blinked twice more.

She stood before him for merely seconds, but for Colchester, it was as if eternity were revealed to him—an eternity of that which he would be denied. He might see Victoria, he might watch her, naked, climbing into her bath, but he would never have her. Her, or any other woman. Even were he to force blood to the dead, dangling flesh between his legs, even were he to force himself upon Victoria, he would never know intimacy, only violence. Touching her would be no more than feeding from a kine, than taking that which was not given freely. His lust was a cruel mockery of love, but it was all he had. All he would ever have. And thus the desperate ache took hold and ruled him.

Colchester, as desperately as he wanted to touch Victoria, wanted just as desperately to flee into the night. She was reclining in the tub now as it filled with steaming water. The mirror, a mosaic of jagged shapes, was covered with a thin film of fog. More steam billowed out the open door.

He stepped closer to her. Another step. And another, until he stood over her mostly submerged naked body. Her eyes were closed. The scalding water returned a semblance of rosy color to her, drawing blood closer to the surface of the dead flesh.

With trembling hand, Colchester reached for her. He stopped as she moved, turning off the water and then stretching luxuriously. She lay back again in the water, closing her eyes.

The ache was too much to bear. He knew it would do no good, he courted disaster, but he could not help himself as he reached for her. His fingertips, quivering, were inches from her perfectly rounded breast.

And he saw the mirror. And himself in the mirror. Fragmented and disjointed to be sure, but the dark, looming figure reflected beneath the layer of steam was him, a grotesque, colossal monster. And as he looked on his own horrified image, a single, triangular shard of glass teetered and fell.

Sunday, 1 August 1999, 4:45 AM Pendulum Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Victoria’s eyes sprang open at the sound of the glass striking the table. She sat up with a start, setting off waves that lapped over the edge of the bathtub. It was only a piece falling from the wall-mounted mirror that she had smashed. All was as it should be.

She started to sink back into the steaming water, but heard a sound from the outer room. The door closing, it sounded like.

“Langford?” she called, then, “Robert?” But again there was no response. She waited for several seconds, listening, but heard nothing else. Perhaps she was mistaken. She reclined again in the bath and took solace in her isolation.

Sunday, 1 August 1999, 9:05 PM Regent’s Sanctum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

Eva FitzGerald noisily deposited another armload of books upon the floor. Aisling Sturbridge, the regent of New York’s Tremere chantry, barely noticed. She was already it was getting difficult to see half-buried as she was amidst the tumble of the dead man’s books and papers.

The formulae that the tome Sturbridge was focused upon described had something to do with an ink made from an extract of owl’s blood. Eva’s sticky note that marked the page read:

Shelved.

Sealed (bound by sigil, familiar. Variant of Foley’s makers mark?) but not warded Resonance: recent use.

Ingredients corroborate Jacqueline’s shopping list

There were at least fifty books just like it already patiently awaiting Sturbridge’s attention. Many of them boasted no fewer than a dozen tell-tale pink sticky notes peeking surreptitiously from the edges of their pages. Sturbridge closed the book with a sigh of resignation. This was exaggerated by the sudden inrush of air as the book sealed itself, as if from old habit. The simple enchantment was oblivious to the fact that its master no longer required its services.

Something was bothering Sturbridge. She pushed herself slowly to her feet, rising from the clutter of Foley’s books and papers. She braced herself against the numbing tingle of circulation returning to her cramped legs and then chided herself for her foolishness.

Another senseless old habit refusing to acknowledge the death of its master. It had been several lifetimes since Sturbridge had needed to concern herself with such distracting biological inconveniences as circulation.

This line of inquiry was getting them nowhere.

“All right. Three nights of cataloguing Foley’s books, papers, curiosities, and we’ve got no clearer picture of the events of that night than when we started. Perhaps we’re on the wrong track.” Eva, glad for the reprieve, flopped down on the floor beside her. “The secundus was such a packrat—if you’ll excuse my saying so, Regentia; I intended no disrespect to the deceased—it would be easier to compile a list of things he hadn’t crammed into that study.” “Fair enough,” Sturbridge replied, playing along, “What wasn’t in Foley’s sanctum?

Or, more precisely, what was missing from the room?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. How about a slavering demon? Or maybe a Sabbat raiding party. At this point, I would even settle for a shadowy assassin lurking in the corner….” “It just doesn’t sit right with me,” Sturbridge mused. “I keep thinking the answer must be here, among his papers. I know Foley. I knew Foley. Whatever he was up to, he wrote it down somewhere. He was never quite at ease without pen and paper in front of him. Look at all these scribblings, the lists, the marginalia. It’s obsessive.”

“I don’t know why he ever bothered,” the overwhelmed novice replied. “To write anything down, I mean. It’s not like he ever forgot anything. Do you remember my first day here, at the chantry? I was so flustered I can only remember a few scattered impressions— the tiny savage faces etched into the fountain in the Grande Foyer, the singing of the bolts on this door when it opened to admit me for my first audience, the unexpected weight of the novice’s robes, their coarseness. It’s silly, really, the things you remember.

“But the secundus, he could recite the exact details. He could tell you who was there when you arrived, where they stood, what they said. He could call to mind each of the small cruelties, the platitudes, the seemingly friendly overtures and the subtle strings attached. It was uncanny. It was uncomfortable.”

“Yes. It seems Foley had that effect on people.”

They sat in silence for a time, each pursuing her own memories of their fallen comrade. “Which people?” It was Eva that broke the silence.

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, ‘Which people?’ He had that effect on which people?” “Oh I see. Yes. Well, just about everyone, I imagine.”

“You?”

Sturbridge smiled. “Certainly. But I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean.”

“No. I suppose not. Things won’t be any easier around here. Now that the secundus is gone. And Aaron. And with Jacqueline… ” she broke off.

“I haven’t decided what to do about Jacqueline yet. Even if she is innocent of any wrongdoing in this matter—and I remain unconvinced on that point—she still let this ill-considered ritual go way too far. That’s irresponsible. And I won’t tolerate that. Can’t tolerate it. Damn it, there’s too much at stake here.”

“It’s the petty intrigues,” Eva replied after a pause. “I mean, that’s what it all comes down to in the end, isn’t it? Sure it’s hard to see it when you’re right up close to it, face to face. You’re holding the body in your arms and all you can see are the bullet holes; your head is full of the smell of blood and spent powder. And you think, chalk up another one for the Sabbat.”

Three nights of shock and horror continued to tumble from her lips. “Only it wasn’t the Sabbat, if you follow me. Sure, some Tzimisce shovel-head pulled the trigger, but you’ve been shot before. I’ve been shot before. Why are we still here when folks like Foley are gone? Because it wasn’t the Sabbat that got him. It wasn’t the bullet that killed him either. It was the damn intrigues.

“Foley gets himself killed in some damn fool high-risk ritual. Jacqueline is supposed to be assisting him. Only she doesn’t assist him. She doesn’t stop him. I don’t know why. But I can make a guess. How about resentment? Foley’s been gloating about his latest little conquest for a week. And Foley wouldn’t have had any new apprentice to gloat over except that Jacqueline saddled him with that obligation of service. And Jacqueline wouldn’t have been backed into making that stupid choice if she hadn’t been trying to draw attention to Foley’s little sideline project by failing to return to the stalking ritual. And it just keeps going like that. Layer upon layer. It is all so absolutely senseless and self-destructive and hateful. I hate it. I just hate it.”

Sturbridge put a hand on the novice’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Eva. It will be all right.” She gazed down at her newest novice. Her young protégée. She was their best hope. Sturbridge’s features drew taut. Yet she was unmistakably a product of this house. She bore the signs already—this young woman who was more afraid of her own sisters than of the Sabbat. “Jacqueline did not kill Foley,” Sturbridge said. The phrase seemed incongruous, but at the moment, it was the most comforting thing she could think to say. “No one here killed him. Do you understand?”

Eva wiped her eyes and nodded.

“We failed him. There’s no denying that. We all failed him. But we don’t kill our own.”

Sturbridge trailed off. Her thoughts were not on Foley, but on Jacqueline, who still awaited judgment for her role in this unpleasant affair.

“We do not kill our own.”

“Oh Regentia. I am sorry. It’s all just so…” “I know, child. I know.”

“Jacqueline told me she tried to warn him, to make him stop, but he only… ” she pushed the details of the unsettling encounter aside. “He wouldn’t listen to her. You know how he was when he had gotten his mind set on something. He’d just assume anything you said was an attempt to sabotage him. It was like that with that box of his. Obsessive. Wouldn’t let anyone else near it. Why, one night he found it lying open and he had three novices flogged to within an inch of…”

“I am aware of the incident in question.” Sturbridge’s disapproval was evident in her tone. “Oh, Regentia. You should have just taken that box back from him. You should have…” Sturbridge turned the novice to face her. Eva’s eyes went wide.

“Forgive me, Regentia! I did not mean to imply that this was all your fault. I only meant that I wished…”

“You don’t know what was in the chest,” Sturbridge realized aloud. Eva looked confused. “But I thought the box was the… It was very old and very beautiful. And it had a strong resonance about it—a sense of history. But not a pleasant history, I think. If it is all the same to you, I would prefer not to have to handle it again.”

That was an interesting impression. Sturbridge filed it away for later consideration. “There was a stone, a gemstone. Small, spherical. Cloudy red with black spirals about the poles. It wasn’t there when we found the body. I know, because I looked for it. I had assumed you would know what to look for, too. Never mind, I need you to think carefully. Have you come across such a stone, anytime in the last three days? Not just in Foley’s quarters, anywhere.”

Eva considered. “No, I think I should have remembered anything like that.”

Sturbridge cursed herself. If she were overlooking such obvious details, what else might have slipped by her?

“All right. Let’s go over the obvious. The body intact? All parts present and accounted for?” Eva wrinkled her nose. “Yes.”

“The box. I’ve got a pretty clear recollection of this one, but let’s check it against yours. Nearby?”

“On the floor. Beside the worktable.” “Open or closed?”

“Lying open, and face down. As if it had fallen.” “Any contents?”

“Empty. The lining was black felt. It was singed.” “Cause?”

“The fire around the base of table. Some candles overturned. Seven candles. A scattering of papers were burned, damaged or destroyed. Incidental damage to floor and table legs.”

“Well, we seem to have papers aplenty. But so far, nothing that looks like notes, preparations, formulae, description or transcription of the actual ritual in progress.”

“Chalk that up to his blasted memory.”

“So nothing from his papers, books. We’ve been over all that. At great length.” Sturbridge looked ruefully at the small mountain of books they had not yet gone through.

“Did he have a pen out? A quill? A stylus, anything?” “A quill, yes. On the worktable. It was broken in two.” “Where?”

“Sorry?”

“The quill, it was broken where? Midway? At the tip?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘midway’. About an inch from the tip. Why?”

“Right at the point where he would have been bearing down on it. It suggests he was writing something sometime during that ritual. If he were just breaking a quill as some ceremonial act, he would have broken it in half, in the middle. How about an inkwell?”

Eva paused and thought a moment.

“Yes,” she replied uncertainly. “There was an inkwell. On the floor, not too far from the box, I think.”

“Another fall from the worktable. Was it broken?”

“No. It was overturned, though. It must have been nearly empty. I don’t recall any ink stain on the floor.”

“Inconclusive. It might have overturned before falling to the floor. Or it may have fallen onto one of the scattered sheets of paper.”

“More missing papers.” “What do you mean?”

Eva took a moment before replying. “I mean, if the ink spilled onto a piece of paper, where’s the paper? Sure, it could have been one of the ones that burned, but how about whatever it was that Foley was writing? You said he had to have been writing something. Was he signing his name to some dark compact? Transcribing the formulae to a forbidden rite? Trying desperately to leave us a warning? A confession? A suicide note? Where’s the missing paper?”

“It’s not in the room. We’ve been over the room.” “Maybe the murderer took the evidence with him.”

Sturbridge shook her head. “No, that’s still no good. We haven’t got a murderer. All we have is a victim.”

“No.” Eva’s voice was steady, confident, despite her rising excitement. “All we have is two victims.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sturbridge was on her feet and pulling the novice after her. “Probably.”

Sturbridge, in the doorway, half turned but then thought better of it. Eva caught only the briefest glimpse of a smile. “If there is one thing I cannot abide in a novice, Ms. FitzGerald…”

Eva quickly fell in behind her mistress, matching her long, purposeful stride only with some effort. “Yes, Regentia. Familiarity.”

Fulton Mall, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Khalil Ravana gazed lovingly at the tiny computer screen. Its bright green face asked him politely whether he minded, as this was not his own bank, an additional charge of one dollar and fifty cents added to his withdrawal. Khalil pushed the shiny silver button for NO, and the machine responded, PLEASE TAKE YOUR CASH. The Ravnos smiled and did. PLEASE TAKE YOUR RECEIPT. The Ravnos picked up the little curl of paper and read the numbers on it with pleasure. DON’T FORGET YOUR CARD. The Ravnos plucked it from the port as it came out. THANK YOU FOR DOING BUSINESS WITH US, ELIZABETH DIMITROS. PLEASE COME AGAIN.

“Thank you,” said Khalil happily. “I will.” Liz had been a cautious girl, not keeping her PIN number in her wallet like Khalil’s musician friend, but she did file it under ‘Checking’ in her records. He grinned and walked on down the sidewalk.

“Now, old boy. Tell me—’cause I just know that Gangrel bitch is going to ask the moment she meets me tomorrow—how do I heal Eye wounds?”

I disapprove of your co-operation with this girl, said the voice. She will turn on you, like the rest of her clan.

“Well, I disagree. She knows jack-shit about me and the feud and, I gather, even her own people. So this one thing, we’ll do my way, yes?”

Silence. “Yes?”

I suppose it may be useful to me to have you practice the necessary method on another person. It may even give you the courage to use it on yourself should the need arise. Another pause. Then again… I’m not sure that you have that courage within you. It will be best to have the girl learn the technique as you do, so that there may be a healer available when the—here a low chuckle rumbled through Khalil’s brain—great demon-hunter and lupine-slayer tracks down the Eye’s host.

Find some turmeric. You will need at least one whole, dry root or large shavings from one.

“And how do I get that?”

Think. There must be spice merchants here. Witch doctors. Herbalists. That is your problem, boy. Attend to it later. I have business for you now. Hire your transportation.

Khalil stepped off the curb and hailed a taxi. A boxy yellow car pulled up precipitously beside him and swayed to a halt. Inside, on grimy plastic seats, the Rom felt a pang of homesickness. There was a Ganesha statue attached to the dashboard and dirty, faded silk flowers hanging from the rear-view mirror, knotted tightly together like offerings. The driver’s name was posted on a little card: SARAT MUKHERJEE.

Tell the man to go to 2417-B—

Khalil listened with half an ‘ear’ to the voice as the cabman spoke, greeting him in Bengali: “Nomoshkar?” He went on enthusiastically in the same tongue as Khalil smiled and nodded. “Where to?”

“Harlem, 2417-B West 119th Street.”

Mukherjee made a face. “That’s not a good part of town for you, my friend. Let me take you to my cousin’s place. He has a very good restaurant—very popular, very exclusive—but I can get you a table. You sound like a Calcuttan, he specializes in Calcuttan local dishes. Just like home.”

“Sorry. I have an appointment to keep. If I knew how long I was going to be there… ” He left the question hanging, hoping his master would answer it.

“Look,” said the driver, fishing a card out of the glove compartment, “When you are finished, you call this number and ask for 758. I’ll be cruising, and maybe I’ll still be around that end of town—probably a little south, if you run late. You’ll want a safe ride out of the barrio, I could use another fare… and maybe my cousin’s café will still be open.”

Khalil took the dog-eared pasteboard card. “Thanks,” he said as the car started moving. He slipped the number into his shirt pocket. On a chance, he asked, “My brother, can your cousin the cook tell me where to get some good dried turmeric?”

“Curry powder?” “No, the root itself.”

“My uncle keeps a grocery store in Queens. He’ll know how to find some. Do you want me to ask?”

Khalil smiled and handed the man a roll of twenties. “I’d take it as a personal favor, my brother, if you would presume upon your uncle’s kindness. I’ll call when I’m through.”

Hemperhill Road Baltimore, Maryland

Jan sat patiently. There was little else he could do. He couldn’t force Prince Vitel to speak. Many minutes had passed since Jan had asked his question, but still Vitel pondered. Still he did not answer.

A huge gold-framed mirror dominated the study. The piece covered most of an entire wall, from chair rail to ceiling, and reflected the two Kindred who sat before it. Both were attired in modern business suits—Jan’s cut to the latest European fashion, befitting his more frequent contact with the mortal world; Vitel’s reflecting more classic lines, timeless in style and craftsmanship.

Jan had spoken with Marcus Vitel numerous times over the past two weeks, but this was Jan’s first visit to the deposed prince’s “home away from home,” his sanctuary in a strange city.

One sanctuary of many, I suspect, Jan thought, despite the fact that his assistants had been unable to link any property deeds to Vitel, including that of this townhouse. Kindred of Vitel’s standing—he was certainly one of the most influential Ventrue on the continent, though he had seldom involved himself in matters beyond his own city—generally maintained multiple havens spread throughout a handful of cities. Baltimore being so close to Washington, Jan imagined that Vitel kept several places of refuge at the ready.

A prince faced many challenges: unruly Anarchs, vindictive childer, ambitious primogen, roving packs of Sabbat, to name a few. The wise prince was not above resorting to forced exile when circumstances dictated. For an exiled prince, there was always the chance, no matter the passing of countless years, that he would return and reclaim his city.

Such was the declared intent of Marcus Vitel.

It was a goal toward which Jan wished Vitel luck but could offer little aid or hope. The Camarilla would be lucky to hold on to Baltimore, lucky not to be muscled off the entire East Coast—much less take back Washington. But the more successful Jan was in pursuing his goals, the more likely that Vitel might some night achieve his own. The prince in exile had proven relatively helpful in the Camarilla’s desperate quest to stymie the Sabbat. Vitel had not, like a certain Toreador, attempted to co-opt the defense of Baltimore as a vehicle for personal aggrandizement. He’d set in motion the wheels that had led to the curfew in Washington, and then faded into the background. As is appropriate for a deposed prince, Jan thought. It was the matter of the curfew specifically that brought Jan here tonight.

“There is no way,” Vitel said.

The sound of the prince’s voice very nearly startled Jan, so accustomed to the silence had he become. The answer was not the one Jan had been waiting for.

“There must be a way that the curfew can be extended beyond thirty days?” Jan prodded.

Again, Vitel did not respond at once. He was not the type to banter about ideas, to work out details by thinking aloud or in conjunction with others. He considered. He pondered. He weighed options. And when he was ready, he would speak.

His thin angular face, haggard but frozen in time before it could be aged by many wrinkles, was difficult to read. The prince’s eyes, however, revealed the soul of a defeated man. Over the past weeks, Jan had observed as Vitel had withdrawn further and further from interaction with anyone. Perhaps the prince had grown increasingly aware of the stark odds against the Camarilla, against his ever returning to his city, except perhaps as a prisoner of war to be tortured by the Tzimisce fiends and then disposed of in some unthinkable way.

It was the eyes, Jan decided—the eyes along with the wisps of gray streaking Vitel’s hair—that made him seem old and tired.

“There is no way,” Vitel again said at last.

“The governor of Maryland is willing to keep the National Guard in the city—if the Congressional oversight committee asks.” Jan passed on that news from Garlotte. “I know the troops don’t do our work for us; they don’t fight or hunt the Sabbat. But they do make it more difficult for the Sabbat to carry out its plans.”

Vitel nodded his agreement, but not enthusiastically. “Yes. The troops and the curfew are extra obstacles for them—How can vampires get anything done when no one is supposed to be on the streets after dark?—but for the most part, order has been restored to Washington. The oversight committee will return authority to the mayor and the city council. There’d be too much public backlash otherwise. The crisis has passed. The troops will go home.”

“The crisis as they see it has passed,” said Jan. “Our crisis is just beginning.”

Vitel did not argue the point, and Jan knew enough to bow to the prince’s superior knowledge of the inner workings of the American capital.

The two sat in silence for several minutes. Jan removed his glasses and slid them into his breast pocket. He vaguely wondered if Vitel might have any whiskey on the premises, but would have felt too foolish to ask.

Instead, Jan stared at the tiny pin that glimmered from the prince’s lapel. A golden eagle. Less-informed Kindred might assume the symbol to be that of the American people, but Jan knew that Vitel’s roots lay among the rubble of the Roman Empire, and that there was more conquering legionnaire than New World democrat in the prince.

Jan started to ask again, to press the point: Are you completely sure? Don’t give up on me just because you’ve lost your damned city. There’s more at stake here! But he knew better. Because of who his sire was, Jan was given great latitude among Kindred of the Camarilla, but he could overstep those bounds. To do so would only harm his cause. And the cause was everything. The mission assigned him by Hardestadt must come before all.

“Once martial law is no longer in effect in Washington,” Jan said, falling victim to the solemnity of his host, “the Sabbat will have that much more free a hand.”

Vitel nodded silently.

There will be nothing to stop them, Jan continued in his mind. They’ve had time to regroup after their victories. They’ll be able to bring their full strength to bear.

Jan stood. He gazed at the prince and himself in the huge mirror. At least we’ve had time to prepare as well, he thought, but he was not much comforted.

Vitel seemed lost in his own thoughts. Jan did not disturb him, but slipped from the study and showed himself out.

The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs New York City, New York

“No really. It wouldn’t be any trouble. I don’t mind searching his room.” Eva’s voice faltered. The rough-hewn walls snatched it away from her, hopelessly muddling her words with the distant plish of falling water and gruffly passing the result from hand to hand down the tangle of winding tunnels.

“The papers aren’t in his room.” Sturbridge explained patiently. “The papers are on the body.” “Yes. Well. Not meaning to introduce any unnecessary complications, but how are we supposed to find the body?”

“What could be easier than finding a body in a mausoleum? Watch your step.”

Without warning, the space to Eva’s right suddenly opened out onto abyss. She hastily scrambled back from the edge, dislodging a fistful of knucklebones that clattered over the precipice. “All these old galleries,” Sturbridge continued as if nothing untoward had happened, “wind about that central well. You only occasionally catch a glimpse of it, but you always know it’s there. You can tell the walls that back up onto the abyss because they are cooler, and damp.”

“What’s at the bottom?”

Sturbridge shrugged. “More bones. At least one of my predecessors was so averse to the place that he was in the habit of making more room in the upper corridors by sweeping the previous tenants over the edge.”

Eva quickly changed the subject. “You didn’t answer my question. How are we supposed to find the body we are looking for? As opposed to say, that one. Or that one. Or…”

“Those are just decoration, dear. Here we are.” She drew to a halt in front of a niche carved into the wall. It was identical, so far as Eva could determine, to any of a hundred others they had passed already.

Sturbridge began rummaging around in the dark recess. Her efforts were accompanied by the occasionally musical sound of bone clattering over bone.

At last, she extracted a carefully folded robe from the niche. It was covered with a powdery white dust. “Can’t imagine why they should have put this in first,” Sturbridge complained, shaking out the robe.

Eva recognized the markings of a novice of the seventh and final circle. Almost free, she thought.

“Let’s see what we have here. Pockets, empty. Cuffs. Lining. Carefully now. We don’t want to tear it.”

She drew a fingernail down across the seam and the material parted without resistance. “Now let’s see what Foley wanted us to know, and Aaron did not.”

Sturbridge extracted a single sheet of parchment. She studied the page a moment, the curious illustrations, the enigmatic inscriptions. She clucked her tongue in disapproval and passed the sheet to Eva.

“Shall we go? Something about the air down here, it always puts me in mind of someplace else I should be.”

Sunday, 1 August 1999, 10:21 PM West 119th Street, Harlem New York City, New York

2417-B rose three and one-half stories from the street. A half-flight iron staircase led up to a classical, brass-handled door painted pine green. A set of cement steps led under the stairs to a slightly shabbier, more utilitarian basement entrance. The windows of the first floor glowed softly, and showed trim and well-chosen curtains. The apartments above were dark.

Khalil mounted the stairs. A shining knocker in the shape of a pineapple presented itself at eye-level. The Ravnos rapped three times with his bare knuckles, instead, and discovered that the weathered wood of the door was a sham; tough and solid-sounding metal bit back and left his hand bruised and stinging.

Lights on either side of the stairs came on softly. Khalil shuffled his feet under their glow. Then the door opened, and a smiling, dark-haired, dark-complected woman in a neat gray suit and white blouse ushered him into the house.

“Please, if you’ll follow me, sir—” she opened another door (the beige-colored hallway was lined with them) and led him into a small waiting room. “I’ll let Mr. James know that you’ve arrived.”

Khalil smiled to mask his trepidation. The lady (a secretary?) was alive, but these people could be… anybody. Anything. With his utmost charm, he nodded and replied, “Thank you, Ms.—?”

“Bernadette,” said the woman, and left him. The Ravnos sat down in one of four green, tapestry-covered armchairs and surveyed his surroundings. The framed prints on the walls said nothing about the taste or interests of the owner. A television and remote control waited, unused, in a cabinet opposite his seat. In the center of the room, Cosmopolitan and the last week’s worth of USA Today reposed on an oval table. On a bookshelf beside him, last month’s New Yorker, People, Time, and Life magazines were strewn about, wrinkled and slightly torn. The address labels had been scratched away completely. Khalil stared at his feet against the abstract patterned carpet. Never had he seen a lair so devoid of personality. In India, you could tell the clan, at least—

“Mr. James is ready to see you now,” said Bernadette, returning. Her voice had no marked accent. Khalil rose and followed her, and the foyer seemed even more neutral than before.

“Good evening,” boomed a big man, standing at another plain and unmarked door. “Please, come inside, have a seat, take a load off,” he rattled on heartily. The unfortunate Ravnos allowed himself to be escorted to another tasteful, emotionless seat (blue and salmon tapestry, this time) and waited patiently while his host settled into a rolling version of the same chair. The large desk between them was of deep mahogany glistening with polish. A white frosted-glass banker’s lamp took up one corner of the essentially executive expanse. A brass stand occupied the other, its gleaming, carved nameplate proclaiming clearly that the man behind it was one Walter James, Ph.D. Between the two were scattered the pieces of a very fine desk set in saddle-colored leather.

Mr. James opened a folio he had been holding and glanced down at it, seemingly refreshing his memory about the case—Khalil felt more and more as though the offices were legal; the bookcases on either side of the desk looked vaguely legislative.

“Well,” said Mr. James, closing and laying down his notes. “I’m very happy to report that our little commission was completely successful. I trust our mutual client will be pleased with the work.” He added frankly, “It was a difficult case, as I’m sure you are aware.”

Khalil knit his brows gravely and inclined his head as though he were entirely aware. “As you say, Mr. James,” he said, implying congratulations tempered by savoir faire.

“Please, call me Walter.” The man seemed honest, seemed friendly… he was dead, of course, so he was likely to be neither.

“Our mutual client made his payment this morning—without any trouble, I’m glad to say—which clears the way for us to hand over the object to you.” He smiled broadly. “And so we come to the terms of delivery….”

Khalil nodded and raised one eyebrow.

“I have instructions from our mutual client to ask you a few questions,” Walter James’s smile became quite clinical as he paused, “just to eliminate the possibility of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, impersonations—you understand.”

“At your service, of course,” said the Ravnos. “Your name?”

Absolute panic washed over Khalil. Then the voice intoned, Jarek Bhandara. The shilmulo repeated it aloud, relieved that these people would not be walking around knowing his own name.

Walter James smiled encouragingly. “What color is the object?”

Sunset red. Say that exactly. And Khalil did. “Now, what is the word, Mr. Bhandara?”

Khalil listened. His mouth twitched a little, and then the voice’s answer rolled out over his tongue. “Sycophancy.” Bastard.

“And the last question—”

“There is no fourth question,” Khalil challenged promptly.

“Just so,” commented Walter James. “Very good.” He pressed an intercom button. “Bernadette? Would you bring Mr. Bhandara’s package in?” Relaxing into his deep chair, he regarded his guest with satisfaction. “My associates and I would like to express how much we’ve enjoyed working with you and your… agency. It’s not often that we have the pleasure of being paid in advance anymore—some of our clients have simply no honor at all these days.” The gray secretary walked in at this point in the speech. She laid a small package wrapped in brown paper on the table by Khalil’s side. Walter James thanked her with a glance. “You’ll wish to examine it, no doubt?”

Not here. He desires to observe your reactions. Stand and leave.

Khalil picked up the little box. He kept an eye on his interviewer. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.”

Walter James arched an eyebrow. “Very trusting of you.”

A host of remarks, witty and otherwise, fought for Khalil’s attention. With an enormous effort, he made one slight bow and exited as quickly as possible. Bernadette opened the outer door for him, and he murmured something polite and negligible in

response to her cheerful “Good night.” The Ravnos walked a block, and another, and another, until he felt the ants stop crawling up his spine. He blinked, stopped, and muttered:

“Where the hell was I?”

The local Assamite coven’s business offices. The holy palace of death itself in this city.

Assamites… ” Khalil quivered.

It did not bother you so much to contract that girl in India for the murder of Michel.

“Yes, it fucking did!” The Ravnos’s eyes nearly popped from their sockets. “I keep my goddamned distance from those bloody zealots. And you just sent me into a whole den of the devourers and didn’t tell me?”

Of course not. You would have become as transparent as glass and twice as fragile. As it was, in your ignorance… They think great things of you now. Does that not make you happy, boy?

Khalil reached for the cab driver’s card with a faltering hand.

Sunday, 1 August 1999, 10:51 PM

On the way to the Nawab of Bengal Restaurant New York City, New York

For a reason Khalil could not quite determine—and because of a vague sense of unease he was equally determined not to realize—the Rom found himself increasingly focused on the elephant-headed god perched on the dashboard of his new ally’s cab. Sarat Mukherjee chattered incessantly. Until, that is, he finally noticed that his fare was no longer responding. Khalil Ravana was finding unwelcome depths to the bouncing plastic god Ganesha.

Do not trouble yourself with false gods, boy. Heed the one who gives you life by his whim, and curtail this whim of your own immediately. See that package safely to the apartment.

Khalil shook his head, but the buzzing persisted. Which should he fear more, a little god or a distant god? A plastic god or a disembodied god? He waited for the voice to answer or goad or laugh, but the old one didn’t stir. Maybe it was just distant and disembodied enough. Maybe Khalil needn’t be a pawn forever.

Or maybe he would be.

He leveled his eyes back at the statue of the Hindu god. The glow of the city lights amidst the looming towers of metal and stone that the Ravnos detected in his peripheral vision gave Khalil the sensation that he was pursuing Ganesha into a cavern. Or following. Always following. Always under the heel of another.

It was perhaps inevitable that Khalil would find little solace in this Hindu god, in Hinduism. He certainly hadn’t as a mortal, but then he supposed that rarely did those assigned the bottom rung of life hail the decisions and decrees that placed them there. Easy for the meditating fuckers at the top to sit around all day enlightening themselves when they have the means to decide that the rest of the world should be doing their work.

Khalil exhaled sharply and sank into his seat. Of course, if he had believed, if he had been a Hindu, then he’d have been in bad shape once he was Embraced. Not because the world was any different on the surface, because the caste system surely persisted here as well, but because his cycle of life would have been broken. He felt that being an undying vampire wasn’t quite what the Brahmins had in mind when they spoke of moksha, release from the compulsion to rebirth.

Or maybe it was exactly what the Brahmins had in mind. Khalil muttered aloud in Bengali, “Shit!”

The driver eyed the rearview mirror nervously but still said nothing.

Yes, I was a Brahmin, the voice in his head said. And more shame to me that I need stoop to use a piece of dirt such as you. But now, get yourself under control. All you are managing to do is frighten your friend and hence endanger my property.

Khalil wondered whether he or the package was the “property” in question. It wasn’t really a question, of course, if the voice in his head was truly that of a Brahmin. The only difference between his unliving body and whatever was in the box would be the greater price paid for the contents of the box.

But Khalil had only survived his years in the rigid society of India by virtue of the ability to set aside such bitter thoughts for the needs of the moment. Producing a smile for the benefit of the cab driver, Khalil once more became his usual confidently conniving self. “Tell me, my friend, of your cousin’s curry,” Khalil said with feigned and confiding delight.

Sarat grinned and answered in Bengali, “It is too subtle to describe… or otherwise too hot to taste.” He laughed. “It is as you prefer, but it will be the best you have tasted.” Khalil frowned, “Ah, but that is why I ask. And why I curse. Too much of this dreadful American food—I thought I’d shaken my sickness, but my stomach doesn’t feel up to the task of real food or drink. But, my friend, I greatly wish to meet your cousin and see his restaurant. Besides, he may perhaps have turmeric root. Turmeric is very purifying to the body, is it not?”

Sarat forsook the rearview mirror and looked back with concern at his fare, despite the dense traffic. “Certainly my uncle is sending a root to the restaurant. We shall not let a brother of ours suffer, so far from home.”

Khalil beamed, “Fine news, friend. You make me welcome indeed.”

Khalil continued to chatter with the cabbie, a shallow brook babbling over his deeper thoughts. Yes, he’d been in Calcutta for the storm. Yes, he was a child of that city. No, he wasn’t a Hindu. Yes, it was his first trip to America. The conversation wasn’t as important as the result, which was the trust of this man. An adequate haven in New York was a necessity. Khalil needed people to trust, and another place besides the loft apartment to flee to if there was trouble. This cheerful countryman with his relatives and his transport would be a good place to start.

So preoccupied was he that he didn’t notice the wariness in Sarat’s eyes, or the note of a heartiness as false as his own in the cab driver’s manner.

Some minutes later, the idle conversation and Khalil’s ruminations were cut short as the cab slowed and halted, accompanied by two honks from the horn.

“What?” Khalil startled and looked around him for the obstruction.

“We are at the Nawab, my cousin’s restaurant, my friend,” Sarat smiled reassuringly as he opened his door and got out.

Then Khalil noticed that they were parked in a reserved space in front of a very tastefully and finely ornamented restaurant. Something had finally seeped in past his busy planning, and made him wary. “You always honk like that?”

Sarat smiled some more and motioned for Khalil to follow him. “So they will unlock the door. My cousin closes at eleven every night, even though he could draw after-theatre traffic on a Saturday like this. And, so they will know what food to put on my plate! Two honks means I want the special.”

Khalil was dissatisfied, but covered it with affability. “And one honk?” “My regular.” Sarat laughed and patted his stomach.

Khalil stepped to the door. A young boy of perhaps eight had turned back the bolt and opened the door from the inside. From behind Khalil, Sarat said, “Now run along, boy, and get those tables clean. Even mine tonight. We have a guest, and he must not sit at a dirty table.”

The boy scurried away and Khalil entered as Sarat held the door open. Then Sarat pulled up short. “But how rude of me. You are ill, so will not wish to sit at table. Will you be so kind as to join me in my home? It’s the third floor, above us.”

Khalil didn’t answer immediately, and instead remained alert as he entered. Something didn’t feel right. There was an itch in his head, although there always seemed to be one now, with his master’s voice in his head.

There is another of our clan here.

“Great,” Khalil said to both Sarat and Calcutta.

Khalil took quick stock of his position, sniffing for the trap. Sarat was behind him, and he seemed mortal enough. No whiff of Cainite or shilmulo blood that might be binding him, although that could be hard to detect sometimes. Maybe it would be easy enough to slip back out.

On the other hand, maybe the madness of Calcutta had passed. The burning, driving thirst for the blood of his kin had subsided since his arrival in America. Maybe that would change when he saw a clansman, but at this moment there was no special seduction.

Still considering his options, Khalil feigned weakness and stepped to the wall, resting his head lightly against it. To the left, the entry hall allowed a view of two window-side tables that were already cleaned and cleared. To his right was a four-foot-high statue of Devi, but not in her guise of the multi-armed and fearsome Kali. Khalil recognized this aspect as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and he felt a little better about things. A good omen for a bad situation, really. He could work with those who worshipped gain more easily than those who reverenced destruction.

Sarat drew nearer, peering into Khalil’s face. Was it true solicitude, or an attempt to block the exit? Exactly how much did this mortal cab driver know?

The other is Ghose. I know him for a fool. But do not let him make a fool of you in turn— though he is not very old, he is older than you, and therefore stronger.

Sarat put a sympathetic hand on Khalil’s shoulder. “Perhaps the odor of the food does not sit well with—”

Khalil quickly turned, grabbed the man’s forearm and twisted it behind his back. Now it was Sarat whose forehead was pressed against the wall.

“What—”

On tiptoe, Khalil hissed into the taller man’s ear, “Silence! Just what did you have in mind for me here?” He nudged Sarat into the wall to emphasize the danger the man faced. “And do not try to cozen me, my friend, because I know who is here and waiting. Maybe even watching right now.”

Sarat evinced confusion. “Who? What? I don’t—”

“Your master is nearby. Where is Ghose?” Khalil quietly insisted as he pushed Sarat more firmly against the wall.

“No sense in whispering, brother,” said a musical voice, too near by far for Khalil’s comfort. Khalil convulsively pushed Sarat away. The mortal staggered down the hall, opening the path to the door. Khalil considered plunging toward it, but stumbled when the statue of Lakshmi next to the entry hall lost its golden hue and stood.

The other Ravnos was a tall and slender man. Lighter-skinned than Khalil, he was undeniably Indian as well. He wore a loose-fitting cotton robe so new Khalil could still smell the harsh dye even from several feet away. Simple leather sandals adorned his feet. Ghose’s black hair was so short it made his round face look almost spherical. He stood with his hands open, palms facing Khalil, and slowly blinked, thick eyelids rolling and unrolling. “Have you any exceptional thoughts of murdering me?”

Khalil, regaining some of his composure, hesitated. “It seems not. If you thought I would, would you have let me come? Why did you have me brought here?”

Ghose smiled dryly. “I was partially curious to see how I myself would react. I delight to say the madness must have passed.”

“Good news,” said Khalil. “I admit I had not thought to find another of ours here, or your servant would never have caught me off guard in such a fashion.”

“I am Ghose. You seem to know that already, but I will let you tell me later how my name has preceded me. Sarat and the others here are of my family. I shall make you known to them, that they may also be of your family. It is not easy to be without kin in the vastness of this city.”

Khalil prepared for introductions even while madly scrambling for an innocuous explanation for his survival of the curse and his presence in New York.

The voice in his head did not bother to help.

Monday, 2 August 1999, 5:18 AM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

That next morning, Khalil and his Setite prisoner sealed the door for the day (much more securely, with foil and black plastic and layers of duct tape) and settled down to sleep (much more comfortably, with pillows and blankets and rugs for padding). Savoring his relaxation after the truce he had made with Ghose and his band, the Ravnos hung his jacket on the shower head and remembered the plain brown box. He clawed it open with lazy fingers and plucked the prize from within: an eye, carved from stone the color of sunset, with an iris black as jet. The back of the thing was hollow; the front was smooth; the sides cut in a curious spiraling pattern.

“Hm.” Khalil passed the gem through his fingers—over, under, over, under—with an ease and fluidity born of thousands upon thousands of shell games. After half a minute of this, he glanced over at Elizabeth to make sure that she was properly appreciating the show. She was watching, but rather than admiration or amusement, her expression was more of… recognition.

The gem was suddenly still.

“You know what this is,” Khalil said a bit too enthusiastically—and realized that he might as well have told her that he didn’t. “You’ve seen it before,” he said more calmly, in way of recovery.

Elizabeth stared silently at him.

“I’m just curious where you’ve seen it before. The folks I got it from aren’t exactly your kind of crowd, if you know what I mean.” Khalil flipped the gem into the air with his thumb. He didn’t have to move his hand to catch it. He flipped the stone again. “I know all kinds of things to do with this little wonder.”

“No you don’t.”

Khalil almost dropped the stone. “Why, you cheeky… !” He raised his hand to strike her. Liz flinched, but not enough to suit him.

Her sire possesses the stone’s mate. Do you know more than Ruhadze, simpleton?

Khalil’s hand quivered, but the blow did not fall.

She doesn’t think so either.

“Can I find the Eye with this?” Silence. “Well, maybe I just need to sell this,” Khalil mused spitefully, turning away from Liz and carefully inspecting the stone.

You will not sell it, worm. You will return it to me.

“I’m sure some jeweler would give me a couple hundred bucks for it. I don’t see much point in keeping it….”

Ignore my wishes and you will never know.

There was silence in Khalil’s mind—in the bathroom, too, until he started tapping his foot. “I’m waiting….”

Liz stared sullenly at the corner. Khalil ignored her.

Fill the hollow with blood—your blood—and you will be able to locate others of our clan.

“Hmph. Of course you couldn’t have told me that a few hours ago, when I could have used some warning of where Ghose was lurking,” Khalil muttered. He glanced around the cramped room. He rummaged through a drawer and found fingernail clippers, then took the small file and jabbed it into the palm of his hand. He tensed his hand and dribbled blood into the hollow space in the stone. When it was full, he licked closed the wound.

“Watch and learn, Miss Know-It-All.”

To the surprise of both, the level of blood in the stone began to lower as if draining away. Khalil looked beneath the stone. Liz, trying hard not to seem intrigued, looked also. There was no blood dripping on the floor. A moment more and the stone was again empty. There was no hole within the hollow. The blood couldn’t have drained into the stone itself.

Khalil held the dry stone. He waited.

“Nothing.”

Elizabeth, now smug as well as silent, crossed her arms and continued ignoring her crestfallen captor.

Do you see any other of our kin?

“I think I would know when I’m alone,” Khalil sputtered through clenched teeth.

Inconsequential blood provides less range.

Khalil stuffed the stone roughly into his hip pocket.

Nevertheless, the stone is now attuned to your blood. When next our kind are near, you will know. Satisfied, the voice fell silent.

Khalil, much less than satisfied, kicked at Liz’s foot and then settled down for the day. The sun rose and the dead fell asleep.

Monday, 2 August 1999, 10:06 PM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Ramona Tanner-Childe clambered awkwardly out of the back seat of a small taxi. She looked around her with trepidation. The street was empty, and that was good. No one lived around here, and that cut both ways. This corner was well lit, which made her a target. She hadn’t seen a patch of bare ground for three blocks at least, and that meant there was nowhere to sink into if she needed a hole in an emergency. This warehouse… it loomed up over her, and it had too many eyes. She didn’t have a real reason—yet—to cut and run from this Khalil, but the half-reasons—the gut instincts—were piling up like flies on a dead rat.

After their talk by the cathedral, he’d set a meet for Sunday. He came to it alone, like she asked. But he hadn’t said anything new, hadn’t healed her cheek, and had been able to hail a cab (the cab she had just now stepped out of) in a part of town taxi drivers stayed away from if they liked their skins whole. “I know what to do for your wound,” Khalil had said as he left. “Come here again, tomorrow night, and I’ll have my man pick you up and take you to my new place.” And he was gone before she could argue. Short, sweet, brutal choices: Play along and maybe be burnt, or miss the meet and say goodbye to the best hope of avenging your friends….

Suddenly she remembered what she was doing here, and turned to find the driver half-out of the cab. Ramona pulled some grubby bills out of her back pockets and stretched the money across to the man. He grinned and waved his hands at her.

“No, no, thank you. It has all been arranged for.” He bustled around to the trunk and chattered on, “If you will just wait a moment, miss—” He lifted, with difficulty, a six-pack of housepaint shrink-wrapped into a cardboard tray. “This is for Mr. Ravana. Could you,” he slumped slightly under the weight, “hit the buzzer for me, please?”

Ramona reached for the cans, but the driver was already stumbling awkwardly toward the door of the place. She darted past him and pressed the button, then slipped her lean, strong arms under his spindly, bony ones. “I got it,” she said. After a token protest, the driver gratefully accepted. When the door clicked her in, he opened it and gave, in polite and heavily accented English, detailed directions to an apartment in the upper reaches of the warehouse.

With effort (the man had repeated some of the turns in his orgy of helpfulness), she found it. Khalil Ravana held the door open, looking past her both ways down the catwalk, and then gave her what passed for a welcoming smile. He slung an arm under the box and loped off across the huge room with his paint. “No trouble getting here? Mukherjee treat you all right?” Without waiting for her answers, he hopped up a step and dumped the carton unceremoniously on a battered old desk standing alone in the middle of upper level. “Just make yourself at home while I finish this coat.”

Ramona shuffled farther in and looked around. The loft was large and airy—a pleasant contrast to the rooms she’d grown up in. It had tall, elegant windows, about a third of which now had black paint slathered over the glass. She watched a ropy strand drip off one of the top panes and splatter on the floor beneath it. At one end of the studio, sheets and sheets of coarse white fabric hung from a bar in the rafters. A few of them were torn away from their rings, and there were black handprints wiped messily onto the nearest. She turned away and inspected the rest of the room.

The Ravnos poured another blob of dark goo into an aluminum tray and picked up his long-handled roller. He squelched the fuzzy tube industriously through the matte- black latex and attacked the next sash. “What do you think of my flat? Ready for House Beautiful? Havens of the Rich and Famous?” Ramona’s eyes flicked up at him, suspicious of levity and his impossibly British accent, but he went on without noticing. “The northern exposure is a bit much, I admit, but that’s being taken care of.” He dipped the roller again. “You’re welcome to stay, if you want. The more, the merrier, particularly if unexpected guests arrive. Are there any looking for you, by the by?” Khalil half-turned to surprise her reaction.

She shook her head and stated flatly, “Nobody knows I’m here. Everyone who knew me’s dead.”

“Lovely,” said Khalil thoughtlessly. “I mean, that you’re the hunter, not the hunted. Much more comfortable position to be in.” After a pause, the rhythmic squeak of the roller went on.

Ramona wandered away from her host’s stepstool and behind the screen of a hanging blanket. Her claws itched at the man. There were odd little things strewn across the table by the quilt—torn up and ready for the trash can, she thought. She picked up a pen, idly, and uncapped it; it was a fountain pen, and she drew a jittery line across the top of a notepad with it. A dark metal tray, blotchy with tarnish, caught her attention. She peered at its engravings, and found it full of shields and animals and tiny mottoes in Latin, which she could recognize but not understand. Vincit qui si vincit… Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit…. She shied away and heard Khalil’s voice going on:

“I said, ‘Want to help paint?’” “No.”

“Then is there anything I can get you while I finish up?”

Ramona ran a hand over (through was no longer possible) her matted hair. “I could use a shower,” she admitted.

Khalil’s grin became an effort. Elizabeth was still chained to the sink in the bathroom. Since this Gangrel didn’t know enough to hate him, she surely wouldn’t know enough to distrust the baby snake. He should have thought before he brought Ramona up here… but who expected a filthy outlander to want to wash? In Calcutta they seemed proud of their stink. He’d have to move the Setite, and… “A shower?” he repeated dumbly.

“Hell, I don’t care,” she snapped, flicking the air between them with an exasperated gesture. She muttered something bitter in Spanish.

“No.” The Ravnos laughed half-heartedly. “No problem. Let me just move a few things out of the way, make sure the water is turned on… ” He backed down off his stepladder and wiped his hands. Reaching for something from his back pocket, he headed for the curtains around the bedroom, cursing under his breath. The pipes continued out of the bath; there was a radiator bolted firmly to the brickwork. Khalil dragged the hangings closer to that end of the room and opened the door on Elizabeth in relative secrecy.

Ramona stepped over to some bookshelves. The titles disappointed her; myths, antiques, lost languages, histories of places she’d never heard of. The furniture was nice though, and there were candles and pictures. She stepped down to a group of comfortable chairs and sofas. Nice, she felt. Home, though the apartment was nothing like any of her own. It was all very comfortable and friendly, and it smelled right. She took a good sniff of the largest couch and paced wistfully around on the shaggy carpet in the ‘living room’.

“Up,” said Khalil. He whispered, but the Gangrel’s high-tipped ears caught it. Dull clanking followed, and Ramona had a glimpse of the Ravnos muscling someone behind the screened-off section of the loft. Ramona stepped quietly to a gap in the curtains and spied inside. There was a girl—no, a grown-up woman—wearing chains on her feet and wrists like a convict, and absolutely silent. She noticed Ramona watching them long before her captor did, and the girl was struck by her eyes. They had dignity still, despite what Khalil was doing with her. They made an appeal. The woman wasn’t defiant and seeking to be smacked down for it (Zhavon, Ramona thought, was looking for trouble… ). She was not a terrified, cowed prisoner, either (Zhavon was terrified, at the end, Ramona remembered guiltily). The strange gold-brown eyes simply said, “You are watching him do this.” Without a word the woman made Ramona think about it, and when Khalil finally saw her, her feral face was black as night.

“What’re you doing?” the Gangrel said menacingly. Khalil felt the room grow cold. He sidled out of reach of the radiator—and of Ramona—and strained to change his expression from guilty, red-handed panic to innocent surprise. He picked a piece of an answer at random.

“Moving her,” he managed blithely. “You wanted to use the shower, didn’t you? Lizzie and I have had to shelter in there the past two days.” He indicated the windows with a flick of a finger, and explained, “I’m trying to give us more space, but there are an awful lot of windows to paint over. She may need to sleep in the tub again tonight.”

“But why’s she chained up?” Ramona pressed, a nasty edge in her voice.

Khalil licked his lips and moved confidentially closer to his partner. “Her lover, Hesha, is the man we’re trying to find to help us get Leopold. He’s missing,” he murmured apologetically, “he may be dead—and she’s having some trouble dealing with the loss.” He glanced over his shoulder to the Setite. “She’s new to all this, as well… liable to lose control. So to keep her from hurting herself, and others,” he said, with a self-deprecating smile, “these things are an unfortunate necessity.”

“Why in here? You were hiding her,” she accused.

“I was trying to give her some privacy. She, ah… she’s only two or three nights old… she was still being sick yesterday. Don’t you think it’s more polite to leave her to herself during that sort of thing?”

Ramona remembered her own first, lonely nights after her change… her body ridding itself of everything but blood… her parents pounding on the door of the bathroom… her flight to a culvert where she could avoid their questions…. “No,” she declared emphatically.

Khalil whispered, briskly: “Look. Leopold has the Eye. Hesha Ruhadze can find the Eye, if he still lives. This is his childe. She can find him once he resurfaces. She’s my bloodhound, and she’s bait. All right?” He leaned further toward her, and spat out, “You’re so hot to catch Leopold; she’s a part of that.” Angrily he shoved Elizabeth at the radiator, and picked open her left-hand shackle.

Deeply troubled, Ramona weighed her options. She wanted vengeance for her dead so badly she could taste its sweet sting at the back of her throat. But she could not be a party to slavery. She wouldn’t stand for caging anyone the way Zhavon had been caged. On the other hand, she knew what she was like, herself, when she lost control, and there had been a time when she’d rather have been chained up than let the Beast do what it wanted. This woman might be grateful, later, for the restraint. She grimaced, and the expression opened the gash in her cheek again. Whatever happened, she had to have that wound healed. If the guy were telling the truth about being able to cure what that Toreador had done to her, then maybe she’d believe him about this lady. If he couldn’t fix it, he’d pay for the lie with blood, and Ramona would set the woman free as she left.

And so revenge and uncertainty won over moral outrage. She had to look away from the lady’s face as the cuff closed on the radiator. It slid down the shaft with a heavy clang that jarred the Gangrel’s conscience. “Wait.” Khalil turned and stared at her. “At least… she can sit out here with us.” She snatched up a wastebasket and held it awkwardly. “She can watch TV or read or something. There’s got to be a more comfortable place she could be and still have us be safe.”

Five more minutes saw Elizabeth locked once more to the central pillar of her apartment. This time, however, she sat in state on the couch. At Ramona’s insistence, Khalil agreed to leave the Setite one hand free. Reluctantly, anxiously, he warned the Gangrel over and over not to go within arm’s reach of the snake. “Be careful!” He took up the congealing paint and watched his partner put little amenities by Elizabeth’s side. “Not the pencils. She could stake you with a pencil,” he lied. “She’s dangerous, aren’t you listening? Watch yourself.” Sullenly he wet the roller again.

“Here’s the remote,” said Ramona. “And the trashcan down here.” She shook her matted head questioningly. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Hand me that writing desk?” The lady spoke in a low, pleasant voice. Ramona searched and found a kind of tray full of papers, pens, and little books on the coffee table. She pushed it within reach of the free arm, and the lady laid it on her lap. “Thank you,” she said quietly. Without looking at Ramona again, she added, “There are clean towels, a washcloth, soap, and a spare hairbrush in the wicker cabinet next to my bureau. You’re welcome to my closet.”

Ramona watched a moment more. The older woman uncapped a pen and began writing something, and the Gangrel slipped away without another word.

Spring Street Laurel, Maryland

Morena caught sight of something in her peripheral vision, but she still wasn’t expecting a person to be there when she turned toward the window.

“Ah!”

Her scream cut the night like a gunshot. She started so severely that she almost stumbled over a chair.

“Fin! You stupid jerk! Why do you always have to do that?” “I don’t always.”

“Almost always. Close enough…” Morena struggled for an adequate expression of her displeasure, “damn it. And stop that! Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

Fin gave her that innocent look that he was so good at, the one that was supposed to say either I’m not laughing, or I can’t help it. Two sides of the same lie. He was still crouching in the window sill like some big, sneaky, blood-sucking monkey.

“You know what I think?” she said at last. “I think you’re just too impressed with yourself. Sure you can climb up the garage, and you can move around without normal people hearing you, so you sneak up on them. Because you can. It’s a power thing.”

Fin’s expression grew mockingly serious. “Does it have anything to do with the patriarchic hegemony?”

“That too. And don’t think I don’t know you’re making fun of me.” “I think you read too much.”

Morena crossed her arms, then walked over to him at the window. “You told me that somebody could shoot you and it wouldn’t really hurt you, that you’re practically indestructible. Was that the truth?”

“Yes.” Fin cocked his head and looked at her funny.

“Good.” Morena gave him a quick shove, and suddenly the window was empty. She walked back to the table and sat with a sigh.

After just a minute, Fin was in the window again. This time, he didn’t try to hide his grin. “That was pretty good.”

“You knew I was going to do that. Didn’t you?” she almost accused him. Despite her little show of defiance, she was feeling defeated. She strongly suspected that whatever paltry amount of control she exercised in this relationship, it was only because Fin let her. He humored her.

“No. I didn’t, actually.” He climbed into her tiny garage apartment, took the other chair, and sat across the table from her.

“But even if I surprised you, you could have caught yourself, or grabbed my hands before I was able to push you. Right?”

He seemed sobered by the seriousness of her tone. “Yes,” he said. “I could’ve done either of those, or moved out of the way before you touched me.”

Morena nodded but said nothing for a long while. She felt like she was on the cusp of some new understanding. Many of the vague feelings and incompletely formed thoughts that assailed her whenever Fin was around, whenever she wondered about him and his existence, were beginning to come together in some sort of form. Like Fin crouched in her window, she was between two worlds: one brightly illuminated and familiar; the other dark and dangerous, a step into oblivion.

Fin wanted her to take that step, to leave the bright, familiar world behind and follow him to the place where he knew all, and she nothing. Where he’d have complete control, Morena thought.

“You need to come with me,” he said.

Morena looked at him quizzically. Can you read my thoughts too? she wondered, but his expression was not so knowing. His words mimicked her thoughts, but he was talking about something else.

“Not…for good,” he explained. “This place isn’t safe. This whole area between Washington and Baltimore. I’ve told you about some of the others…like me.”

Morena nodded. He’d mentioned that there were others, but that’s all he’d ever said.

Fin seemed uncomfortable talking about…what-ever he was talking about. He pressed his palms flat on the table, fidgeted in his chair, ran his fingers through his dark hair, put his hands on the table again. “There’s a war among my kind. It might come through here. Probably will come right through here.”

“And I need to go with you,” Morena said. “What about my parents?”

“I can try to work out a place for them too. It doesn’t have to be for good, or that far away. Although a vacation might be a good idea. Where have you and your parents always wanted to go? I can get the money.” He paused, then managed a nervous smile. “I’ll even take care of your gerbils.”

For a moment, Morena was ready to agree. He seemed different tonight. She wasn’t sure exactly how. She felt that maybe this time he was sincere about what he thought was best for her, not necessarily just what he wanted. But she couldn’t trust her feelings. Was what she felt for him real, or was it part of some hold he had over her? She could never be sure.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Her words sparked hours of debate, argument, tears and accusations. But Morena was decided.

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Every window was the color of tar. The drying paint fumes choked the air but failed to affect the three creatures brooding in their midst. Elizabeth, curled around her sketchbook and notes on the sofa, hardly smelt it. Ramona, sitting bolt upright in the walnut desk chair, had sneezed and spat and tried to ignore the stink for hours. By now her nose was deadened to the solvent by exposure. Khalil rather enjoyed the effect the chemical had had on the Gangrel, and solemnly refused all attempts to open the door or ventilate the room.

The Ravnos switched on a gadget—a lamp with more arms than he had, and a great magnifying glass at its center—and positioned the glaring bulb directly over the rent in Ramona’s cheek. From a pile of tools on the bench between them, he selected a curly dentist’s pick and a rounded metal stick like a spatula. With the blunt object, he spread the largest part of the wound open and probed the inside, as gently as he could, with the other. His patient’s grip tightened on the chair arms, but she kept motionless under the examination. Khalil moved on to the rest of the holes in her skin, studied each in turn, and then set his instruments down.

The wound looked, from the outside, like a narrow, curved, and superficial line— precisely as if the girl had been struck by a thin spatter of acid. Below the surface, however, the sore went straight down to the bone. Each dot on the outside had a large pocket of rotted, torn flesh beneath it, as though whatever hit the skin had burrowed on impact and eaten the larger area away after the first strike.

Khalil picked up a craft knife in his right hand. ”Are you going to cut it out?” Ramona demanded.

“I can’t.” Khalil took the knobby turmeric root in his left fist, and set to work on it. “I could slice off that part of your face,” he grinned merrily, “but unless the poison is gone you won’t ever heal it. We have to destroy the residue and keep the rot from spreading.” He shaved off good-sized stick and cut it wider at one end than at the other—he was clever with his fingers and very quickly carved a thick and wedge-like spoon out of the sliver. With the sharp, thin blade, he made a exact and tedious series of parallel cuts in the broad end. The result resembled a primitive paintbrush more than anything else.

“What’s that?”

“Turmeric root. It’s good for exorcisms.” He laid down the Exacto and palmed something else: a lighter. Elizabeth, watching from the couch, raised an eyebrow and added another line to her notes.

“Can you stand a little fire?” Khalil asked archly.

Ramona’s brown eyes locked with his. “Yes,” she replied cautiously. “You going to smoke it out?” She considered she had experience with smoke and magic….

“No.” All the jests fled his face, and he went on gravely. “Close your eyes,” he said, “get a good grip on the chair, and,” he looked slightly scared, “try to remember I’m doing this to help you.”

It took five tries for Khalil to get the lighter flaming, and an agonizing seven seconds for the frayed bit of turmeric to catch. His twitching eyes watered as the smoke from the burning herb struck them. He waited while the dry root built up a good smolder. It bothered him to have to hold a lit object. The Ravnos was less afraid of that, though, than of what the voice had told him to do next.

With the knife, he cut a line linking all the Evil Eye’s ravages together. He was painfully aware of Ramona’s feral gaze pinned to every movement of his hands. He held the flap of skin open with the blunt spatula-thing, gathered his courage, and then plunged the fiery smudge-stick into the center of the wound.

Ramona shrieked and roared. Her legs flew up and her head jerked violently away. Khalil managed, barely, to keep the burning herb inside the Gangrel’s flesh. He dug it further in. He twisted it deliberately, feeling out the rest of the path the acid had taken inside the girl’s body. If the bones were breached, could he—

That is all at that location, the voice in Khalil’s head said. The hurt was very small.

Khalil leaped back gratefully and dropped the turmeric into a bucket of water. He waited to see what the girl would do after the first spasms stopped. If he ran behind Elizabeth, Ramona might attack the Setite first and give him a chance to get away before the bloodlust took her further….

Ramona shuddered from tip to toe. Red rage boiled in her eyes, and the stench of her own body, burning, filled her nostrils. Memories of the sun, of a stake in her heart, of this same stink—sun and fire and death…. With an effort, she kept her mind clear. She clenched her fists and forced blood to her cheek as she had done so often in the past six nights—carefully, slowly at first, and then more eagerly. She caught the sensation, barely, of knitting edges. Her fingers crept up to her chin—no trickle of wasted life oozed from the wound this time. Ramona felt the area itself—the sickle-shape was smaller! It shrank beneath her touch, and she poured more effort into healing. At last, after ages of strain and what seemed gallons of precious blood, the skin of her face was smooth once more. She slumped in her chair, relieved and grateful, but suddenly sick with hunger. Even with the evil, the poison gone, that tiny cut had taken a lot of curing. Dull furies danced in her guts, and she knew she would have to hunt before dawn, or suffer worse, possibly uncontrollable pangs tomorrow.

Ramona rose, shakily. She tripped down the step toward the apartment door. Khalil hove into sight. “Where are you going?”

“Starving,” she growled.

Khalil retreated. Her face was whole, he saw gladly. “Will you… will you want to sleep here tomorrow?”

“You’ll see me when you see me,” the Gangrel barked, fumbling with the locks. She lunged through the door.

“Are you coming back?!” Khalil called desperately after her.

No one and nothing answered, and the Ravnos bolted the steel slab, unhappily uncertain as to whether he would ever see the girl again.

“Tell me again,” Calebros said, “how it was that you came to be at the cathedral four nights ago.”

Mouse’s hair was falling out in clumps. His coat didn’t have a beautiful sheen at the best of times; as it was, he could very well be totally bald by morning. And he couldn’t stand still. He itched all over. He kept fidgeting and scratching. It was all he could do not to fall to the floor and writhe on his back to get some relief. Meanwhile, Mr. C. was sitting behind his big wooden desk and asking the same questions again and again. Mouse could barely see his elder over all the clutter, stacks of papers and boxes. Mouse was sweating all over too. A thin bloody film that made him itch all the more, and so he scratched, and more of his hair fell out, and that made him itch more….

“It’s all right, Mouse. I’m not angry with you. I just need to know.”

Mouse wiped more bloodsweat from his face. Was it a hundred degrees in here or what? He felt as if he were ringed by bright hot spotlights, although in truth there was only the erratic lamp on Mr. C.’s desk.

“Come over here,” Calebros said. He motioned with his curved talons that Mouse should come closer.

Mouse did as he was told—always the best course of action with Mr. C. Old Crookback did not care to be defied, and, as often as not, disobedience brought with it a cuff to the head. Not that Mr. C. was cruel, he just expected to be listened to and obeyed. Period. Mouse edged around the old desk and, as Calebros indicated, settled down on the floor at the elder’s feet.

“There. That’s better” Calebros said. “Now we can speak properly.”

Mouse smiled weakly. He sat slightly hunched in a perpetual half-cringe, awaiting a blow to the head should he misspeak.

“So, you were near the cathedral. You were hunting…”

“Yes,” Mouse nodded. “For treasure.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the shiny button he had found that night, and showed it to Calebros.

“Yes.” Calebros nodded and kindly patted Mouse on the head. “Very nice. So, you heard something—something loud, and not that far away. You went to investigate. What did you find?”

Mouse hesitated. He stared down at the button-treasure in his hand—the treasure that some of his brethren had told him was no treasure at all. Nothing more than a plastic button. Don’t be foolish! That’s what Mr. C. had said, and then he’d smacked Mouse on the back of the head. That was right at first, when Mr. C. had been pretty excited, and Mouse hadn’t said what his elder had wanted to hear.

“What did you find at the cathedral, Mouse?”

“The hand man, and the melted man.” Mouse had already said this before. Mr. C. had seen the melted man, because Mouse had dragged him away from the church, down the storm drain, and back to the warren. The melted man, beneath all the burned clothes and dripping skin and muscles and fat, was a vampire. Mouse had been able to smell that, and the sun had been about to come up, so he’d pulled the thing to cover. It was in the sick room now. Mouse watched over it.

“The hand man,” Calebros prodded gently, “the one with the funny eyes, he was leaving when you arrived?”

Mouse nodded. It was true in a way. The hand man was leaving when Mouse arrived the second time, after he’d run away and come back. “He was carrying a statue hand, and it was moving. All the fingers were wiggling,” he said in a hushed voice. Statues weren’t supposed to move. Not like that. No one had believed him about that part of the story at first. That was why he hadn’t mentioned what else he’d seen. He was certain that no one would believe him, and Mr. C. might hit him.

“And that’s all you saw?” Calebros asked.

Mouse didn’t hesitate; he nodded again. If he changed his story now, Mr. C. would know that he hadn’t told everything before, and then Mr. C. would hit him… and maybe take him back to the kennels. Mouse couldn’t tell him about what he’d seen the first time he’d peeked into the garden at the church—the big metal statue moving and beating the melted man, only the melted man hadn’t been melted yet. Mouse hadn’t said anything about that before, so he couldn’t say anything about it now.

“I see,” Calebros said. He sat quietly for a few minutes. Absentmindedly, he gently scratched Mouse’s head with his talons. It felt good. But Mouse itched all over. He wished that Mr. C. would scratch his back, and his shoulder, and his leg… but Mouse was afraid to ask.

“Thank you, Mouse,” Mr. C. said at last. “You can go back to your patient.” Relieved, Mouse crawled around the desk and then scurried out of Mr. C.’s office.

Mouse felt important now that they were letting him take care of the melted man, although there wasn’t really much to do, except wipe up the bits that dripped off. Still, Mouse felt that he’d found two treasures, even if only one of them was bright and shiny.

Calebros watched the youngster scuttle away. That interview had not proven overly productive. He really shouldn’t have spent the time on it, he decided. The “melted man,” as Mouse called him, though enigmatic, was of little real concern, other than the fact that the mystery of what had happened to him had the entire warren abuzz with rumors and speculation. That was the main reason that Calebros was interested. If he could figure out what had happened, he could dampen the agitated atmosphere. Otherwise, the severely burned stranger was of little import.

I shouldn’t have wasted the time, Calebros thought.

Time. There it was again—the sense that time was running out. But why, and for whom?

It’s just that there’s so much going on at present, he told himself. Gather the pieces. I will reconstruct the puzzle. That was what he’d told his young Nosferatu charges, much as Augustin had often told him. Yet, truth be told, Calebros felt profoundly unsure of whether or not he was up to the task. The puzzle pieces were still all a jumble.

There’s not so very much going on, he tried to convince himself. It merely feels that way. Expectation could be worse than crisis. So many loose ends dangling; so many axes waiting to fall. But still, he was making progress.

There was no substantive news from Emmett yet, but that would change. Calebros had every confidence in his clanmate. And as for the Sabbat, they seemed still to be stalled in Washington. The storm was gathering, certainly. Calebros had no doubt of that. But from Jon Courier’s reports, there seemed to be dissension brewing among Vykos, Polonia, and Borges, and perhaps others. That was to be expected. They were a fractious, bloodthirsty lot, and the longer they were holed up in one place, the better for the Camarilla.

For their part, the defenders of the seven clans were not sitting idly in Baltimore. Jan Pieterzoon had acceded to Calebros’s suggestion, which Marston Colchester had discreetly passed along—despite his air of perverse buffoonery, Colchester was, in fact, capable of acting discreetly. At any rate, along the lines of psychological warfare, Pieterzoon had hired an assassin. And not just any assassin. Lucita, wayward childe of Cardinal Monçada of Madrid. Lucita would certainly remove the targets whom Pieterzoon had chosen for her, and her activities would force members of the Sabbat, from the high command on down, to think twice about their every move. Beyond those benefits, however, there was another potential payoff, though it was far from certain. There was the chance that Lucita’s involvement in the war might possibly prompt the attention of another infamous assassin, a certain Assamite who seemed to have maintained a heated rivalry with Lucita over the years. But only time would tell if that came to pass.

Time.

Calebros sifted through the papers on his desk. Despite the press of weightier matters, he couldn’t manage to dismiss the melted man that Mouse had found. Something about the grotesquely disfigured victim struck a resonant chord. Perhaps that was it, Calebros mused: He identified on some level with this Kindred, ostensibly not a Nosferatu, who had been so hideously deformed. Seemed a reasonable enough explanation.

No time for sentimentality, you old fool, he chided himself. There was Benito Giovanni to consider, the Sabbat, not to mention the still-missing Eye of Hazimel. And Anatole! The Prophet, presumably after keeping all the Nosferatu out of the Cathedral of St. John Divine for weeks, had allowed Donatello in, but now, Donatello could remember nothing of what had happened—nothing except a single, childish riddle. As if they had time for that. And to top it all off, when more of Calebros’s people had entered, Anatole was gone. Without a trace. And then these new unexplained happenings at the cathedral with the melted man…

Blast it all to hell. Calebros tried his best to put Mouse and his enigmatic melted man out of mind and get back to work.

They wore tight, shiny clothes that left their legs free, their arms bare, their muscles evident, and her chest tantalizingly half-covered. Gold flashed on their necks, on his wrist, and from her ears and fingers. Beads of sweat scented with tobacco, perfume, and alcohol glistened on bronze skin and on olive; the young couple had spent a beautiful evening dancing salsa with friends at their regular place. Clinging together, holding hands as they made their good-byes, they moved gracefully down the front steps of the one- room club. She kissed one last girlfriend on the cheek and promised to call; he gripped a friend by the arm and joked about work. Then the two stepped out of the circle of music and off down the sidewalk… north, away from the darkness of Red Hook… in the direction Khalil had expected them to choose.

The Ravnos sauntered down the uneven pavement roughly twenty feet behind his prey. Ramona’s grunting talk of food had piqued Khalil; he felt rather peckish, as he put it to Elizabeth. She hadn’t liked that. He smiled. She wouldn’t like the rest of the evening any better.

His hearty appetite goaded him on, and he closed the gap separating the couple and himself. When the three of them reached a nice, shady spot, Khalil skipped forward and pinched the girl on the butt. She whirled on him, dark-eyed and angry, and her companion, after quick words passed between them, advanced on the offender with rippling biceps. A torrent of abuse flew from his mouth; his fists followed. Khalil dodged, winked at the woman, wished he understood more Spanish, and gut-punched the man so hard he had to stop speaking to catch his breath. Khalil jabbed and swung and dodged, and the fight backed its slow way into the real darkness between two faceless buildings. A bit of cunning footwork—the mortal was forced to retreat down the alley—his girl, realizing at last that her man’s knuckles had no effect on the stranger, leaped on Khalil’s back and tried to claw his eyes out. The Ravnos stopped playing, knocked out the male with one solid blow to the chin, tapped the girl unconscious before she screamed any louder, and dragged his prizes further from the street.

Two mammoth dumpsters flanked the back door of a little café, closed now for the night. Elizabeth sat chained to the nearest, her mouth securely gagged with duct tape. Legend had it no call for help in New York was ever answered, but the Ravnos took no chances.

Khalil laid the two victims down side by side and examined them judicially. “Dinner is served,” he quipped, tearing the strips of plastic away from his prisoner’s mouth. The man was stronger—he could take the loss a little better. Khalil pulled the girl over to his own side of the alley. He found a seat on a pile of decaying newspapers, tucked the girl into his lap, and shoved her boyfriend forward with his foot until the body pressed up against his prisoner’s. He nodded at Elizabeth, saying, “That one’s yours.”

Khalil wrapped his arms around the girl. She wore a necklace with a charm engraved “Rosa,” and the shilmulo whispered the name softly to himself. He kissed her red lips and smelt wine on her breath. He stroked her downy neck, found a pulse with his tongue, and sank his teeth in deep. Beautiful, smooth, sweet darling, he thought, before he ceased thinking and simply enjoyed. After a long time (Never long enough, cursed the Ravnos to himself), he wrenched his mouth away. He licked the wound clean and watched the twin holes seal themselves, weighed his belly, and checked the woman’s color. She would be a white rose for a week or two, he guessed, but he was fairly sure he didn’t have a corpse on his hands. Good, he mused contentedly, she’s a pretty one; maybe I can find her again a month from now. Heavy-lidded and warm, he leant back against the wall and regarded his Setite childe. Disgusting. She hasn’t even made a move toward him.

Elizabeth’s nose, mouth, and throat burned with the smell of blood. Khalil reeked of it. The ally teemed with it. There seemed to be a red mist, even, floating behind her eyes, and her body—

Once, after a bout of food poisoning which kept her from eating real food for a week, Liz had experienced the first, faintest knives of starvation in her belly. She remembered how her hands shook lifting the spoon to her mouth, how applesauce tasted when the body had been eating itself for days. That feeling—doubled, tripled—had crept through her the last two nights. Now, with this solid smell in her nostrils, the hunger became a living thing lashing about her guts. I will not, she thought, without naming to herself what she denied. This is wrong. Better to have died in the sun than to…

“Feeling squeamish?” Khalil’s voice touched her, unexpectedly full of sympathy and concern. Liz looked up with a kind of hope dawning on her face. Her companion nodded consolingly. “It’s tough the first time, sweetheart.” He picked up a half-brick from the debris around him and reached out—Elizabeth froze—and Khalil smashed in the man’s skull. The cranium caved in like an eggshell. Gray matter and bone sprayed up and flecked the torn skin and curly black hair. Blood began pooling in the horrific dent—and stopped. Liz stared at the dancer’s unmoving chest. He’s not breathing. She saw the girl’s left hand outstretched, where it had fallen when Khalil finished with her. The third finger bore an engagement ring. They would have been married.… She loved him. She tried to rescue him, and now there will be nothing. God grant that they’ve gone somewhere better, together, prayed the new Setite.

“Go ahead, darling,” Khalil told her cheerfully. “You can’t hurt him now.”

Elizabeth, wretched and terrified, knew she was sick. Her stomach turned, and she bent her head forward to let her dry and empty body do what it would. Unstoppably, nightmarishly, fangs forced their way down from her gums and cut her mouth. It opened of its own accord and fastened leech-like to the man’s still-warm shoulder. Her hands, stretched out to push away, grabbed instead and brought him closer. Elizabeth drank despite herself, and despaired because she enjoyed it.

A sound close to her ears. Snapping. Words. Khalil’s voice and hard fingers on her shoulders, pulling her away. “That’s quite enough for you, my girl. Mustn’t gorge yourself.” A perverse and childish spirit whined in the back of her head, demanding why, if the man was dead already, she couldn’t drink it all? Other sounds: clanking chains. Her fetters were off the trash bin and back in Khalil’s hands. The Ravnos jerked on them, and she stood slowly. The corpse lolled away from her feet and came to rest against the body of his bride-to-be.

Wednesday, 4 August 1999, 1:44 AM Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Khalil shoved his prisoner down the lane and back toward the warehouse. At the corner, he looked back: The broken brick lay pulverized on the cement beside the man’s smooth and unbroken head. The Setite knew nothing of taking her meals; she had opened only a tiny vein, and the sluggish flow was nearly stopped from the clotting already. No corpses at all tonight. He jingled his new jewelry in one pocket and felt the man’s heavy wallet pressing on his hip. It looked enough like a robbery…. He turned his attentions to his companion. Elizabeth walked huddled in on herself. She was obviously terrified, mortified, barely holding her sanity together—Hesha’s childe, in just the state he’d love to see Hesha. Khalil licked his lips and smiled. Good.

Wednesday, 4 August 1999, 10:52 PM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Ramona knocked cautiously on the steel door of the loft. She kept watch to both sides of the catwalk and listened. Would Khalil open the door? Was he home? What if someone else had moved in on the place? And what had she said as she left the other night? She bit her knuckles and waited. Below her, was that a noise? A footstep?

“Who’s there?” Khalil’s voice, thank goodness. “It’s me.”

Locks clanked and clicked open, and Khalil looked out through the crack left by a sliding chain. He nodded and let her in. “You’re looking well,” he observed. “Set of keys for you on the refrigerator. They work for everything except the big day bolt; get here before I shoot that if you want to sleep in.” He glanced down at a sheaf of papers held in his hand, turned away negligently, and sat down at a cheap desk by the black windows. “Do you have any good Camarilla contacts?” he inquired, flipping through a file drawer.

“No.” Ramona followed him up the step. “No, my gang tried to keep out of all that.” “Know where I can find anyone from the Camarilla?” She shook her head. “Elysium?”

Ramona looked blank. “Cam turf? Cam bars?” He tapped his nails on the desktop.

I told you where to go, the voice in his head said.

“I’m just checking all available options,” Khalil said aloud. Ramona nodded in answer. He spoke again, this time to her. “I’m going out tonight to find some players. People we can bargain with. Come with me.” The Gangrel’s eyes flicked over her shoulder to the couch. The lady in chains sat quietly listening. Khalil cleared his throat. “She’ll be fine here. Safer, really. The stuffed shirts in the Cam don’t care for Setites—not at all. They’ll like you, though….” And on that confusing note he hustled Ramona out the door again.

Thursday, 5 August 1999, 12:13 AM Turtle Bay, Manhattan

New York City, New York

“Sexton’s Dirty Secret,” read Ramona off the sign above the door. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s a Camarilla club. Probably owned by one of the highbrows. Ventrue, darling. They like being coy and clever with their little problem.” The Gangrel blinked at him uncomprehendingly. “Death, Ramona, death.” He slicked his hair back and kept talking. “A sexton is a churchwarden. He takes care of the grounds, including the cemetery and the vault, see? The walking dead would be his dirty secret.”

“Oh.”

“The owner is probably British; it’s a terribly Anglic word.”

Very perceptive of you, the voice commented dryly. It had had to explain the exact same thing to Khalil earlier in the evening.

They neared the entrance and a bouncer, well-built for his job, eyed them thoughtfully. While still out of earshot of the line waiting to get in (Khalil hoped), he whispered to the girl, “Try and remember. If anyone asks—say, if another Gangrel comes up and gives you the secret handshake or something and questions you about me—you’re not sure what clan I’m from, but I talk a little about some thing named Malkav when I’m getting sleepy, okay?”

“Why? What clan are you from?”

“I’m independent,” Khalil said cockily. His ears rang with the voice’s laughter, and his hands tightened into frustrated fists.

Khalil led the way to the back of the queue, and Ramona tailed along looking bored. Very quickly, more would-be patrons joined them, and the Gangrel’s nose twitched. The whole place was in mourning, apparently. Almost everyone wore black lace, black latex, black leather, or black net—and every hanger-on had pale, pale skin. She caught the scent of makeup off them: pearl powder and white greasepaint, sticky mascara and fresh nail polish. Ramona set her back against the wall and kept her distance from the posers and the freaks.

The line buzzed. Another man had appeared at the doorway of the club. After a quick chat with the bouncer, he passed along the line in review. The newcomer was whiplash-thin, with buzz-cut black hair, and the painted people waiting looked at him with hope-filled eyes but nonchalant expressions. “You,” he said, pointing to a girl wearing crushed red velvet despite the heat. “And you—” a boy, very pretty, whose eyes were smeared with black paint. “Both of you—” to Khalil and Ramona, “and you lot.” A tight group of four at the back of the line tensed with unexpected victory. The chosen progressed to the door, a few of the neglected wandered away, and the rest rearranged themselves to wait a while longer.

The eight elect filed through a narrow, dirty foyer whose long walls were sheets of mirror. They were being very careful, Khalil realized, so the situation must have been worse than he had originally thought. He smiled. Good wars made good markets. A girl with fluorescent white hair wrapped wristbands onto him and Ramona without asking for identification, and they shuffled along with the rest into the club.

Sexton’s Dirty Secret contrived, in a building designed originally to house finance, to create the atmosphere of a decayed and moribund chapel. The first-floor ceiling had been knocked away and replaced with one that slanted from its proper place on the right to the second story on the left. This gave the amateur feel of half a cathedral roof. A balcony running along the high wall was dressed as a choir-loft; the DJ resided in a glass booth atop another designed to take confessions; the bar fronts mimicked tombs; the dance floor was fenced off by chancel rails; and the booths ranged round the perimeter had seats like pews, their carved backs exaggerated into tall and imposing walls. Khalil’s mouth twitched as he threaded his way past the crowds and into the dark, flashing heart of the place. Most of the people here were acting as though they were actually people, at a club, enjoying themselves as much as their tragic souls would let them. A few danced in strange and back-breaking, ridiculously serious fashions. The club seemed to be full of live ones. The Camarilla and its damned Masquerade. Khalil wondered who was kidding whom, in the end.

Khalil took a seat in one of the booths. It wasn’t the position he would have occupied if he had his choice—the looming walls of the “pew” obscured anyone approaching from the sides until they were almost on top of him. On the other hand, of the tables that were left, his had the best view of (and from) the other quiet corners and private nooks. He settled in with his back to the wall and lounged ostentatiously along the entire seat. Ramona slid in across from him. She was trying to look natural, poor thing, but the crowd clearly bothered her, and the enclosed space had her on tenterhooks. Khalil took pity on his anxious partner. “Go ahead. Get up, go around the place as if you were checking it out. Obviously that’s your style. So be yourself. Order something from the bar—anything but a Bloody Mary. Walk around with it. Come back here in… I don’t know. Half an hour. Listen, don’t talk, and pay attention if anyone says anything about sewer rats. We’re looking for one, a big one. All right?”

Ramona slipped away gratefully. Khalil watched with satisfaction as the girl’s animalistic looks caught attention. She was as good as a full-page ad in the Post. He riveted his eyes on the faces of anyone who so much as glanced her way, trying to gauge their status—living or dead, friendly or suspicious, puny or important—by the kind of approach they took with her.

You are wasting time, the voice in his head said. I have told you your next move.

Khalil licked his lips and covered them with a lazy hand. Under its concealment, he murmured softly: “Let me handle this my way. You’ve been out of things for a while—”

As you wish. It makes no difference to me when you make contact, so long as it is tonight—you are the one being marked by the prince’s sheriff during this delay. Khalil’s back muscles writhed, and he glowered across the dance floor at Ramona’s head. Never mind. Here he comes.

“Mike?” Khalil said, as though recognizing a friend.

A short, burly man with long brown hair stopped walking by and looked into the recesses of the booth. “Yeah?” He had pale-gray, washed-out eyes and a crooked nose. “I know you?” “No, no.” Khalil sat up a bit and smiled reassuringly. “A friend of mine told me to look you up if I were ever in New York. University man, calls himself the Mongoose. ‘Go and find out,’ you know.”

“Rick? I haven’t seen Rick in ages. How’s the old boy doing?” Mike planted himself squarely on the seat across from Khalil and plastered a grin across his homely face. “Did he ever finish that biography of Kipling?”

“Last time I saw him, he’d abandoned poetry. Gone on to study the background of the thing. The Jungle Book, the real jungles of the time, the real old city life. That’s how I knew him, really. We had a common interest in the topic. I used to do a little snake-charming act in Delhi; he helped me make it more ‘authentic’ for the tourist trade.” The Ravnos shrugged. “I’d like to set up shop again over here, but I’m having trouble finding the cobras.”

“I know a lot of reptiles. I might be able to fix you up.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate that. It’s just… I’m looking for one breed in particular. Very rare; recent import to the States. The handlers got it through Customs for me, and it just—disappeared.”

“Stolen?” Mike’s tone was sympathetic. “Stolen, escaped, mislaid, I don’t know.”

“I’ve got some friends who are pretty good at finding things. Never tried to find a cobra before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything.” He frowned a little. “Just one thing, though, before I offer their help—they don’t always take dollars, you know. Currency regulations, red tape, the IRS…”

Khalil nodded in complete understanding. “Not a problem. I’ve been traveling quite a bit recently. I haven’t exchanged everything I picked up on my trip. I’m sure there’s one coin or another we can agree on.”

“Great.” Mike tipped his near-empty beer bottle to his lips and rose to go. “Great. Hey, how can I reach you… uh… ?”

“Khalil,” the Ravnos said. “My offices aren’t open yet… have you got a number where I could get you?”

“Sure.” Mike pulled out a card and swayed slightly drunkenly. “You know, you ought to get a pager or a cell phone or something. Everybody has them here.” He patted the pew and began moving on. “Give my regards to the Mongoose next time you see him, pal.”

Khalil collected Ramona from conversation with the barmaid and ushered her out. “Did we get what we wanted?” she asked angrily, upset at being yanked around.

“We made contact. That’s enough for one night.”

Thursday, 5 August 1999, 1:51 AM Crown Plaza Hotel, Midtown Manhattan New York City, New York

“Lie still, my friend.” Nickolai lifted the I-heart-NY sweatshirt that he had bought for his troublesome patient. The deep gut wounds had been the ugliest—shredded organs and muscle and sinew—but they were significantly healed. The internal tissues had knitted back together, and even the surface-entry wound, which had been wide and gaping, was largely repaired. The quintuple lacerations on both chest and left shoulder were completely mended, use of the left arm returned. All that rejuvenation merely from the blood of two prostitutes.

No, more troublesome than the patient’s physical well-being was his mental condition….

“She is here? That’s what you said—that she would be here,” he said.

His mental condition, and the fact that his stinking, sputtering Eye kept seeping acidic pus onto the sheets.

“Yes, Leopold. She’ll be here. I promise. You can trust me,” Nickolai reassured him. Leopold was, in layman’s terms, fried. Intelligible sentences from his lips were the exception rather than the norm, and on the rare occasion that he did manage to utter a comprehensible thought, invariably he was asking after her. His right eye, the normal one of the pair, stared crazed and fanatical. The other, the Eye, bulged out dramatically, as if it might pop from the too-small socket at any moment. The fleshy membrane that served as a lid was obviously darker than Leopold’s own skin—as if there might have been any doubt that he was not the original owner of the Eye. Adding to the overall foulness was the intermittent fizzling and dribbling of a pungent, gelatinous ichor from the orb.

Nickolai was envious. Fascinating, he thought, at least once every few minutes. How, he wondered, could such a rank neonate stumble across such a wonderful… thing? The secret, for now, was safely tucked away in Leopold’s addled mind. Along with other secrets. Nickolai had surmised something of Leopold’s mental state over a week ago, but when the warlock had actually, physically, found the boy five nights ago, wandering north of Central Park and caressing a stone hand—and being caressed by it!—Nickolai’s suspicions had been confirmed. Leopold remembered nothing of their previous time together.

Thursday, 5 August 1999, 1:55 AM Crown Plaza Hotel, Midtown Manhattan New York City, New York

Leopold did remember. He gazed up at the teacher through the fantastic prism of Sight. Nickolai was the teacher’s name; it was a name Leopold knew. He knew many names. And he remembered a great deal.

Truth, to Leopold, was a great, dark, underground river. He walked along its chalky banks. In places, the river ran straight and sure, flowing inexorably toward its destination. In other places, the river grew wide, and the current was not so strong. The water meandered, split into separate channels, wandered between rocks and beneath the knobby roots of blighted swamp trees, their branches pulled low by crimson Spanish moss—all beneath the vaulted darkness of living rock.

Leopold stepped closer to the river. Who was this person he was watching? The name escaped him now, when a moment before it had been as familiar as family. No matter. The paunch-bellied man was not her, not Leopold’s Muse. Leopold had thought he’d found her again, thought that she’d taken him by the hand, but he was no longer sure. He could feel her presence, her nearness, in the dragon’s graveyard, but would she reveal herself to him again? She had already given him so much. He must not be greedy. She had led him to the cave and presented him with the tools he’d needed.

My masterpiece…

Leopold stared down at the water. Blood dripped from the hanging moss and painted circles on the river, ripples carried lazily downstream, spreading as they moved, leaving the point of their impact smooth and clear until the next drop fell. Leopold dipped his foot into the water.

He stood in the cave again, his masterpiece towering over him. Never had he known such contentment, such peaceful exhaustion, awash in the afterglow of the most skillful and elusive of lovers. His Muse had brought him here with whispered promises, and she had proven as good as her word.

The wolves stared at him. Surely they understood the honor accorded them, their droll existence graced by the opportunity to partake of perfection, to become a fragment of perfection. Rivulets of blood clung to the mammoth column of sculpted stone, sweat upon his lover’s brow.

Another face watched Leopold. Teacher? No, nor the Muse. Another woman, a seer, whom Leopold had touched and studied. She had placed her seed in him—Leopold laughed at the irony—and he had birthed her anew.

There were others—so many visitors. A troublesome man who’d left very quickly. And also Leopold’s teacher.

“I’ve been searching for you, Leopold,” he had said. But Leopold had been so busy. For three days and three nights he had labored. The Muse had directed him, and the teacher had watched over his shoulder—though, in truth, Leopold had been too enthralled to be constantly mindful of the other’s presence. And when Leopold was done, the weight of all the stone had seemed to press down upon him, to force him to his knees, to his belly.

He’d awoken to find the Sight gone. Taken from him. Stolen.

“Do you want it back, Leopold? I can help you.” The teacher again. But so stupid for a teacher. Did he want it back? Did blood call to blood? Did greatness call out to the worthies?

“I shall have it!” Leopold had screamed. “I-shall-have-it!”

The mere memory was too painful. Leopold withdrew his foot from the water. He waited until the ripple of his passing was swept downstream, then tested the waters again.

He was in the dragon’s graveyard, Sight restored, brought to the city by his teacher. I can help you. Stepped through the portal. Leopold had found the thief, the snake, and shown him the error of his ways. That was before. The righteous indignation was ebbing already. No lasting harm was done, after all. The Sight was restored, and Leopold was holding the hand of his Muse—but not his Muse.

“Just a piece of a statue,” his teacher was saying, “but I can help you find your Muse again. Come with me, Leopold. Didn’t I help you find the Eye?”

Leopold pulled his toes from the river. His foot was covered with blood. He watched the red water flow past. He was unsure what to do next; his Sight was restored, but his Muse was gone. He tried to listen to the teacher, Nickolai—that was his name. But the teacher seemed so far away.

Wednesday, 4 August 1999, 11:41 PM

(Thursday, 5 August 1999, 2:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time) Inyo County lockup

Shoshone, California

“When do I get a chance to practice on him?” Kragen asked.

Emmett swiveled on his stool beside Benito Giovanni’s cot. “You don’t. Interrogation is my job.” Emmett stared coldly at the two other Nosferatu, outside the jail cell. Kragen was a brute, no two ways about it. He’d already cracked three wooden door jambs here in the “off-limits” basement level of the lockup by forgetting to duck. Rhodes scholar he wasn’t, but he possessed a low cunning and a sadistic streak that made Emmett feel like a humanitarian. Behind Kraken stood Buttface. He’d come by his name honestly. Emmett was sincerely grateful that he didn’t have to go through eternity with such an affliction.

“How do I get good at interrogatin’ if’n I don’t get to do it?” Kraken grumbled. “You don’t have to get good at it. That’s why I’m here,” Emmett said.

Kraken snorted but didn’t complain further. Buttface didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a big talker. These two were the local talent. Purely small-time. And I thought Montrose was an ass, Emmett thought, then caught himself in the awful, unintended pun. And, of course, Montrose was an ass, but that was beside the point.

Emmett’s own men, whom he’d brought with him from the East Coast, were in the other room. They were merely insurance. There wasn’t much chance that Clan Giovanni would find out about this operation. The biggest worry was keeping Kragen and Buttface away from Benito. Emmett felt pretty confident that, given half a chance, they’d be a little overzealous with the prisoner, and before long there would be no prisoner left. Benito was the one locked up here, but it wasn’t to protect the Nosferatu from him.

“Look,” Emmett said finally to Kragen, “you bother me. Why don’t you take Hemorrhoid Boy there and scram.”

Kragen didn’t take insults kindly, but he obeyed, and that was all that Emmett was worried about. Those two aren’t going to keep quiet after this is over, he thought as he watched them shamble out the door, Kragen remembering to duck this time. They’re going to grumble and spill their guts to anybody that’ll listen. Then again, that might not be all bad. If everything went well, secrecy wouldn’t be so important after the fact. It might be better if word got out that it was the Nosferatu that had abducted Benito. It would send the message that the clan wasn’t going to sit back meekly and take insult and injury. The Giovanni might get a bit nasty, but it wouldn’t be anything that Emmett and his brethren couldn’t handle— he hoped. Conveying a position of strength to the other clans would more than make up for any complications from the necromancers. Again, he hoped.

Emmett took a miniaturized tape recorder from his pocket, turned the device on, and set it on the floor beside Benito’s cot. The Giovanni had definitely seen better nights. He was blindfolded, and Kragen and Buttface had unceremoniously stripped him and stuffed him into an orange Inyo County jumpsuit the first night Emmett had arrived with his captive. That was the night that Emmett had decided the two southwestern sociopaths would not touch the prisoner again. Emmett was fairly certain they had broken Benito’s arm, as well as opening a deep gash in his head, in the process of changing his clothes. Benito had been torpid at the time, so he hadn’t made much of a fuss. Still, Emmett was determined that if any carnage occurred, it would be at his direction.

The gash in Benito’s head remained open, attracting flies. His arm was still broken as well, but it looked straight enough. Probably it would heal—if and when Emmett allowed him a sufficient amount of blood.

The jail cell, without the lurking presence of Kragen and Buttface, was calming in the same way as a cheap funeral parlor, minus the flowers. The stark cinderblock walls were painted that washed-out, institutional pink. The toilet, in this case, was superfluous.

Emmett carried the keys to the barred door in his pocket. He leaned over and slid a briefcase from beneath Benito’s cot, dialed the combination and opened the case, from which he removed one of several glass test tubes. All were full of blood. Emmett also took an eye-dropper, which he filled from the test tube. He leaned close to Benito.

The Giovanni had always been fairly fleshy for a Kindred. Fat city living—or unliving, or whatever; Emmett wasn’t one for semantics. Currently, however, Benito’s pasty white skin was drawn tight over his bones, like a shriveled plum. Emmett snickered at that thought. Yeah, I’ve got a giant, vampire prune here. “It’s good for you,” he said. “Keep you regular.” Then he remembered the tape recorder, picked it up, rewound, and started recording over again.

Before feeding drops of blood to his captive, Emmett brushed the flies from Benito’s lips. Where Emmett’s fingers brushed, the skin flaked away like scorched paper. Very gently, Emmett pulled Benito’s mouth open slightly and began squeezing in droplets of blood.

Almost instantly, the Giovanni drew an involuntary breath between his parched lips. He was trying to drink, his body attempting to draw the sustenance it so badly needed. Another drop. Benito’s gray, withered tongue stabbed weakly at the air, like some meek but desperate subterranean creature testing the light of day.

Emmett fed him two more drops of blood, then leaned very close to Benito’s ear. “Gary Pennington,” the Nosferatu whispered. He dripped two more crimson droplets. “Gary Pennington,” he whispered again.

The small amount of blood, even had Emmett fed him the entire dropper’s worth, was not nearly enough to restore Benito’s strength or to allow him to begin to heal his injuries, but it did serve to draw him slowly toward consciousness. Beneath the blindfold, there was the movement of spastically blinking eyes. Benito’s tongue continued stabbing at the air, searching desperately for more blood.

“How the mighty have fallen, you pompous fuck,” Emmett hissed. “I’m going to know everything you know. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve waited two years, we can wait two more if we have to.”

Emmett placed a droplet of blood on Benito’s cheek, just beyond the reach of his striving tongue. Benito tried to buck but hardly shook the bed. He didn’t have the strength. He didn’t have the strength to lift his hands, even had they not been tied beneath him. “Gary Pennington,” Emmett said, a bit more loudly this time. “He helped you, didn’t he, Benito? He was in on it. And then you killed him, didn’t you? I want to know it all. I

want all the details. You’re going to tell me everything, Benito. Did you contact him, Benito? Was it your idea? Benito…”

Emmett squeezed the rubber bulb on the end of the dropper, holding his fingers together so that all the blood ran from the dropper into Benito’s slack mouth. The Giovanni’s tongue sprang to life again at once, darting from side to side, soaking up every speck of blood it could find. For the first time in many nights, sound escaped from Benito’s throat—a faint gurgling moan.

“Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito….”

Emmett reached for another test tube and refilled the eyedropper. He would bring Benito along slowly. The art connoisseur was little more than a torpid mass of primal instincts, a hungering pile of undead flesh, but Emmett would bring him back. Ever so slowly. All Benito would know was that he hungered, that he desired blood. And with each drop he would hear the name.

“Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito….”

First to return would be a few of the most basic of motor skills, and then, slowly, the blurriness would begin to recede. And Emmett would be there leading him all the while.

“Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito….”

After three hours and three more test tubes of blood, Benito began to speak. At first he merely responded to the names that Emmett whispered, but soon he spoke names himself, different names. “Nickolai… ” Benito rasped. By the beginning of the third cassette tape, he had progressed to sentence fragments. He wasn’t quite ready for dates or addresses, but Emmett was confident those too would come, as would all the plans, all the vile schemes.

Oh, yes. They’ll come, Emmett thought. It was just a matter of time.

Thursday, 5 August 1999, 2:41 AM Crown Plaza Hotel, Midtown Manhattan New York City, New York

“Leopold?” Nickolai couldn’t trace the blank stare of the neonate’s right eye—it gazed at some nonexistent sight in the far distance. Nickolai was more interested in the left Eye, distended and constantly in motion, like some ever-curious creature. Or ever-hungry, he thought. Continuously shifting position, gangrenous pus ever percolating and seeping.

Fascinating.

Even when Nickolai had reached Leopold’s troubled mind, when the artist had collapsed from his supernal exertions in the cave and had been robbed of his “Sight,” Leopold had seemed to know where the Eye was. Nickolai had merely transported the enraged victim of treachery to the city, and Leopold had done the rest. And now he had the Eye once again. Nickolai had nursed him back to health—physical health, at least. He feared that Leopold’s mind, however, had been stretched beyond its limits.

The Eye, blinking, oozing, watching, did little to dispel that impression. Yet there was much to learn; there was much power here. And the gods knew that Nickolai would be in need of it. Leopold might, perchance, prove a fine tool indeed, a fine weapon. For Nickolai’s enemies were searching for him. His secret was revealed—or would be in time.

Nickolai turned away from Leopold. The Eye watched, as always, but the right eye still saw some specter projected by a broken mind. The warlock stepped into the next room. He took up a vial filled with blood. He’d collected just a drop of blood—not the blood of his enemy, but of his ally—on the night of that fateful attack, but the sorcerous arts were nothing if not practical. One drop had become two, and two four, and so on until the vial was full.

Standing before an ornate quicksilver mirror, Nickolai unstopped the vial and poured a small amount of the blood onto a cloth of pure silk, the death shroud of a long-dead king. The warlock wiped the cloth across the face of the mirror, and where the fabric passed, the reflection of the hotel room was replaced by another scene—cinderblock and bars; a hideous beast leaned over poor Benito and whispered lies in his ear.

Nickolai did not need to watch for long. The truth was clear enough to see. Benito had betrayed him, and soon the hoarders of secrets would possess his own secret. Damn them!

He went back to the other room and stood over Leopold. An unexpected boon, this Eye, Nickolai thought. There was much to prepare, and who was to say how soon his enemies would fall upon him.

Thursday, 5 August 1999, 3:54 AM A forgotten pneumatic subway tunnel

New York City, New York

Mike Tundlight swung through a service grating and down a ladder into an old, crumbling corridor. He popped in one door to chaff a few friends gathered around a poker table. His face was no longer merely pale but maggot-white, his eyes bloodshot through the iris, his brown hair wispy and uncontrolled, his short stature and thick body clearly the result of a spine twisted in on itself. The card players, all but one of whom shared his monstrous ugliness, called cheerfully back and went on with the game. Mike poked his head into another room with a touch more deference, asking the occupant, “You busy?”

Umberto scratched an eyebrow (which was not, properly speaking, over his eye) and blinked in the light from his computer screen. “Just a second.” His bony fingers flickered over the keyboard with a perfect rattling touch. “What’s up?” One hand took hold of a trackball, the other waved vaguely at the dilapidated couch beside the machine.

“Just got in from Sexton’s.”

“The beautiful people making a late night of it? What else is new?”

“Lot of talk about the war,” said Mike, settling down. “But that’s not important. I’ll send something on that around in the evening. But a guy did come in who might be relevant. He was Indo-Pak or something… South Asian, anyway. Had a girlfriend with him, called herself Ramona. He, or they, were looking for a snake. I think he was looking for the same snake we’re hunting for. Certainly seems to have lost track of him at the same stage of his travels.”

“Huh.” Umberto took both hands off the keyboard and thought. “Interesting, if true. Cass!” he yelled down the tiled corridor. “Spare us a minute?”

A dark, pebble-skinned woman appeared on the threshold. She wore several layers of sweaters and skirts, and in her permanently clawed left fist she held a deck of cards. “Sure. It’s my deal. What do you need?”

“You saw the two jokers who showed up at Saint John’s the night after the commotion. Describe them for Mike.” And a very short time later, the three Nosferatu confirmed that Khalil was the man from the bar, as well as the man from the cathedral. Mike and Cass thought that the girls they had seen were one and the same (though she had had an open and unusual wound when prowling about the churchyard), but were positive that she could not, under any circumstances, have been the woman in the pictures with Hesha in New York. Umberto gathered his information together and took it down the hallway. Mike Tundlight, Cassandra, and a growing crowd from the game waited, sensing something important in the offing—each of them were experts in atmosphere—and when Umberto came back in only five minutes, with new and urgent assignments for anyone who could volunteer, their expectations were more than fulfilled.

“He wants a full report on Khalil; another on the girl. If he’s selling or trading information, we want to know how reliable the stuff will be. Mike, you meet with him as soon as you think wise. I’m going with you,” —mild sensation in the hall as Umberto spoke of leaving his computer— “as your humble servant, just in case our Ravnos tries something.”

Friday, 6 August 1999, 2:41 AM A subterranean grotto

New York City, New York

“Good evening, sir,” said Umberto respectfully into the shadows. A gnarled and twisted hand held a sheaf of typewritten reports out toward him. Red ink and faint stampings overran the pages. The technologically minded Nosferatu clipped the sheets to a folio that had its own dim light built into the cover and glanced at the manuscript notes. “Baltimore is still in conference… no news for you there. But I’ve got some juicy ID’s on the two that came into old Gotobed’s club last night….”

Large, wide-set eyes blinked encouragingly at him.

“The girl is Ramona Tanner-childe; Tanner, childe of Horrock, etc., is a Gangrel of decent reputation and moderate standing—he seems to be quite a mover, so the call is out over SchreckNET to see where he might be now. Ramona is very probably Pilar Ramona Salvador, a missing-child case from LA. Poor Hispanic family, barrio where that sort of thing happens all the time, hardly any news coverage, not investigated deeply by the police. Her parents had a memorial stone put in the family plot back in Mexico and say prayers for their lost little girl.” The shadows rustled slightly. “I know. Old story.

“Khalil Ravana, on the other hand, is a two-bit Ravnos from Bihar. Good, long history there.” He passed a printout into the darkness. “And he,” Umberto finished triumphantly, “was last seen in a disco in Calcutta, sitting across the table from the notorious Hesha Ruhadze.”

“Make the appointment.”

Friday, 6 August 1999, 9:12 PM Turtle Bay, Manhattan

New York City, New York

Ramona kept her distance from Khalil as they neared the club. She wore a charcoal- gray T-shirt and leggings borrowed from the quiet lady’s closet. He had bought a bright and intricately printed silk shirt in blue, white, and gold—very expensive, very conspicuous. If the stranger wanted an extra hand, she was ready. If he wanted to make himself a target, she would be standing somewhere else. She watched him swagger ahead, dangling his new black-leather phone bag from its wrist strap, and she rolled her eyes. At the shut and darkened door he didn’t hesitate—he knocked twice, and the door opened immediately. A bartender Ramona remembered speaking to stood there in quite ordinary clothes (she had been a vision in black net the other night), welcomed them pleasantly, and led them up to the gallery.

As the Ravnos and the Gangrel mounted the steps, two other people kept pace with them on the opposite staircase. The bartender reached the top and stood aside for a moment to let everyone have a good look at each other. Mike Tundlight matched their faces with his memory of the club; Umberto with a missing children’s photo and a surveillance shot. Khalil recognized Mike, saw that the other figure was swathed in cloth from head to foot, and accepted that he had a second and obviously (to his mind) lesser (because unable to hide his deformities by magic) Nosferatu to deal with. Once she was sure no fight would break out, the bartender started moving again. The gallery held five doors, all wide open. Ramona looked inside the first one as they passed it, and saw a blank—four plain plaster walls, seamless white plaster ceiling, seamless white vinyl floor. When the party met at the center door, the bartender recited, as if by rote:

“All the rooms are the same. Feel free to examine them as you will. Select one you can agree on. All the locks work only from the inside. I do not have any keys. I will not remain in the building. The management takes no responsibility for the safety of its guests, it merely ensures neutral ground in which discussions may take place. In the event of hostilities, damage to the club, or damage to the staff, the management will take measures against the offending party or parties for the sake of its own reputation.” She glanced at Mike. He stepped aside for her. “We open at ten-thirty,” she added as she walked away. “Mr. Gotobed told me to ask you to try and be done by then.”

“Well.” Mike grinned. “Pick a room? I don’t think we have a preference.”

Khalil slipped into the center door. Mike followed, then the cloaked person, then Ramona. She was grateful for her partner’s flashy clothes once inside; they broke up the monotony—this room was just the same as the first, and the furniture, now that she saw it, was no help. Clear molded-plastic chairs, clear molded-plastic table. The only thing besides themselves that was not transparent or clinically white was a mirror twelve inches square hung on the back of the door. She wished she had spent the night in the ground and could at least get the place dirty. Uncomfortably, she took her place by Khalil’s side.

Khalil settled in, apparently at his ease. In his mind, however, the voice kept up a steady commentary; he had hardly had a moment’s silence to think since Mukherjee’s cab dropped them off. Insist on seeing what the second man has beneath his robes, it said. He has nothing, but it will demonstrate appropriate caution on your part.

“If you don’t mind,” Khalil said to Mike, gesturing at the stranger, “could your friend shuck a few layers? Just so I can see there aren’t any stakes hidden under there. Mere formality, of course.” “Not a problem.” Mike helped his companion stand again and stripped him of his bulky outer robe. Ramona, unprepared for the sight, gasped a little.

“Nothing up my sleeves,” said Umberto reassuringly. His voice was quite ordinary, though it was difficult to tell where he kept his lips. His skin clung to his bones in some places, sagged into his skeleton in others, and very few scraps of flesh came between them. “Your own bag?” he suggested politely, and Ramona saw that his mouth ran diagonally up one cheek.

Khalil unzipped the little case. Mike picked up the phone, turned it around in his hands, and set it back. “Glad to see you taking my advice. Made this meet much easier, didn’t it?”

To business. Begin by inquiring after Hesha. Trade the details of—

“Well, gentlemen. Shall we talk?” Khalil asked as the second Nosferatu wrapped his body up again. “Any progress hunting for snakes?”

“We can speak more openly here,” Mike answered. “You are looking for Hesha Ruhadze, right?”

“Yes.”

“Suppose we knew where he was. What would that be worth to you?”

Mention the Eye. They will be prepared to—

Khalil overran his master’s voice. “Mike, I’m afraid I left you with the wrong impression the other night.” He considered this as an opening, and found he liked the sound of it. “I know answers; you collect answers. In fact, I think you need answers. I need some things myself.” At the back of his mind, he felt the presence pause. It wasn’t sure where he was taking this. Khalil wasn’t sure himself.

“What kind of things?”

“Hesha Ruhadze, first of all. I want to find him” —his master relaxed— “I want to know everything about him, and for that I’ll share what I know about the inside workings of his organization.” No. Stop this at once, the voice said.

“Second, if I’m going to be here very long while you boys find things out, I want hunting grounds and a promise that I won’t be interfered with by the prince’s sheriff. I need some money for expenses. I want information on New York City, the Setites here, the Camarilla setup and what the Sabbat call their turf.

“Third, I want to know about a Toreador named—” He winced, choking to a halt. Say not his name. The cure for the location, only. Do it. “I want to—” Khalil began again. Obey me, gnat. Ramona stared at him. Blood trickled from his nose, and his eyes ceased to focus. “Never mind. Never mind. Those two things are all.” He waved a hand weakly in negation.

Mike and Umberto exchanged quick glances. “What are you offering in return?” “You’re the ones… with… the emergency,” the Ravnos managed through the continuing, vengeful pain. I will destroy you for your insolence, boy. “Makes it a seller’s market, doesn’t it? You’ve got a bloody thunderstorm—” he pulled himself straight in his chair— “I’m the man selling umbrellas.” Try to thwart me again and I will personally track you down and reclaim my blood; I will break your bones with my teeth and suck the marrow from them while you still live.

Khalil stood up, and the voice raged on at him.

Mike shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about. You demand all these things, and you don’t give me many reasons to give them to you. My friends are going to want to know what you can do for us, Khalil.”

Khalil chuckled aloud. He could hold out. His ears hurt from the threats and the fury—he had trouble hearing his own voice and Mike’s, and felt obscurely that one of them wasn’t making sense. But the old bastard’s grip was weak. He could hold out.

Beneath a deep and twisted scowl, Ramona glowered at the table. She opened her mouth and said sharply, “Find Hesha and we’ll tell you how to heal wounds from the Eye. If you don’t know what the Eye is, you don’t know anything.” She sprang to her feet and took her tottering companion by the arm.

“I’ll take your… statement… back to my people. We’ll call you.”

“Good,” Ramona shot back. “Make it fast.” And she pulled Khalil out the door after her to the sound, if only she could have heard it, of ancient peals of laughter. Her partner put up no resistance; he kept silent, petrified by the magnitude of his humiliation, and let the Gangrel guide him.

Once in the street, she turned on him. “What the hell? Have you gone crazy? You didn’t do nothing like you told me last night. The cure for Hesha, that’s the plan, you said. What the fuck happened to you?” She pulled a wrinkled bandanna out of her hip pocket and wiped the blood from Khalil’s face. The Ravnos hardly noticed—between the mocking, mind-filling sound of his master’s humor, the thing had begun speaking again.

Fool. Fool, a thousand times a fool. You suffer my wrath until your heart fries with the effort, and the little girl-child of our enemy… against whom I warned you… does my bidding without the least prompting. You trebly damned baboon’s bastard. I told you she would betray you…. Its laughter kept it from finishing the sentence.

“I wanted a better bargain,” muttered Khalil. “I know very valuable things, you old bastard.” Ramona let his arm go suddenly. “You calling me a bastard, you son of a bitch?!” But Khalil’s eyes weren’t on her—they stared blankly away east, to Calcutta. Go on,

pick a fight with her. I would like to see this. His master’s agenda had nothing in it for him

except, possibly, survival. And the creature had never made the slightest promise of that. Somehow, he must get out from under its power. He swore that to himself, and begged gods he didn’t believe in to tell him how he’d come under the monster’s sway in the first place.

With concern, Ramona pressed him, “Come on, man. What’s wrong with you?” He said nothing. They walked down the sidewalk together, away from the club. Dinner crowds and early drinkers swirled around them. The girl did her best for him without understanding; she kept him from walking against the lights more than once. Blocks went by in stupefied silence.

Eventually, with walking, Khalil’s head cleared—of the voice, of the pain. The streets were crowded. Mortals everywhere—walking, driving, eating, drinking, laughing, arguing. America really was the land of opportunity. So many people to be bilked out of money or goods or whatever else Khalil wanted. That thought cheered him—that thought and the fact that he had defied his master. More or less. Khalil started to have a warm feeling inside.

He stopped in his tracks. Ramona took another couple of steps before she realized.

The warm feeling, Khalil discovered, was not the rising up of newly found pride, nor was it a result of the stifling, balmy evening. It was coming from his pocket.

He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the radiant heat of the gem—the stone that had inexplicably soaked up his blood a few nights before. Khalil took off at a jog.

“What the hell?” Ramona, who had just come back to him, followed along grumbling. Khalil only half-heartedly tried to avoid the other pedestrians. He ignored their New York pleasantries as he made his way to the next corner. The gem was growing warmer. He started to his left to cross the street—cooler—and then to his right along the sidewalk—warmer.

He ran for several more blocks—warmer. The stone seemed to drive Khalil onward. He forced himself to pause at intersections and dodge traffic. Warmer. He wasn’t sure if he’d lost Ramona or if she’d merely given up cursing at him.

The gem was incredibly hot, but the heat did not burn.

And then he saw her—across the street, hailing a cab. In the midst of the sweat- drenched crowd, one woman looked back at him coolly, as unconcerned by the heat wave as himself. Her full, painted lips were still pursed from calling the cab. Her long, black, coarse hair was swept back with beads and braided cords. She wore a costume in bright reds and purples, somewhere between a simple peasant dress and medieval court costume, and she had a number of scarves and sashes wrapped about her person. Behind the trappings, she was dark, genuinely beautiful, rather haggard, and bitterly sad.

“Khalil?” Ramona caught up with him at the curb.

He’d almost forgotten about her. She looked at him quizzically with raised brow. Following her gaze, Khalil noticed that the gem was glowing sunset red through his thin slacks.

“You just happy to see me?” Ramona asked.

“Stay here,” Khalil whispered to the Gangrel. “I have to talk to someone.” He strode into the street, not quite believing in the woman on the other side. He had a bad moment when a cab pulled up in front of her, but the woman waved it away and waited for him.

“Khalil?”

He nodded and stepped eagerly toward her.

“I thought that was you. What a shock,” she exclaimed in their native language. She reached out and stroked his mustache with a varnished fingernail.

Khalil began to smile—and then felt a jolt of remembered panic. The last people on Earth he wanted to see were his own kind, now. But, then, he and Ghose hadn’t felt the uncontrollable urge to slay one another; surely Mary would be safe as well. Khalil reached for her hand and clasped it welcomingly—to keep those nails far from his face. He became aware of Ramona watching them from across the street, and of the Ravnos woman watching Ramona.

“Hello, Ravana. It’s been ages. Delhi, wasn’t it?”

“Hello, Mary. Delhi it was.” He took her arm; as they spoke he promenaded her around the block. “What are you doing in New York?”

She shrugged. “Traveling. Let me think… Delhi to London, London to Hong Kong— stay out of that, old man, if you would live longer—Hong Kong to California, California to here… more or less.” She waved away the rest of the century with a carelessly graceful gesture. “Now tell me, where were you when the world ended? And don’t try to tell me you were here.” In another tone, she added, “I was here.”

“India,” Khalil admitted.

Mary’s eyebrows rose. “You survived India? Where?” she demanded, only half-jokingly. “A small town,” he answered briefly, modestly.

“Oh, you can’t tell the truth to save your soul, can you?” She nudged him. “I didn’t know it was at stake anymore, Mary.”

They walked on for a while without speaking. “Who would have thought,” she observed at last, “that Khalil Ravana would survive India? Who would have thought that I’d survive New York, for that matter!” She sighed audibly. “But here I am. ‘Gypsy queen’—eldest Romni of the Five Boroughs.” Her grip tightened on his arm, and when he looked at her, he saw a thin blood tear rolling down her cheek. Khalil offered her a bandanna (he vaguely remembered someone pressing it into his own hand a little while back), and she cleaned her face.

“There’s no one else,” Mary wept quietly. “I snapped out of the trance on Saturday night with Andreas’s head in my hands. He was the last. I never knew I could fight like that.” She wiped her eyes again. “I gave them all a beautiful funeral… I’ve been spending the whole week going round to their houses….” They rounded their fourth corner and started up the street they’d met on. “Who’s your gaji friend?” Mary inquired, as the Gangrel came into view. Mary put the bloodstained end of the handkerchief in her mouth and sucked on it.

“A little outlander maggot. Nice kid; no one’s told her a word about the feud, or us. Don’t you go telling her,” he warned. He briefly considered telling Mary about the other Ravnos newcomer to her city but decided that was a bit of information he’d keep to himself, for the time being at least. “I’m independent, that’s all I’ve said.”

“Good man. They could wipe us out in a week now, if they only knew it.”

Khalil cleared his throat. “They’ve been hit pretty hard themselves.” He beckoned to his partner, and she joined them. “Ramona Tanner-childe, this is Mary—do you have a last name today, Mary?”

“Tinker. Mary Tinker. I’m afraid I call myself Madama Alexandria to the trade. I’m a psychic now—you’ve caught me in my working costume—it’s a very good business nowadays, and legal, even. Come by my shop sometime. I’ll tell your fortunes.” The Queen of New York held a hand out toward the Gangrel and nodded politely. “I believe I’ve met your sire, girl… briefly. How is he now?”

“Dead,” Ramona told her darkly.

Mary smiled sweetly and gathered her skirts to move on. “Aren’t we all?”

Saturday, 7 August 1999, 12:25 AM McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

“And yes, Prince Vitel, the attacks along the Fort Meade line—they don’t really rise to the level of attacks—those raids have been the only direct challenge to our defenses. But of course, the state of emergency in Washington—the curfew, the National Guard troops—that’s over now.” Isaac’s briefing of the assembled Kindred was concise and informative. He showed no signs of being intimidated by speaking before two princes and an equal number of Camarilla officials, if Jan was considered such. His role was considerably less formal than that of Archon Theo Bell.

Isaac had shown some skill for organization, as had Robert Gainesmil, and the two were intimately familiar with Baltimore and the surrounding areas, but it was Jan’s hand that had guided the defensive strategy. He had subtly led the sheriff and the Toreador where he wanted them to go, and they had responded ably.

Since none of the information Isaac conveyed was new to Jan, the Dutchman withdrew somewhat from the discussion. He listened less to the actual words of the twelve Kindred present, and more to the tenor in which they were spoken. Like a lens changing focus from the detailed foreground to the broader landscape, Jan opened himself to broad impressions, most notable of which was the cathedral-like imbalance between the surrounding space of the auditorium and the number of persons in it. Instead of the riotous mob from the earlier conferences, there were only a dozen individuals present. They sat in office chairs around a stolid, square table, its corners themselves squared so that four equidistant places of honor existed. The five rows of amphitheater seats were empty. The sight of the vacant chairs prompted Jan to glance toward Victoria who, as if on cue, broke in on Isaac’s current explanation of force deployments.

“First of all,” she said, “I must take exception to the term refugee. It suggests unwashed Africans or Kosovars and simply is not acceptable. Now, you said that the majority of the displaced Kindred, among whom I count myself, thank you, have been placed along the third and fourth perimeters, those closest to the edge of the city itself.”

“That’s correct.” Isaac was prepared to clarify any detail for her. “Many of the… uh… guests to our city are not necessarily militarily inclined, so we’ve stationed them on the final lines of defenses. By the time it would be necessary for them to face Sabbat attackers, it would mean that the forces from the first two lines—the Brujah, along with the prince’s… Prince Garlotte’s, that is, security force, and the elements from Chicago— would have fallen back, so the line would be strong enough—”

“That’s very nice,” Victoria interrupted him. “Is it safe to say, then, that if these guests, as you put it, were needed, there would be some notice?”

Isaac didn’t answer right away.

“We would have warning?” she prompted him. “There would be a major attack. They would likely have several hours to take up their positions.”

Isaac nodded slowly. “That seems likely. Yes.”

“Then why is it necessary for them to be in position tonight?”

Again, Isaac paused. Jan could see that the sheriff didn’t realize where Victoria was going with her question, though it should have been painfully obvious.

“Why,” Victoria pressed, “are they being denied the chance to have a voice in their own destiny?”

“An attack could come at any time,” Isaac tried to explain. “The Sabbat forces—” “But you yourself just said that there would be several hours to prepare before any attack could reach the inner lines.”

“It would be possible to take up the defensive positions on short notice,” Isaac conceded, “but that doesn’t mean we want—”

Victoria slammed her fist on the table. “This is a deliberate attempt to manipulate these Kindred. There is no sound military reason—”

“Ms. Ash.” Jan had been about to come to young Isaac’s aid but, from the first of the four seats of honor, the sheriff’s sire spoke a moment sooner. Without raising his voice, his words abbreviated Victoria’s gathering rant. The auditorium suddenly seemed immensely large and silent.

Prince Garlotte spoke calm, joyless words. “My military planners,” he gestured to the individuals around the table, “the sheriff, Mr. Gainesmil, Mr. Bell, Mr. Pieterzoon—have made what arrangements they deemed necessary.”

Gainesmil, at Garlotte’s left hand, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Jan suspected that the architect was having second thoughts about information he’d passed along to his Toreador houseguest, information that might now cause a public confrontation with his prince.

“No guest in my city,” said Garlotte, “is compelled to stay.”

Victoria stiffened slightly. Though the prince spoke to the emptiness of the auditorium and, ostensibly, regarding the refugees manning the defenses, the implication of his statement for her was clear.

“As for the matter of various Kindred determining their own destiny,” continued the prince, “customs may have differed with Prince Benison in Atlanta before the attack, but in Baltimore, the prince consults with his council of primogen as he sees appropriate. Considering the unusual circumstances at present, this body,” he opened his hands to indicate all those around the table, “is serving in an advisory capacity as an ad hoc council of primogen. Should we choose to function by plebiscite, we become no better than the Sabbat, our enemies, who follow the loudest voice and the sharpest sword.”

Garlotte, elbows on the table before him, clasped his hands together and then rested his lips upon his knuckles. “Would you not agree, Mr. Gainesmil?”

The prince’s words, though his mouth was obstructed, seemed to echo throughout the chamber. He did not turn to face his lieutenant. There was no need.

Gainesmil’s face, already pale, blanched. “Certainly, my prince.”

Jan repressed a smile. Gainesmil might play games with his loyalty, but should he stray too far, he’d be called to task. Jan waited for Victoria’s response. The prince had scored rhetorical points, but she would still argue the specifics of the situation at hand. Or so Jan expected. Instead, Victoria remained silent. The prince was not so friendly toward her as he’d been. Her play for populist leadership was dashed, and her primary confederate was publicly cowed. Was all this enough to dissuade her from seeking further undue influence?

Doubtful, thought Jan.

Since arriving in Baltimore, he’d found her willing to play the weak gambit (and fail) rather than bide her time. There was a certain desperation about her actions—or perhaps it was merely the Toreador penchant for shortsightedness and instant gratification. The clan lacked patience. They were predisposed toward rashness, unlike the Ventrue, who thrived with methodical and measured plans.

Victoria did not remain silent—that would have been too much to hope for—but much to Jan’s surprise, she struck more of a conciliatory pose:

“I concede, of course, to your wishes, Prince Garlotte. Though I might suggest that the extraordinary circumstances call more for a conclave than a council of primogen, you have decided otherwise.” She bowed her head respectfully.

“Well then,” said Jan, hoping to move the discussion along. He was seated directly across from Prince Garlotte, in another of the four places of honor. Prince Vitel of Washington and Theo Bell occupied the other two corner seats, figuratively above Jan but beneath Garlotte. “Theo, your raids have continued to—”

“Before we hear from the esteemed archon,” said Garlotte, unexpectedly interrupting Jan, “I must make one comment. Mr. Pieterzoon, make no mistake of my appreciation of the gentlemen from Chicago who are contributing to the defense of this city. My undying gratitude goes out to the several clans represented among them. However,” the prince, until now still staring into the emptiness of the auditorium, fixed his gaze upon Jan, “it has come to my attention that some of them are not limiting themselves to the hunting grounds I have set aside for them.”

Jan, caught off guard by this rebuke, began to respond, but even his most deferential assurances were preempted by the steel glare of the prince.

“If we hold off the enemy hordes,” said Garlotte, “only to succumb to internal chaos, then the Sabbat will have triumphed.”

Jan respectfully waited several moments until there was no doubt that Prince Garlotte had had his say. “I will see to it, my prince.”

Behind the mollifying words, Jan’s mind was racing. He had arranged the presence of the defenders from Chicago, nearly fifty of them, but he didn’t command them, per se. Garlotte, however, had seen fit to chastise Jan—publicly, no less. The expression of displeasure was more significant than the specific nature of the rebuke: It was a sign to all present that this Ventrue from Europe did not run the city, had not received carte blanche from the prince.

Another aspect of Garlotte’s words disturbed Jan. The prince complained of the Chicagoans ignoring hunting restrictions. Surely he knew of Jan’s transgression as well. Estelle. The initial feeding had qualified as an emergency, but in keeping the girl after the crisis had passed, instead of clouding her memory and releasing her, Jan had blatantly ignored Garlotte’s proscription. Did the prince’s rebuke contain a private as well as public warning?

Jan ticked off the score in his mind: Victoria, Gainesmil, me. With just a few sentences, Prince Garlotte had put each in his or her place. Though Jan was not above a bit of public humility, if it made the prince feel better, the implication that Garlotte, on some level, equated Jan with the two Toreador, that the prince considered Jan a threat, was a danger sign. Does he think I want his blasted city? Jan wondered. Perhaps the added security was a mistake. He could believe that I staged the assassination attempt as an excuse to strengthen my own hand.

Jan mulled over the seemingly unending string of possibilities as Theo described in sparse detail his latest raids around Washington. He was no longer probing far into the city; the Sabbat had grown too numerous and better organized. Jan thought at first that the Brujah seemed more relaxed than usual as he spoke, but then the chastened Ventrue corrected himself. Bell seemed exactly as he always seemed—grim, inscrutable—but he’d removed his cap and sunglasses. Probably that was as close to affable as he ever came. Bell’s companion Lydia, whom he sometimes left in charge when he was away from the city, was surprisingly attentive and well-behaved for a Brujah.

Again, Jan let himself grow slightly detached from the discussion at hand. He concentrated instead on what could be gleaned from the questions asked from different quarters. Marcus Vitel continued to ask insightful questions of Bell and Isaac regarding Baltimore’s defenses and Sabbat tactics. The Washington prince along with Victoria, who still questioned the others freely, were obviously the hawks among the crowd. Vitel ventured as far as to ask about a potential timetable for retaking Washington, and when assured that such a venture was patently impracticable, he grew sullen and silent.

The victims are always the most anxious to strike back, Jan thought. Vitel had lost his city. Victoria had suffered—exactly how, Jan wasn’t sure—at the hands of the Sabbat. Then Jan’s thoughts shifted suddenly to other victims. Would Marja and Roel have struck back? Would Estelle, cowering upstairs even as he met with his fellow undead, strike back if she could? Or do I so completely destroy their will that they cannot?

Jan squeezed his eyes shut until he had pushed those thoughts far back in his mind. This was not the time—if there ever were a time. The discussion continued around him. When he opened his eyes, no one seemed to have noticed his lapse, except perhaps Roughneck who was staring at him. But the Malkavian, as was his friend the Quaker, was prone to fits of staring for no reason. Jan also thought, for a moment, that Colchester was watching him, but whenever Jan glanced his way, the Nosferatu seemed intent on what Bell or Isaac or Vitel was saying.

If that really is Colchester, Jan thought. The Nosferatu wore an image that was disturbingly

… normal. It was not impossible—in fact, it was common—for a Nosferatu to be seen as other than he truly was. But this mild-mannered, well-kempt black man in a business suit was nothing like the obscene, shaggy monstrosity with whom Jan had dealings. At the outset of the meeting, Colchester had apologized for his absence from the earlier conferences—he disliked crowds, he’d said—though Jan knew the Nosferatu had been present.

The business of the council meeting—the term conference was no longer in vogue, now that the masses were, thankfully, excluded—was continuing when the double doors at the rear of the auditorium slammed open. Malachi, the Gangrel scourge and also the only one of the twelve Kindred present who was not seated at the table, was alert at his position guarding the door. His every muscle tensed, as if he were coiled to spring, but then a shock of recognition swept over his face. Suddenly Malachi dropped to one knee and lowered his head.

Into the room, past the kneeling sentry, strode an imposing figure—taller than any in the room save possibly Bell, red hair receded but hanging far down his back, muscled legs in black leather extending from a gray cloak held together at the chest by long, distinctly claw-like fingers. Most striking was the scowl of barely restrained fury that twisted the newcomer’s face. Jan had met Xaviar just three weeks ago, when the Gangrel justicar had agreed to gather a small army of his clansmen and guard Buffalo and upstate New York from Sabbat depredations.

The justicar was met with silence as he stalked down the aisle to the conference table. The impression of Xaviar’s agitation grew more palpable with each step.

Queasiness took hold in Jan’s gut. They’ve taken Buffalo, he thought. The Sabbat has taken Buffalo. If that outlying point no longer remained in Camarilla hands, then the noose was tightened around all their necks.

“Justicar Xaviar,” said Prince Garlotte, when the Gangrel was sufficiently near, “how may we be of service?” The prince, despite the unannounced arrival of a justicar in his city, appeared totally composed.

With Xaviar’s final few steps, the two Malkavians seated to Jan’s right abandoned their places and prudently created some distance between themselves and the justicar. Xaviar stood alone by that side of the table, scant feet from Jan on one side, Theo Bell on the other. The Gangrel took a moment to observe the other Kindred present. He seemed to calm somewhat, but the tension in his right hand, still clutching shut the cloak draped over his shoulders, was visible enough.

“We must abandon the city,” Xaviar said without preamble. His words swept across the table like the first gusts of a stormwind, but instead of chaos, silence reigned.

“Has Buffalo fallen?” Jan asked at last, unable to wait for Garlotte to speak, as would have been proper, and at any rate, Garlotte would not have asked that most important question. He refused to see the strategic importance of that other city, as he called it, and that if the scattered Sabbat forces in the Northeast were able to join those in Washington to form a deadly ring around Baltimore, all would be lost.

Garlotte suddenly seemed less important as Jan realized Xaviar was staring down at him as if the question made no sense whatsoever.

“Buffalo,” Jan tried again. “Has the Sabbat taken it?”

Xaviar allowed himself a mirthless laugh. “The Sabbat is nothing.” His gaze shifted from Jan to Theo and finally to Prince Garlotte. “We must abandon the city. Every Kindred is needed.” Those around the table regarded him with varying degrees of befuddlement, curiosity,

and fear. Jan believed that he saw something of madness in the Gangrel’s eyes.

The Sabbat is nothing.

“I’m afraid we don’t understand, Justicar,” said Garlotte. “Needed for what?” The prince couldn’t have been happy with the suggestion that his city be abandoned, but he trod lightly with the justicar.

Xaviar had little patience even for Garlotte. The Gangrel began to snarl, Jan thought, but then it seemed merely that a muscle at the corner of Xaviar’s lip was twitching.

“The Final Nights are at hand,” the Gangrel said.

The stark note of prophecy jarred Jan. The words, painted with the mingled accents from hundreds of years in the Old Country, from the lips of the justicar touched a place within Jan as deep as his need for victims, a place as central as the hunger to what he had become. The Beast stirred within him.

The Final Nights are at hand.

Such words were sometimes uttered casually among the ignorant, or disingenuously by those hoping to strike terror into the hearts of listeners, but Xaviar was neither fool nor demagogue. He was one of seven justicars, chosen of the Camarilla to oversee its mandates. He was Gangrel, of all the clans closest to the Beast and sensitive to its emanations.

Other words of prophecy, newer words, sprang unbidden to Jan’s mind:

The Gangrel was consumed by the Beast. Flesh of his flesh. Soul of his soul. And at the Tower of the Saint atop the Isle of Angels, the Unholy Triad was complete. Kinslayer. Betrayer. Beast. The Beast walks the earth. The Undoing of the Children of Caine is at hand.

The words were attributed to the Cult of the Wanderer, an obscure group of lunatics that had arisen from the ashes of the Blood Curse. The words spoke of the end of time. They spoke of Gehenna.

“What are you saying?” Garlotte tersely asked the justicar, latest in a string of Kindred telling the prince what to do with his city.

Xaviar, if possible, was even less used to and more irritated by opposition than the prince. This time, the Gangrel did snarl. “The Final Nights are at hand,” he said again, as if that should explain it all, but he found himself still facing uncomprehending stares. “The prophecies are coming true!” he barked finally. “An elder power has risen. We must destroy it or be doomed!”

Jan battled mounting cognitive dissonance. His frame of reference had little room for elder powers, for the Final Nights. Futilely, he tried to reconcile the world he knew— Kindred politics, the Sabbat, princes and clans—with childish superstitions suddenly lent credence by the passion of a justicar. Not just passion, Jan realized. Fear.

“Elder power?” Prince Garlotte was standing now, his patience stretched to the breaking point. He waved his hand dismissively. “If some decrepit Gangrel has gotten loose in the woods—”

“No Gangrel did this!” roared Xaviar, and he pulled back his cloak and thrust forward an impossibly mangled arm. His left forearm was not broken but twisted, warped into unnatural curves and bends. Familiar claw-like fingers dangled from the end of the useless limb.

Jan had been edging his chair away from the Gangrel. The tension between prince and justicar had rocketed out of control, and Jan had feared violence. Between battling elders was not the place to be. But now, with the shock of Xaviar brandishing his crippled arm, the crisis was at least temporarily averted. Garlotte, and the others, gawked openly at Xaviar’s disfigurement. Victoria looked away. One of the Malkavians, the Quaker, had dropped beneath the table and was whimpering.

Theo Bell was the first to recover. “What happened?”

Xaviar’s eyes were downcast now. He stared at the center of the table. “It destroyed all those I took into battle. One other escaped, maybe two… I don’t know.”

“How many Gangrel?” Bell asked. His deep baritone seemed to hold the terror at bay for all the Kindred.

“All those who defended Buffalo.” Bell nodded grimly.

Jan tried in vain to fathom what sort of creature could destroy such a collection of Gangrel. “An Antediluvian,” said Xaviar.

“Antedi… ” Victoria gasped. The name from legend seemed to catch in her throat. She clasped a hand over her mouth and started shaking her head.

“The third generation is rising,” Xaviar said. “The Dark Father will not be far behind.”

Victoria’s hand slid down to clutch her neck, as if her throat had been slit. “There’s no such… ” she whispered more to herself than to anyone else, but the proper words eluded her. “No such…”

But Xaviar heard her, and her doubt enraged him. “It called fire from the earth’s belly against us! The very ground beneath our feet obeyed it!” His eyes bulged. He bared his fangs and raised his deformed arm. “It melted flesh and bone with its hands! And its eye… throbbing, pulsing.” He held his right hand open as if cupping a giant orb. “To look into it, into that eye… ” Xaviar’s mouth twitched again; he tried to repress a shudder, “was to stare at Final Death.”

Yet you escaped, Jan wanted to say—but to do so would have been to invite dismemberment, for even a one-armed Gangrel justicar was not to be trifled with.

In hurried phrases, Xaviar described the scene of carnage he’d beheld in the Adirondack foothills, far east of Buffalo—fountains of lava and fire, spikes rising from the earth to impale, slabs of stone crushing Gangrel, lakes of blood and fire. But always he came back to the eye—glowing, throbbing, holding Cainites in thrall while the risen Antediluvian tore their bodies limb from limb.

“Xaviar,” said Garlotte, having regained his calm, “surely something attacked your people. We do not doubt you in that. But to abandon the city… ?”

“What difference are Camarilla and Sabbat when we are all destroyed!” Xaviar shouted. “The Sabbat will fight with us against an Antediluvian!”

“Treason!” Vitel was on his feet and pointing an accusatory finger at Xaviar. “The Sabbat are no better than animals! I will not submit to them!”

Xaviar stepped forward, as if he would charge through the table. He held a clawed hand before him. His face seemed suddenly more snout-like with his bared fangs.

Despite the danger, Jan was searching his memory for any scrap of information about the Antediluvians, but regardless of the legends or prophecies recalled, he knew what his sire would say, what he had said, hundreds of times.

“The Antediluvians do not exist,” said Jan. “We know that to be the truth, and the Sabbat, whatever propaganda its leaders may spew to control the rabble, knows it as well.”

The words struck Xaviar like a blow to the face. He jerked his head around to face Jan and moved dangerously close. “We know that to be the truth?!” he bellowed, mocking Jan. “This,” he stuck his twisted arm in Jan’s face, “this is the truth! I have seen the truth! I have stood before that eye and felt the truth as it toyed with my body as if I were made of soft wax!” Xaviar turned from Jan and began pacing back and forth, waving his good hand in rage and disbelief. “We exist, no matter what the mortals think. Do the Antediluvians need our belief? Or would they rather catch us unawares?”

“Legends,” said Jan. “Folk tales, myths. Nothing more.” Hardestadt had always been emphatic on this point, and Jan was nothing if not well-schooled and obedient. “There must be some other explanation.”

“Bah!” Xaviar flung his head so violently that he sprayed droplets of froth from the corners of his mouth. “The Ventrue can rot!” He shot a challenging glare at Prince Garlotte, but the prince folded his arms and kept his peace.

“Theo,” said Xaviar, “bring your Brujah. I will gather more Gangrel. We will get Tremere sorcerers from the chantry in New York. We don’t need the rest—weaklings and cowards!”

All eyes turned toward the Brujah archon. He sat perfectly still, as always keeping only his own counsel. “My instructions from Justicar Pascek are to do what I can to stop the Sabbat.”

“Do you doubt what I say?” asked Xaviar, the question half entreaty, half threat.

“No.” Theo didn’t hesitate this time. “But Pascek would be pretty pissed off if I just dropped what I was doing, just like you’d be if one of your archons ignored you, and just like Hardestadt would be if Pieterzoon here up and left. Shit, Hardestadt probably has more clout than my boss and you put together.”

Through narrowed eyes, Xaviar looked from face to face around the table. Only the four Kindred at the places of honor met his gaze unflinchingly: Garlotte, Theo, Vitel, Jan. Isaac and Gainesmil cast nervous glances at their prince and were careful to avoid eye contact with Xaviar. Lydia, the Brujah, did likewise except for watching Theo for nonexistent signs of his reaction. Colchester was doing what Nosferatu did best—not drawing attention to himself—while Roughneck and the Quaker were, respectively, stalking around the room mumbling, and under the table. Victoria, since the first mention of an Antediluvian, had retreated within herself. She was absorbed with her thoughts and memories, speaking to no one, perhaps not completely aware of what transpired around her.

When Xaviar turned toward Jan, the Ventrue held his gaze for quite a while. The Gangrel was a fearsome creature, but Jan had studied at the knee of a master, one of the eldest of the Camarilla. No slash of Gangrel claw could tear down the loyalty that Hardestadt had spent centuries to build—the loyalty and the fear of failure. Within Xaviar’s bestial eyes, what Jan had first taken for madness now crystallized and became something else, something harder, less forgiving.

Xaviar, with great effort, took a moment to regain his composure. His good hand rubbed across the red stubble on his chin. He licked the back of his hand and, like a cat, smoothed down the hair above his left ear. All the while, the small muscle at his lip jumped, and his eyes burned with disgust. His face, still showing signs of strain, seemed more human again.

He raised his crippled arm, but this time didn’t brandish it so violently. “Twelve nights ago this happened. For three nights I grieved. I roamed the mountains mad with rage. Then for six nights I hunted. I had many wounds and little strength. I hunted animals, then mortals. When I’d wandered as far west as Buffalo, I found a Sabbat pack and drank their thin blood. Then for three nights, I traveled here, all the way searching for a Gangrel seer who had spoken to my people before the massacre—it was he who told us of the Final Nights. But he was not to be found. Each of these nights, from sunset to sunrise, I fought the desire to go back to that place, to fight the creature and its eye, to die as my clansmen died. But I did not. The Camarilla must be warned, I told myself. Then together… together… we will go back to that place. And there will be blood and vengeance.”

Again the Gangrel justicar looked from Garlotte to Bell to Vitel to Jan.

“As justicar,” Xaviar said, “of Clan Gangrel, of the Camarilla, I take command of all Kindred in this city. We will destroy the Antediluvian.”

The shocked silence was broken only by the panicked muttering of the Quaker under the table: “Sweet Jesus… sweet Jesus…”

Then slowly, deliberately, Prince Garlotte rose to his feet. “With all due and proper respect, justicar,” he said, the weight of his decision evident in each syllable, “retaining this city is the most vital interest of the Camarilla at present. We do not question your authority. Considering the dire consequences of your demand, for all Kindred, however, we demand a conclave.”

Jan watched Xaviar closely. Though the Gangrel had seemed close to violence with both princes earlier, this gambit by Garlotte, no matter what he said, and though technically sound, was a tremendous affront to the justicar. Xaviar, on edge as he was, might snap. Politics be damned. The only question then would be who would support Garlotte to Final Death. And who would stand by and watch.

Xaviar flexed the claws of his right hand, stretching the long digits and curling them in, over and over, without seeming to realize he was doing so. His gaze bore into Garlotte. “Who will stand against me?” he growled at last. “Let there be no confusion.”

A long silence passed, finally broken by Jan: “The Antediluvians do not exist.” His lot was thrown in with Garlotte, though, considering the unyielding position of Jan’s sire, he had little real choice.

“So speaks the slave of Hardestadt.” Xaviar turned to Theo.

Bell slowly shook his head. “I have a job to do here. Until we know more…” “So speaks the slave of Pascek.”

“Aid us against the Sabbat,” said Prince Garlotte, trying to offer the justicar a way out of this confrontation without losing face, “then we will see to this… this other matter.” “So speaks the slave to his city,” Xaviar said, turning from prince to deposed prince. “Vitel?” “There are other dangers in the world,” Marcus Vitel said, “but I will have my city

back, and I will see the Sabbat destroyed. Or myself in the attempt.”

Jan sat perfectly still. Though the threat of violence had passed, something more monumental now hung in the balance. It was clear that Xaviar could not hope to prevail through a conclave. His response might well change the course of Kindred history.

A soul-baring growl began deep in the justicar’s throat, only barely taking the form of words by the time it escaped his mouth. “Then damn you all, slaves of the Antediluvians.” He took a long time and regarded each Kindred in turn, as if branding their visage in his memory. “Damn you all. For this I swear: I will see that creature dead, and its eye ground to dust. And if first I have to drink an ocean of blood to be again whole of body, it will be the blood of your clansmen.” He thrust a finger toward Garlotte. “And yours,” toward Bell.

Then he turned to Jan. “And perhaps the blood of your sire.”

Despite Jan’s best efforts, the threat struck rage into his heart, not from fear that Xaviar would carry it out, but from the lack of respect conveyed for Hardestadt. Jan rose partially from his seat. Only a supreme effort of will kept him from launching a fist at the Gangrel’s jaw—a suicidal prospect, and no doubt what Xaviar was hoping for.

Jan lowered himself back into the chair. “I assure you, honorable justicar, it is not lightly nor with any pleasure that we refuse your request.”

Xaviar sneered. With his good hand he leaned forward onto the table. “Save your words for those who would listen.” He glanced meaningfully at Theo. “Though I would have expected better of the Brujah than to sell themselves cheaply to Ventrue masters.”

Bell responded not in the least to the justicar’s baiting.

“Very well, then.” Xaviar dug his claws into the table top. “The Final Nights are at hand. I leave the blind to lead the blind. This is not the first time the clans of the Camarilla have shown their disdain for the sacrifices of the Gangrel. But it will be the last.” With a quick raking motion, he gouged out a handful of wood and ground it to splinters in his hand. Then slowly, he let the remnants sift through his fingers. “See how well you find your way without us. Tell your masters if you wish. I’ll tell them soon enough in person. Let the union be dissolved.”

As Xaviar stalked from the silent chamber, Jan didn’t fully notice Victoria still trapped within her own mind, a finger absently stroking the near-perfect jaw. He didn’t see the ebon statue that was Theo Bell, nor the Malkavian hugging his shoulders in a far corner, nor the other madman curled into fetal position on the floor, nor the others staring dumbstruck after the justicar.

Instead, Jan saw the portico of an ancient temple, a temple that was the only hope of civilization—seven mammoth columns supporting the structure that protected learning and law and order. Only now, one of the seven pillars had cracked and toppled to the ground, where it lay smashed beyond repair. And Jan had pushed it.

A subterranean grotto New York City, New York

Curiouser and curiouser. Calebros pondered the strange new twists that the perversity of the gods had seen fit to toss his way. Not only was there no single member of Clan Nosferatu who was able to tell him the whereabouts of one Hesha Ruhadze, Setite, Esquire—and the snake was last reported seen here in the city, in New York! Infuriating!— but now there was some strange little Ravnos, with a Gangrel girlfriend of all things, who was also trying to find Hesha and who was making demands of the sewer rats.

This Ravnos, by the name of Khalil, was not a savory sort of fellow. His demands, some of them at least, were a bit on the extreme side, and he was apparently subject to some type of seizures. Odd. All very odd.

It was possible, of course, that this Khalil might be able to deliver on his promises of payment. The fact remained, however, that, even were Calebros resigned to bargaining with the youth, the Nosferatu didn’t know the answer to what Khalil was asking. Galling, that. Had Calebros known Hesha’s whereabouts, he still might have turned away the Ravnos on principle, but the inability to fulfill a potential bargain struck a nerve.

That was the course of Calebros’s thoughts when Umberto scurried into the room, his mouth all screwed up in apparent distaste at the message he brought—although Calebros had learned long not to rush to judgment based on the facial expressions of a man with no lips.

“Um… news in,” Umberto said, brandishing a print-out unenthusiastically.

Calebros feared his first impression was correct. News would be bad news. “Yes?” He steeled himself to receive it.

“Report in that… um, Anatole has been spotted.”

“Oh?” That was not so bad. After his tête-à-tête with Donatello, the Prophet of Gehenna had disappeared. Without a trace. The Nosferatu, masters of hiding and of uncovering the hidden, didn’t seem to be able to find anyone these nights. This sighting, however, was doubly fortuitous, for Calebros had decided to accept Jeremiah’s urging that the clan make use of Anatole’s presence. But not in the way Jeremiah had so vehemently suggested. Teach him to hold my reports hostage, Calebros thought. No, he wouldn’t waste Anatole’s talents on Jeremiah’s superstitions, hungry rats or no. The news that Emmett had forwarded, however, that was worthy of Anatole’s insight. If Jeremiah was right, and he was indeed able to lend guidance to the Prophet’s peculiar skills, then a great service to Clan Nosferatu might soon be fulfilled. The first step would simply be having Jeremiah catch up with Anatole.

“Where was he spotted?”

Umberto hesitated. “Um… on a… uh, that is… getting on a… a bus.”

“A bus,” Calebros said coldly. “For where, pray tell?” Say, ‘Crosstown,’ Calebros pleaded silently.

“Chicago. Red eye.”

Calebros blinked. “Red eye. Then that would have been—” “Several hours ago. Yes, sir.”

Unbelievable. “And why that long? Who—?” “Uncle Smelly.”

“Oh. I see.” Uncle Smelly was well respected among the Nosferatu, but he did tend to operate on his own schedule, and nothing Calebros or anyone else said was going to change that in the slightest.

But all was not lost. Not yet. Calebros raked his talons along his lumpy scalp as he thought. Considering the information that Emmett had uncovered from Benito, Chicago, of all places, was one of the prime locations that Calebros had intended for Jeremiah to take Anatole. Coincidence? In dealing with the Prophet, Calebros did not believe there was such a thing as coincidence. Still, he was undecided as to whether this revelation bode well or ill. One thing, however, was certain.

“Track down Jeremiah at once,” Calebros ordered. “Give him the information about the bus number, destination, etc., then get him to Jaffer at LaGuardia on the double. I want him waiting at the station when that bus rolls in. I’ll have a packet ready in fifteen minutes for someone to take to him at the airport. See to it.”

“Gotcha.” Umberto scurried out of the room, undoubtedly pleased that the situation required immediate action and there wasn’t time for Calebros to be angry.

Calebros himself wasn’t completely sure whether he should be angry, mystified, or frightened.

McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

A solemn collection of Kindred had gathered around the scarred conference table. Jan, like each of the others, did his best not to look at the gouged crater in the wood just a few feet away, but he found his gaze drawn back to the spot time and again.

“Surely the entire clan won’t leave the Camarilla,” said Gainesmil, “no matter what Xaviar says.”

Jan followed the Toreador’s nervous glance at the rear of the auditorium, where Malachi stood guard by the doors that, mere hours ago, Xaviar had stormed through. Garlotte’s scourge had not left with the justicar—not yet—but most Gangrel, unlike Malachi, were not tied so closely to a particular prince or to Camarilla hierarchy.

“If anyone speaks for all the Gangrel,” said Jan morosely, his eyes now locked on the evidence of violence done the table, “it is Xaviar. Word will spread. There will be a mass exodus.”

“Word has already spread,” Prince Garlotte snapped.

They had all agreed last night to keep Xaviar’s outburst and threats secret for as long as possible. To Garlotte’s disgust, that had proven to be only a few hours. He glared around the table.

Their number was fewer tonight. Isaac and Lydia were overseeing portions of the defenses. The Quaker apparently had been so shocked by Xaviar’s pronouncements of doom that the Malkavian had fallen into torpor, and Colchester was nowhere to be seen.

Not to say that he’s not here, Jan mused morbidly. The weight of responsibility he’d felt for so many weeks had been replaced—or maybe added to—by numbing fatalism. The Gangrel would leave. The Camarilla cities would fall one by one. Jan would fail his mission and, if he survived, return to face Hardestadt.

“What about Buffalo?” Theo Bell asked.

What about Buffalo? thought Jan. It will fall. Without the Gangrel, it will fall. He almost spoke the words aloud—more prophecies of doom; the Undoing of the Children of Caine is at hand—but he restrained himself. Bell’s focus on details, his enduring pragmatism and unbreakable will, drew Jan back to a challenge that was not yet completely hopeless. Not yet. He straightened somewhat in his chair as his thoughts turned in a more productive direction. He could not afford to escape through madness and torpor, as the Quaker had. Nor could Jan retreat inward, like Victoria. She sat at the table again tonight, a pained expression on her face, only speaking when directly addressed. She was not herself. Xaviar’s doom-mongering had affected her perhaps even more deeply than it had the unstable Quaker.

But more important matters required Jan’s attention.

“Buffalo is completely exposed without the Gangrel,” he said. “If we shift forces from here … maybe the Chicago element—”

“I cannot accept the weakening of this city,” Garlotte broke in. His words were sharp, unequivocal.

Jan tried to explain, “If we create a small, mobile force, then it could be brought back if—”

“Baltimore must be held,” Garlotte insisted. “If we divide our forces, neither city will be strong enough to stand.”

“I agree,” Marcus Vitel added. “We stay strong here and press the war south when we are able.”

Jan recognized from Garlotte’s tone that the prince would not negotiate on this point, and though Jan had been allowed great leeway in coordinating the Camarilla defenses, he was still, in the end, a guest in Garlotte’s city. Additionally, with both princes agreeing and Theo not feeling compelled to offer his opinion, Jan held little hope of swaying those to whom, technically, he was merely an advisor.

“Abandon Buffalo,” Gainesmil said.

“No.” Jan removed his glasses and began to rub the bridge of his nose. Despite the hopelessness of his position, he felt compelled to make them see the importance of somehow maintaining Buffalo. “Baltimore is stronger,” he explained, “if there is the threat of another Camarilla city within striking distance should the Sabbat fall on us here… or if there’s at least a perceived threat.”

Garlotte regarded him skeptically but said nothing.

Jan opened his mouth to speak, but, surprisingly, it was Bell who gave voice to his plan: “As long as the Sabbat think there’s an army that can come help us here, that’s as good as having an army. We bluff them.”

“Yes,” Jan agreed.

Garlotte was shaking his head. “But they will find out about the Gangrel, and if we don’t divert forces from here, how do we make them think—”

“We make an army,” said Jan. He set his glasses on the table, then stood and began to pace back and forth behind the empty seats, where Xaviar had stood the night before. Damn his pride, Jan thought, seeing again the Gangrel’s mark on the table. And damn Garlotte’s. And damn mine. But there had been no other way than to defy the justicar.

Now it was Vitel shaking his head. “You’re not suggesting that we just Embrace enough mortals to defend a city.”

Jan paused in his pacing. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. Theo—what?” Jan could tell the archon didn’t like the idea.

The Brujah’s dark face was creased by a deep frown. “I don’t think Pascek would go for it.” “Would he rather lose the entire East Coast?”

“Maybe,” Bell said. “All I know is he and some of the other bigwigs have had a hundred shit fits over Prince Michaela Embracing an army in New York. It’s not the Embracing exactly, but that’s a lot of tough Ventrue bastards. No offense.”

But Jan wasn’t prepared to concede. “What good is a balance of power among our own clans if the Sabbat takes everything?”

Bell shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Ask Pascek. Ask Hardestadt.”

Jan understood Theo’s point readily enough. His sire would not approve of the plan. Bell was right. More than the East Coast was at stake. What good would be saving the East Coast if in doing so they brought the Camarilla clans to each other’s throats? Already, the Gangrel had abandoned the sect. No one would agree to an army of Ventrue or—God forbid—Tremere, for the very reason that those clans were already seen by each other as being too powerful. But that still left other options.

Jan turned to face Bell. “What about a small army of Nosferatu… and some Brujah tossed in?”

“They’d be so young,” said Vitel. “Even if they were of potent blood, it takes time to adjust to our existence, to master the gifts of the undead.”

“But it’s a bluff.” Bell slowly began to nod. “They don’t have to master anything.” “Exactly,” said Jan. “They don’t have to fend off an attack. If there’s enough Kindred activity, it could confuse Sabbat spies and delay an attack. It’ll at least buy us time, and with Buffalo in Camarilla hands, Baltimore is stronger.” Jan closed his hand into a fist. He unobtrusively glanced at Garlotte, who seemed less entrenched in his opposition. He’ll agree as long as we don’t take anything from here, Jan thought.

Vitel, however, was not convinced. “The clans might not mind all those new Cainites, but Prince Lladislas in Buffalo won’t like it. Overpopulating doesn’t make for stability.” “Neither does a horde of Sabbat running through the street killing mortals and staking the prince,” Bell pointed out. He shrugged. “But he’s right. Lladislas won’t like it.”

Jan returned to his seat. “It’s the best chance he has to keep his city.” But he knew they were correct. Lladislas was a hard-headed Brujah—as if any prince wasn’t stubborn— and he’d spend years arguing for reinforcements rather than accept a plan that might leave him stuck with a gaggle of ill-disciplined, hunger-driven neonates to wreck the Masquerade in Buffalo.

“What if we tell him that our intelligence shows that an attack is imminent?” Jan suggested. “We tell him an attack is coming. We can’t reinforce him—which is true. This way, he can at least leave an army of neonates to take a few Sabbat with them. No recriminations from the Camarilla.”

“He’d like that,” Bell agreed.

“Lladislas evacuates the city,” Jan continued. “With the increased Kindred activity, the Sabbat believes there’s a real, formidable army. They’re deterred from attacking… or if they send a force large enough to deal with what they think is there, they’ll have to draw manpower from Washington, and we have a chance to strike there.”

This last line of reasoning broke through to Vitel. He agreed with anything that would give the Camarilla a chance to win back his city. Garlotte, too, was willing to go along—which meant Gainesmil was on board—since Baltimore was not weakened. Roughneck didn’t pull much weight even if he did object for some reason. Practically speaking, there was still one potential veto.

“Lladislas will do it… if you tell him to,” Jan said to Theo. It was a tricky thing, to ask a Brujah archon to mislead a Brujah prince, and Jan couldn’t press too hard. It was a call Theo had to make. Jan only hoped the archon realized that there truly were no ulterior motives for trying to get the Brujah prince out of his city. “It’s in his best interest, and he won’t go along otherwise.”

Theo sat stone-faced. He had contributed to the plan, but much of the execution would necessarily fall on his shoulders. Finally, Bell nodded, if not enthusiastically. “It’s his best shot,” he agreed, “and it’s the Camarilla’s best shot.”

“We might as well be the Sabbat.”

All heads turned to face Victoria, who had unexpectedly offered her first opinion of the evening.

“We might as well be the Sabbat,” she said again in a low voice. Her green eyes seemed to have lost their luster. Though she never looked poorly enough to be thought of as haggard, she did seem tired, and only vaguely concerned with events around her.

Jan didn’t completely follow her meaning. He didn’t think she could change the minds of the others, but she did exhibit influence with Prince Garlotte on occasion, so Jan attempted to mollify her. “We have to convince Prince Lladislas to act in his own best interest, otherwise—”

“Lie to the damned Brujah all you want!” she suddenly blurted out. “We all do. They never know the difference.”

If Bell took offense behind his unreadable mask, he gave no sign.

“But to Embrace twenty… fifty, a hundred mortals?” she went on. “To turn them loose on the streets? That does nothing for the Masquerade—nothing good. It makes us no better than the Sabbat. Is it worth surviving, only to become what we despise?”

“If it’s the only way we can survive,” Jan retorted. He was somewhat mystified by Victoria’s sudden bout of scruples. Law, morality—these were not absolutes, as she seemed suddenly to think. Like manners, they were preferences contrived to govern the interaction of the masses. But sometimes those individuals occupying positions of responsibility, those Kindred entrusted with the caretaking of the entire race—of humanity, fragile as it was— must through necessity step beyond those bounds.

Jan started to say as much, but the attention of all around the table was distracted by movement at the rear of the auditorium. Malachi had stepped closer to the double doors and was prepared for whomever entered. Jan had visions of Xaviar again slamming open the doors and stalking down the aisle, but Malachi hadn’t heard the Gangrel justicar approach until the doors were flung open wide.

When the doors did open, Prince Garlotte’s youngest childe, Fin, entered the auditorium. He seemed embarrassed for a moment that everyone was watching him, but he quickly mastered himself and continued down to the table.

“Our business here is concluded,” said Prince Garlotte. “Mr. Pieterzoon, Mr. Bell, proceed with your plan.” Then, having dismissed Victoria’s objection, he directed his attention toward Fin.

For his part, the young Ventrue, aside from a brief glance at Victoria, who didn’t seem to notice he was there, determinedly held his sire’s gaze. “Prince Garlotte,” he said formally, “I must discuss something with you, and since it’s something you have to decide as prince, and not just as my sire, I come to you here.”

“I can see that you do,” Garlotte said evenly.

Fin paused and licked his lips. Jan found himself sympathetic to the boy’s plight of addressing an aloof, seemingly omnipotent sire. Though the council proper was concluded, the other Kindred remained at their seats out of respect for Garlotte and his childe. Fin seemed to have expected more resistance from his sire. Encountering none, he plowed ahead.

“I want to Embrace a mortal. I’ve never asked for this before.” He hesitated briefly, then, “I feel that it’s my right.”

“Your right.” Prince Garlotte did not laugh or grow angry. He remained totally impassive.

“Yes. Katrina has Embraced. Twice. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.”

Jan couldn’t help but take note of the boy’s resolve—and of his utter lack of judgment. Apparently every Kindred in Baltimore knew about the prince’s troublesome female childe and her unauthorized coterie, but to bring to the prince’s attention facts that he obviously wanted not to know—at least officially—was less than wise.

“You are aware of all that is transpiring?” Prince Garlotte asked. “All that consumes my time—the Sabbat hordes pressing at the city gate; the insanity of a justicar? Surely you’ve heard of these.”

“I am.” Fin swallowed hard. He paused, but then pressed ahead. “I want to Embrace Morena before something happens. With the Sabbat. Before it’s too late.”

Garlotte rested his chin on his fist. The assembly, quite ill at ease now, waited patiently nonetheless for him to resolve the matter. “Come to me, my childe.”

Several seconds passed before Fin took the first step. Each footfall echoed through the otherwise silent auditorium as he walked around the table. Fin knelt before his sire, the prince, and bowed his head.

Garlotte lifted his childe’s chin. “You must learn patience. A year and a night— before that time is up, we will resolve this. Speak no more of it to me.”

Fin nodded and rose. A mix of relief and disappointment was visible on his face, but Jan couldn’t help thinking that the young Ventrue was fortunate.

Saturday, 7 August 1999, 11:48 PM Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

It was a busy night for the vampires of the Camarilla, especially those privileged (or unlucky) enough to be in Baltimore, nerve center of the sect’s resistance to the Sabbat. Everywhere, Kindred and ghouls scurried about on tasks of greater or lesser importance. The threat from Gangrel Justicar Xaviar the previous evening that his clan would break with the sect was both a secret that could not be kept and a development that required no few adjustments to Camarilla strategy. Tucked away in his private suite, Jan Pieterzoon discussed new emergency tactics, as well as the other desperate plans already set in motion, with Marston Colchester, a Nosferatu ally.

Throughout the rest of the city, the strengthening of defenses was proceeding even without the direct supervision of Theo Bell. The archon of Clan Brujah was on his way personally to attend to matters in Buffalo, the city most imperiled by the defection of the Gangrel. No Kindred was unaffected by the dire turn of events.

In the midst of the frenzied preparations, one particular Kindred retired for the night, claiming a terrible headache. The others were very understanding, and allowed the Cainite to depart with only some more or less insincere wishes of good health trailing after.

Once “home,” the vampire sat down and composed a brief letter on a remarkably expensive stationery, sketching out the entire Camarilla strategy for the defense of upstate New York, southern New England and so on. The sect’s strategists had decided after vociferous argument that there was no way that every city could be held. The best thing to do, they’d then agreed, would be to concentrate the remaining force available. That meant evacuating cities, most notably Buffalo, and leaving behind screens of newly Embraced Kindred and ghouls to give the appearance of a strong defense. With any luck (and a judicious sprinkling of public appearances by higher-ranking Kindred every once in a while), the bluff would hold long enough to delay the Sabbat offensive and tie up Sabbat resources. That would buy time for the Camarilla to retrench, re-arm, and eventually, retake its lost territory.

Beyond that, the letter contained some inconsequential details about Pieterzoon’s latest malapropism, and was signed “Lucius.” The Cainite folded it, slipped it into an envelope and sealed it, scribbling “Sascha” on the outside. Such careless informality would infuriate its intended recipient. That sort of thing carried entirely too much enjoyment these nights.

All in all, the traitor reflected, the Camarilla had come up with a good plan. It might have done some of what it was supposed—if its details were not to be handed over to the enemy within hours of its conception. The vampire concentrated for a second, reaching out to summon a secure courier. The other would arrive in a matter of minutes, and would then take the letter off to Washington. There, it would no doubt have some very interesting effects on the Sabbat battle plan for Buffalo.

The Kindred, fiddling absently with the outstretched wings of a lapel pin, sat back in the chair and pondered the upcoming carnage with some satisfaction.

Part Two:

Sacrificial Lambs

From Sunday, 8 August 1999

to Saturday, 28 August 1999

Presidential Suite, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

“You’re sure there’s no indication of an attack on Buffalo?” Jan asked.

Colchester had waited until van Pel left to reveal himself. He wore his monstrous, tusked visage and resembled nothing of the suave businessman who last night had sat at council. “No large-scale movements from Washington, or from Montreal or New York City,” he said. “And Vykos’s ghoul reports only the continued build-up for an eventual shot at Baltimore.”

“The Assamite masquerading as Vykos’s ghoul.” “Yes. Parmenides, now Ravenna.”

“And this other business with the Assamites…”

“Right.” Colchester stretched and cracked his knuckles so loudly that Jan thought the Nosferatu’s fingers might pop off. “Since the Sabbat War started, four Tremere assassinated: first in Atlanta, then right here in Baltimore, then Calcutta, then New York. All four confirmed or strongly suspected Assamite involvement. I mean, shit, who else is gonna go around bumping off warlocks?”

“But who are they working for?” Jan wondered aloud. “Assamites don’t dirty their hands for free.”

“They didn’t used to, anyway,” Colchester said. “Word is that might’ve changed.”

Jan was only partially listening as he tried to unravel certain facts. “And Vykos has a personal Assamite. Has he… she… it, whatever… Vykos made an alliance with them?” “Possible. There’s also a Setite.” Colchester started counting off on his fingers. “Operates out of Baltimore, had a flunky in Atlanta, and was in Calcutta meeting with

that one when he got whacked. Three out of four.”

“Hm.” Jan weighed this information against his own suspicions. “Prince Garlotte knows this Setite?”

Colchester nodded. “Sure. Hesha keeps a low profile. It’s not worth starting a war to get rid of him.”

“Hesha Ruhadze? I didn’t know he worked out of Baltimore.” “He don’t advertise.”

“I see. There’s also Victoria,” Jan pointed out, “who was in Atlanta, and meeting with Maria Chin when she was assassinated.”

“Maybe the Assamites gave out Tremere coupons….”

Jan was thinking aloud again and paying little attention to Colchester’s prattle. “That might explain why Aisling Sturbridge is spending her time at the chantry in New York instead of here.”

“… Maybe it was a Tremere rebate, or off one get one free. Tax write-off?”

Jan’s thoughts, despite his best efforts, drifted away from murdered Tremere and back to Victoria. Part of him recoiled at the thought of her being responsible for or even complicit in such brutality. Maria Chin had been decapitated by a garrote. Jan pictured Victoria, not as an accomplice luring the Tremere to her destruction, but as a victim, horrified, cowering in fear. That image blended with how he’d seen her tonight—practically catatonic. She seemed so fragile.

But Jan knew that wasn’t the full story. Ironically enough, it was Colchester’s absurd litany that helped Jan clear his mind and focus again on the business at hand.

“Never mind.” Jan waved Colchester silent. “Who’s behind it isn’t the most important thing right now.” We can do with a few less Tremere, he thought, but then caught himself. The Tremere could be a devastating tool when unleashed against an enemy. But they’d damn well better start pulling their weight.

“Now,” Jan said to Colchester, “this is what we’re going to do….”

U.S. Interstate 80

East of South Bend, Indiana

The companion knew that Anatole regretted missing the dance that had taken place a few nights ago, but the prophet had thought it best to be away from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine when the event actually took place. The companion didn’t fully understand why Anatole would stay with that damned woman so long while she prayed motionless, and then leave on the eve of her activity.

But Anatole had said that it would not do to be found in the midst of that ballet. So many performers already, he said. It seemed like many of those he might have chosen to pursue were the dancers that evening. It seemed that he simply did not know which one to follow, but Anatole now said that a guide would be provided and he would show the guide the way.

Of course, he said this without answering the question the companion had about those who danced with the woman, but that didn’t necessarily mean he didn’t know the answer. And, of course, he answered the question with an utterance that clouded the picture even more. For the companion at least.

Why did they need a guide if they would, in turn, show the guide the way?

Anatole then said that to be part of the dance would cause others to assume they knew more than they might. Which, of course, avoided a confirmation of whether they did know what they sought in the first place. But if they were to be guiding the guide, then perhaps they did.

Anatole had also said they needed to make themselves conspicuous, but the companion didn’t see how traveling west via Greyhound bus through northern Indiana would cause them to be noticed. Except perhaps by the impish man in the aisle seat next to them. The very fact that he hadn’t been interested, intrigued or confused by their presence meant this was one mortal—and he was indeed mortal, a matter on which Anatole agreed—with an agenda the companion cared to know nothing about.

Anatole sat in the window seat, staring into the blur of landscape. Sometimes the companion thought the prophet was more at rest when awake like this than in his sleep, as during the day he was bombarded with visions and hallucinations. These night hours, then, were good for sorting through that chaos and trying to determine which was which.

He felt, too, that Anatole must think of their friends, such as their longtime companion, Lucita. He knew the prophet dreamed of her often, such as on the day they had departed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, when he had mentioned that the masters of our guide had been in touch with her, and we were likely next.

The companion got the impression that she was somehow involved in the events that encircled and ensnared them. But her way would take her back to Europe, he thought, and a confrontation with her father. Or so the companion gathered. He believed it was for this reason that Anatole did not travel with her, for she had to travel alone.

Or perhaps Anatole was wondering at the recent successes of his friend Beckett, another Kindred whom Anatole held in high regard. Beckett pursued the mysteries of Gehenna with perhaps even more zeal than Anatole. But whereas Anatole sought revelation, the companion feared that Beckett sought only to satisfy his ego—a presumption that it will and must be he who unravels the mysteries of Gehenna. It was a conclusion Anatole shared, much to the companion’s chagrin. But then that was merely the companion’s own ugly ego revealing itself, perhaps. Or his love of Anatole—but that was a rationalization he recognized even as he thought it.

Meanwhile, as they waited for universal truths of life and unlife to be revealed or discovered, they continued to travel west.

Where and when would they meet their guide? Or had Anatole lost the trail again, after believing himself very close to a means to access the secrets of the End of Times? Would they travel thus for years and years, waiting for a guide who never came?

For the moment, though, the companion just hoped they’d arrive in Chicago before daybreak. A miracle was all that had saved Anatole from the sun two weeks ago when the companion had sought safety and the prophet had endured the terrible light. While it seemed that Anatole was often the beneficiary of the miraculous, the companion preferred not to rely upon it.

They would have made it in no time at all if not for the damned stops the bus made. If only, like the Kindred, kine had no need to eliminate waste from their bodies. Extremely inconvenient, and not a heroic explanation for being stranded on the highway at daybreak.

Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

Polonia hated parking garages. They were noisy, smelly, crowded, aesthetically displeasing and generally wet with noisome spills. On a more practical note, they were lit in a fashion that made it almost impossible to seize on useful shadows; they generated echoes that made judging distances by sound impossible; and they gave all sorts of idiots the notion that they’d make wonderful locations for ambushes. Polonia himself had been assaulted, not once, not twice, but three times in the past year alone by enterprising young Cainites. None of the attacks had come within shouting distance of success, but the affairs still left a bad taste in the archbishop’s mouth.

Thus it was with some distaste, though no real trepidation, that Polonia stepped out of the elevator into the parking garage below the hotel. Thankfully, this level was mostly deserted. Only a few scattered cars were parked here and there, while across the way from the elevator doors was the van that MacEllen and his pack were engaged in loading. Cases, suspiciously bulging wrapped bundles, and various firearms were arranged in a semicircle around the van’s back doors, while MacEllen and a short, heavyset vampire with a bowl cut and arms like lead pipes loaded various items with surprising care.

Briefly, Polonia considered walking over to where the others were, but he decided against it. MacEllen was just mad enough to risk doing something stupid, and in any case, it would be beneath his dignity. Let the man come to him.

It didn’t take long for one of the other Cainites lounging around the van to spot Polonia as he stood, arms crossed, waiting by the elevator. A piercing whistle got all of his comrades’ attention, including MacEllen’s. The big man stared across the lot with undisguised hatred in his eyes, then began to lope across the expanse of concrete. A couple of the others drifted after him.

Polonia permitted himself the luxury of a smile.

“I have orders for you,” he said, when MacEllen had gotten close enough to hear. “Important ones.”

MacEllen spat. “Fucking great. What, are we being ordered to ride behind the rest of the army with a broom and a shovel now? Is that it?”

“On the contrary, the operation is yours. All of it.”

For a moment, MacEllen was speechless, then hard suspicion masked his features. “This has got to be a setup. Why the change?”

“New information.” Polonia reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small bundle of neatly folded sheets of paper. “This is for you. It details the operation, your objectives and your resources. You’ll be getting another pack under your command, Einar’s, and you’ll be in charge of the assault on Buffalo.”

“With two packs?” MacEllen was aghast. “Are you out of your mind?”

“As I said,” responded Polonia coolly, “there is new information. Buffalo is your target; it will be only lightly defended. The Camarilla is withdrawing all but a token resistance force. All that you will encounter will be newly made vampires who have no notion of their potential, and the occasional ghoul. You should have no difficulty.”

“Where did this information come from, Vykos’s mole?”

“From the best of sources. The answers to all of your other questions,” and he proffered the packet of papers, “are in here.” Wordlessly, MacEllen took the bundle and tore it open. The others crowded around for over-the-shoulder glimpses. Polonia ignored them, and quietly reached behind himself to press the button to summon the elevator.

“You will have total autonomy in the field, MacEllen. I expect a complete and rapid success, considering the caliber of opposition you will be facing. If you fail, don’t bother coming back. I’ll find you to discuss your performance.”

Right on cue, the elevator doors opened. Polonia turned on his heel and stepped into the car; the closing doors obscured him within seconds.

MacEllen watched him go with a mixture of hatred and fear. All around him, his pack members whooped and cheered as word spread from each to each that they’d be heading the Buffalo strike. But MacEllen wasn’t so sure this was a good thing.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, mostly to himself. “It’s a setup. It’s got to be.” In his mind’s eye he could see the arrangement: Forge new “intelligence,” pick out the pack ductus who’s getting a little too noisy and dangerous, hand him the news, and bundle him off to get chewed up by a meat grinder. The rest of his pack, and Einar’s, too, would be sacrificed just to get rid of him. Vykos probably didn’t even have a real spy.

But the only way out of the trap, he realized, would be to go straight into it and try to get out the other side. He couldn’t run, or he’d have both sects after his balls. Hell, half his pack would probably jump his ass if he suggested cutting out now, just for the chance to be his replacement. No, he’d have to dive into whatever was waiting and kick its ass. Jaw set with grim determination, he turned back to the business of loading the van, a bit more carefully than before.

A subterranean grotto New York City, New York

For the past forty-five minutes, Calebros had stared into the dark recesses of his lair and tried to calm himself. Still, his hands were not completely free of trembling. A courier sent by Colchester had arrived from Baltimore, and upon reviewing the news he’d carried, Calebros had barely managed to clack out the relevant data on his typewriter before succumbing to the nervous palsy.

He’d kidded to himself for distraction—Jeremiah had wanted his time with Anatole to revolve around superstition. Well, here was something else to keep him busy during his vigil with the Prophet of Gehenna.

But that hadn’t helped, and reading the understatements recorded in ink did little to soothe him now.

The solution to a puzzle that had dogged him for weeks might very well be revealing itself to him, but at what price? The collapse of the Camarilla? The onset of the Final Nights?

A network of tunnels and caves New York City, New York

Cassandra Washington strode briskly along the tiled hallway of her shared home. Unlike her peers, she carried herself erect, maintaining the perfect posture she had been trained (and beaten into) in life. She rubbed her eyes wearily. Time for bed, and not too soon for her. The chief had kept them busy these last nights, and so far they had nothing to show for it. No sign of Hesha, no more luck finding their few “reliable” Ravnos contacts… no luck finding the perverse little devils, either. And the war between the Camarilla and the Sabbat for “control” of so many cities kept getting in the way of more interesting projects. She had begun to feel less like a reporter and more like a switchboard operator: latest word from Buffalo, memo from Charleston, movements in Atlanta, situation in D.C., hasty phone call from Richmond, dateline Baltimore….

Cass passed her “office” and snorted at it. She skirted the edge of the drop shaft and listened for incoming friends or foes. She turned the corner, saw that the break room was empty, and turned off its lights. Looking up again, she had a shock: At the end of the hall, an unexpected apparition staggered out of the doorway. Her elder’s hands were bright red, smeared with black ichor, clutching at the door jamb and a untidy fistful of white paper.

“Cassandra… ” Calebros rasped.

Concerned, she ran to him, switching off the overhead lights as she came. “What is it? I’ll find Umberto for you—”

“No. You come with me.” He tugged gently on her arm. Cass let him lead her through the old closet, out the crumbling back wall, and into the small cave that the old Nosferatu had taken, long ago, as his den. The floor had been smoothed out by Calebros’s helpers, first by chisels, later by jackhammers, but it was most polished along the paths made by its owner’s methodical feet. Cass saw old, paper-labeled wooden boxes stacked beside the door; brass-and-oak file cabinets standing next to them; elderly metal versions of the same a little farther over; and shining, modern, fire-safe hanging files beyond those. On the right, generations of rough tables and desks lined the rock wall. The newest—antique, nonetheless—came at the end of the row, and the one chair in the room stood sentry beside it.

“Look.” He cleared the desktop with one careless swipe of his long arms. Reams of paper overturned and fluttered to the earth. Cass rescued a stack, set it on the next desk, and reached for the mess on the floor. “Never mind that now,” said her guide. She steadied the typewriter and the lamp in their corner, but otherwise obeyed.

Calebros laid down his papers and set them in order with his stained hands—ink- stained, she realized with a release of tension, bright red and ribbon-black from his work, not gore. His gnarled claws tapped shakily at the typescript. “Follow me through this,” grated the old Nosferatu.

“On the solstice, we handed an artifact, supposedly the Eye of Hazimel, to a Setite in Atlanta. We know this happened because Rolph, who made the transfer, survived the Sabbat attack.” He picked up another sheet and pointed to the words. “In the battle we lost track of the Setite agent who took it, and when he resurfaced he no longer had it. Rolph confirms this, too.

“The Setite, Vegel, worked for the Setite Hesha, called Ruhadze. He never went to Atlanta. No agent he could possibly have sent could have taken the Eye from Vegel between Rolph’s reports. We presume Hesha never had it, and we have lost track of him.”

Cass nodded. “Yeah.”

“We have someone looking in on the Sabbat. They show no signs of possessing such a thing, and they wouldn’t hesitate to use it if they did. We have many more agents in the Camarilla. If they had it, we could assume that they would have used it by now, whatever its cost, to defend their cities. We have, therefore, lost track of the Eye altogether.”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

“Tonight,” said the elder, collapsing gently into his old leather chair, “I received a report from our man in Baltimore. The Gangrel Justicar Xaviar arrived at the Camarilla conference this evening. The outlanders met in the mountains to fight something besides the Sabbat. By Xaviar’s account, the entire party was wiped out by one Kindred warrior wielding power over flesh, earth, stone, and molten rock. This warrior had one eye larger than the other, and the emanations from that eye were deadlier than all his other powers together.”

Cassandra sagged against the desk. “Holy shit.”

“Xaviar thought—said he thought—that the Gangrel had fought a waking Antediluvian. If he’s right, it could mean the end of the world. The Final Nights.”

Slowly, the younger Cainite considered the implications. “But it may be just the Eye of Hazimel.”

“Just,” said Calebros. “Merely.” He rose. “Come with me. I want you to see something.” They shuffled together down the ruined hall, and he leaned heavily on her shoulder.

The shelter furnished bunks for forty. Thirteen beds were occupied. Rats played on four of them. Five held corpses in various states of decomposition and recovery. In three— behind stout, electrified steel bars—there were “healthy” bodies strapped and chained to the old iron bunks. Six mad eyes stared resentfully at the newcomers, and one man’s lips began to move. His jaw did not: He was as well muzzled as his prudent cell-keepers could contrive. On the thirteenth mattress (a top bunk) a tiny figure, free and unhurt, looked down happily as the two monsters walked in. “’Lo, Cassie. ’Lo, Mister C.”

“Hello, Mouse. How’s your patient?”

The pink-and-gray, mangy bundle of fur uncurled himself, pushed away a rat, and sat up. “Same old, same old.” Mouse flicked a switch on a yellow extension cord and light flooded the berth beneath him. He twisted and scrambled until he was hanging off the end of the footboard, then twitched the army-green blanket away from his bunkmate.

“Confirmation?” murmured the elder.

Cassandra moved closer. The thing on the rotten mattress seemed to have rotted away itself. Its flesh was the texture of dissolving Styrofoam—bubbling, collapsing, melting, evaporating. Its bones were visible through the stuff, and looked like gray putty. Cass felt for the light. Less of it… at an angle… there. She could see the surface of the carcass, gleaming faintly, familiarly. She hesitated, asking, “Not one of us? I mean, it didn’t look like that before…. Whatever happened?”

“It could stand up,” Mouse said. “It was wearing real shoes. I saw the footprints, too. It’s got puddles for feet now.”

“Not a Tzimisce victim?”

“Maybe,” said the boy. “But I saw the other guy walk away. He was doing the same thing to a bit of stone as he went. Never heard of a Shimmy doing that.”

Cass sat on the next bed. She propped her clawed feet up next to the corpse and fiddled with the light again. At length, she nodded. “It’s the same kind of thing Ramona had on her cheek.”

“You’re sure?”

“No.”

Her elder blinked his large, sad eyes once. He held his hand out for the light. He played the bright beam up and down the arms, the legs, the squashed pumpkin-shaped head, the flattened, blasted torso.

“Can’t we just pick up this Khalil and bring him in? If this is an Eye wound, he should know. Mike and I could work on him. Get him to talk. I hate those methods, but if this thing is loose in the city…”

“You can’t,” said her companion, “just ‘bring in’ a Ravnos. If he talked, he’d lie. If we thought he was lying, he’d tell the truth and confuse us. If he got loose anywhere that was our space—trouble. If he got away, or the others heard about it, we’d be swarmed by them. As for ‘working’ on him, they aren’t… ” he stopped near what had been the sternum, “… manipulable in the sense you’re used to. Every clan has a weak spot they guard, or a goal they’re after, or a secret you can find out and blackmail them with. But a Ravnos makes the most of his weakness, has no plans, and couldn’t care less who knows what about him. They are the only really unpredictable people, because they are the only ones who make a habit of acting in their own worst interests. Knife?” Cass clapped one into his hand, and the elder sliced gingerly into the skin of the carcass. The torpid patient lay still. “Here we are.” With a quick, swiveling cut, the blade popped a little red rock out of the mess. Another twist, and up came a brassy disc the size of a quarter. The old Nosferatu’s fingers scrubbed the spongy tissue off it, and traced a few glyphs graven in the metal.

“Yes,” he said, and laid the disc back on the body. “Yes. You can be sure, now. Good for you, girl. Mouse, move this man out of the ward and into better quarters—secure quarters. Cass, call off the hunt for Hesha Ruhadze. We’ve had him here all along.”

Greyhound Terminal, 630 West Harrison Avenue Chicago, Illinois

When he got off the bus, a new voice sounded in Anatole’s head:

I have waited for you to come here, but you know that I have always been with you. I see that you know, and that is why you will follow me. You will follow me because I am you, and I have waited for you at this place, at this time, and for this reason: to uncover your future and reveal a past.

Yes, follow me this way. Down toward Roosevelt Street. That is the entrance to the city trains, the L. We ride the Red Line. To Belmont.

See, we are here already. We are near where we must go, but the dawn is near, and here too, I will show you a place to stay. You see that you will not be out of place here. We are strange, yes, and strange-looking too, but here there are runaways, though I know you do not need them for food. Here are the trappings of modern youth, though I know you cling to the past.

It is within this building. Yes, the one with the odd window displays of mutilation and insanity. Do you not appreciate the joke? Yes, it opens this early. Open for us. Yes, please enter. You hear the music beating on the walls even in this silent morning? Yes, that is why it is you who must uncover your own future and reveal a past. I can show you to this place, but you must show us all the way.

I am only a guide, and I have always been here. I see that you understand, and trust, and believe. I have always been here.

With you.

As the voice spoke, Anatole saw a wagon train crossing this America more than a century ago. He himself drove one of the wagons, and his sons and daughters sat around him or in back with their mother. He could hear her grunting in pain and discomfort, but he had to keep the wagon moving. To lose the others would be to lose themselves. What purpose the destination if they alone arrived?

She had been large with child for some time. She was always with child. He birthed so many.

Where did they all go? There had been so many more than the few here.

The child wriggled from his mother’s womb and clambered onto the seat beside Anatole. The child knew the way, and they were soon leading the caravan of wagons. Their path converged with the meandering course of an ancient river. They held a straight line, but the river surged in bows and curves like a mad serpent caught in the box that was a valley between two high ranges of mountains.

And then the horses of their wagon pulled the entire caravan. They were all lost with him. Without his son who had shown them this path. And they hurried through the valley, but they were not fast enough. The rain, which Anatole realized had been dousing them for some time, sent the river coursing over its banks. The overflow was red, but it was not blood. Too diluted. It flowed too quickly.

The waves washed over their horses’ hooves and ankles and soon lapped at the undercarriage of the wagons. They continued to plow through the storm. An opening to the valley was ahead. If they could make that rise, they would be safe.

The horses slipped in the red mud, but they pulled the wagons inexorably along the submerged trail. The water was so high that it threatened to float some of the wagons away, but with a burst of strength and speed, the horses cleared the valley and brought their proscribed baggage with them.

Outside the valley, no rain fell. A wide-open plain stood before them, but where the plain and valley met, where they now stood, was a small town. His son then said they must enter it, which they proceeded to do even though Anatole saw the town was populated by slavers and thieves and murderers. But the townsfolk thought the newcomers to be their kind, for they dripped with the red of the water, and the townsfolk thought it the blood of those the travelers had butchered to seek sanctuary there.

Anatole did not disabuse them of this notion, of course, for the travelers needed the rest. And if they were to survive, they required this misplaced respect.

Then Anatole prepared to sleep for yet another day. He would dream some more, his multitudes and he. His multitudes plus one, and he.

Belmont Avenue Chicago, Illinois

Any man is legion, they said, and perhaps Anatole was more so than another, but the companion did not care for this interloper. He had never cared for the variety of friend that informed you of the good they would do for you. Better a friend, like himself, who did the good asked of him.

And if the interloper had been with them always, why did he only appear upon their arrival in Chicago? The mind could be a strange thing—as the companion should know better than most—but a true friend would have helped long before. Why no hints that they might meet him in Chicago?

Of course, the companion realized he had been complaining and worrying about waiting forever for a guide, and now that one had suddenly—miraculously, perhaps— appeared, he complained as well. Well, when looking out for the welfare of one such as Anatole, the companion reserved the right of illogic. Yes, he was supposed to be a keeper of facts and presumably therefore blessed—or cursed—with a modicum of logic, but one who was friend to Anatole could not afford to be one-dimensional.

Also, the companion frankly could not recall the last time he was so disappointed in Anatole. For all the prophet’s talk about guiding the guide, he was certainly falling right into line for this newcomer. Not as with the companion himself, or with others who had helped the prophet in the past, whom Anatole seemed to see through instantly when he accepted some advice as perfect truth and other as flawed guessing.

But there they were, on the verge of another dawn, still without a reasonable idea of what asylum they would find from the rays of the sun. This new friend seemed to have a plan, though; if anything, it seemed too orchestrated. The companion smelled a trap, but even if there were none, he resented Anatole for the oblivious trust the prophet was placing in this interloper.

Jealousy? Perhaps. Well, yes, probably. But Anatole did seem more careless than usual. Certainly, his motives were often obscure to the companion, and the prophet had many times made decisions he could not fathom, but the companion had not reviled him for so doing.

He did not trust this one, but he must hold fast to his trust in Anatole.

They had apparently found a haven for the day: a couple of connected rooms in the basement of some retail store.

The companion would hold fast, and no matter what, he would be here to assist his friend of long standing.

Harmony High-Rise Chicago, Illinois

Jeremiah sat in the corner observing Anatole. It was a sometimes tedious, sometimes surprising affair. How odd it must be to have Malkavian blood, he thought. To see so much and decipher so little.

In the end, he decided he agreed with the common wisdom of his clan. The Malkavians saw reality from the other side of whatever veil hid the truth from the eyes of others. For others, that hidden truth, revealed, could not be made to correlate with the things around them. So the Malkavians were mad, or seemed deluded or crazed or prophetic, since they saw the truth but were unable to formulate it in mundane terms that others could understand.

Most of the time, however, Anatole wandered aimlessly around the room. Other times he just sat. Usually silent, but sometimes he muttered. These comments were random and seemed to have no bearing or connection to his place and time. Other times, he appeared to be in a conversation with himself. Different tones of voice. Sometimes different languages.

The one watching him made note of all of this.

Did we know that he spoke Romanian? asked one of his jotted notes. Jeremiah spoke a great many languages himself. What use could he be on a clandestine mission if he could not understand what his subjects were saying? Comprehending the substance of the comments was an entirely different matter, of course, especially with one such as Anatole, but synthesizing information was not his job at the moment.

Reporting was.

Sunday, 8 August 1999, 11:54 PM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Khalil tossed his cell phone anxiously from hand to hand. Obstinately, it refused to ring. He set it down for the fortieth time, in an attempt to calm himself. Damn the Nosferatu, damn the Gangrel, and most of all, damn the thing in his head!

It may be possible to save the situation, it responded. Your rebellious incompetence has put my plans at risk. There will be a reckoning for that, I assure you. For the moment, however, let me instruct you in your part should the Nosferatu call—and the voice in Khalil’s mind droned dryly on. The Ravnos reached out and picked up his phone again. The light was on, the power working. He pressed a button to hear the dial tone, then shut the connection down for fear the sewer rats would call just as he tested the line. Behind him, Ramona paced and fretted. Her mood pervaded the room: tense, feral, trapped, forced into inaction. It did Khalil no good; her soft footsteps kept time to the voice in his head. He caught himself throwing and catching the phone to the rhythm. Determined to ignore his master’s instructions, he concentrated on breaking the pattern. He fixed his eyes on the matte black case and forced himself to juggle that one thing quick or fast or anything but…

“Sit down, for the gods’ sake!” he shouted at his partner. The padding feet stopped just behind him, and he knew her hands were in reach of his neck. A long second went by. Then the old office chair creaked as she fell into it. Khalil sat back, set the phone down, and looked around. Elizabeth, still and quiet on the couch, was watching him. He returned her gaze with his best poker-face, and vowed to calm himself. It had only been two nights. What were two nights to the dead?

Tonight, you have a chance to—

Ramona began rocking in the old chair, and the mechanism squeaked in time to the voice’s chant.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

Pendulum Avenue Baltimore, Maryland

“Is there anything I may do for you, Ms. Ash?” “Yes, Langford. You may go away.”

Normally Gainesmil’s butler would slip silently from the room, but tonight with every step he crushed fragments of glass beneath the soles of his painstakingly polished shoes. Only when she heard the door click shut did Victoria open her eyes. She couldn’t face anyone. Not tonight. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone looking at her. She couldn’t face even her own eyes. And she wouldn’t have to. Not now. Every mirror, every vase with a reflective surface, every glass face from the pictures on the wall lay shattered on the floor. The drapes were pulled, the lights smashed.

Her right hand traced the line of her jaw, brushed over the tiny scar shaped like a serpent swallowing its own tail. Then her fingers strayed to her neck, where the golden chain and locket no longer rested. She’d given them back to Garlotte, and with them the memento of her time with Elford, the Tzimisce fiend. Aside from the snake, the injuries to her body were healed.

Aside from the snake.

She had consumed massive quantities of blood since arriving in Baltimore, and the physical infirmities—protrusions of bone, skin stretched and fused—had become things of the past. But even as the heinous degradations of the fiends had receded, something far worse—far worse than her beauty marred!—had taken hold of her. She’d thrown herself recklessly into the petty games of politics, a vain attempt to hold her demons at bay, but after Xaviar’s words two nights ago, she could no longer deny her panic. No fewer than three of her plots had come close to fruition in the past nights, and with all three, she’d missed her opportunity. Already a schism had begun to form between Prince Garlotte and Jan, yet she had failed to drive home the wedge. Then, irony of ironies, Garlotte himself had demanded a conclave, and she’d let the chance slip away. And then poor, gullible Fin had dared defy his sire. The prince had been embarrassed, no doubt, but had Victoria backed the childe’s claim, merely spoken on his behalf—Is this true, Alexander, that the girl has Embraced, not once but twice?—the occasion could have been so much more.

But she had huddled in fear. Paralyzed by words that haunted her still.

Slaves of the Antediluvians.

Victoria felt a hand clutching her heart. Elford had violated her. Vykos had scarred her. But this was far more pervasive, more insidious. She placed her hand on her breast, felt for the heart that no longer beat. The fingers of her other hand traced the pattern of the finely embroidered divan beneath her, and she tried in vain to keep from trembling.

“I am not my own master,” she whispered to the darkness.

Despite her fanatical quest to examine her every action, she felt the horrifying certainty that all freedom was illusory, nothing more than ignorance. Like the blood within her undead body, her soul was not her own.

Slaves of the Antediluvians. The Final Nights are at hand.

Monday, 9 August 1999, 1:34 AM Guaranty Building Buffalo, New York

“So I have to abandon the city?” Lladislas, Prince of Buffalo, Niagara and the surrounding regions, was mildly displeased. “One hundred and sixteen years of keeping this place free from Sabbat, breaches of the Masquerade, lupine incursions and the Canadian dollar, and now I simply fold my tent and leave my home? Bell, you’re coming dangerously close to overstepping your bounds here.” Lladislas was a man of medium build, with short-cropped, sandy blonde hair that hadn’t made up its mind how it felt about a widow’s peak. He wore a suit that looked like it came off the rack at Marshall’s, and which clearly wasn’t big enough in the shoulders. Still, he was prince, and he had actually done a much better than average job of keeping his domain operating smoothly.

And that, in a nutshell, was why Theo Bell hadn’t clocked him one yet. Besides, Lladislas was Brujah, and Brujah princes were rare enough that Theo didn’t particularly want to lose this one. Lladislas had come up from the meat-packing plants, a Civil War veteran and early labor organizer. He’d risen to the post of prince with meteoric swiftness, first as the compromise candidate of a hopelessly deadlocked primogen council, and then through his own strength.

In short, Lladislas was a tough guy and a good soldier, and Bell really did hate to take his city away from him. That’s why he was being polite. It was up to him, Theo Bell, designated asshole and bearer of bad news for the whole goddamned Camarilla, to get Lladislas, his primogen, childer, hangers-on, and personal possessions out of the city. If all went according to plan, Buffalo would in fact remain undisturbed, and Lladislas’s forces would be used more effectively elsewhere. Of course, Lladislas was not about to leave quietly for an assault that “might” be coming, so Theo was prepared to fudge a bit, or more if necessary, in stressing the imminence of attack.

Theo sighed theatrically. He was good for one more round of Mr. Nice Vampire, and then Lladislas was getting hauled out of here like the half-full sack of shit he was. “Prince Lladislas. For the last time, the Camarilla knows and values your service, and thinks very highly of the job you have done. That is why we are evacuating you and your subjects, instead of leaving you here for the Sabbat to use as a fucking piñata. Now, if you want to stay, you’re more than welcome to, and when we come back and liberate the place I’ll be sure to put up a nice little stone monument right over the greasy spot on the goddamned floor that would be all that we could find of you. Do I make myself clear? When the Sabbat shows up, you do not stand a chance against the sort of force that got brought to bear on Atlanta. Now you get your people together, you move them out, and you do it quietly.”

Okay, Theo thought to himself. Maybe I’m not feeling that nice after all.

Lladislas just sat there, wide-eyed. He opened and closed his mouth several times without saying anything. Clearly the man was on the verge of some sort of episode.

“No argument?” said Bell. “I like that in a prince. I’m going to scout around and get a good lay of the land. When I get back, we can talk about how we’re going to handle logistics and what defenses you will leave behind. Oh, and for the love of God, get a better suit.”

Lladislas was still gaping when Theo walked away into the night.

A subterranean grotto New York City, New York

“So what do you think?” Mike asked.

“I think,” said Calebros, “that we will obviously not reveal anything about Hesha.” Neither Nosferatu suggested trading false information. For brokers of secrets, such was the kiss of death.

“Hunting grounds? Intercession with the prince?”

“Possible,” Calebros said, as he scratched his misshapen head. “But I’m not convinced that this Khalil—even if he does possess the knowledge—is the only source. How to heal injuries caused by the Eye of Hazimel—that’s the kind of detail that Hesha might well know. He’s been looking for the Eye for a few centuries, I believe.”

“If he ever comes out of torpor…”

Calebros nodded. “If he ever comes out of torpor.”

“Are we even certain that he actually is in torpor? He looked… worse than that.” “Certain? Nothing is certain. Ever.”

The corner of Church and Pearl Streets Buffalo, New York

Bell found Prince Lladislas at church, of all places. Specifically, the prince was outside St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, looking up at the edifice with a sad smile. Inside, a single light shone; a janitor making early-morning rounds, no doubt.

“I’m going to miss this place, Bell,” Lladislas said without turning. “They built it while I was a boy. I remember everyone being so excited, one way or another. It meant work for a lot of men. It meant a lot of things. That was a hell of a long time ago, though. Wish it still meant anything at all.”

“Saying good-byes?” Bell was always vaguely uncomfortable with moments of sentimentality like this; he figured that once you were dead, you shouldn’t care quite so much any more. On the other hand, Lladislas’s wistfulness over a church was positively petty compared to some of the manias he’d seen in Europe. It balanced out, he decided. It all balanced out.

The prince gave a laugh that had no humor in it. “More or less. It’s either that or get my dander up, call you a prick, and let my temper paint me into a corner so that I have to stay and get myself killed all over again. Oh, you’re right. We do need to leave. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

Bell walked down to the corner of Church and watched the evening’s light mist make a halo around the streetlights. Cars zipped past intermittently, few even slowing down because of the slick streets. “No one expects you to be happy, Lladislas, except for a couple of the real thumbdicks on the council who no doubt will want you to kiss their boots because they noticed your little problem and sent me to fix it.”

Lladislas grinned a crooked grin and looked over at the archon, who stood silhouetted by the light behind him. “They can be a bunch of right bastards, can’t they?” Bell nodded assent. “But they’re right this time. I’ve got eight, maybe nine Kindred who amount to anything here, plus about forty ghouls. We’d make a fight of it, but we just don’t have numbers. Hell, there wouldn’t even be anyone left to let the next city know we’d made a last stand.” He spat blood into a sewer grate. “We have to go.”

Bell stretched, the occasional popping noise from his back evidence that he’d been on his feet far too long. “I know. Believe it or not, I’m sorry. You did a good job here.”

“Not good enough.”

Theo rolled his eyes. “Stop with the self-pity bullshit—you sound like one of the clove-and-cape neonates. Let’s talk about how we’re going to get your people out of here.” “Already taken care of.” The prince’s tone was noticeably flat. “Like you suggested, we’re going to have a couple of our youngest Kindred Embracing a small flock of gullible idiots who will fight to hold the city as a screen against our departure. The valuable ghouls are going to be evacuated. We’ve already started arranging transfers, job offers in other cities, relocations, visiting positions and the like. One of my bodyguards insists on staying behind. His name’s Haraszty, and he’s going to be coordinating the defenses, such as they are.”

“Stubborn. Not a good quality in a ghoul.”

Lladislas nodded. “Nearly a fanatic. Channels it into sports, most of the time—I’ve caught him on TV during Bills games. He’s one of the idiots who likes to paint himself blue. But he’s a hell of a shot.” The prince started strolling up Pearl Street. After a moment, the archon followed him. They made an odd pair, the prince preternaturally pale and formally garbed, while his companion was as dark-skinned as the Kindred condition allowed, dressed in a loose-fitting jacket over a red T-shirt and jeans. The archon had a massive pistol in a shoulder holster and a smaller one strapped to his leg, and both occasionally caught the light from the sickly globes atop the lampposts. The guns didn’t do much against Kindred, but they did make meaty chunks out of most ghouls, even Tzimisce war ghouls.

Lladislas was unarmed. He was still prince here, after all. “Any idea of when they’ll get here?” he asked.

Bell nodded, though in truth he had no idea. Hopefully never, but “hopefully” had a way of turning ugly real fast, so Theo figured it was just as well to get things set up as quickly as possible. “A week at most. We’ve drawn the line at the Beltway, more or less, so they’re stuck there. That means they’ve started swinging around to the west—through Wheeling, up past Pittsburgh and then on to here.”

“And how much territory are we going to give them?”

They passed street lamps, mailboxes, parked cars. Nothing disturbed them. In the distance, an overachieving songbird let loose with the first frail notes of the day. Bell hesitated before answering. “That’s up to the council. It’s the usual backstabbing bullshit in there. That’s why I like being in the field. It’s cleaner.” He suddenly grinned. “I’d give my right nut to have Parma over here, or one of the real heavy hitters from Europe. Or maybe my boss could just get off his ass and get out here before the roof caves in.” The two shared a laugh at that. They walked on past the district courthouse, the run-down convention center looming on their right.

“Is it such a good idea to keep giving ground?”

Bell thought about it for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. Look at it this way: As things stand, we have a lot of territory to cover. That means we get spread thin on the ground. Say we’ve got a hundred Kindred over a thousand square miles, and ten cities in it we have to defend. That’s ten Kindred per city, right? So let’s say the Sabbat rolls in with fifty Kindred. Now, if we had all of our guys in one place, we could take them, right? We’d outnumber them two to one, and that would be that. But instead, we’ve got this ten-ten-ten thing going, which means that instead we have a whole lot of fifty-on-ten rumbles. And, since we’re so badly outnumbered in each fight, they don’t take diddly in the way of casualties. So we lose all hundred of our people, all ten cities and all of the territory.

“Now, instead, what we’re doing is taking all our guys, pulling them back to the far border of that thousand-mile box, and planting them in two cities. Sure, we lose some turf, but now the Sabbat’s got a choice of fair fights. Even better, if they hit one city with everything they’ve got—which at that point becomes the only chance they have—we can pull half the Kindred out of the other city and put a shiv right into their collective kidney.”

Lladislas nodded. “Solid.”

“It had better be solid, damnit. It’s the only plan we’ve got, and if it goes belly-up, ain’t nobody worrying about being prince of nowhere. There won’t be anyplace left to be prince of. Not on the East Coast.”

Lladislas gave a bark of laughter. “Hell, Theo, there’s going to be no place for me to be prince of when this shakes down anyway. You think they’re going to let me come back? Five will get you ten they hand over my city to some snot-nosed brat of a Ventrue ‘as a reward for services rendered,’ and I’m out on my ass.”

“I can’t promise anything, Lladislas, but I’ll put in my word for you. But that’s tomorrow, if ever. We’ve got more important things to handle, like the evac.”

“True. Any thoughts?”

“A few. When you start bringing neonates over to soak up bullets, make sure they’re fourteenth generation, thirteenth at best. I know it’s tempting to do the job yourself, but you leave your childe behind, some Sabbat asshole’s going to turn him into his personal six-pack and we’ve given aid and comfort to the enemy. No sense letting them have more to munch on than they catch themselves. Hmm. Another point. Keep the cannon fodder Brujah or Nossie. Anyone else, and someone’s going to scream like babies with a load on about unfair representation, too many Tremere and shit like that. I hear it out of New York all the time, where the prince has them ass-deep in baby Ventrue. But our kind, they make the best fighters right out of the box and you don’t have to deal with Gangrel noble-loner bullshit to produce them. And Nossies, well, no one cares how many Nosferatu you make; they don’t play politics where the lights shine, so the Elysium crowd can pretend they ain’t real.”

The Prince of Buffalo snorted in amusement. “Beautiful. And so true!”

Bell grinned back at him. “Ain’t it? We’re fighting for our lives here, but the Ventrue and Tremere still have to piss on each others’ shoes every chance they get, and all the Toreador want to do is critique the color of the stream.”

Lladislas abruptly sobered. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Bell nodded. “Pathetic indeed.” He looked at his watch. “Damn. Getting early. Got a lot of work to do before the shit hits the fan. You have a ride?”

Lladislas nodded as the sleek black limo which had been discreetly pacing them rolled up to the curb. “Always. Rank still hath its privileges.”

The car stopped and the driver, a heavyset man with a thick, bristling mustache, came around to curbside to open the door. Lladislas waved him off. He opened the door himself, gestured Bell inside, and climbed in after. With a minimum of fuss, the car rolled off toward Lladislas’s favorite haven. In the east, the sky promised the first hints of dawn. To the west, there were clouds and a hint of thunder.

Monday, August 9 1999, 5:04 AM Chantry of the Five Boroughs New York City, New York

The rattle of the teletype broke in upon Sturbridge’s morbid reverie. She checked a start that nearly precipitated another avalanche of books and papers. From her perch atop the precarious throne of texts, she could see the leading edge of the tickertape probe the air experimentally, like the tongue of an asp.

Even here, within her sanctum sanctorum, there were implicit perils and poisons. With exaggerated care, she descended. Despite her precautions, a small wave of papers and bindings broke in her wake. She seemed for the moment a classical figure emerging from the sea and shrugging off a mantle of foam. Before the cascade of papers had subsided, Sturbridge was struck with more than a vague premonition that the news was not good. From long habit, she braced herself for the worst.

It is Washington, she thought. Washington has fallen.

It was not the city itself she feared for. She knew it to be lost already, damned—a casualty of the ongoing massacre that raged the entire length of the Eastern Seaboard. The Sabbat was crashing over the bulkhead, as inevitable as the tide. There was hardly any point in denying that they were, even now, firmly in control of the nation’s capital.

It was not a reassuring thought.

The patter of the tickertape fell suddenly silent.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark, cold day.

Sturbridge placed one hand atop the smoky glass of the bell jar to steady it as she tore free the ribbon of parchment. A dim illumination played just below the surface of the arc of glass. It broiled like a distant thunderhead, pregnant with the promise of lightning. A smear of light and color stained the glass, spreading out from the point where her hand contacted the opaque surface.

Sturbridge resisted the temptation to delve more deeply into the play of images forming and dissolving within the bell jar. It was a humble, almost reflexive magic—this peering into crystal, this seeing through a glass darkly.

The art was her birthright, a legacy that had come down to her through generations of fortune tellers, wise women, hedge witches, oracles, scryers, diviners, priestesses and soothsayers. Sturbridge was the end product of several hundred, perhaps several thousand, years of occult experimentation, spiritual searching and fervent prayer.

The crystal responded eagerly to her familiar touch.

It would be very easy for Sturbridge to lose herself in the dance of light and form that beckoned from within the crystal. But it was an indulgence. And she could ill afford indulgences right now.

Instead, she turned her back upon the arcane device and turned her attention to the ominous scrap of tickertape. She read with growing agitation.

Begin Baltimore comma 9 August 99 period

To Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B period From Dorfman comma Pontifex comma WDC period Greetings etc period comma Disturbing news from Camarilla council period Xaviar comma Gangrel justicar comma storms out period Threatens to pull clan out of Camarilla period Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B to report to Baltimore immediately period Gather intelligence comma damage control period Briefing en route period Keep your head down comma Dorfman end

Damn. Pull the Gangrel out of the Camarilla altogether? Could he do that? There must be some mistake. Perhaps the message meant to say that the justicar threatened to pull the Gangrel out of the defense council meetings in Baltimore. Surely that was it. Xaviar was undoubtedly one of the most prominent Gangrel warlords. But the members of his clan prided themselves on an almost rabid independence. Sturbridge doubted that even the respected justicar could presume to speak authoritatively for his entire clan.

She found herself wondering what offense might have been so grave as to drive the justicar not only out of the council in Baltimore, but perhaps out of the Camarilla entirely. It just didn’t add up.

Sturbridge read the note over a second time, scouring it for hidden meanings. Keep your head down. Sound advice. Things in Baltimore seemed to have taken a decidedly unhealthy turn of late.

Sturbridge’s thoughts kept returning to Maria Chin, her predecessor on the council. Chin was dead. Assassinated, she corrected herself. Sturbridge had run through the scenario over and over again in her mind, realizing how easily it might have been her instead of Chin on the receiving end of that garrote. Sturbridge tried to think who would have any reason for wanting Chin dead. She performed a quick mental calculation and sighed. As was all too often the case among her fellow Tremere, it would be far easier to answer instead the question, Who did not have a reason for wanting her dead?

Sturbridge would be the first to admit that she was an ambitious regent. One did not arrive at such a position without bloodying a few noses. And one certainly did not hold such a controversial posting for any length of time without attracting the unwanted attentions of a few equally ambitious rivals.

It was not only one’s peers that a regent had to take preemptive maneuvers against. There was a flicker of covetousness in the heart of even the most modest novice, and a dangerous flashfire of jealousy behind the cool exterior of even the most aloof superior.

Chin’s death might well have been politically motivated. Sturbridge knew very little of the details surrounding her fellow regent’s demise. The official reports had called it an “assassination,” which clearly implied politics. But this was no reason to assume that it meant clan politics.

Chin was among the founding members of the impromptu Camarilla council that had convened in Baltimore. In some respects, calling the gathering a “council” was something of a euphemism. It was more like a natural puddling in the stream of refugees fleeing the devastation in the Southeast as Atlanta, Charleston, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington and who-knew-what other traditional Camarilla strongholds fell in rapid succession to the ravages of the Sabbat. Sturbridge could not begin to imagine what strange alliances of convenience Chin might have run afoul of among the floodtide of refugees.

And all these speculations ignored perhaps the most obvious suspect—the slavering horde of Sabbat that had surrounded, cut off and besieged Chin’s chantry in Washington, D.C. The Sabbat certainly would not mind seeing one of the D.C. chantry’s major players carried bodily from the field. That the plot had succeeded boded ill for the D.C. chantry— the last knot of Camarilla resistance within the nation’s capital. The pattern was unambiguous and none too reassuring. Sturbridge could not help but notice that every Tremere who had dared lift her head up above the trenches of late, had had it summarily removed for her trouble.

And now this summons. She had quite enough to worry about at present without being dragged away to Baltimore. Didn’t they know there was a war on, right here in the streets of New York? She could not coordinate the defense of even her own chantry from Baltimore—much less the defense of the city or the region. The most recent reports hinted at a stepped-up Sabbat presence upstate. And she couldn’t even spare the manpower to preempt that little incursion at present.

Damn it. This could not have come at a worse possible time. But it appeared that all had already been decided from further up the chain of command. She had no choice but to shore up the defenses as best she could here, and jet down to Baltimore to size up the situation.

There was always opportunity in such high-profile assignments. The trick was, of course, to avoid an equally high-profile demise.

Damn them. “Keep your head down.” She snorted indignantly.

Laying both hands upon the bell jar, she made a few languid, prescribed passes and began to dictate:

Begin New York 9 Aug 99 period

To Dorfman comma Pontifex comma WDC period From Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B period Dorfman comma Dire omens indeed period Will be honored to serve period Looking forward to seeing you upon arrival etc period comma Sturbridge end

Monday, 9 August 1999, 4:05 AM (5:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time) Harmony High-Rise

Chicago, Illinois

As the night had worn on, Jeremiah had continued to watch, and Anatole had shown no signs of impatience or discomfort. Jeremiah wondered how this was possible. In an unknown place, in a city only recently entered, most others—Kindred or kine—would seek diversion.

But of course this was why Anatole was of use to Calebros, Jeremiah’s master. Anatole’s interior world was a world potentially shed of the illusions hiding secrets from those looking from this side. So long as the studio in which they were spending their nights tickled that interior world, then perhaps Jeremiah would be successful in this mission.

He was usually successful, but so was Calebros. This was that rare mystery that had taken two years for the master of New York’s warrens to solve. This one was even two years and counting, still without a concrete connection.

The darkness waned and Jeremiah knew the light of the sun would soon be illuminating the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, so he scribbled some summary notes. Then he collected Anatole and directed him back to the nearby basement. As they turned the corner onto Belmont Avenue, Jeremiah dropped his report in his mailbox. A ghoul courier would be along shortly to collect it and fax it to Calebros.

Jeremiah knew he would have to be patient. This was only the first night. Visions were not a commodity easily traded in, but hopefully he was creating the right circumstances to encourage them.

Interstate 270

Near Garrett Park, Maryland

MacEllen was not the sort of vampire who admitted to having any friends. That worked both ways, as not many vampires would have admitted to liking MacEllen. The ductus was feared, yes, and even grudgingly respected for his ability to win more fights than he lost, but even among the antisocial Cainites of the Sabbat he was regarded as a serious pain in the ass.

MacEllen did, however, have a real and serious affection for one member of his current pack, a Brujah antitribu named Tolliver. Tolliver was about five and a half feet tall and nearly that wide, and was built like a concrete sea wall. He didn’t speak much, but when he did he got to the point as quickly as possible: Fully half his conversation was devoted to telling other pack members who were yammering to shut the hell up. In a fight, he was just as direct, dealing with whatever came at him with a combination of equanimity and brutality.

The latter was why MacEllen liked him so much, truth be told. MacEllen’s temper was, to put it mildly, explosive, and he lost it on a regular basis. Indeed, “lack of self- discipline” was the reason given to him when he was passed over for admittance to the councils of Les Amis Noirs; he was told that he simply couldn’t be relied upon to keep his calm at moments when control was necessary.

He’d responded by doing his level best to wreck his sire’s study, and it was something of a miracle that he hadn’t been terminated on the spot. Still, MacEllen’s notorious temper haunted him and all his doings, and it especially tainted his dealings with other vampires who knew enough to take advantage of it.

Tolliver, too, had the sort of temper that got talked about in whispers by those who didn’t want their arms ripped off and then snapped in half. This was the common element that brought the two vampires, the blustering Lasombra and the sullen Brujah antitribu, together as friends. On this level they understood one another in a way that even their packmates never could quite grasp. Each had talked—or held—the other down from ruinous frenzy; each had seen the other go berserk in battle, and viscerally understood what the other was feeling.

And that was why MacEllen had decided to abandon Tolliver at a rest stop just north of Washington.

On one level, MacEllen conceded as he steered the pack’s van along at what he considered a sedate pace, it was idiotic to weaken his force like this on the eve of battle. After all, the fighting was likely to be bloody and desperate, and Tolliver was the best that he had. On the other hand, if the gig was a trap—and MacEllen was damn sure it was—he didn’t want Tolliver going down with him. It was cutting his own throat, he knew, but something told him he had to do it.

So, for the sake of his friend, MacEllen had spent the last night plotting ways to cold-cock the son of a bitch once he found a convenient place to leave him. He thought he had something good worked out, but the damn thing had better work or he’d have one pissed-off Tolliver coming after his ass, and God alone knew which way the rest of the pack would jump if that happened.

A sign on the right announced gas, food, restrooms and hopefully someone to eat two miles ahead. MacEllen bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, then announced that he was going to be pulling over for gas. There was the expected chorus of groans and cheers from the back; MacEllen didn’t bother warning them not to be sloppy if they fed. It was pointless to do so.

“You’ve still got half a tank.” Tolliver peered in from his position riding shotgun, a quizzical look on his face. His weapon of choice, a military-style automatic shotgun, was cradled between his knees. “Why are we pulling in now?”

MacEllen grunted in response and dropped the van over two lanes, nearly causing an accident in the process. “It’s a hell of a long way to the next one. If something goes bugshit, I’d rather have a full tank available for making a run with.” It was feeble, MacEllen knew, but rather than argue, Tolliver just made a noise that conveyed both disbelief and resignation, and looked out the window.

At this hour of the night, the rest stop was thankfully nearly deserted. A few cars were scattered in the lot, while eighteen-wheelers snored noisily further out. A lone attendant sat, bored, in the booth at the center of the gas station, while the lights in the nearby office were out. With expert skill, the ductus wheeled the van in and coasted to a stop. “Right, everyone out. Stretch your legs and don’t make too much of a mess.” Doors slammed opened and vampires poured out, loping across the tarmac and fanning out in the search for prey. MacEllen got out himself and watched them go with a surprising jolt of satisfaction.

Walking around to the other side of the van, he was pleased to see that Tolliver had not gone. Instead, the Brujah was squatting on his haunches outside the van, fingers laced behind his head.

“So what’s this all about really? Just wanted them out for a minute?” Tolliver’s tone indicated that he didn’t believe a word of it. Head down, MacEllen began the laborious process of filling the van’s tank.

“I wanted them away so we could talk. I don’t mind telling you, Victor, this whole thing stinks.”

Tolliver nodded and stood. “So it does. Smells like a trap. What’s your plan?” “Figure out what the trap is. Figure out who it’s supposed to close on.” With a hiss and a click, the flow of gas ceased. MacEllen yanked the nozzle out and stared pointedly

at the readout on the pump. “Fuck. Twenty-three dollars for a lousy half tank?” Tolliver ignored the digression. “And then what?”

“And then I get your ass out of the line of fire.” With that, MacEllen brought the nozzle up with all the strength he could muster by channeling the power of his vitae, and cracked Tolliver underneath the jaw. The impact was enough to shatter bone and lift the vampire entirely off his feet. Tolliver landed fifteen feet down the concrete, his skull hitting the ground with an audible thump that made even MacEllen wince.

Cautiously, the ductus let the hose drop and stepped over to where Tolliver lay; if the Brujah were still conscious, everything would go to hell rapidly.

A smear of blood marked the spot on the concrete where Tolliver had hit; he seemed to be out cold. MacEllen looked back over his shoulder and didn’t see the rest of the pack. Perfect.

With a grunt, he hoisted the antitribu over his shoulder and trotted over to one of the massive dumpsters. Almost effortlessly, MacEllen heaved his friend inside. The accommodations would stink, but they’d provide protection from sunlight until Tolliver was in shape to take care of himself.

Without so much as a good-bye, MacEllen jogged back over to the van. The others would have questions, of course, but he’d tell them that Tolliver was on special assignment or something. They’d bitch and moan and half-disbelieve, but they wouldn’t argue. Adele could take over Tolliver’s duties, and it would all work out. Somehow, it would all work out.

The Nawab of Bengal Restaurant, Manhattan New York City, New York

Khalil cursed aloud. It wasn’t supposed to work like this. That other Ravnos and his family were supposed to be helping him. Not vice versa.

An hour earlier he’d nearly shaken the neighborhood, so seismic was his reaction to his phone actually, finally ringing. The sewer rats were back at last with some information, he had thought. But no, it was Sarat the cab driver on the phone. The man’s Bengali was rapid and nearly incomprehensible with fright.

“My friend, please, terrible things have happened! Our elder brother is gone from us, and we are lost without his protection. Please, what do we do?”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“They came and broke down our door and seized him—many, many demons—and beat our brother and tore at his flesh, and now he does not speak to us. Oh, he cannot be dead, he promised he would not leave us here in this foreign land! The demons screamed and danced on Elder Brother’s flesh, and my cousin Prasad is near his own death, and I do not know what I must do. We are your family now, help us, please….”

Demons? Ghose in torpor? Khalil could not at the moment imagine what had taken place, but instinct made him leap at the possibilities he could hear in the mortal’s abject pleadings.

Rash fool, “demons” are likely the Sabbat. You do not need these mortals, not if you listen to me as you should. Nor do you need that puling idiot Ghose. Do not consider this for another moment. Send the mortal away.

But Khalil ignored the words. Having reassured Sarat, he hurried to the Nawab of Bengal. Ramona he left behind with Liz. She would only get in the way of his plan.

Khalil stepped to the door. Through its window, he could see that the restaurant itself was put away neatly, with chairs upside down on the tables and no messes in sight. Whoever had attacked the Mukherjees, they had apparently saved their wrath for the upper living areas.

They had also left the front door open, Khalil discovered. He entered and cautiously made his way through the immaculate dining area and kitchen. The back stairs were made of thick boards, so they didn’t squeak or complain, but they were shallow and narrow, wedged into a tiny portion of the structure. Passages like these, made for Americans before they got so fat, were perfect for a skinny gutter boy like Khalil. He quietly mounted the stairs and worked his way up.

After two short flights, he passed a landing and went higher. Two more flights and the stairs terminated. Here at last was evidence of an assault—the door at the top was savagely splintered, and had been ripped bodily from its hinges. Although the wrecked slab of wood had been propped up to block the doorway once more, Khalil could hear a commotion beyond. He knocked once, gently, and the gabbling voices inside hushed instantly. Sarat’s terrified face peered around the door through a gap at about knee height. “My friend, is it you?”

Khalil smiled pityingly. “Of course it is me. Demons don’t knock, now do they?”

With some grunting and scraping, the door was shifted from the inside, and Khalil got his first view of the damage. It was certainly impressive. The cheap wooden furniture of the apartment had been matchsticked. Blood was splattered across the far wall like a monochrome Jackson Pollock. A woman peered, dark eyes wide, from a back bedroom, vainly trying to keep behind her the young boy who had first let Khalil into the restaurant. Another woman crouched on the floor, kneeling heedlessly in a pool of blood that spread across the bare, polished floorboards. Wailing and beseeching, she was striving to bandage a dreadful gash that ripped Prasad Mukherjee’s abdomen raggedly from groin to sternum. The torn sheet she held was already soaked through with red. A piece of what looked to be the same sheet was wound around Sarat’s thigh, and that, too, was splotched with blood.

Blood… Khalil snuffed the air with unexpected hunger. Mortal blood, of course, from the wounds inflicted on Sarat and his cousin. But even better, old blood, Ghose’s blood, beckoned to him, singing along his nerves. Sternly, he brought himself under control. He must not frighten these people. Not yet, at any rate. He forced himself to speak gently.

“Sarat, my friend, but this is terrible that you should be hurt! Where is Ghose?”

“In there. Oh, Khalil, he said to us often that he could never die, but I fear what the demons have done to him. Quick, please help…” Sarat trailed off, his face pale with anxiety and fear, gesturing toward another door. With two swift steps, Khalil reached the door and pulled it open.

The general carnage had not reached this room. Ghose lay curled up on a woven rug which had apparently been used by Sarat or one of the women to drag the body in here. It would not have been very difficult even for the boy, in truth—that smashed and shriveled husk could not have weighed more than a large basket of laundry. Khalil bent over his clansman and prodded him gingerly, but he knew already what he would find.

“He is not dead, friend Khalil? No breath, no heart, he is cold, but you know how those lie—he said he was immortal and needed not such things. But he does not speak or move, and I am terribly afraid for us all.”

The wheels of the Ravnos’s mind spun as he crafted what to say. Obviously Ghose had not enlightened his family as to some of the peculiarities of vampiric existence—not to mention exaggerating its durability. “No, Sarat, your elder brother is not dead. But grave harm has been done to him, and the demons tried him sorely, body and spirit. He… sleeps. Now you and your family must protect him as he has protected you for so long, until he can regain his warrior’s soul. Tell me, where did Ghose rest during the daylight hours? We must hide him away from the demons while he is weakened.”

Sarat slid down the wall and slumped to the floor in exhaustion and relief. “There is a trapdoor underneath the bed,” he said. “Down there.”

Khalil scooted the foot of the cast-iron bedstead to one side. Sure enough, there was a trapdoor that opened onto a tidy little coffin-shaped space between the floors. Disliking the vacant glare of the torpid vampire’s eyes, he folded the rug over the shrunken carcass before shifting the entire bundle into the hole and restoring the appearance of the room. Good enough for the moment. “There. He will be fine for a while, you must not worry. I will watch over him and your family both. Come, I should tend to you and your cousin. Neither of you are immortal, after all.”

Here came a tricky bit. He was relying on Ghose’s having kept the Mukherjees in ignorance of other things besides the nature of torpor. If he could convince Sarat and Prasad to take some of his own blood, it would certainly heal their wounds—without it, Prasad at least looked likely to die. No need to explain the other little side effects of becoming ghouls to them right now.

Khalil raised the trembling mortal by the arm, smiling reassuringly, and led him limping back to the front room. Yes, they’d all have a new elder brother now.

Tuesday, 10 August 1999, 10:14 PM Guaranty Building

Buffalo, New York

“I can’t do this, Lladislas. There is no way, no way in hell I can do this.”

The speaker had one of the all-time great cauliflower noses, and that was his best feature. His skin was the color of a wet paper bag, except for the warty protrusions on his bald pate. Those were an impossible shade of green. His eyes were piggish and small, tucked into deep sockets and hidden by wrinkled skin. On his chin was a scraggly tuft of something that might once have been a beard, but now just served to hide a scabby wound that never quite seemed to heal. He wore a wide-lapelled blue coat over the ruin of what had been a perfectly good set of overalls and work shirt. Only his boots, knee- high and polished black, looked new. His name was Tomasz; he was the Nosferatu representative on Lladislas’s primogen council; and he was profoundly displeased.

“I cannot, absolutely cannot go along with this, this travesty of a plan. I will not offer up my clan for the slaughter.”

“For the last time, Tomasz, not your clan!” The prince slammed a blocky fist down on the table. Fine cracks spider-webbed across the wood. “You and your childer and their miserable childer will get away scot-free if you follow my instruction. If you don’t, then so help me, I will leave you and yours here to die, and send a bunch of daisies to be laid on the grave of the Unknown Nosferatu every year. Damnation!” He picked up a half-full goblet and flung it against the wall; the blood the cup had contained made a jagged stain where it hit. Ghouls scurried in to clean the mess up, but Lladislas snarled at them and they vanished.

Tomasz picked up his own goblet, which was still full, and chugged noisily from it. “Temper, temper, Lladislas. Beating up the furniture won’t impress me, won’t impress me at all. Now unless you can give me something, anything, to convince me that this idiotic plan will work, I’m leaving and making my own arrangements.”

“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The Brujah prince leaned over the table, his body quivering with barely repressed fury. Tomasz got a close-up view of the bigger man’s fingers actually digging into the wood of the table, and decided that a conciliatory tack was in order.

“It just means that… I’m not convinced, not convinced at all that this plan is going to work, and was hoping you’d convince me.”

Lladislas drew his lips back in a grin that showed entirely too many teeth. “I told you. It’s very simple, and before you start complaining, it’s not mine, so bitching to me won’t get you anywhere. We are going to have to evacuate the city. No ifs, no ands, and no buts. I’m sure you’ve read the reports from Atlanta. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you have better sources than I do. You always do. And, having read those reports, what do you think our chances are against what’s coming?”

Tomasz pursed his lips. “Somewhere between none and none.”

“Exactly. And like you, I have no intention of getting slaughtered. I also don’t intend to let the Sabbat profit from my city. I want this place to be a nail in their tire, a thorn in

their side. I want them to waste so much time on Buffalo for so little gain that they burst blood vessels thinking about how badly they’ve been had. Does that idea appeal to you?” “Of course it does. But I don’t see how what you have in mind is going to do that.” “Bell’s idea, actually, but I think it’s brilliant. The brief version is this: We take your youngest neonate—what’s her name, Ashleigh?”

“Phoebe Ashleigh, yes. What does she have to do with any of this?”

“She gets to live out many an elder’s fantasy: near-unlimited right of creation.” “But that’s absurd! She’s barely survived any number of… I mean, why are you…” A

sudden gleam of understanding slid into the Nosferatu’s eyes. “Aha. Very clever.”

“As I said, credit Bell. Ashleigh is just the most convenient candidate.”

Tomasz shrugged. “What do you want to do with Phoebe? Just turn her loose? That strikes me as a poor, poor idea.”

“Already thought of. We tell her to go to the clubs and pick out a half dozen—no, a dozen pretty boys and girls of the sort that she used to be. She gets to haul them back to a safe house I’ll provide. She Embraces each and every one, and then a mysterious, shadowy figure—I had you in mind for this, actually, but I’ll take it myself if you don’t want to do it—can walk in and tell the babies that their only hope for being returned to human is to fight off the invasion of the monsters, and so on and so forth.” He held up a hand to forestall the inevitable explosion. “What are you going to do, tell them the truth? Half will run away and the others will join the Sabbat. If we don’t lie to them, they’ve got no incentive to fight for us, and every reason not to. Also, if we hold out the carrot of turning them back, we can also sucker them into abiding by the Masquerade. And so they’re ready, willing and eager to fight.”

“I was going to say,” Tomasz interjected with a hint of acid, “that I wasn’t sure they’d be in combat shape, if the assault is coming as soon as you say it is.”

Lladislas’s expression went ever-so-slightly cold. “Honestly, Tomasz, it doesn’t matter if they are or not. They’re not supposed to win this fight.” More gently, he said, “They’re not even supposed to survive.”

“What if they do?” Lladislas just looked at Tomasz, and the latter looked away. “Ah. I see.”

“There’s no other way. All we need these Kindred for is to provide a speed bump. To make the Sabbat stop and look around and take a long time settling in here before moving on to the next city, so we buy time for our defenses. I will level with you, Tomasz. I don’t particularly like you. Left to my own, I couldn’t care less if you or Ashleigh fell down a sewer grate and got eaten by one of your mutant alligators. But I am prince. I have a duty, one that I take seriously. That duty is to take responsibility for this city and the Kindred in it, and for the moment, you are part of that responsibility. Once we abandon this place, that ends, at least temporarily. You’ll be free to spit in my beer, puke on my shoes and tell the rest of the world about all the dirty deeds I’ve done. But for the moment, I am prince. This is what we’re doing, because the prince says so, and because it’s the only chance we have of getting the city back. Ever.”

Tomasz looked up. “It stinks, you know that. It stinks to high heaven, and there are going to be a lot of pieces to pick up, even if it works.”

“We’ve dealt with mass disappearances before, or don’t you remember ‘96?”

“Eighteen or nineteen?” “Does it matter?”

“Not really. But there will be an accounting for this.”

Lladislas made a dismissive gesture. “Tomasz, we are Kindred. There is an accounting for everything we do, and an accounting for that accounting, and on into the centuries. You know that as well as I do. So make your mark in your ledger, and let Ashleigh make hers, and let the reckoning come when it may. And in the meantime, do what I tell you to or you won’t have the time to make that mark.” The Prince of Buffalo closed his eyes for a moment. “Mind you, even if you refuse, the whole thing goes forward. I’ve got Baughman lined up to do it as well; he’s even agreed to stay behind and oversee the initial phase of things with Haraszty. I can do this without you. I’d rather do it with you. It will make the whole thing look better from the outside, and that would make my job easier. And right now, I really don’t need anything that makes my job harder. Do we have an understanding, Tomasz?”

“An understanding, yes. A perfect one. If you will excuse me?” The Nosferatu rose to his feet and made for the door. As he reached it, he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll deliver Phoebe to you in an hour. She’ll have at least enough understanding of what’s going on to be helpful, though I suspect she won’t deal well with the shock of having all her childer slaughtered. You might have to put her down, too. For the good of the plan, of course.” Tomasz strode out, his back as straight as he could make it. One of the waiting ghouls shut the door behind him, and Lladislas found himself alone in the room, with only the faint smell of spilled blood in the air to distract him.

He sat there for a solid quarter of an hour, until the ghoul at the door timidly knocked and stuck his head into the room. “Your Majesty? You said to tell you when Mr. Baughman arrived and, uhh, he’s…” Lladislas turned around without bothering to disguise his expression, and the ghoul abruptly paled and stammered.

“Send him in,” was all the prince said, and the ghoul bolted. A few minutes later, he returned leading a short, wiry Kindred in jeans and a shirt in a revolting shade of orange. Lladislas composed himself as the ghoul scurried out. “Mr. Baughman. Glad you could make it. I have a little job for you, one I’m hoping you’ll find worthwhile. Mind you, if you’re not interested, I understand; I’ve already spoken to Tomasz about handling part of it and he can certainly take care of the whole thing. But if you want in, there’s a place for you. Frankly, this thing needs one of us Brujah to hold its hand, if you know what I mean.”

Baughman looked back at the door, which had just clicked shut behind him. The ghoul was nowhere to be found. It was just him and the prince. The same prince, a little voice in his head noted, he’d spent fifteen years agitating resistance against. Of course, he’d come back to the fold and more or less settled in to the Camarilla routine, but this situation was looking awfully like a setup….

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he said as he settled into a chair. “What can I do for you?”

Underneath Marine Drive Buffalo, New York

It would have been a surprise to several of Buffalo’s Kindred to discover that the haven of Tomasz the Nosferatu was not ankle-deep in sludgy water. It also was profoundly lacking in the smell of rotting garbage, any sort of sewage, or even the odd piece of salvaged, broken-down furniture. Tomasz may have had a face like week-old roadkill, but he liked his creature comforts, and his main haven reflected this.

The haven was in a storm drain, true, but it was a side chamber raised a foot off the tunnel that led to it. Arrangements of glowing fungi marked the corridor; some labeled traps that Tomasz had painstakingly set up over the years while others marked safe routes. Only he, and a few of his childer, knew which species of growth meant which. Farther out in the darkness, the watchful eyes of rat sentries gleamed in the faint light. No one, mortal, Kindred or other, could approach Tomasz’s haven without Tomasz’s learning of it.

Response time was something that was near and dear to the Nosferatu’s unbeating heart, and he tried to make sure he always had enough of it. At the moment, however, he didn’t have any, and he didn’t like that one bit. And that was why he found himself entertaining company that even he found dubious in his haven.

It wasn’t that Dustin was particularly ugly. By Nosferatu standards he was almost handsome, and could nearly pass for normal in bad light. Currently he was sitting on one of Tomasz’s elaborately carved handcrafted chairs (brought over at great expense and difficulty from Krakow), being a perfect guest and paying rapt attention to everything his host said.

No, the reason Dustin had a somewhat shaky reputation among even his clanmates was that he liked to play with fire, and that was the sort of thing that made even other Nosferatu worry.

“I don’t like this, don’t like this at all.” Tomasz paced up and down on a Persian carpet that was five decades old and showed not a thread out of place. Behind him, light sparkled on a collection of Viennese silver that had been lovingly acquired over a hundred years. “There is something amiss. Dustin, I need you.”

The younger Nosferatu shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Why me? Where’s Phoebe?”

Tomasz grimaced. “She is on… other business. But Dustin, this is something more along your specialty anyway.”

Dustin grinned, showing teeth going every which way. “Meaning you want someone killed, and sweet lil’ ol’ Phoebe ain’t up to the dirty deed?”

Tomasz shook his misshapen head. “No, not exactly. I need you to watch for me. To kill if you have to, but mostly to watch.”

“I don’t get it.” Dustin stood and took great care to dust off the chair, his movements just this side of exaggeration. “So you need someone to watch. Send your rats and leave me out of it.”

Tomasz waggled a cautionary finger. “No, rats will not do for this. I need sharp eyes, and a good mind behind them. If you had studied more, you’d know rats are limited in some ways, some very important ways.”

Dustin failed to disguise a look that conveyed a deep sense of “whatever,” and took a step toward the exit tunnel. “That’s nice. What now?”

“What happens now is that you stay when Phoebe and I go, and you keep yourself alive so you can tell me what really happens. I do not trust this.”

“I take it refusing is not an option?”

“It is always an option, but part of that option is accepting the consequences of refusing.”

“Ah.” Dustin opened his mouth and closed it again. “Crud. Do I at least get to fight back if they spot me?”

Tomasz spread his hands in an expansive gesture. “Of course. You are of no use to any of us dead, so do what you must. Just remember what you are there for, though. You have a reputation for… too much enthusiasm. It will not serve you in this.”

The younger Nosferatu chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry. I like my skin, and I pack a few surprises these days. I’ll make it out in one piece.”

“You had better, Dustin. I am relying on you. And I think you will find the rewards for this task to be suitable.”

“Oh really. Well then, we’ll have to discuss those when I catch up with you. Have the rats tell me where the meet point is. I have some prep work to do.”

With that, he loped off into the darkness. Tomasz muttered something that might have been a curse or a farewell, then set about packing. In the darkness outside his home, rats chittered to each other, softly.

Underneath Louisiana and Seneca Streets Buffalo, New York

Unlike Tomasz’s haven, Dustin’s was quite literally a hole in the ground. More to the point, it was more a workroom than anything else. Dustin was a tinkerer, and he eschewed the “normal” Nosferatu hobbies of breeding monstrous ghouls, cultivating fungi and otherwise playing to stereotype in favor of building devices that left his clanmates leery of his company. He’d been a mechanic in life, and the bug to take things apart only to put them back together better was one that hadn’t left him when he’d been Embraced. He’d just turned that interest to things that were more pertinent to his current condition.

It was one of those projects that concerned him now. It lay mostly disassembled on a workbench as Dustin took heated shears and cut lengths of plastic strapping. Whistling something that might have been an Offspring tune before he mangled it, he slid buckles onto the straps, folded over the plastic weave and used the flat of the still-hot scissors to melt a seal into place. On the workbench, a small gas flame jetted merrily into the air; a hose led from the burner to an ominously large tank. Most Kindred would have been climbing the walls to get away from such an arrangement, but Dustin was self-confessedly weird. On an intellectual level, he knew precisely the sort of damage open flame, especially the stuff flaring forth on his workbench, could do to him. He’d spent agonizing weeks regrowing the flesh on his hands after a couple of particularly nasty accidents, and he could feel the ravening, insane fear of flame that still lurked inside him every time he turned the gas jet on.

But that was nothing compared to the rush he got from seeing fire, from watching it dance and flicker and flare. In his rare philosophical moments, Dustin reflected that, on some gut level, he knew how a moth felt around the light.

There was a practical benefit to the whole obsession, too, however: Even other Kindred regarded Dustin as more cracked than an eggcup in an earthquake, and tended to give him a wide berth. That suited Dustin just fine, as he really had little interest in politics and less in being patronized by the pathetic quintet of Kindred who hung on to Prince Lladislas’s coattails. Dustin liked being in the dark, he liked being left alone with his toys, and he liked making Tomasz’s too-thin blood boil on a regular basis. Beyond that, everything in existence was gravy.

With a grunt, Dustin looped the straps through eyelets on the back of a large metal tank, then held the scissors in the flame for a minute to re-heat them before sealing the straps on. “Hope this damn thing works,” he said to himself, and began strapping the aluminum tank onto his back.

Interstate 270

Near Garrett Park, Maryland

Tolliver had lived out of a dumpster for over twenty-four hours, and he frankly hated it. His jaw was still in three pieces where MacEllen, the bastard, had broken it. The back of his head ached, though at least he’d been able to mend the cracks in his skull and stop the bleeding. And to top it all off, he smelled like rotting fast food, old rainwater and vomit. All in all, it sucked, but he’d been damn lucky the dumpster wasn’t emptied during the day.

As inhospitable as the surroundings were, he’d needed the time to heal, and he figured he’d hang here until suitable transportation came along. In the meantime, there was at least enough food and shelter, and he could be a patient sort of vampire when necessary.

Minutes ticked by. He hunkered down on top of the dumpster and watched for a suitable ride to arrive. Minivans came and went, as did broken-down Fords, dinged-up Toyotas and almost everything else imaginable. Finally, a perfect specimen rolled in.

The car was a black convertible, one of those squat little Beemers that had been all the rage a year or so back. The top was down so Tolliver could see the driver, a woman traveling by herself. She seemed utterly oblivious to anything except herself and her car, which meant that he’d be able to get close without a problem.

Plus, from what he could tell, she was a looker.

Soundlessly, he sprang down from his perch and moved towards the gas pumps. Other cars whizzed in and out, but Tolliver ignored them. He’d be out of here so fast it didn’t matter what anyone saw of him.

The driver was just getting back in when he reached the convertible. Her back was to him. It was perfect.

“Miss?” he said as he prepared to make a grab for the keys. “Could I beg some change from you?”

Lucita turned around, her eyes fixing on Tolliver’s. “I don’t think so. Get in.”

“Oh, shit,” he said weakly, and climbed into the passenger seat. His brain screamed at him to flee, but he couldn’t. Lucita’s will animated his limbs and forced him to sit meekly. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes as he tried to resist, but it was useless.

Lucita took the driver’s seat, slammed the door and started the car. Beside her, Tolliver literally shook with hatred and the effort of resistance, but made no other movement. With a sniff of disdain, Lucita hit the accelerator and the car eased out toward the exit ramp and the highway.

There was silence in the car for a few minutes, then Lucita said casually, “What are you doing here?” Tolliver sat, silent. “You have another tenth of a mile in which to answer,” she said mildly. “Otherwise, I’ll be annoyed.” Still, Tolliver said nothing. Unlamented, a highway marker whizzed by. “Fine. If you insist. Open the door.”

Slowly, inexorably, Tolliver’s hand reached the handle and pulled it. The door swung open for a second, then swung back toward closing. Helplessly, Tolliver struggled to hold it open. His eyes met Lucita’s as he glared hatred at her, and too late he realized the mistake.

“Keep the door open. Take your right foot, and place it against the surface of the road. Hold it there no matter what. You may lift it when you decide that you’re willing to talk to me.”

Relentlessly, Tolliver watched his right leg swing out and his foot drop toward the highway. He was a brave man, and he had no fear of pain, but watching what was slowly, inevitably happening to him came near to breaking his nerve.

Then his foot started scraping asphalt at ninety miles per hour, and there was no more time for fear.

There was, however, enough time to scream.

The Sanctuary Club Buffalo, New York

Phoebe hated the music they played at the clubs these days. It had no elegance, no style—just pounding beats that reminded her of men at hard labor, chained at the ankle and turning big rocks into small ones. By extension, then, she hated the beautiful people who came out every night to dance to that pile-driver beat. They still had their beauty, the beauty that had been taken away from Phoebe because she’d laughed at the wrong man one night. They could still look in the mirror and not weep for what might have been, for the admiring glances lost and the hearts that Phoebe would never get a chance to break.

Small wonder, then, that she enjoyed hunting on the club scene almost to exclusion, and that she was a bit more brutal in feeding than many. But tonight, that hatred served everyone’s purposes—Phoebe’s, Lladislas’s and Theo Bell’s.

“Phoebe,” the prince had said, all smiles and gentility, “I need a favor of you.” Behind him had stood the giant of an archon, saying nothing and almost frowning, clearly there to play bad cop if Lladislas’s attempts at persuasion went awry. Bell scared her the way big cats used to scare her, all muscle and grace that could uncoil with deadly speed. With an effort, she turned her attention back to what Lladislas was saying.

“So you see, there’s absolutely no time to waste. I—we need you to start on this immediately.”

“So let me see if I have this straight,” she drawled. “I’m supposed to go out on the town and bring a half-dozen—”

“Ten,” said Bell.

“—ten nice young men home and turn them into… into what I am, and then walk out the door and never see them again?”

“Exactly.” Lladislas nodded with the urgency of a man who wants to get the damn meeting over with so he can get to either the golf course or the men’s room. “Your pick. Don’t worry about cover-up for the disappearance; I’ve got Haraszty already on it. We have a safe site in Lancaster picked out for the Embraces so you don’t have to worry about that. The only pressure is time, which we have precious little of.”

Phoebe crossed her hands in her lap demurely. “I’m certainly open to discussing the matter, sugar, but there’s a little voice in my head askin’ what I get out of this arrangement.” “The gratitude of some very important people,” rumbled Bell. “Which is worth a lot more than you might think.”

The Nosferatu smiled winningly. “Of course, but I was wondering if I could have a small token of more concrete appreciation?”

Bell shot Lladislas a glance, who returned it with a look approaching resignation. He sighed. “What do you want?”

“If I’m never gonna see these childer again, I want one I can keep. When this, whatever this is, is all over, I want to make one I don’t have to leave.”

Without even looking at Bell, Lladislas said, “Done. There’s a car waiting for you downstairs. Tell Trietsch where you want to go, and he’ll handle all of the transportation. Dinner’s waiting for you out in Lancaster. I’ll see you tomorrow night to hear your estimation of how it went.”

“I’m going to need to go home and get ready. You can’t expect me to go out looking like this, can you?”

“Fine. Whatever.” Bell clearly sounded annoyed. “Tell the driver where you’ll meet him. Just don’t take too long.”

And just like that, they’d dismissed her. The fact that Lladislas had given in so easily on her demand made her think she should have asked for more. Either that, or the prince had no intention of honoring his boon, but she tried to put that worrisome possibility out of her head. So here she was walking into Ash’s (she supposed the title was a play on words; she despised that sort of thing), the latest in a long line of nightclubs to spring up, draw the crowds for a season, and then wither away. She had to be careful now; she’d already hit five other sites for recruits (she just couldn’t call them anything but that) and didn’t think she’d be recognized here, but you never could tell. Some nights the crowd along the rack was restless, and flowed from club to club like water. If someone had seen her at Gabriel’s Gate, and then at Zoobar, and had seen her leave each club with someone…

She panicked briefly, and considered changing the face she wore to a new one—say, that of the McClemens girl she’d met on that trip to Savannah—but it was too late. She was already inside, and if she went into the bathroom to change faces without changing outfits, it might have been noticed, and, oh, damnation and hellfire. Too late now, girl, she told herself. But after this one, I am definitely going home for a change of outfit and a change of face. Squaring her shoulders and adding a little bit of sway to her walk, she plunged into the crowd.

It didn’t take too long to find a likely recruit. He was tall and thin, with hands that constantly fluttered as he talked, and a thin mustache. His hair was close-cropped, and he wore a red vest over a white shirt and gray slacks. Phoebe thought he looked like a waiter at an Italian restaurant, to be honest, and wouldn’t have given him a second thought if he hadn’t attached himself to her as she walked on by.

Not that she could blame him, Phoebe noted. She’d outdone herself tonight, giving herself perfect alabaster skin, an aggressively cut blonde bob, and a face with the sort of high cheekbones, piercing blue eyes and elfin features that would drive certain unsavory sorts of men to certain unsavory thoughts. The black outfit was perhaps a touch too severe, but it hadn’t affected her success rate any. And now she had her touch on a string, and was slowly but surely leading him away from his friends and off into the night. At the moment, he was busy telling her all about himself, no doubts in hopes of exciting her admiration and desire. She found the whole thing laughable, of course—having seen five-century-old vampires crooning lullabies to tens of thousands of rats, she didn’t find marketing executives for sports bars too terribly impressive.

Phoebe let him natter on as she drifted toward the door. When he paused for breath, she interjected, “Isaiah, sugar, that is absolutely fascinating, but I am afraid I cannot hear half of what you are saying in this,” she made a gesture that took in the whole club, from the enclosed DJ booth upstairs to the crowded dance floor to the smoky haze of tables screening the bar at the back, “this dreadfully noisy place. But I’d so hate to end the evening so early. Would you mind… ?” She let the statement trail off, and hooked a finger in her mouth coyly. “No, no, I couldn’t ask that of you. It would be much too forward. You’d think terribly of me, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. Ask anything.” Isaiah leaned forward with almost feverish eagerness. Phoebe had noticed that when she’d made her little shrug, the boy had most certainly not been making eye contact. That, and the slight but noticeable pale band on his finger where a wedding band ought to have been made doing this a bit easier.

“I was thinking, mind you, that we don’t have to end the evening now. If, of course, you ain’t tired of my company?”

Isaiah licked his lips nervously. “Umm, sure. I mean, where would you like to go? I’d offer my place, but it’s a terrible mess at the moment, I’m an awful housekeeper, I have to admit….”

… and your wife probably won’t take too kindly to you bringing some blond thing home, sugar, she mentally finished the sentence. “Oh that’s quite all right. I was thinking, perhaps, my place?”

Isaiah nodded. “Of course. And you have no need to worry, I don’t think I could ever get tired of your company.”

Across the street, Trietsch was waiting, silent and efficient, in the Town Car Lladislas had loaned Phoebe for the evening’s work. The ghoul got out of the car and opened the door. “Good evening, Miss Phoebe.” He glanced at Isaiah. “Sir.

“Shall I take you home, ma’am?”

“Why, that would be just lovely,” Phoebe said. “Absolutely lovely.”

Wednesday, 11 August 1999, 3:08 AM

Interstate 270 Northbound South of Frederick, Maryland

Upon reflection, Lucita conceded that she probably could have simply forced the answers to her questions from Tolliver by the power of her mind, instead of resorting to torturing him, but Tolliver was the sort of vampire who invited that sort of thing. He’d been casually brutal and tiresomely vicious, and she’d lost patience with him upon their first meeting, years ago. Tormenting him was like tormenting a slug or a toad. One had no sensation that one was playing with anything even remotely human.

Oh, he’d broken after a couple of miles, babbling everything he knew. He’d mentioned whom he’d been traveling with, where they were going, whom they’d gotten their marching orders from and more. Apparently MacEllen and the rest had a haven set up for them thirty miles outside of Buffalo, a rendezvous point where Einar’s second pack would meet up with them. Then they would trash the city, which apparently was only lightly defended. That was news to Lucita. She had quizzed Tolliver about other troop movements and so on, but the vampire had sworn he knew nothing. As he’d been worn down past the ankle by this point, Lucita tended towards believing him.

All in all, bumping into Tolliver at the rest area like that was quite the stroke of luck. Lucita hated to depend solely on intelligence supplied by the Nosferatu, so she’d been heading into D.C. to ferret out some information about her targets on her own. After all, if she were going after Sabbat, it was going to be hard to avoid Sabbat territory. And then Tolliver had so kindly presented himself to her.

When he had spilled everything he was privy to, she’d slowed the car and shoved him out into the weeds along the shoulder. The sun would be up in a few hours and he’d fry. Or not. It didn’t really matter anymore.

Lucita’s car was pointed north as she pressed on into the night.

Stone Hedge Commons Lancaster, New York

The house was a new one, in a new housing development that was up against the fringe of wetlands by some creek or other. The house was vaguely colonial in an impressionistic sort of way, painted white with blue trim. The porch light was on, giving the whole thing a weirdly cheery look. The hedges were neatly trimmed and the lawn was putting-green short. It was utterly suburban, if a bit masculine for a creature as frail and feminine as Phoebe supposedly was. Needless to say, Isaiah took to the place immediately.

Trietsch opened the door to the Lincoln and then vanished in the way good servants seem to have, leaving Phoebe and her victim alone on the walk. He’d tried to get frisky a few times on the way over, but Phoebe had playfully fended him off and pointed to the driver. “Soon,” she’d whispered to him. “We’ll be home soon.”

And now they were “home”—someone’s home, at least, and it would all be over soon indeed. She led him to the door and fumbled in her purse for the keys; he took the opportunity to try to steal a kiss. Laughingly, she fended him off and said again, “Soon.” The door opened onto blackness. Phoebe stepped inside and reached to the left, where she knew the light switch was. Isaiah followed her in, shutting the door behind him. The floor of the hallways was hardwood, and the overhead light gleamed off it.

Slightly to the left, a carpeted staircase rose to the second floor, while past it the elegantly decorated living room stood mostly in shadow. Down the front hall was the breakfast nook, and past it a curtain hiding a patio door. The walls were painted eggshell white, and a landscape by someone who had taken at least a few classes hung on the wall to the right. Phoebe thought it was the blandest, dullest, most jejune thing she’d ever seen.

“Very nice,” said Isaiah. “Did you decorate it yourself?”

“Why, no,” Phoebe said, overcoming the urge to grit her teeth. “I had some people do it for me. The upstairs is much nicer, though. May I show you?”

“Of course,” he replied. “After you?” He made a gesture that might have been considered suave by a girl with a few drinks in her. Phoebe just thought it crass.

“No, no, after you. I want you to be surprised when you get to the top of the stairs.” “If you insist.” Isaiah started up the staircase without bothering to look for a light, his mind clearly on what he thought was waiting for him. Phoebe, who had no need of light, followed. As she watched him stump up the staircase, she found herself suddenly very weary of him, of his poses and transparent expectations, of his thinly veiled contempt for her and his elevated sense of his own attractiveness and prowess. It was going to be, quite frankly, a relief to kill him.

Isaiah reached the landing at the top of the stairs, his footfalls muffled by the carpet. Phoebe joined him seconds later. “Interesting,” he said, “but a bit dim. So what did you want to show me?”

“That door, sugar,” she said. “Leads to the bedroom, which I did decorate myself.” “Really?”

“Why yes,” she said with a mischievous giggle. God almighty, she thought, I am doing this man’s wife a favor. “Step right through here, sugar.” She opened the door and held it for him. He stepped past her, and she followed, shutting the door as she did. “Close your eyes. I want this to be a surprise when I turn on the light.”

Obediently, he did so, going so far as to cover his eyes with his hands. Phoebe slid out of her jacket, undid her blouse and dropped her disguise, smiling all the while. She walked over to him, the only light in the room dim moonlight through the Venetian blinds. Isaiah still had his eyes closed obediently, and his breathing had acquired a raspy edge. “Almost ready?” he said with a sort of pathetic hopefulness.

“Almost,” she said, and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Now.”

Isaiah opened his eyes and screamed. Phoebe just smiled. “How do you like me by moonlight, sugar?” she said, and forced him into a kiss. He struggled, but her hands on his shoulders drew him irresistibly forward. “How do you like me now?”

Isaiah screamed again, once, before she finished with him and dragged him down to the basement with the others. Two of them were starting to stir, but that was Tomasz’s problem, not hers. She was just in human resources.

“Six down, four to go,” she said to the air, and locked the front door behind her as she went out. Trietsch sat, waiting, at curbside. He opened the car door for her with impeccable courtesy, and then seated himself behind the wheel.

“You look lovely tonight, Miss Phoebe,” he said as the Lincoln pulled away from the curb.

“Why thank you, sugar,” she said, genuinely pleased. “But then again, I always do, at least in the right light. I always do.”

Interstate 270 Northbound South of Frederick, Maryland

Tolliver hadn’t moved much when Talley found him in the culvert by the Interstate. A Sabbat lookout—they were stationed extensively along the northern arc of the Beltway—had sworn up and down that he’d spotted Lucita zipping past in a convertible, so Talley, after making sure the three archbishops were in secure locations, had gone to investigate.

After a bit of driving around, Talley came upon what a mortal would mistake for the results of roadkill dragged along beneath a car. The keen nose of the Hound, however, recognized Cainite vitae, even when it was spread in a bloody streak along a couple of miles of highway. Not too far beyond the end of the streak, Talley found Tolliver. The rotund and rather mangled fellow still survived, more or less.

Talley sliced his hand with the jagged edge of a muffler that lay discarded nearby. A few drops of blood revived Tolliver enough to mumble in answer to Talley’s questions about Lucita. “Buffalo… and MacEllen’s crew,” he moaned during brief episodes of near- lucidity. “She wanted to know… Buffalo… MacEllen’s crew.”

Talley wasted only a few seconds phoning for someone to pick up the poor bloody bastard he’d found. The Hound himself was headed north. He knew an opportunity when he saw one. Lucita was going to Buffalo, for whatever reason. This was his chance, without the damnable, arrogant, impossible archbishops underfoot, to let her know that she needn’t bother going after any of them, that he, the Hound, would not allow it. It was his chance, in accordance with Monçada’s wishes, to warn her off.

It was her chance as well. If she didn’t take advantage of it, Talley knew, he might very well have to kill her.

Khalil lay listlessly in an old armchair, eyes closed against the droning, petulant complaints of his master. Sometimes they stopped… the young Ravnos opened his eyes with a little more hope… and then the tongue, sharpened by thousands of years of inactivity, began whittling on him again.

Ramona was gone; she had stormed out early Tuesday, unable to stay still any longer. She had tried to drag her partner along and take him out of the dark, queer mood that had come over him—but she hadn’t tried very hard. She hadn’t come back yet, either. Maybe she was dead, Khalil thought, without caring very much. Maybe Mary had caught her and eaten her. Maybe Mary would catch and eat him. It seemed like a fine idea, on the whole. Mary had power, now. Real power. She didn’t have an evil old bastard looking over her shoulder all the time and shouting in her head. She probably had enough strong blood in her that the old demon couldn’t crawl into her mind. Gods, what he would give for that freedom again….

A faint papery noise caught his attention. His lackluster eyes drifted to where his prisoner sat calmly on the sofa, poring over her books and papers. She turned a page— that was the sound. Khalil slumped back into his misery. Through sheer inertia, he kept watching her, and a new train of thought began, slowly, to move.

Hesha Ruhadze, he mused, was a very powerful snake. Khalil had been dirt under his feet in Calcutta. Nearly nothing to Ruhadze, like he was fucking nothing to the old bastard who spoke in his head. And what was the real difference between Khalil and Hesha? Khalil was a smart guy. He’d been around. But Hesha was an elder, or the closest thing to it, while Khalil had eight or nine ancestors between himself and Ravana, let alone the King of Demons or Caine or whoever the hell.

Hesha, he realized, would always have the upper hand because his blood was thicker. Khalil stood up, and his dull gaze remained fixed on Elizabeth. Elizabeth… one generation younger than Hesha. Devil knew how many generations older than Khalil, no matter how few nights she had actually seen. Slowly he crept down the room toward her, unconsciously opening his mouth, licking his lips, sliding his body against the sofa as he went. He hopped up, catlike, and took a cross-legged perch on the narrow arm of the couch.

The Ravnos stared down at the Setite like a vulture. He considered her for the first time as a stepping stone, rather than a bargaining chip. He liked the idea. He thought of finding Hesha with his own teeth still stained from the Setite’s childe. He realized suddenly that his mouth was open, nearly drooling. He snapped it shut.

You will not take her blood, rebellious whelp, the voice inside said. I forbid you.

For once, Khalil screamed back in his thoughts: Go away! You may be an elder, but you are still stuck in the mud of Calcutta—I will not let you make me your slave any longer! I am a free Rom, and do as I please!

After a moment, Elizabeth turned her head and regarded him coolly. Khalil bit his tongue, bothered by the fact that she could ignore him even while he thought about destroying her… that she was calm while he hungered after her blood. She didn’t fear him—not really. His hands made fists. The woman’s eyes dropped, took notice of his tightened knuckles, then flicked back to his face. Khalil’s pointed fingernails popped into the upholstery. She raised an eyebrow.

“Damn you, bitch. Say something,” he hissed. Elizabeth’s face went blank.

“Why don’t you say anything to me? Plead for your freedom. Ask me to let you go. Ask me what I plan to do with you.”

And she said nothing. He struck her.

“Say something!” He hit her again.

“Beg me for mercy. Beg.”

Khalil hit her hard enough to break a mortal jaw. The sparks rose in her eyes, but she held her head high, and was mute.

He bent his fingers back and forced his claws—inch-long, dirty, dark claws—out of their sheaths six inches from her eyes. He set one hand at her throat, the other on her face. “Beg for mercy.”

Elizabeth looked up at him without emotion. “Do you have any?”

Slave, the voice inside said, you have neither mercy nor wisdom.

And Elizabeth’s eyes finally widened, as Khalil began to thrash in pain, hurling himself away from the couch and the sudden, roaring fire in his mind.

When the next explosion occurred in his brain, Khalil Ravana had already spent several hours pacing, rubbing his aching head, glaring at his prisoner, and sullenly trying to ignore the voice—gods, he wished he were mad, so there might be voices and some variety. Then, he heard the thing in Calcutta roar:

LISTEN TO ME!

Khalil felt his guts leap up around his own heart to strangle it. He screamed. He felt Elizabeth watching him in this fresh humiliation, and didn’t care—he ran for the wall, trapped like a rat, and beat his skull against it.

“No more!” Khalil yelled and scraped his hands on the rough bricks. The real pain in his palms, his head, his knuckles—drove out, barely, the torture in his belly. In his fury and fear, the mantra he used to fight that torture slipped out his mouth and into the room: “Not real, not real, notrealnotrealnotreal!”

“What isn’t real?” Elizabeth asked sharply.

THIS is real, the voice exclaimed.

Khalil screamed and staggered to the kitchen island. Clutching at the countertop, he stared at his own fists, cutting deep furrows in the formica. His eyes snapped up to meet his prisoner’s. She was standing, reaching out to him as far as the chains would let her. Sympathy— from her? In a flash, he felt he understood. She was afraid. She had been afraid all along. She concealed the fear from him the way he hid his master’s domination from her… and what good did it do either of them? Her weak, soft heart betrayed her. His weak will betrayed him.

I am real, shrieked the presence in his head, and Khalil allowed the storm of that voice to howl forth into the room, for his ears, for the Setite’s ears, for the rats and mice and roaches: “I WILL DESTROY YOU IF YOU CONTINUE TO DISOBEY ME!”

“Good God,” whispered Elizabeth. “Who—” “SULLEN WRETCH!”

That no windows broke seemed a miracle. The booming noise went on making words, but nothing vibrated to their timbre.

“HOW DARE YOU?” Khalil fell to the floor, the hateful words spewing from his mouth, seeming as though they must wrench his body apart with their violence. “SHE MUST NOT HEAR ME! THE SNAKES MUST NOT KNOW OF ME—YOU WILL HAVE US ALL IN THE FIRE! I FEEL YOUR

MIND, BASTARD SPAWN! I FEEL YOU FIGHTING ME.” With slow, heavy, painful movements, Khalil crept toward Elizabeth. Though she could not comprehend what was happening, still she helped him onto the couch and grasped his shoulders in an attempt to still his contortions. “IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF COURAGE—OF DEFIANCE? HOW LOW YOU ARE,” the voice

rolled on, “YOU DOG, YOU FLEA, YOU WORM!” And the gypsy writhed and whimpered like a wounded animal. The cruel voice changed to a language Liz did not know.

“Khalil? Khalil!” The Setite clapped her hands over the shilmulo’s ears, but he shook her off. She tried, without any real idea in mind, to run to her workshop—the leg irons jerked her back. Falling, her shoulder hit the glass-topped table and knocked it over. Papers and books tumbled around her. The remote control must have crashed to the floor as well— suddenly, soft music filled in around them. She groped to turn the sound off, but stopped at the change in her jailer. His eyes had opened, just a little. She turned up the volume, and Khalil nodded, desperately. He sprang up and yanked the controller out of her hand. Violins and vocals flooded the room. The strange language was (very nearly) covered by the sound.

“Something to see,” demanded Khalil, hacking and gasping.

Elizabeth caught up a deck of cards from the scattered amusements Ramona had provided her. She fumbled the rubber band off onto her wrist and turned over the top card—

“Knave of diamonds,” Khalil shouted.

“Four of spades,” Liz yelled back. The second card— “Knave of diamonds!”

“Ten of clubs.” “Knave of diamonds.” “Queen of spades.”

It went on and on. Elizabeth shuffled and cut again and again, and Khalil went on seeing the wrong card fifty-three times out of fifty-four. The music and (when they thought of it) the television blared out around them, but for the longest time it seemed to make no difference. Khalil crumpled at the end of one run, wracked with phantom pains, but Elizabeth urged him on. The effort to see the real card behind the false one… that took more of his mind off the punishments of his master… straining to hear or lip-read from Elizabeth… another layer between his senses and the lie. He worked like the devil to ignore the pain inside (Not real, he reminded himself over and over) and the voice (real, but less real, when he truly concentrated, than the news anchor, or the singer, or the Setite’s quick answers). At last he had no thought left over for anything but the glossy red and black pips in front of him.

“Knave of diamonds.” “No.”

“Knave of…” It was a court card—it was a… king— “King of clubs?” he mouthed at Elizabeth. The next card was stubbornly the jeweled jack again, but he knew now that he could turn the trick. In another hour, he had his own eyes under control. He turned off the television, and found that the rant had subsided some time before. He pressed the switch for the stereo, and realized his body only hurt him where the wall and the bricks had left their marks.

“Now, you old tyrant,” he said to the empty air.

Are you entirely finished?

“Yes. And so are you.”

“Death to tyrants,” murmured Elizabeth, curled up once more on her couch, watching the one-sided conversation.

What was the purpose of this little game?

“I am not your slave. Treat me with some respect, and I might keep working for you. As a free Rom. If you give me what I want while I get you what you want.”

What have you ever done to earn my respect, you vain little dung beetle? said the voice. I have lost patience with your obduracy. Perhaps I should leave you to your own pitiful devices.

Khalil blinked. He licked his lips. He walked over to the library and ran his hand along the book spines.

“There’s a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the dictionary,” Elizabeth suggested brightly. “Emancipation Proclamation, too.”

The Ravnos shot a suspicious glance at her. She’d helped him. And now she had something to hold over him. She might be sweet enough tonight, but she was a Setite and they used everything, eventually. Liz wouldn’t be able to stop herself from twisting the secret round him—and she was Hesha’s childe and thrall. She would tell him. Now there was no way he could use her to track Hesha, allow the two of them to come together, unless he was sure of killing one “accidentally” as they met. Should he go ahead and drink her blood now? No, she could be useful just in case the elder asshole decided not to lie down for it again. Who knew how strong his blood would have to be to drive out the monster? Besides, the voice in his head probably wanted him to kill her now, now that she knew of his presence. He didn’t want to give it the satisfaction. Damn.

And the Nosferatu hadn’t called back. That door was closed. He found what he was looking for and snatched it up: a phone book. He’d find that snake his own damn way. He flipped through the Yellow Pages, hunting for fortune-tellers. Mary would be able to give him the dirt on every turf war and snitch in the city. If she had the Sight (never likely but always possible for a shilmulo) she might put her finger on Hesha from where she sat.

The book referred him to “Psychics and Mediums,” and he let it drop to the floor as he took up the M-Z. He found Madama Alexandria in a quarter-page display ad, offering everything from “Astrology” to “Yi Ching Readings.” Her address, her number, her website were all done up in black on a sky-blue background, and the list of services ran three columns on green below. Between them was printed a bright red sixteen-spoked wheel. Khalil chuckled. Mary had dodged the anti- gypsy fortune-telling laws throughout the British Empire for decades. Now she could bring in the gaje with an ad designed on the Rom flag. He’d no idea she’d become such an internationalist….

Khalil ripped out the page and set the volume back on its shelf. He crouched to pick up A-L, put it up. He saw that the other book had flopped open amid the nightclubs: “Gala Knights Exotic Dance Club” and “Gary’s Grill” and “Gehenna.”

Gehenna. Khalil looked again. In huge but emaciated capital letters: the end of the world, the rising of the Antediluvians, the name of a bar. Amusing. Khalil read more. “Leave the Herd Behind.” “No Cams or Videotaping Permitted.” The Ravnos blinked; that was an odd way to put that, and an odd thing to waste space on in the phone book. “Live Adult Entertainment” and “Free Buffet with Cover” were set so close together and so raggedly that it was hard to say where one stopped and the other started; the two lines could nearly be read “Live Adult Free Buffet” and “Entertainment with Cover.” “Open Sunset to Sunrise 7 Nites a Week.” Khalil gaped. Surely, no one could be this blatant…. “Club 666—Party with DJ The Beast Every Friday.” He looked at the number under the ad. 718-722-2288. He picked up his portable phone, frowning, and worked the word out. 718-SABBATT.

“Holy shit,” said Khalil, and began laughing out loud. “Holy…” It was hilarious. It was so ungodly obvious. It was so stupid; it was brilliant… the Sabbat, slapping the Camarilla prince in the face with their presence, setting up a contact point without all the tiresome Elysia and rules and… he’d go tonight, to see if it were true. It couldn’t be true. But it had— The bolts on the door began grinding open. Khalil’s whoops and cackles died abruptly.

Ramona slipped in, filthy with dirt and dust. She started doing up the locks again, throwing a glance toward her partner. “Any news?” she asked, in a voice that expected none.

“Yes,” Khalil yelped wildly. “No!” He grinned from ear to ear. “No, the Nosferatu have not called to set up another meet; yes, I have news. We’re going out. We’re going to see the competition and start a little game.”

Thursday, 12 August 1999, 2:33 AM The Gehenna Club, Queens New York City, New York

Gehenna was alarmingly easy to enter. Khalil, as confidently as possible, led Ramona up a short flight of steps to a loading dock, past a tight knot of smokers, and into a crushing crowd. No one challenged them. They filtered through the dancers and the lurkers and the drunks and came to rest in the calmer eddy caused by a six-foot-high amplifier.

“Why d’we always got to meet people in fucking bars?” Ramona shrieked into his ear. “What else is open all night—” the Gangrel shook her head, and Khalil bellowed it again, louder, “and full of freaks anyway? Who the hell’s going to notice a few corpses in this place?” And he looked around at “this place.”

Khalil’s feet felt the music through the concrete floor; his ears suffered. The décor ran to metal—corrugated aluminum roofing sheets, inch-thick distressed steel tables, and wrought- iron things that looked more like medieval torture devices than chairs. All of it drove the sound back into the room. The echoes made the music impossible to follow; only the beat survived the acoustics. He looked toward the ceiling, and found other levels of flooring blocking his view. He pulled Ramona toward a spiral staircase and fought the swarm to go up.

Most of the patrons wore black—a different black, he realized, than the kind that waited outside Sexton’s Dirty Secret. That was mourning black, raven black, Hamlet black, crêpe black—deliberate and romantic, or desperate and nihilistic. These people dressed in burnt black, iron black, tar black, coal black, dead black—just black.

The second level—one of them—lofts and platforms seemed welded and bolted to the old building’s steel framework almost at random—was a trifle quieter. From here they could look down on the mass of writhing bodies in the pit, moshing… or fighting…. Khalil swore under his breath as he caught sight of blood and teeth in the dance below. A body fell under the crowd, and half a dozen people went down after it. They might have been friends of the broken boy, trying to rescue him. A girl, undeniably mortal and screaming at the top of her lungs in real panic, tried to run for the door. Another woman blocked her way. Other guests surged in and Khalil lost sight of the little drama. Obviously, anyone who did notice things here was taken care of before they left. The shilmulo, hardened as he was, shivered. He stepped away from the railing and unconsciously moved closer to Ramona. Instinctively shoulder to shoulder, Ravnos and Gangrel continued up the stairs.

On the third level, Khalil caught sight of a few black-curtained, enclosed rooms. After a moment’s hesitation he made for the largest. The inner door was guarded, not by a large and burly bouncer, but by a short, thin, teenaged girl. Her dead glance flickered once over Khalil and twice over Ramona, then focused again on the distance. “Enter.”

“Thanks, babe.” Khalil forced himself to sound more confident than he felt.

Inside the glass walls and black canvas drapes it was whisper-quiet. Small groups of men, women, and children sat around on couches, at tables, and in booths. Every eye in the room turned on the newcomers. Every eye in the room looked away—not all at once, not individually as interest waned—as each little band dropped back to its own business as a whole entity.

Khalil felt ice prickle down the back of his neck and moved forward, smiling a little cruelly to cover his repulsion. Ramona nearly trod on his heels, she was so close, and he found he didn’t mind at all. She was almost comforting.

The room hummed back into life. People stood, sat, moved, drifted into other conversations. A table by the wall filled in; stools from a counter disappeared to seat larger parties. By apparent chance, a comfortable couple of loveseats opened up near the center. The shilmulo checked the layout and swore under his breath. That was the only place left to sit; the Sabbat had forced a card on him as neatly as any conjuror.

Ramona and Khalil walked softly to the two small couches. They sat apart automatically, giving up the physical proximity of their allegiance for the ability to see in both directions. This left an empty spot beside each of them; the Ravnos watched his companion arrange herself so that there really was no possibility of anyone sitting next to her. He placed his own bag down and lounged a bit. That would do for his own vacancy.

And now what? He wondered. This venture seemed less like a bright one every moment. The scene on his right kept shifting, and he found it difficult to track faces and movements; another surprise could come out of that deck at any moment. On his left, there was a sprawling mess of people sitting around a table. He labeled them in his mind… one uncaring shark, one slinking cat, one stoic turtle, one chattering monkey, one strutting cock, and one pathetic little dog. Their body language alone was enough to unnerve the shilmulo. The animals touched each other too much; hands, legs, words, looks, and mouths intertwined about the booth. The dog and cat stroked the shark and he settled down farther amongst them. The rooster preened and let the monkey put her fingers on his face and through his hair. Khalil found himself staring, and the young rooster, birdlike, fixed a beady eye back upon him.

“What the fuck do you want?” demanded the man from where he sat. The monkey’s hands flicked back sharply. Suddenly the whole band was watching Khalil.

The Ravnos kept his gaze on the proud one; fighting cocks, he reminded himself, were still chickens… the louder the crow, the weaker the punch… just don’t look at the shark…. “Not you,” sneered Khalil. He sized the man up, visibly, and watched him take offense, take another look, and take a step back from the fight. The Ravnos smiled and licked his lips. “Definitely not you,” he said. “I need to talk to someone… important.”

The rooster lunged forward. The dog shook himself and followed to keep from being left behind. The shark was ready… but settled lazily back. The cat touched the monkey with her toe, and the monkey took the fighting pair by the shoulders and whispered to them. The entire table looked across the way, past Khalil, and blinked in respectful satisfaction.

The perfect stereotype of a colonial aristocrat peered down his long nose at the intruders, and the gypsy boy in Khalil instantly hackled. “Well?” the narrow-faced man asked in an infinitely tired voice. “What is it that you do you want? You may speak to me.”

“You the top man here?” Khalil shot out, in deliberate disbelief.

“I am,” answered the aristocrat, guardedly. He studied them as though they were pinned insects in a museum exhibit.

Khalil grinned widely. “Do you mind if I just check that?” He pulled a small, round plastic mirror out of his bag and whipped it under the man’s hand. The thin, gray skin turned a bit purple with rage… but it was also reflected in the mirror. Khalil shook his head and tsk’ed. “No. Don’t think so.”

A woman appeared out of the crowd beside him and laughed like wind-chimes. She wore a platinum-colored jumpsuit over a slender, pale body. Her bones were beautiful; her hair and eyes were jet-black and striking. “Sit down, Jean-Paul,” she suggested pleasantly. “How is this man to know how highly we hold you in our counsels?” She plucked the mirror from Khalil’s hand, and her shining white nails had no reflection. “Relax, all of you,” she insisted, smiling at the crowd around her, the animals, Jean-Paul, and the two intruders—now unmistakably her guests.

“Now,” said the silvery woman, edging her way onto Khalil’s couch. “I’m Yve. This is Jean-Paul.” Jean-Paul took up a standing post at one end of Ramona’s seat. “You look like a man with a purpose. What did you come here for?”

“I have a few things worth trading; I have a few things I want. I’d like to make a deal.” “I see.” Yve crossed her long legs and regarded him curiously. “What kind of ‘things’

do you bring to my table?”

I have knowledge of,” Khalil paused significantly, “the Eye of Hazimel, that object of dreadful fame. I can tell you how to heal the wounds it causes.”

Yve’s shadow-black eyes widened slightly, but her voice remained nonchalant. “What makes you think we don’t already know all we need to know about this Eye? Tell me more, if you please.”

“I can offer a means of tracking the Eye.” It’s not transferable, he thought, but this darling doesn’t need to know that. “Information on how to use it, when you have it, and how to shut it down when you don’t need it anymore.” He went on, carried away by the attentive expression of his companion. “Missing pieces from the legends about it. The true story of its origin. The tale of what it has done since coming to America.” Khalil smugly folded his arms. If push came to shove, he could even deliver on a little of what he promised.

“Why, if you have all that, don’t you…” Yve searched for words, “track down the infamous Eye yourself?” She seemed genuinely interested, moving closer to him.

Khalil grinned. Quite a compliment, being asked that seriously by one who knew. “Healthy respect for my own skin,” he answered with a casual shrug. “Besides, you folks are the ones with a beef against the old-timers, if you know what I mean. Some night you’re going to go after them. The Eye, assuming you have somebody tougher than J.P. to hold on to it…” Khalil glanced skeptically at the not-amused Jean-Paul, “could be a powerful weapon. And where there’s one eye, there’s bound to be another. Knowing how to heal the wounds could come in handy.” Khalil stroked his mustache proudly. “Also—”

“There is more?”

“I get around, Yve. I see things.”

“So what else have you seen?” Her shoulder grazed his. “What can I expect in return?” He gazed down at her.

“What do you want?” And Yve’s flirting, long-lashed eyes promised a great deal. “Money, to begin with.”

“Well, that’s cheap enough.” She winked. “Money for our new friend, Jean-Paul.” The aristocrat reached into a pocket of his long black coat and fetched forth a thick,

old-fashioned wallet. He glanced inside and abstracted the entire contents—nearly an inch of hundred-dollar bills—and set them gracefully on the table before Khalil.

He took them without counting, and kept his eyes on his hostess. “Camarilla blood.” “Oh, I like that. For magic or for…”

“For the other. American princes spawn childer like rabbits, don’t they?”

“Yes, indeed. Particularly in New York. We could mark down a pretty young cony for you quite easily. Michaela simply can’t keep her hands off the old money here, and so few of them can fight. Catching one once we’ve named her will be your problem, of course.” She laughed again in her bell-like way. “That’s almost a favor ≠to us, not from us, my dear Khalil. Ask for something difficult.”

“Security while I’m staying in New York.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “That is harder to arrange. I don’t care for it myself….” She paused thoughtfully. “We might be able to fix something up. Escorts through our territory, a fairly safe haven for your days. It would be far less complicated, of course, if you were one of us.” Her inflection made a question and an invitation out of the statement. Before Khalil could reply, she shook her head, dismissing the matter. “Just think about it. There are… considerable benefits, you know.”

Ramona cleared her throat loudly and shattered the mood. Khalil caught a glare from her, and brought himself back to business. Not quite what the Gangrel was waiting for, but these were the people to get it for him.

“I want Hesha Ruhadze.”

Yve’s eyebrow lifted again. Jean-Paul merely seemed lost. “Ruhadze?” he repeated carefully. “Ah.” He nodded. “Hesha abn Yusuf.”

It was Khalil’s turn to look blank. Yve glanced from one man to the other and translated. “Black, bald, arrogant Setite. He toured Europe a great deal last century. How do you want him?”

“Battered, burnt, staked, and left for the sun.” “Head on a silver platter?”

“If that’s easier for you.” “Fierce, aren’t we?”

Khalil thought of Hesha’s black hand staking him down as he was about to take his prey, of Hesha’s cultured voice lecturing him, of the humiliating wait in Chicago for men that never came, the fact that had Hesha not hunted the Eye to Calcutta, the voice would not have called Khalil into service. The snake should not be allowed to live.

“Call it that,” he uttered shortly. He shot a warning glance at Ramona, who showed signs of speaking. “Can you do it?”

“I would need to consult with my partners; this Setite has a certain… reputation. And there is a very strong temple here—” She shrugged. “We can kill anyone. It’s a matter, more, of whether what you offer is worth the risk of allying the snakes with the Camarilla. Would you,” she said, rising, “give us just a moment?”

Ramona shifted nervously, glaring a warning at Khalil, and he felt a little fear of his own creep up beside him. Still hearty with confidence, he held up an arresting hand.

“I can do better than that. Here, take my number—call me back when you know what we can do for each other, and when.” He stood up. “My friend here has another appointment tonight, and I’d hate to have her miss it.”

Yve took his handwritten card and held her guest’s glance a moment. She seemed disappointed, and the Ravnos was uncertain whether to be flattered or frightened. “We’ll call. I’ll call. Either way we decide. I do think we’ll be able to help you.”

Khalil scouted the way out. It was clear, and Ramona was already making for the door. No good-byes, he thought, and followed her example.

Stone Hedge Commons Lancaster, New York

It was damned dark in the basement, which was just the way Tomasz liked it. From his position at the top of the stairs, he could see that there were bodies on the floor. Some were moving and some were not; it was the former that concerned him. The latter had been tossed in by a few of Lladislas’s bullyboy goons for the new childer to feed upon, otherwise they would have torn each other apart, rendering the whole exercise pointless. Briefly he wondered whom the victims had been. Homeless men and women, perhaps, or people whom Lladislas had wanted out of the way for some reason or other. It didn’t much matter in the grand scheme of things, not anymore.

Tomasz had seen Phoebe when she’d returned from her last hunt. She’d looked weary, and there was no way she could carry on any longer. He was glad that she was done; less pleased that his part in this little drama was beginning. Still, alea jacta est, as Father Andreas would have said once upon a time, in the Old Country.

Tomasz looked down into the gloom, still cloaked in the shadows of the mind he could call to himself. He was used to the dark, used to spotting small details in it, and could see the tableau beneath him clearly. There were ten figures moving about, some more active than others. Two sat huddled in corners, rocking back and forth as if terrified. Others sucked quietly at the corpses on the floor, nursing like monstrous infants at a corpse-mother’s breast. One pounded on a wall endlessly, senselessly, mindlessly. Another merely staggered about on his hands and knees, crying softly and promising anyone who might be listening that he would never do anything bad again. In the minuscule light available, they reminded Tomasz uncomfortably of worms, degraded and inhuman.

The sooner he got this over with, Tomasz decided, the better. So he let his mask of invisibility drop. Steeling himself in case the mob decided to rush him, he flicked the switch on the wall, and blinked furiously as the fluorescent bulbs on the basement ceiling flickered into life. At the sudden flare of light, all of the bestial things on the floor of the cellar stopped in their tracks and looked up at him. He could see fear in their eyes, and cold hatred as well. He had made no effort to disguise himself, so his full hideousness was on display. Hopefully it would be enough to frighten them into listening, or at least out of trying something foolish. The light showed the first warts beginning to blossom on the new vampires’ faces, the first signs of monstrosity blossoming.

He sat on the steps and smiled as gently as he was able.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Tomasz, and I am here to help you.”

They all looked up at him, sudden, terrible hope in their eyes. They believed him, Tomasz knew. They believed him because they had no choice but to believe him. Not to believe him was to embrace a truth too horrible to be borne. Not to believe was to admit that they had become monsters like Phoebe.

Or him.

He took a deep, unnecessary breath, and launched into the story that he and Lladislas had grudgingly cobbled together while Phoebe was out doing the prince’s dirty work. It sounded clumsy to him, patchy and unbelievable, but he knew better already, and unlike the men in the room below, he was not desperate.

Desperate men will believe almost anything, after all.

Within a few sentences, Tomasz knew he had all ten in thrall. Part of him rambled on, but inside, he thought: They will fight for us. They will die for us. And I cannot help but tell myself that it will be a kindness when they do.

Dawn was not far off when Tomasz finished his tale, and promised the men that someone would return for them the next evening to help them. He told them that they were being kept in the basement to protect them from the fatal sun, and that they would slumber without dreaming. Then he had left them to sprawl among the other corpses, and locked the basement door. Two ghouls stood there with shotguns, presumably to keep the vampires within from attempting escape. He nodded to them as he passed, “I do not think you need to worry about them, no,” Tomasz said. Upstairs, a bedroom had been sealed against the daylight when the house was built. Lladislas had graciously offered it to Tomasz, and sunrise was so close that he had no choice but to accept the invitation.

The room itself was comfortably furnished, with clean white sheets on a queen-sized bed and foil-wrapped windows. There was no other furniture in the room. Tomasz found himself drowsily disapproving of the decor as he locked the door behind him and lay down on the bed.

Tomorrow I gather Phoebe and my treasures, and we leave this place. And no one will ever know of this.

The Gehenna Club, Queens New York City, New York

Jean-Paul, livid, turned on his pack-mate. “He’s a Ravnos, isn’t he?” “Oh, Jean… how can you possibly tell?”

“I know. Damn gypsy mongrel.”

“You’re right, of course. But how reactionary of you.”

He quivered with rage. “Why didn’t you give the word? Stake him, question him… turn him over to the—” he made a flat, palm-up gesture as meaningful as a finger across the throat.

“Jean-Paul, you know better. Touch a Ravnos without precautions and every gypsy leech on the continent will camp on your doorstep and haunt you.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t too many of them around these nights. One of our packs was boasting about pulping some old gypsy in his haven the other night.” Jean-Paul raised his open palms. “I don’t see any repercussions.”

“What do you think this might be?”

“I just can’t imagine a trap, with that loser involved. Nobody that dresses that badly could be dangerous.”

“Still…”

“But why in hell did you bargain with that trash? Yve, it demeans you even to speak with him.” His long, pale hands reached out, not quite caressing her shoulder.

The Lasombra watched her companion run down. “And you a blueblood, too. Where were you when the intrigants were busy in your chateau? Jean-Paul, haven’t you ever heard of giving a man more rope? Letting the accused convict himself? If you let a man under pressure talk long enough he will tell you more about himself than he intends to. Quiet yourself.”

She left him for a moment to have words with the youngsters at the booth beside them, the ones who had had first contact with her new problem. They listened eagerly and slipped out of the quiet room together. Then she returned, and after a pause called to him.

“Jean.”

“Yes?” Sullenly.

“Speak to the archbishop for me. Tell him about our visitor—tell him what Khalil said about the Eye of Hazimel, and ask him if there is such a thing.” Jean-Paul stared at her in disbelief, then stalked away to do her bidding.

And Yve, sitting alone, stared thoughtfully into the mirror Khalil had left behind him.

Thursday, 12 August 1999, 4:35 AM Sunnyside, Queens

New York City, New York

On the walk home from the Gehenna Club, Ramona grabbed Khalil by the sleeve and searched his face. Her own darkened. “You want them to snuff Hesha. You told me we were just goin’ to find this guy. And you told Liz you’re gonna bring her back to her boyfriend. What the hell’s goin’ on?”

Khalil had known this was coming; he’d had the whole way down from the Sabbat’s nest to come up with an answer Ramona would accept. He detached her claws from his clothes and replied patiently.

“Hesha bound Liz to him with his blood. She only thinks she loves him. If we kill him, we free her, all right? What do you know about blood bonds, hmm? Don’t you know that she’s nothing but a slave to him? He was the one who chained her up and left her for the sun—and she still couldn’t help crawling back to kiss his feet if we let her go now. Do you think I like keeping her locked up like that?” A little thrill ran through him—actually, he rather did….

“I’m not going to use her to track Hesha, not knowing what he did to her. But you can’t let her know what we’re doing for her, or the blood bond would probably drive her insane trying to stop us. And we can’t unlock her, or she’ll run right to him.”

Ramona said nothing, but the tension lifted. Khalil licked his lips and smirked slightly into the darkness.

Guaranty Building Parking Lot Buffalo, New York

The Kindred of Buffalo, those few who remained, were leaving. All save Lladislas, Tomasz and Phoebe had left the night before. Bell had been on his way out of town when the first Sabbat sighting had come in. He’d seemed slightly surprised, never mind the fact that he’d been the one preaching doom and gloom since he’d arrived. He’d paused only briefly, to make sure that Lladislas would follow shortly, before leaving for Baltimore. Baughman was remaining behind, as was Dustin (though without Lladislas’s consent or knowledge, in the latter instance). Ghouls were in place, leading the newly Embraced cannon fodder to strategic positions and arming them. Haraszty was on his headset, barking orders to his ghouls and pacing nervously.

Moving trucks had been leaving the city and heading southwest on I-90 all day, driven by ghouls and containing the evacuating vampires’ prized possessions. Most would switch drivers at least twice before arriving at their final destinations; those currently behind the wheel had no idea where their cargo was ultimately going. Most didn’t care: They were either well-paid or thoroughly conditioned not to be nosy. It made them better servants.

The few remaining vampires were escorted to chauffeured cars by heavily armed ghouls. More of the same took up places in cars that would pace the vampires’ vehicles on the road out of town. Tomasz and Phoebe were headed to Syracuse, until Dustin could catch up, while Lladislas was going to Baltimore to join forces with the Camarilla elders there. The city’s other Kindred of note had mostly elected to go into Ohio, at least temporarily. No doubt some would be returning east, while others would keep running.

Lladislas was about to climb into his Lincoln when Haraszty motioned him over. “Boss, we have another sighting.”

“Oh?” Lladislas did not move, perhaps wisely. “How far out?”

“About twenty minutes on 90 westbound; they’re better than I thought if they got that close without my people noticing. I’ve told the driver for the Nosferatu to cut down to US 20 and take that east instead. It’s a weird route they’re coming in on, but what do you expect?”

“How many?”

“Two vans so far. Probably advance scouts.” Haraszty paused and looked around. “You should probably get going, sir. It’s been a pleasure. I’ll see you in Baltimore.”

Lladislas nodded, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yes, of course. Thank you, Gustav. You know how much I value your service. Do what you need to do.”

“I always do, boss. Have a good trip.”

Without further comment, the Prince of Buffalo climbed into his car and slammed the door. His driver, Trietsch, waited a moment to see if his passenger was settled, and then pulled out. Three more cars, loaded with armed ghouls, pulled out after him.

The last Prince of Buffalo had officially abandoned his city.

Haraszty watched the cars go and suddenly felt very alone. He posed a few questions into the headset and got satisfactory answers. Baughman had been seen taking up his position with a few of his childer. The rest of the freshly made Brujah were in place in the downtown district, though one had insisted on positioning himself by the grain elevators. The Nosferatu had been more trouble, but the ghoul was convinced they’d fight better in the crunch. Most of them were in Delaware Park. Others were scattered throughout the city to give the appearance of a thriving defense. A few ghouls were placed strategically, both to get the baby vampires’ asses in gear and to relay him accurate information.

Buffalo was as ready as it was ever going to be.

“And that ain’t ready at all,” said Haraszty to no one at all. The headset buzzed in response, and the moment of reflection was forgotten.

Interstate 90

Just east of Buffalo, New York

“Buffalo: Thirteen Miles,” Adele read the sign with tangible excitement. “Beautiful.” “Shit, Mary, did you know Adele could read? I didn’t know Adele could read.” The van rocked with a general round of laughter while MacEllen’s new second-in-command shrieked curses at her tormentor.

MacEllen glanced in the rearview at his pack. They were ready. They had their assignments—from steel factories to parks to churches. They’d even gotten a little bit of information on vampires they might be facing, the poor bastards liable to get left behind to anchor the smokescreen. That was his pack’s target—the remaining vampires. Einar’s was there to set up a ruckus to keep mortal authorities tied up, and to catch stragglers. Between them, they had just enough manpower to do the job right—if this was on the up and up, and not a screw job of the sort Polonia was famous for.

MacEllen was still convinced that the entire operation was a setup. However, he’d also convinced himself that even without Tolliver (and man, was he going to be pissed that he missed the fireworks), he just might beat the fix. If his team and Einar’s did their jobs, they’d break the frame and come out smelling like heroes. Beyond that, he had begun speculating on what the night’s work might net him. The Southeast might be overloaded with archbishops, but upstate New York was a hell of a long way from their jurisdiction. He would take Buffalo for a start.

The vans crossed into the city of Buffalo itself. Einar’s peeled off, flashing its brights once as a salute. MacEllen smiled. It was too late to turn back.

The battle for Buffalo was about to begin.

Thursday, 12 August 1999, 11:15 PM Exit N2, Interstate 190

Buffalo, New York

“You don’t want to be in that part of the city after dark, miss,” was what the old man had said. He’d been friendly and polite, things that Lucita hadn’t seen from a stranger in decades, and had actually seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of a pretty young thing who was heading into a bad neighborhood. He looked about seventy-five, and was alone behind the counter of the convenience store-cum-gas station at a ridiculous hour of the night. Lucita guessed that either some local Kindred was protecting him, or he had an over-under stashed under the counter. Otherwise, there was no way he’d have survived long without getting mugged a few times and losing his sunny disposition.

Lucita had thanked him for his concern, paid for her gas, and left. Quickly, she climbed into the car and started it up. Normally she preferred a lower-profile vehicle, but something about this job told her that it would be wise to have a car that could flat-out scoot in an emergency. The engine purred to life and she pulled back onto I-90, heading north toward the center of Buffalo.

Younger Kindred often thought it was a big deal to steal stupid things just because they were vampires, but Lucita had found that it was the stupid things that most often led to trouble. Steal some gas and you piss off the station owner. Piss off the station owner and he calls the cops. The cops get called, they look for you, and all of a sudden feeding without complications becomes nigh impossible (because God knows that a cop would rather look for a gas thief than mix it up with someone likely to be packing, or interrupt a domestic disturbance). And so it went, and it was just easier to pay the twelve bucks and avoid complications. If the situation had demanded, she would have had no compunction about killing the old man and putting his blood to good use, but since the situation didn’t warrant such, there was no point to causing trouble for herself. After all, normal young ladies who did normal things tended to fade from the memory of those who saw them—and Lucita didn’t like to be remembered.

That was the whole logic behind the damn Masquerade, to be honest. It wasn’t because there were any vampires out there who were “good guys” (though some folks spent years, decades or even centuries trying to play the role) and the Masquerade was some great and altruistic thing done for the sake of humanity. No, it made working easier. It made feeding easier. And it meant less competition and fewer hassles from kine with torches and shotguns. So few Kindred on either side of the fence understood that. It wasn’t about kowtowing to the Antediluvians or keeping the world safe for poor fragile humanity.

It was about getting things done with a minimum of extra effort. There was no idealism involved. Lucita just liked avoiding unnecessary complications.

The top on the Beemer was up, but even through that and the sound of the engine Lucita could hear sirens wailing. A pair of pillars of smoke wafted upwards on the skyline ahead; no doubt the Sabbat was breaking things to distract the gendarmes while the local Kindred were rousted and put to the sword. It was all part of the basic modus operandi.

Distract the mortal authorities, and it gave you a clear field to go Kindred hunting. The locals would have to protect both themselves and the Masquerade, and sooner or later their resources would stretch too thin. One or the other would tear, and then the city’s Kindred hierarchy would get eaten alive.

“Simple, but effective,” Lucita said to the night. On the passenger seat, the dossier on tonight’s target sat open. A head shot proved that he was unattractive by any standards but a Nosferatu’s or a mother’s, with a piggish, heavy face and a scowl that was almost petulant. He had thick black brows and thick black hair and a thick, bullish neck. The picture had apparently been taken at a point when the subject was in the midst of some sort of shouting fit, because his mouth was open and his lips were flecked with spittle.

The name at the bottom of the picture was Roger MacEllen.

U.S. Steel Plant Buffalo, New York

Hell, Baughman decided, was built entirely out of abandoned steel plants. And the one at the very heart of the whole thing was clearly modeled after the monstrosity he was currently wriggling through. Bethlehem had abandoned the place years ago, but it was simply too big to tear down. They’d left it sitting there, an open invitation to kids looking for trouble, gangs, dealers and of course, vampires.

Baughman had, like every other Anarch-wannabe Buffalo had ever spawned, havened in the plant at one point. This was before he realized that Prince Lladislas and his advisors kept the place standing as somewhere the rebellious teens of the Camarilla could go to perform the vampiric equivalent of smoking dope behind the garage before coming home, growing up and getting a respectable job manipulating the local media or some such.

However, at the moment it was a deathtrap. Baughman was sure of it. He’d been suckered—How exactly did I get talked into this again? he found himself wondering—into remaining behind with the skeleton force that was to hold the city after Lladislas and the big guns pulled out. In other words, he was there to get killed noisily and take out as many of the enemy as possible in the process, just to keep the Sabbat from realizing that they’d been had.

The situation, he concluded after due reflection, profoundly sucked.

Unfortunately, it was too late now to do anything about it. He’d heard the others enter the building a few minutes ago, and that meant that there wasn’t any way out any longer. He’d also heard a few of his so-called support troops going down noisily and quickly, and that didn’t exactly help his mood either.

Instead, he wriggled closer to the edge of the platform he was on and carefully got his AK-47 in line to cover the entrance to the room. The gun was a Chinese-made piece of shit, but it was all he’d been able to get his hands on when the orders came down. It was about as accurate as the local weather forecast, but once he hit someone with it, they tended to stay down, at least long enough for him to make sure of the job. He was positive he didn’t have the personal firepower to handle one Sabbat badass, let alone a whole pack, but a really big gun, as his sire had been fond of saying, was a hell of a way to even the odds.

The room itself was a jumble of catwalks, walkways, abandoned blast furnaces and other, less identifiable things. Once upon a time this room had housed planning meetings, parties and the like for Baughman and his friends; now he’d come back to it because it had more potential escape routes than anywhere else in the building.

Voices in the next room snapped Baughman out of his reverie. Someone, no, two someones were coming, and they were arguing.

“… Could have sworn I saw him duck in here,” came a male voice, damaged by cigarettes and whiskey.

“You’d better be right. We’re behind schedule as is, and there aren’t enough of us on this ride to afford unexpected delays.” The response caught Baughman by surprise. He’d been told that the city was going to be swamped by waves of Sabbat. If what he’d just heard was true, then there weren’t that many Sabbat in the city. In that case, there might actually a chance of holding them off.

More to the point, the fact that there weren’t that many in place for a supposedly major offensive against a big target was a sign that someone’s intelligence wires had gotten crossed somewhere. Either the council advising Lladislas had vastly overestimated the force lined up against him…

“Or we’ve been sold out. Son of a bitch.” He cursed himself for speaking as he heard a scramble down on the floor. While he’d been lost in reverie, the Sabbat vampires had entered the room and crossed out of his field of fire. And now they’d heard him speak and knew where he was.

Well, the hell with it. What he’d figured out was more important than taking one or two shovelheads with him as he went. His first order of business was to escape; his second to bring word to someone, anyone higher up in the Camarilla to let them know that the whole operation had been compromised. He eased to his feet silently while his pursuers stomped about, backing toward a patch of darkness that he knew concealed a fire door to a stairwell with an outside exit. If he made it to the stairs and out the back, he could find a car to steal and run like hell. Quietly thanking God that he didn’t have to breathe any longer, he silently lifted one foot, then the other, taking minuscule steps to avoid making any further noise.

The two downstairs sounded like they were still bickering. Perfect. The door was only a few feet behind him, hidden in the shadow behind a massive column of machinery. For the first time since he’d been thrown to the wolves, he dared to hope.

And that’s when the shadow Baughman had been easing into decided to expedite the process, and swallowed him whole.

“Oh, fu—” was all he had time to say before it was over. The AK-47 clattered to the metal of the walkway, alerting the two vampires down below. They looked up, laughed, and walked out.

MacEllen was right on schedule, and so were they.

Baltimore Street Buffalo, New York

Sheldon and Mary walked down Baltimore Street without a care in the world. They were hunting Camarilla vampires, and they didn’t care if the whole city knew it. Sheldon was tall and thin, with a runner’s build and a computer geek’s complexion. He wore camouflage pants and shitkicker boots, and had a motherfucking big pistol jammed into his waistband. His head was shaved but his arms were hairy enough to make it look like he could lie down in front of a fire and play bearskin rug.

Mary was, by contrast, short and stocky, and looked like she’d done time in a car crusher in the not-too-distant past. She dressed like a preacher’s worst nightmare of a drugged-out earth mother, and was dragging a baseball bat behind her on the asphalt. Her partner looked anxious and gleeful; she just looked pissed off.

“Goddamned sonnovabitch has got to be around here somewhere,” muttered Sheldon. “Briefing said the ugly little bastard holed up in this part of town, so we just have to find whatever hole he’s in and plug it with this.” He took the pistol, a battered Desert Eagle, out of his belt and waved it around. “You can be such an asshole,” his packmate replied without heat. “We’re chasing a Nossie. Fucker probably heard you coming two blocks off, ducked into the sewers and is halfway to Cleveland by now. All because you had to haul your metal-plated dick out of your pants and wave it around. Dipshit.”

“Who you calling a dipshit?” Sheldon stopped, turned on his heel, and stared down at Mary. “MacEllen put me in charge of the team, so if you call me a dipshit again, I’ll blow the top of your ugly head off.”

“Try it and I’ll rip your balls off.” “You can’t reach that high.” “She’s right. You are a dipshit.”

The voice came from a point about five feet behind where Sheldon stood, and from a figure who hadn’t been there a minute before. He had a face like the business end of a dumpster, and a massive bulge rose beneath the back of his tatty tan trench coat. His left arm stuck out at an odd angle, and in his right hand he held something that could only be a Zippo.

“Well hello, little ratboy,” breathed Sheldon. “We’ve been looking for your ass, and now that we’ve found it, we’re gonna stomp it flat.” Mary fanned out to his right, while Sheldon brought the Desert Eagle in line with the Nosferatu’s head. “Just hold still and this will only hurt like hell.”

“Idiot,” said Dustin very clearly, as he squeezed the trigger on the nozzle of the plant sprayer that he’d run up his left sleeve. With his right hand, he flicked the lighter into a blaze and brought the flame into contact with the stream of diesel fuel jetting out of the plant sprayer’s nozzle.

The jet of flame it produced was impressive. The effect the wash of flame had on the two vampires it played over was even more so. Sheldon had no time for a scream; Mary barely a half-second more in which to try before the fire turned her face to a ruin and washed down her throat to crisp her from the inside.

Dustin swept the flame over the two writhing figures dispassionately for another minute, until he was sure they weren’t getting back up. “Darwin would have loved you two, you know?” he said, and loped off into the distance to find more targets.

Outside the General Donovan Building Buffalo, New York

“So what do we have here?” MacEllen jabbed down at the map with a long-nailed finger. His face was flushed and red, and his shirt collar was wet with beads of blood sweat. He’d just finished his sweep of the Bethlehem steel plant, and could barely contain his nervous energy. The scouting report had been absolutely perfect. The city was being held with a screen of recently Embraced neonates, a few slack-ass ghouls, and one or two real vampires who were being hung out to dry to sell the thing. Somewhere Hell had frozen over, because Polonia’s info had been spot on. Of course, that didn’t mean this was easy. There were a lot of the fresh-faced bastards, and they fought like demons. Once he caught himself missing Tolliver, but there was nothing to be done. The battle was being fought here and now.

Adele, her face covered by a fine sheen of bloody sweat, laid a talon of her own on the map and pointed to an area not far from where they stood. “We’ve got some kind of trouble here. Scaz said he saw, if you believe this, a Nosferatu with a flame-thrower. Whatever’s over there, though, we haven’t heard from Sheldon and Mary in half an hour, and that was where they were supposed to be.”

“Flame-thrower, huh.” MacEllen scratched his right armpit absently. “You’d think toting around fire would drive him apeshit.”

Adele tapped the map, twice. “I’m not sure I believe the report. Scaz is also prone to eating bugs and throwing himself off of buildings to see how much it hurts. On the other hand, assuming the information’s good, I suspect it’s a lot easier to be brave about fire when the big fat nozzle of flaming death is pointed away from you.” She stared at MacEllen until he took his finger off the map, then lifted it off the table herself and folded it. “Other than that one setback, though, we’re sweeping the city. Resistance is stiff but incompetent, just like we’d been told it would be.” She listened to the headset she wore for a second, and then nodded. “Okay, Delaware Park is cleaned out. Three babies with three big guns. They jumped out of the trees screaming, and Einar took them out, no mess.” There was some crackling from the headset. “Hang on. Watts wants you to know that it took him all of ninety seconds, and that you owe him something that I really don’t want to think about. In other words, it’s all under control except this one little area.”

MacEllen grunted something that might have been distracted approval. Losing even two vampires on something that was supposed to be a milk run, after all, would not help him look good at the next war council. The problem, even if it was just Mary and Sheldon dicking around, needed to be resolved quickly and cleanly. Otherwise (and he could just hear that sanctimonious weasel of an archbishop saying so) it would reflect… poorly… on his leadership capabilities.

Well, screw that. Time to go deal with the situation, whatever it was. “Right. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Either to find what’s left of Sheldon and Mary, or kick their asses for dicking around on the clock. If they’re okay, that’s great and we do mop-up. If Scaz saw something real this time, then you actually get your hands soiled.” Adele had a reputation for letting everyone else do her dirty work, and MacEllen liked calling her on the issue. He didn’t want her to get crispy-fried quite yet—she was too damn useful and he could get what he wanted out of her with a minimum of flak—but he’d be perfectly happy to see her have to charge in and mix it up with some bruiser, and get her pretty little ass handed to her in the process. She was just a little too satisfied with her self-appointed position on the fringes of things. She needed to learn that no one was safe, and that her prissy little act wasn’t going to play here.

“Whatever.” Adele was clearly pissed off, and that suited MacEllen just fine. They trotted west, toward the lake and the trouble spot on the map. “So what’s your brilliant plan, assuming this guy is real? Or do we just rush in, screaming, and hope that Scaz was snacking on winos again?”

“It’s simple. You attract his attention. I pop behind him and kill him. Flame-throwers are bulky as all hell, and there’s no way he can turn fast enough to fry both of us. Any other stupid questions?”

Adele stopped in the middle of the street. “Yeah. What happens if he gets to me before you get him?”

MacEllen never broke stride and didn’t even look back at her. “Then you duck.” As she spouted a stream of curses at him, he just laughed and kept going.

Intersection of Scott and Washington Streets Buffalo, New York

Talley had decided that he loathed Buffalo approximately two minutes after setting foot in the place. It reminded him unpleasantly of some of the Midlands cities, plain girls trying to tart themselves up for tourists by hiding all their dirt and grime.

MacEllen had no idea that he was there, of course. Letting the angry vampire know that someone was watching him would make him utterly unmanageable. So the templar had merely shadowed the operation, observing MacEllen’s tactics, lending a small incognito assist on occasion while waiting for Lucita to show herself. Talley couldn’t imagine anyone else on the attack squad besides MacEllen who Lucita could be interested in.

On the whole, Talley decided, MacEllen’s work tonight had been brutal if uninspired. It wouldn’t win him much recognition from those higher up, but on the other hand it was damn difficult to argue with success.

Now MacEllen was pelting off somewhere personally, trailed by his weed of an assistant. With a curious frown, Talley thought about making his presence known, but decided against it and instead walked from shadow to shadow in their wake. Neither looked back, so he went unobserved. Finally, they turned a corner and left him behind for a second, which for no accountable reason filled Talley with alarm.

Something painfully stupid was about to happen, he was certain of it. Either something had gone unexpectedly wrong or, more likely, MacEllen had decided that he needed to make a big show of how much he was doing personally to win this fight.

Abruptly, the night was interrupted by a scream, and a faint whooshing sound that made the hair on Talley’s neck stand on end. He could hear MacEllen cursing, and then the sound of gunfire. The screaming, however, continued.

Stepping up his pace, Talley headed for the source of the noise. This might be just what—and who—he was waiting for.

Intersection of Hamburg and South Park Streets Buffalo, New York

Dustin was hot under the collar, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing for a Kindred toting around several gallons of diesel fuel on his back. After he’d toasted the two goons who’d been looking for him, Dustin had gone looking for more fun, but none was to be had. All of the tissue-paper troops that Lladislas had commissioned had been stomped flat by this point. He’d seen some of the corpses of the ones Phoebe had made, and he didn’t have high hopes for the Brujah he’d heard were to the north and west.

He checked his watch. It had been four hours since the assault began, and as near as he could tell, he was the only one of Buffalo’s defenders still on his feet. Logic dictated that he get the hell out of town, meet up with Tomasz in Syracuse, tell Phoebe some comforting lies about her childer having fought well, and then move on. Those were his marching orders, and he’d seen enough to know that there was something fishy going on. From the briefing Tomasz had given him, Dustin had expected dozens, if not hundreds of opponents—war ghouls thundering down the street, packs of hunting antitribu flushing out havens and setting buildings on fire, chaos in the streets—and he’d intended to use the plant sprayer only as a last resort to get him out of a tight spot.

Instead, he’d seen about a dozen invaders, total. Clearly, someone had monkeyed things up somewhere along the way. Nothing jibed, and while it wasn’t his job to figure it out, Dustin had a sneaking suspicion that it was his job to get that information to someone who could put two plus two together and get something other than “math is hard.”

Dustin looked around. In the distance he could see the smoke from multiple fires rising into the night sky. Sirens whined from every corner of the city. A shotgun barked, once, well off to the northeast. The fight was clearly over. It was time to go.

“Right, one last check on those two to make sure that they’re most sincerely dead, and then I’m blowing town.” The night refused to comment on his witticism, and Dustin sighed. He pondered ducking down into the sewers for safer travel, but decided against it. He figured he’d spend more time moving the fricking manhole cover at each end of the route than he’d save by taking the quote-unquote shortcut. Besides, it was damn difficult to lift up a massive slab of metal in the middle of the street discreetly and quietly.

With that in mind, he simply closed his eyes for a second and imagined himself to be invisible, then started pacing down the street past the abandoned cars (and one extremely incongruous black sports car that had no damn business being in this neighborhood without being up on blocks). Tomasz claimed to use a different technique for vanishing, but this was what worked for Dustin. Mind you, vanishing didn’t make him feel any different, but he could see its effects on the world around him, and he liked it.

He especially liked it when vanishing gave him a way to get the drop on dickweeds like the pair of hunter-gatherer types he’d flambéed a few hours back.

Grinning and self-satisfied, Dustin turned the corner to the place he’d left the smoldering forms of his victims. Unfortunately, there was someone already there.

She was slender and scarred, with long black hair and a headset receiver on. She wore black, of course, and had a face that clearly said “here is a woman who has been pissed 24/7 since the day she was born.” She was squatting by a pile of blackened flesh that Dustin immediately recognized as one of his victims, and she was calling out to someone who was out there but not showing himself.

Dustin wondered if he was up against a fellow Nosferatu, and remembered any number of clichés about the better part of valor. Besides, if he waited a minute, the vampire in the street’s partner might get tired of her screeching and show up just to shut her up.

He had no such luck, however, and after an eternal minute or two, he began walking toward the woman. She was clearly one of the enemy, and clearly about as bright as a sack of sand. Even better, there was no sign of her buddy, which meant that he could toast her and get out with no one the wiser.

The other option, of course, was that her buddy knew he was coming and was hiding, waiting for Dustin to show himself. It, and variants thereof, were basic Nosferatu strategy, but that was unlife in the big city. He decided to risk it. She was standing now, still cursing the air. Dustin moved in and flicked the sprayer nozzle into position. The woman was completely oblivious. She had no idea he was there. He brought up the lighter and took a last look around for his other prey. There was not a soul on the street. Grinning, he dropped his shroud of invisibility—too excited to concentrate anymore—and let the flames roar into life.

What was left of Mary smoldered in the middle of the street. It might have been still moving, or perhaps that was just the shriveling effect of the fire on the husk of her corpse. Adele spotted her first, spat a curse and ran to her. “MacEllen?” she called, but the ductus had vanished. Not wasting any more time on that chickenshit—who’d clearly run when he saw that he might get hurt, she reflected bitterly—Adele knelt by Mary’s side to get a closer look at what had been done to her. A crunching sound underneath her feet announced that she’d found Sheldon’s remains as well. She looked over Mary’s cadaver with an appraising eye. Her professional assessment was that whatever had hosed her down hadn’t been a flame-thrower but wasn’t a bad approximation of one. In other words, they were dealing with a brutal, clever amateur.

She looked around for her missing ally. “Damn you, MacEllen, get over here. You should see this.” Only silence answered her for a long minute, then she resignedly got to her feet. She still had the headset on, and decided to call in one or two of the others, just in case the nutjob with the napalm fixation was still around.

That was when the flames hit her. She threw herself violently to the left, but didn’t quite make it to safety. The fire washed over her right arm and part of her back, and a scream forced itself out of her throat as she fell to the ground. Behind her, she could hear her assailant cursing, his footsteps slapping on the asphalt as he moved in for the kill. She rolled desperately in an attempt to put the flames out, then gave in to sheer animal panic and started howling in earnest.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch,” Dustin said, then whirled and sprayed a burst of flame in a semi-circular arc behind him. Deep within the shadows cast by an abandoned house, MacEllen let out a roar of inchoate rage and dropped to the ground.

“Screw you, asshole. I use that trick, you think I’m dumb enough to fall for it?” Dustin was already on the move, fading into invisibility as he went. MacEllen scrabbled for his pistol and let off a few shots in the vicinity of where the Nosferatu had vanished, but hit only brick, glass and metal. Adele, her head wreathed in flame as her long black hair caught and blazed, continued screaming. Her right hand left smoking palm-prints on the asphalt as she crawled toward the end of the block.

The flames over his head gone, MacEllen climbed to his feet warily. The Nosferatu was still out there somewhere, with a flame-thrower no less, and he needed to be at his best. Adele’s frenzied howling distracted him, so after a second’s deliberation, he put a bullet into her head. She gurgled once and collapsed. Suddenly, the only noise on the street was the soft crackle of the flames eating away at her prone form, mixed with the hiss of burning fat.

“Son of a bitch,” said MacEllen very clearly as he began to circle away from Adele’s remains. His pistol was in his hand, his eyes straining for any sign of his opponent. Briefly, he considered a tactical retreat. He could grab some of the others and come back. With help from someone besides the utterly useless Adele, he could flush the bastard out and put the clamps on him. Then this little operation would be over with and he’d come out of it smelling like a rose—all of Buffalo subjugated in a single night.

As quickly as the notion arose, he dismissed it. There was no way in hell he was going to ask for help. This was his operation, his command, and bringing anyone else in would be setting himself up for a challenge. No, better to handle the risk—and the benefits—solo.

And then there came a sudden sound behind him, and MacEllen knew that he was very, very dead.

Talley stepped into shadow about forty feet from where Adele was burning. Not far past her, MacEllen was firing randomly into the night. One of the bullets nearly winged Talley, and mentally the templar made another black mark against his estimation of the man’s competence.

Dispassionately, he watched as the thug silenced the screaming Adele. That was simply a waste of resources. Had MacEllen been thinking, he would have attempted to smother the flames in shadow, or found some other way to try to save his reasonably useful second-in-command. But the ductus was lost in his own little fantasy trip at this point, acting from gut instinct rather than reason, and it had cost him.

MacEllen stepped away from the corpse delicately and began a series of spinning maneuvers presumably designed to make sure that no one was getting the drop on him. In actuality, they made him look ridiculous, like a fat man in fatigues missing targets at a rifle range, but Talley didn’t care. He was too busy scanning the street for the author of the carnage.

It took only seconds to locate the Nosferatu with an awkward bulge beneath his coat. Confident in his invisibility, the vampire made no effort to take cover or otherwise protect himself. Instead, he was laughing, and mimicked one or two of MacEllen’s more ridiculous faux-jetées. He seemed to be having a grand old time. Unfortunately for him, Talley was old enough and powerful enough to see through his efforts to veil himself. “You’re never the last link in the chain, lad,” Talley murmured to himself. “If you’d remembered that, you might have gotten out of here.”

Talley was tempted to leave MacEllen to the fate he deserved, but if the Nosferatu took out the ductus, Lucita might never show her face, and the trip north would be wasted.

Talley knelt down and picked up a pebble. It was a shard of cement, perhaps an inch across and with jagged sides. No doubt it had been torn out of a sidewalk somewhere nearby through rough usage or harsh weather, but that was of no importance. Talley looked at it calmly. It would serve.

Out in the street, the Nosferatu had ceased his capering and took careful aim at the nearly spasmodic MacEllen. Another second and the positioning would be perfect, and slowly he turned his back on where Talley stood to follow the gyrations of his target.

Talley tsked. He placed the pebble in the palm of his left hand and squinted, making sure that his aim was true. Lifting his hand, he concentrated for a second and then flicked the pebble right at the center of the Nosferatu’s misshapen back.

The sound the pebble made when it went through the tank might have been mistaken for a gunshot. The sound it made when it exited through the Nosferatu’s stomach was indescribable. The results, however, were easy to discern. The vampire flicked into plain view, clutching his stomach with one hand. He spun, looking for his assailant with an expression of shock on his face, and staggered. Gasoline or something like it made a wet stain on the back of the creature’s coat and dripped to the ground; a bloody mixture poured from between his fingers.

MacEllen finally noticed what happened (seconds too late, Talley noted dispassionately) and turned with a roar. Talley merely stooped and picked up another pebble. In the street, the Nosferatu broke into a stumbling run, trying to shed both his coat and the leaking tank on his back. MacEllen sprinted after him, screaming imprecations.

Talley ignored that and instead took his aim again. He aimed, not at the fugitive, but rather at the cracked asphalt just behind him. The pebble took off with a whoosh, and struck the street precisely where Talley had wanted it to. The impact, as such impacts are wont to, created a spark.

The results were impressive. The flame scurried up the Nosferatu’s coat in a matter of seconds, inspiring a wail of terror and pain. The vampire stumbled on a few more steps, then the flame reached the tank.

What happened was not precisely an explosion. Rather, it was a burst of flame that more or less took off the upper third of the Nosferatu’s body, and sent minuscule bits of the tank whizzing about. MacEllen narrowly avoided getting singed, and flattened himself to the street as the tank went up.

From a safe distance, Talley permitted himself a humorless smile. That quickly vanished as MacEllen pulled himself up and cautiously advanced until he was nearly straddling the still-burning corpse. He kicked it, once, cautiously, and the flaming remnants of what had been an arm flew several feet. MacEllen jumped back, startled, and cursed again, at which point Talley decided that it was time to make his presence known lest his assignment suffer the vampiric equivalent of a burst blood vessel. He stepped out into the yellowish light of the street lamps, and waited for MacEllen to notice him.

“—er just exploded. Never seen anything like that without a Tremere around, never seen anything like it at—what the fuck are you doing here?”

Talley bowed, precisely, from the neck. “Saving you. Against my better judgment.” “So it was you—”

“Indeed. It was me. Now is the time, Ductus MacEllen, when you stop stammering and thank me.”

MacEllen stalked closer. “Son of a bitch. It was you. You were here the whole time.” Talley nodded. “We’ve already established that. In fact, I have been watching you since the operation began, including tailing you through the steel factory, observing your conversations with your late second-in-command, and so on. I must say I was impressed by the turn of speed you managed in getting here. If you’d moved a little more slowly, I

might have been able to protect Adele as well. Incidentally, I think she’s about out. You may want to stamp on her bits to make sure.”

“So you saw everything.” MacEllen took a few more steps, sparing only the briefest of glances for what was left of Adele. “Why are you here? Are you spying on me for Polonia and those assholes? Is that it, you’re here to make me look bad?”

“No, you idiot, Lucita is in this city! Do you want to face her alone?” Talley shifted his weight into a fighting crouch. Impossible as it seemed, it looked as if MacEllen might actually attack him. Whether or not the man had succumbed to his inner demons, he was clearly unhinged and might well decide to try to get rid of any witnesses to his self- assessed humiliation.

MacEllen’s chances of actually hurting Talley were comical, but the situation was sticky enough as it was. So Talley, being the efficient sort of vampire that he was, simply locked eyes with his would-be assailant and extended his will against MacEllen’s. Unsurprisingly, the resistance was minimal.

“Sit,” Talley said, and obediently MacEllen sat where he was. “Behave yourself,” Talley said, suddenly irritated for no reason that he could fathom. MacEllen nodded with pathetic eagerness, and Talley exhaled in disgust. This short-tempered idiot, who clearly couldn’t handle himself in any situation more stressful than a game of darts, was going to get himself killed sooner or later regardless of what Talley did. For a brief instant, he considered handing the man off to Lucita as a bribe not to bother any of the three archbishops. The idea had a certain appeal, he had to confess.

He turned back to MacEllen in disgust, prepared to frog-march the man back to the putative field HQ, when suddenly, everything became very, very dark.

Friday, 13 August 1999, 2:28 AM Baltimore Street

Buffalo, New York

Lucita had observed the entire affair from a rooftop across from where MacEllen now squatted in the street. She’d watched it with some amusement—the whole chain of Kindred, each convinced that he was both invisible and invincible, made for a certain sort of low comedy. She’d seen vampires hunting vampires before, but the combination of factors—the bizarre little Nosferatu’s choice of weapon, the blustering swagger and cowardice of MacEllen, Talley’s nonchalant approach to the problem—all combined into something profoundly risible even as it was terrible.

Seeing Talley had surprised her at first. She’d received word from her first employer that the Hound had been imported. Rumor had it that her own sire had sent the man to safeguard his beloved archbishops. But Talley being in Buffalo, while the archbishops were presumably safe elsewhere, didn’t make sense.

Unless he was after her.

The thought caused Lucita some concern. Talley’s presence was an unexpected complication. The Hound was good, very good, and would change her plans for dealing with her target. MacEllen himself was nothing. He’d nearly been taken out by the childe with the flame-thrower, and clearly was well below Lucita’s level in terms of talent, power and intelligence. But Talley was a different matter, a very powerful and determined one.

Lucita had crossed paths with the Hound once before, some seventy years prior in New York City. She’d been there on pleasure while he was on business; they’d intersected in the notorious Five Points. Talley had been sent by Monçada to rid the city of a troublesome vampire named Karl who’d been noisily disrupting certain of the archbishop’s long-range plans. Unfortunately, Karl was also the Kindred responsible for much of Lucita’s amusement at the time, and she took exception to the attempt to remove him before she was finished. The duel had been long and bloody, sparking a brawl in the tenements and speakeasies to rival the infamous Dead Rabbit Riots. At the heart of it, the two ancient children of shadow had torn at each other with unimaginable fury, cloaking an entire city block in impenetrable darkness. The newspaper reports talked of broken power lines as an explanation, but in truth, it had been Lucita and Talley hunting each other in the dark, fueling themselves with the lives of the hundreds trapped within their battlefield.

Lucita had won, barely. Karl had been wounded but slipped away during the fury of her counterattack. She’d later learned that he’d fled the country, and had been destroyed by Talley in Vancouver, in 1934. By that time, of course, she’d long since ceased to care. Talley himself had left the scene exhausted but relatively unscathed, leaving her with a mocking bow and an expression of regards for her sire. And she had stumbled out of the tenements, weary but more or less triumphant, and thoroughly convinced that Talley was, if not her equal, then at least one of the more frightening opponents she’d ever faced.

And now here he was across the street, muttering to himself. No doubt his professional sensibilities had been thoroughly offended by MacEllen’s performance. No doubt he was just the slightest bit irritated, and that meant that he was the slightest bit distracted, and that meant that if she moved very quickly, everything would work out just fine.

She reached out, across the street, to the shadows that so recently had hidden Talley himself. They responded to her call, eagerly shaping themselves into ropy arms that stretched forth to envelope the templar. Talley, to his credit, did not hesitate, but rather ducked and rolled to his left, out into the street. One shadow tentacle did grasp his arm as he moved, but with practiced ease he simply tore it to shreds. Lucita smiled and sent more tendrils of blackness after him. The idea was not to kill Talley, or even to wound him, but rather to keep him off balance and drive him further and further from the still-dazed MacEllen. Then, when it was too late, she’d simply terminate her target and stop harassing the templar, leaving without any fuss.

Of course, that plan relied on keeping Talley on the defensive, and that was going to take everything she had. She frowned, and another tentacle of shadow burst forth from beneath a manhole cover in the middle of the street. The metal disc went thirty feet in the air and nearly caught Talley on the way down, even as he dodged of the way of his new assailant. Slowly but surely, he was moving into the middle of the street, which was blanketed in illumination from multiple streetlamps. Lucita’s shadows stretched themselves thin to reach Talley here, and he avoided them with ease.

“Lucita,” he called out, glancing about in an attempt to pinpoint the attack. “Good to see you again! Your sire asked about you, in case you were wondering.” He ducked another swipe, then drew on shadow himself and tore Lucita’s servant to shreds. “He mentioned you might be in the States; so glad to see he was right!”

Lucita cursed and called up more shadows from the now-open manhole. They geysered upwards, then plunged down on Talley like a hammer of night. The templar sidestepped, and the shadows’ impact on the street cracked the asphalt with a sound like thunder.

“Lucita, you’re not going to get me like that! Come on out, so we can talk. At the very least, you owe me a rematch!” All the while he dodged and struck, called forth shadow tendrils of his own and moved with a laughing grace that was hypnotically smooth. Huge clubs of darkness smashed the surface of the street, leaving enormous holes and sending debris flying everywhere. In the middle of the carnage, Talley laughed, and Lucita saw for the first time the pure, unadulterated joy the man took in his work.

It was as good a cue as any to finish matters. She called forth a last arm of darkness and brought it screaming down toward where Talley stood. He avoided it easily, and she split it into three smaller entities. Two continued to pursue Talley, while the third arrowed straight for where MacEllen still sat, oblivious.

Talley saw what was happening and desperately summoned shadows of his own in a vain attempt to deflect Lucita’s. Even as he did so, the first two tendrils struck him like hammer blows. He cried out, the first time Lucita had ever heard him do so, and his control of his shadows faltered.

As Talley fell, Lucita’s last shadow tendril reached MacEllen, wrapped around his neck, and with ungentle pressure, tore his head off. There was silence for a moment, and then the pack ductus’s body topped to the street with a barely audible thump. Blood pumped from his neck into the gutter, pooling amidst the trash and dead leaves. His head came to rest a few feet away, face down.

Talley slowly and silently picked himself up as the arms of shadow that both vampires had created dissipated into nothingness. Lucita dusted herself off and took two steps back from the ledge, acutely aware that she was dangerously low on blood should Talley decide to continue their disagreement.

“Lucita,” he called, in a more reasonable tone of voice. “Nicely done, my gracious señorita. I’ll be on the lookout for that in the future. It seems that this time you are the hunter, and I the protector. I think it only professional courtesy that I advise you to let it end with this one.” He gestured toward MacEllen. “Otherwise, I—and your sire—will be greatly displeased.”

With that, he executed a sketchy bow and walked off. Lucita debated following him, but the gnawing hunger in her stomach told her that it would be foolish, if not suicidal. Instead, she went down the cast-iron fire escape at the back of the building she stood on and loped the three blocks to where she’d parked. Ideally, she’d find someone to eat on the way out of town, hole up somewhere in secure Camarilla territory, and relax in order to plan the next job.

She came out of the alley she’d entered across the street from her car. Wonder of wonders, it was still there. Even more miraculously, the tires had not been slashed. She climbed in and started the engine; it responded with a warm purr.

Some nights, she reflected, things actually did all go your way. It was unfortunate that the city was doomed anyway, but in the end, that wasn’t really her concern.

With a smile, she slammed the car into gear and roared off into what was left of the night.

Friday, 13 August 1999, 2:29 AM (3:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time) Harmony High-Rise

Chicago, Illinois

It was sickening, really, the companion felt. Not merely that Anatole was being led around like a dog, but more that he was also acting like one. Allowing this to happen. A dog sniffing a trail for someone else.

How did this possibly connect with the recent events that had Anatole moving closer than ever to the answers he desired? The answers he required to hold his madness at bay?

Perhaps the madness was not at bay. To be sure, it had forever been a part of Anatole, but was an affliction he had turned to useful ends. It had never before made him a village idiot to be so yoked. But the companion’s shame would not force him from Anatole’s side, even if the prophet no longer spoke to him.

Neither of them spoke anymore. The only relief the companion felt was that Anatole did not speak to the new friend much either. Only a few mutterings of the sort he’d often cast the companion’s way, curious to see if he could make sense of them. Now the remarks were for this new friend, and while concrete in some ways, they were more fragmentary. Let the new fool try to piece such together!

And as for this so-called friend, he did not speak either. Where was he? He’d led them to this old, large, renovated building and caged them there. Yes, he returned for them as dawn approached, and thank goodness for small deliverances. Anatole paced like the caged dog he was. It didn’t seem that he could sit still anymore. Nonstop all this night, tracing and retracing his path.

Maybe they would gain something here; after all, this was where the young wizard lived, the maker of the great work Anatole had pondered so intensely for several days through the natural cycles of light and dark. But was humiliation a required price for wisdom?

Perhaps the companion was himself too worldly, he thought. He should have shrugged away such matters as appearances. How would social standing contribute to uncovering the truths of Gehenna?

Regardless, he did not like this one who sought to deceive his friend Anatole.

Friday, 13 August 1999, 5:18 AM

U.S. Steel Plant Buffalo, New York

Talley stood in front of the abandoned steel plant. It would serve as well as anyplace for a temporary haven. The survivors of the assault had straggled back over the past several hours. They were mostly upbeat; they’d crushed the pitiful resistance Buffalo had offered. A couple of the ghouls had bullet wounds, but mostly everyone was unscathed. They laughed and joked and told stories about how they’d dispatched various of the idiots sent against them. If anyone missed Sheldon or Mary, or even Adele or MacEllen, it wasn’t evident from what Talley heard. The troops were just happy the fight was over and that they’d kicked ass.

All in all, he found it hard to disagree with them.

As the last of the survivors entered the building, Talley gazed out at the streets. The charred corpses had been unceremoniously hurled in dumpsters. Fires and vampire-initiated firefights had distracted the police and other mortal annoyances sufficiently that there had been no interference with their efforts.

As for MacEllen, he was no great loss as far as Talley was concerned. The trip north had been about as successful as he’d expected it to be. He’d warned Lucita. If she failed to abide by his advice… well, he’d have no compunction in dealing harshly with her the next time they met.

Having accomplished that intermediate goal, Talley was ready to return to Washington and direct his attention to the question that, to Monçada, was more pressing even than the personal well-being of the archbishops: Who had hired Lucita?

For now, Talley walked inside the steel plant, then, and shut and locked the door. Outside, the sun came up sluggishly over the Sabbat city of Buffalo.

Friday, 13 August 1999, 8:02 PM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Khalil lay, still drowsy, on Elizabeth’s bed. He held his wallet in both hands, counting the crisp, fresh American dollars by touch. A shrill tone filled his ears—he reached for the cell phone and grasped for consciousness.

“Hello,” he mumbled. A dull tone—the dial tone—answered him back. The shrill note sang again. Another phone? Who had another phone? Ramona hadn’t slept here… Ramona didn’t keep a phone…. A fourth ring, a click, and then the message of the answering machine droned until the beep.

“Lizzie? Are you there? This is Amy—Amy Rutherford. Antonio tried to make a delivery to the apartment this morning, and he couldn’t get in; he says there seemed to be another bolt on the door? And that the windows have been painted black. Aunt Agnes doesn’t know yet, but she will soon, and I need something to tell her and… Mother. Lizzie? Pick up? Are you in trouble? Do you need help? Call me!” Frustrated silence filled the gap. “Anyone! Where is Elizabeth Dimitros? Why have you painted the windows? Why is the door bolted? You are trespassing on private property! Pick up the phone or I will call the police.” Khalil walked bleary-eyed out of the curtained room and saw Elizabeth, chained by the wrong end of the sofa, desperately straining against the shackles to reach the phone. The voice went on, more softly:

“Liz. Hesha’s service doesn’t answer; I can’t get past his secretary’s secretary. What’s going on? Did the terrorists find you both? Are you all right? Someone please answer this message and—” The tape cut her off in midsentence.

“Friend of yours, Lizzie?”

The Setite swung a guarded glance his way. If she resented him, if she were worried, it didn’t show on the surface. He put on an inquisitive, charming, damnable expression to fence with. Khalil felt very arch, very superior this evening. It had something to do with the wad of currency in his hip pocket. He’d never had an opportunity to really test the limits of his greed before. How nice finally to find something boundless for which he had talent. This phone call—it gave him ideas, as well.

He pressed PLAY and listened to the pathetic mortal voice plead again. “Rutherford— Rutherford House is where you work, isn’t it? Before you died, of course.” He stepped up to her studio and poked at the antiques laid out on the workbench. “Is this real silver?” he asked, holding up a tray. “Looks valuable.”

“To a collector…” the Setite admitted carefully.

Khalil crossed to the computer desk and file drawers. He plopped down in front of the stacks and rummaged through the mess he’d made of them since moving in. There had been a folder marked Insurance… there it was. He opened it and traced a dirty-nailed finger down a list of appraisals and premiums. “Looks like a lot of money goes through Ye Olde House of Rutherford. This Amy. She’s a friend of yours?”

“She’s… just my boss.”

“Sounds awfully fond of you.”

“Probably more concerned about the apartment,” Liz parried.

“And that’s why your desk is full of cards and letters signed, ‘Love, Amy’.” Elizabeth said nothing.

“Well, you’ll get to see her soon enough. We’re going to pay the Rutherfords a visit, you and I. One night before long.”

The Setite looked up, startled. “Why?”

“When we’re there, you’re going to point things out to me. Expensive things.” “I won’t help you.”

“Oh, yes you will. I’m a terrorist. Amy said so. Terrorists kill people, if people don’t do what they want… and you know I kill people.” He threw down the files and sprang over to where she had to sit. “So you’ll do what I say, and you’ll be goddamn nice about it. You’ll help me get in and get out. You’ll tell me all about the security systems, and you’ll remember every single fucking detail. You’ll use that forked tongue of yours to tell a plausible story to your friend, or you won’t have a friend anymore.” He let it sink in. “And you won’t try anything sneaky and underhanded with me, either before or after. Dear Amy’s home address is in your desk, too.”

Relaxing a little, satisfied with the effect, Khalil coiled into the wide easy chair that faced Elizabeth’s seat. He let some time go by thinking about the numbers in the insurance folder, the little tricks and cheap illusions he could have ready, and the problems a really sweet haul would cause. His jetty eyes drifted back to the childe Setite, his trump card, and narrowed.

“You’re looking peaked, girl. I suppose we’d better hunt tonight, or you’ll be no good to me.” He picked open the fetter and unwound her chain from the support column. She made no move. “Come along,” he urged her, and pulled a bit.

Elizabeth sat where she was. Her hair had fallen forward, covering her expression. Khalil prepared to strike her for rebelling; he thought of the voice and hesitated; he looked at the set of her shoulders, and saw despair there, not resistance.

“Would you be happier if I left you to starve?” he barked, trying to make a joke of it— trying to clench his hand back into the fist he’d had ready.

She asked quietly and without interest: “Would I die?”

Khalil scoffed internally. She was such a complete infant. She knew less than nothing. “No,” he retorted. “You’d have about a week of agonizing hunger and pain, then you’d shrivel and curl up, until you smelt blood. Then you’d go after it, darling, and it wouldn’t matter who or what it was, you’d drink them dry and look around for seconds.” He tilted up his chin, playing up mental calculation. “You might get yourself under control before you’d murdered more than… say… two people. Adults, that is. Really, though, I’ve found that children are more likely to come poking in caves and old buildings and things—”

“I’ll go.” Elizabeth spoke through clenched teeth, images of young lovers lying savaged in a dark alley flickering in her eyes. “I’ll go.”

Friday, 13 August 1999, 9:01 PM (10:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time) Harmony High-Rise

Chicago, Illinois

Anatole (who both was and wasn’t himself) exited the mercantile establishment. His household had goods enough to last the remainder of the season. He saw that night had fallen, so he knew that the pretenses of his day would soon give way to the illicit exploits of his night. Once he was within the reaches of the manor, he would forgo the title of lord and again become a humble necromancer, striving to uncover the secrets of life beyond this mortal one.

His experiments were reaching a delicate stage. While his brethren might struggle to transmute lead into gold, or to learn the true names of demons they might control, he sought to make stone live like flesh. If he was successful, then his armies would plunder the gold of his brethren, and all the demons they controlled would find no souls to tempt within the breasts of his animated warriors.

At the end of the walkway, he hailed his carriage. There was some grumbling among the members of his group, but they dared not complain loudly enough to be singled out. Such rudeness. To them he was still lord, though one of them might unknowingly be his mentor in the masked ceremonies they sometimes gathered to perform.

They were a secretive lot, and theirs a secretive business. The lord-cum-necromancer (who both was and wasn’t Anatole) had cast his warriors in the likeness of one of them, and he knew another would be jealous if this were revealed. But nothing could be revealed; for if it were, then the secrets upon which his life depended would become known, and his life would be forfeit.

Within the carriage, the lord deflected the inquiries of his companions. He only answered to say that, yes, they were returning to the manor now. His companions seemed puzzled, as if expecting another destination even at so late an hour. Perhaps they did not have plans for the evening, not even a bedmate with whom to copulate, but he had his own variety of errands within the darkness.

The driver, too, made annoying inquiries, and when his companions could not answer his questions, the lord was forced to intervene. He pointed. There! Could the driver not plainly see the manor? Moments later, they arrived. For reasons he surely could not grasp or care to inquire after, one of the lord’s companions tipped the carriage driver. Oh, for the return of past ages when his powers as lord extended so far as life and death over every one of these. Such was his heritage, and hopefully such was his destiny.

His manor was bustling, of course, despite the late hour. Its proximity to a populous area full of the means of entertainment and diversion benefited his solitude, even if such carefree activity did not suit him personally.

He waited in the entry area as a handful of others passed through, then he dismissed his companions and stepped toward the secret doors to his laboratory. The doors slid open, and he stepped into the small room. He depressed the proper series of buttons on the wall, and a moment later, the door opened, but now it revealed the passageway to the lab.

He advanced grimly. The anticipation of this final night’s work on so delicate a task began to weigh heavily where before it buoyed him with expectation. The final strokes were to be set into the stone this night, and these were the lines that would either shape the project into something worthy of eternity, or would damn it to the bowels of Hell.

His workshop was as it always had been. A mess to others, he was certain, but by familiarity it seemed orderly and prepared. Damn the others, for what else should or shall be here? Perhaps he would have the place cleaned after this affair was complete, though of course the wench who did so would also supply the blood to power some future work. Such was the life of peasants. He could no longer murder by day within the law, so murder by night, when he was the law, would be his method.

He stood before his work. Already he could see the transformation of the visage was nearly complete, and tonight would give it the final vigor required. His model himself might be ghastly, but he had transformed him into something more angel than the demon he resembled, and how fitting that the death that would march at his command have a beatific, not demonic, face. Let him be underestimated! His enemies would not dare to do so more than once; but one mistake would be their undoing.

He prepared the proper rituals to encircle his subject and himself. He recited the expected incantations. Then his steady hand went to work. The details began to come through, and he felt a power growing in the room.

Too late, he realized some of that swelling energy was not of his making. Instead he was under attack, and from an unexpected direction. Too bad the lines of powder and chalked symbols that surrounded his work and himself were not protective ones. He had been caught unaware and had no chance to stop his master. The master must have thought his work a threat to him as well; which of course it was, for the master knew everything required to destroy the necromancer’s gargoyle.

With a wave of his hand, the master destroyed the work. The smoothed face was blasted with energy and the hideous visage of the model was revealed and then soon crumbled to dust as well.

The scheming sorcerer collapsed to the floor and begged for his master’s forgiveness. He would never have used his power against him, he claimed. With his work gone, those claims became true, and they convinced the master.

And so he lived, but he would be and was forever changed. Forever not the master, but instead pawn to many.

Friday, 13 August 1999, 11:30 PM The National Mall Washington, D.C.

In the wake of the riots, the Mall had assumed the aspect of an armed military encampment. A vast tent city, overflowing with refugees and emergency workers, stretched unbroken between the Capitol and the boarded-up windows of the White House. For the second time in its history, the residence of presidents had been subjected to the indignity of the torch. The First Lady had taken the forced evacuation in stride, recalling the example of her predecessor, Dolley Madison, by making a photo op of rescuing a portrait of George Washington from the conflagration.

The Washington Monument jutted erect and defiant from the press of canvas and unwashed bodies—a finger pointed accusingly at the heavens. Upon closer inspection, however, it was obvious that that the concerted efforts of innumerable vandals were taking their toll. As if sensing the prevailing wind, FEMA workers had at last overcome their awe and reluctance, erecting a makeshift scaffolding in order to paint a bold red cross on each of the obelisk’s four sides.

The Smithsonian Institute had shut its doors to the public. The lower level of the Air and Space Museum had been commandeered as the field headquarters of the Maryland State Militia as they tried in vain to restore some semblance of order to the nation’s capital. The Natural History Museum had been condemned and cordoned off after the explosion—allegedly set off by would-be diamond thieves— that rocked the building, setting it back down unsteadily on its foundation. Rescue crews were forced to carve their way through the life-sized replica of a blue whale that, once suspended from the ceiling, had precipitated to the floor, sealing off an entire wing of the building.

Of all the buildings on the Mall, however, the one that was most changed was the Castle (technically the Smithsonian Building, but know to al by its simpler and more telling monicker). Something fundamental about the nostalgic old brick edifice had been altered. The press of teeming life instinctively edged away from its presence. The weeds of rope and canvas would not take root in its shadow.

Still, it was there the small crippled figure was bound.

The tent city was alight with cookfires blazing in metal trashcans and gutted automobiles. He gave them a wide berth. He knew that if he were unwary enough to straggle too close to one of these tight knots of humanity, he would be rewarded with angry glances and bared steel at best. At worst, he would be robbed, or beaten or… well, many here were starving, he reminded himself. They would hardly scruple at such fare as was abundantly at hand.

He broke from the press of voracious bodies and emerged into a rough circle of open space, the no-man’s-land surrounding the Castle. Without glancing around to see if he were observed, he crossed quickly to the front doors. He felt as if the old building were marking his progress through narrowed arrowslit eyes.

Cautiously, he extended one hand to the door. Its surface was rough and knobby, but it seemed to squirm under his touch. Soft and yielding, moist and alive. The portal did not so much open to him as fold around him, engulf him.

He blindly groped, pushed and battered his way through the viscous membrane, only to find himself spat out into the coolness of the interior. He lost one of his polished brass crutches in the struggle. It skidded across the marble floor and came to rest several feet away with the clatter and reverberating ring of hollow metal.

“William?” came a sharp cry from upstairs. “Is that you, William? You always will make such a racket.”

“Yes, Your Eminence, it’s me. I am sorry to disturb you. I have…”

“Well come up, then. I am anxious for your news. But do try to be quiet. I should not like for you to further startle the subjects. They are coming along so nicely at present. Do come up.”

William shed his traveling clothes and abandoned his remaining crutch in the entryway. He tightened the cinch of the sack around his ribs. What little physical form he had extending below the ribcage—a tangle of vital organs and entrails—was wrapped up in that stained remnant of burlap. Its contents slopped wetly along the floor in his wake as he propelled himself along by means of his grotesquely overdeveloped arms.

William ascended the steps in a tortured series of hops and jerks, his palms slapping resoundingly against the cool marble. Pausing between each step, he waited for the unbalancing rocking motion to subside before assailing the next. After what seemed an eternity, he reached the tower room.

The small circular chamber was stifling. The air was stagnant and musty; the stench of carrion, nearly overpowering. William had the unsettling impression that he had wandered into the nest of some great predatory bird. He could see snatches of sky through the grimed windowpanes of the aerie. The floor of the nest was littered with old bones. Here and there a bright, shiny bauble caught the light—most of them steel, barbed and wickedly edged.

Sascha Vykos perched atop a high stool before a massive antique desk wrought of gopherwood. The piece must have easily weighed three hundred pounds, but the latticework supports gave it a light, almost ephemeral aspect. It put William in mind of the bazaars of Baghdad, of sacks of cinnamon, of swaying girls with navels like perfect almonds.

The stool seemed two sizes too large for the desk. Vykos, her arms folded tightly against her sides like wings, bent nearly double, pecking at the detailed anatomical sketchings before her with one cruel fingernail. Periodically she would cock her head, comparing some nuance of these precise diagrams to the living subjects arrayed around her—splayed open for her scrutiny.

The critical difference here, William thought, was the direction in which the information flowed. He thought of Vesalius and the great anatomists of the Renaissance, forced to ply their trade in secrecy and infamy, hastily scribbling down such verboten lore as they gleaned from covert glimpses into the secret depths of the human body.

Here, however, the operation worked in reverse. Vykos was not chronicling her observations of human cadavers. Rather, she was reworking her human subjects according to the blueprint on the desk.

She looked up from her work and, catching sight of William, rose to greet him. “There you are, William. Do come in. I was only just wrapping things up here. Do you have news for me?”

A shuddering moan from the nearest subject testified that Vykos had not yet finished “wrapping things up.” William accounted it a sign of weakness in himself that he still took notice of such trifles. The rivers of spilling life; the wet heft of the internal organs; the precise cuts that would separate bone from sinew; all these sights he had mastered and grown numb to. But the moaning, the keening, the gnashing of teeth…

Vykos regarded him coolly, with a look of detached curiosity, as if experimentally rearranging his features in her mind. He swallowed hard and forced himself to focus on the purpose of his visit.

“Yes, Your Eminence. News from the third enclave. All is in readiness. We have breached the outer wardings. I knew you would want to be there yourself, before anything within was disturbed. I have invoked the noli intrare and dismissed the excavation crews for the remainder of the evening.”

“Excellent. You have done well, William. But tell me, were you not even tempted to enter the enclave yourself? To be the first to wander those disused galleries, abandoned by the enemy in his haste? To gaze upon his lost treasuries, to handle the things that were precious to him? To pry from his musty books and wailing spirits each of his secret hopes?” Vykos’s voice had swelled to a susurrant chorus. William’s eyes were fixed in mute horror and fascination upon the severe black tribal tattoos peeking from the archbishop’s sleeves. Each seemed to writhe of its own accord and then, with the unmistakable sound of flesh parting, split into a wide, toothless grin. A babble of voices issued forth, each raised in the expectation of some new plunder or vengeance or humiliation near at hand.

William wrenched his gaze away and forced words to his lips. Any words. “Tempted, Your Eminence? Yes, perhaps. But you have been more than generous. The spoils from the first two enclaves—why, without the secrets we uncovered there, I could not hope to have achieved this present level of liberation from the flesh. I am greatly in your debt.”

Vykos scowled. “You are a poor liar, William. You did go inside, didn’t you? You can tell me. I will understand.” She pressed closer.

“No, Your Eminence! I did not… I dared not… I am your faithful servant. You who can dissect all truth from falsehood, you know this is so!”

Vkyos looked down impassively at the wretch squirming on the floor before her, inching backward through its own slime trail toward the edge of stairway. A curious insect. She raised one foot to crush it.

“Thank you, my lady!” Enrapt, William curled around the proffered foot, pressing it to his lips.

Vykos hesitated at the crux, savoring the still point between his adoration and annihilation. “Do stop that, William. It is most unseemly.” She flipped her toe disdainfully as she withdrew her favor. He flailed wildly, and only narrowly caught himself at the edge of the stair.

“Have the car brought around at once. We will leave immediately.” “Yes, Your Eminence. Thank you, Your Eminence.”

The National Mall Washington, D.C.

The armored personnel carrier rumbled from the subterranean parking deck of the museum. The barricade was hastily reassembled in its wake. The vehicle crossed the street and kept coming, plowing over the curb and into the Mall. Into the no-man’s-land surrounding the Castle.

The crowd edged away further, showing its disapproval at this disturbance by means of an intermittent rain of rocks, bottles, and human waste. The APC pulled up tightly to the front doors. It idled for a moment and then pulled away again, a burst of warning shots clearing its path. The crowd shrieked, hurled another volley of abuse, and then shrank back, subsided.

The APC picked its way through the detritus of the city and crossed the last serviceable bridge over the Potomac and into Virginia. Form there, it continued on, deep into the mountains beyond Winchester, before coming to a halt.

The doors slid back and Vykos stepped forth into the cool night air and its pervading scent of pine. She found the vastness of the open space distracting. Perhaps she had been too long among the cramped and dimly lit laboratories, prisons and bunkers which had comprised the entirety of her world of late.

She considered. The last time she could remember being out of doors was the night they had stormed Washington. That had been glorious. No, it was the night of her coronation. She distinctly remembered sitting on the roof of the Castle while the dignitaries of the Sabbat gathered beneath her. But the city had since become a trap for her, a jail.

Vykos had little, if any, interest in the nightly rigors of running a city—especially one of the size and complexity of Washington. The innumerable details and crises that must be dealt with only distracted her from her work, her research. Distracted from it? They preempted it.

But tonight… She drew a great double lungful of wind and starlight and pine. Tonight, she would be free of all such distractions. Here there would be time enough—and space enough—for discoveries. For revelations! Perhaps she would find, within these woods, within this hermitage of her old rival, within his cache of carefully hoarded secrets, some hint to that which had eluded her these long years. Perhaps she would not go back, would never go back.

William cleared his throat uncomfortably, shying away from the unveiled hunger consuming his master’s features. It was more terrible than her clinical indifference, her casual dismissal. “The enclave, it is just through here, Your Eminence.”

The pass through the wall of briars had been trodden flat. The smell of pine soon gave way to the sickly sweet reek of magnolia. White-blossoming trees lined both sides of the approach. They leaned together noticeably, their upper reaches meeting high above and forming a bowered colonnade leading up to the decrepit manor house.

Two sentries flanked the semicircular steps which ascended to the front porch. From this distance, they might have been mistaken for a pair of thorny and ill-trimmed hedges. Their impatient rustlings, however, betrayed them. Their stirrings did not coincide with the gusting of the wind.

As the archbishop approached, each of the two thorn bushes disconcertingly dropped to one knee, bending nearly double.

“Good evening, Your Eminence.”

“It is a great honor, Your Eminence.”

The green men had a wild aspect to them. Their unkempt leafy “hair” stuck out in all directions, barely contained by severe crowns of thorns. The wood of their faces was old, weathered and deeply scored with the passing years. Their features were sharp and angular, a theme carried through to their brittle, twiglike limbs. Wood cracked and snapped at their every motion.

“You,” she indicated the guardian at her right hand, “shall accompany us within. We will need a light. William, do hold still a moment.” Vykos cupped her hands and blew into them slowly, steadily. A faint, tentative flicker blossomed within the dim recess. As she breathed life into the spark, it grew brilliant, white-hot.

William cried out in alarm, nearly losing his balance atop the brass crutches. His black wool greatcoat slumped to the ground, smoking slightly. Revealed within, the burlap sacking that bound up his entrails blazed with a blinding white light—the network of coarse fibers illuminated like the mesh hood of a propane lamp.

Vykos silenced him with a look. “If you are quite finished, you will be so kind as to lead the way.”

A House in the Shenandoah Valley Frederick County, Virginia

The metallic crutches rang along the empty corridors and galleries. It seemed to William that they had been wandering aimlessly for hours. The former occupants of this house had obviously left in a great hurry. The signs of hasty packing could still be read in the scattered personal effects littering the upper chambers. The laboratories had been taken over by noxious vapors and unchecked fungal growths—the descendants of dubious compounds left to their own devices in uncovered beakers and petri dishes.

In the sanctums and workshops, dust had drifted over and obscured the carefully inscribed chalk lines of protective diagrams—the unmistakable sign of rites abandoned midcourse. In the east wing, William could trace a swath of carnage that could only be attributed to a guardian spirit gone renegade. With the pacts that bound it left unfulfilled, the once-faithful servant had rather dramatically and vindictively taken its leave.

“It is the same here as in the other two enclaves that we uncovered,” Vykos purred. “I am pleased to see that the loyalty of Goratrix has not gone unrewarded. The pupils have taken a page from their master’s book. They have abandoned their post at the first hint of danger.”

“They say,” William struggled to keep up. “That they were summoned. All of them. Called away. To attend upon their master.”

They also say, he reflected, that Vykos and Goratrix had been the fiercest of rivals, even back in their mortal days—back when both were mere apprentices vying for the attentions of the wizard Tremere. But that was in back in the golden age, when the gods of the night walked among men wearing their true forms—their visages beautiful and terrible to behold. The very sight of them was enough to blast a man’s senses for the presumption of gazing upon their betters. But the balefires of the Inquisition ended all that, and the affronted Tzimisce turned their radiant and ineffable faces away from even the faithful.

William had been ever at his master’s side as she systematically pillaged each of the hastily abandoned enclaves of House Goratrix. From her occasional unguarded outbursts, William had tried to piece together some hint of what had transpired between the two legendary rivals. His best guess at present was that Goratrix had thought to best his rival by betraying Vykos into the hands of the Radiant Ones. He could not have anticipated, however, that by his actions he would ensure only that their enmity would span a mind- numbing eight centuries. William wisely kept all of these conjectures to himself.

“I know what they say. Do you think we would be here if…” Vykos visibly calmed. “I had heard these rumors, of course, even when I was still in Europe. But I had to see for myself. You understand, don’t you, William? But I have heard no news of their master these many months. His silence troubles me. He is very… dear to me.”

William was certain that he would not care to be the object of such affections. “And… and do you think it is possible that he was actually here, Your Eminence?

Within these very walls? I must admit, with all that has been whispered about the Betrayer, I begin to doubt that there remains any shred of truth still clinging to the stories about him. All that nonsense about him winning for the Tremere the secret of life eternal. And of his single-handedly rediscovering the lost premises of the Blood Magic. And of his turning upon his master to audaciously declare his own House! Why, if half the things they say about him were true, he would have to have been the greatest warlock ever to…” William broke off abruptly, instantly aware that he had gone too far.

Vykos regarded him levelly. He recognized his master’s look. It was that moment of calm into which the blood spills. She held him there squirming with only her gaze. Then with a snort of derision she turned away. “I know a greater.”

William hobbled along in silence for a time, reluctant to say anything that might further provoke her. He was content to fall behind. It seemed that they were just traversing the same empty corridors over and over again, but he said nothing. Just ahead Vykos had come to an abrupt halt.

“It has to be here. I distinctly remember being deflected down the length of this corridor at least three times already. William, do you remember searching this storeroom?” He looked again and saw a small door he had failed to notice during his approach, blocked no doubt by the intimidating figure of Vykos herself. He searched his memory. “Yes, a small pantry. Your Eminence will recall that most of the foodstuffs had collapsed into a sort of red and gray mold.”

Their escort had taken note of the discussion and turned back toward the pair. Vykos turned upon the green man as he rejoined them. “Would you be so kind as to make a quick search of that room to confirm William’s recollection?”

“Of course, Your Eminence.” Opening the door, he peered within, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. He shut it again quickly. “It is exactly as he says. Can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time rummaging around down there either.” He turned to resume the trek up the corridor.

“What is exactly as he says?” Vykos pursued.

The guard looked confused. “The steps. Down to the wine cellar. It looks like the boards are rotted through in places. And from the smell of it, the staircase isn’t all that’s decomposing down there.”

“The wine cellar?” She turned upon William, a look of triumph in her eyes.

“Yes, Your Eminence, the wine cellar. If you feel that is somehow important, I imagine we could rig up a harness that I might navigate the broken stairs. I saw some rope in that supply room in the west wing.”

“A moment ago, you told me it was a pantry,” Vykos persisted.

William seemed flustered. “Maybe I’m disoriented. It feels like we’ve been wandering in circles for hours.” He crossed to the door and, wedging himself between crutch and wall, opened it.

“You are, as usual, quite correct, Your Eminence. It is a pantry, nothing more. I am sorry to have wasted your time. Shall we proceed to search the grounds?”

“No, we will not. We’re going through that door. All of us.”

“Into the pantry?” William challenged. “I hardly think we would all be able to squeeze in, even if the room were not crammed with rotting foodstuffs. No, I will go, master.”

“Imbecile,” she muttered. “It is a warding. A lingering trick of old blood magics. It is fogging your perceptions—and apparently your memories as well—of whatever is behind that door.” From within the recesses of her sleeve, Vykos conjured a wicked steel blade. William rocked backward in alarm, teetering precariously. She grabbed his shoulder with one hand, steadying him. He felt a surge of heat and panic. Looking down, he saw the knife buried to the hilt in the white-hot mesh that encased his interior organs.

“But, my master! Your Eminence!” he sputtered.

“Do shut up, William.” Vykos withdrew the knife. It glowed with stolen fire. She pressed the blade into the wood of the door and, in a single sweeping motion, seared a perfect circle into its surface. She worked quickly, adding runes and arcane glyphs, transforming the circle into a protective diagram. A few more deft strokes and the entire diagram changed again, resolving into the semblance of a great dragon, curled in upon itself, swallowing its own tail.

The knife had grown cold, but the dragon blazed with a radiance of its own. An internal flame. William had slumped back against the wall and slid slowly to the floor. Entrails spilled around him from the tattered remains of the burlap sacking, now extinguished and lifeless. He looked up uncomprehendingly at his master.

“You will wait here, William.” She beckoned to the green man to accompany her within. “You may follow us when your wits have cleared.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence. You are most generous,” William replied.

Saturday, 14 August 1999, 3:45 AM A House in the Shenandoah Valley Frederick County, Virginia

The room beyond the door opened out into a vast courtyard, open to the sky. There was no trace of a cramped pantry nor of any decaying staircase descending into a dank wine cellar. The once-elaborate gardens were choked with decaying leaves and pools of stagnant water that bred clouds of mosquitoes. Three forking paths—of red, black and white pebbles, respectively—slithered through the undergrowth.

Vykos stepped into the small circle of cleared space just beyond the door. The floor here was of stone; the weeds and bracken had made little headway against it. To her right was a great jagged boulder draped languidly with broken iron manacles. The chains were stained the dusky red of corrosion and old blood.

The green man bent to examine the inscription carved into the boulder. It read

“Ecce inquit ignis et ligna ubi est victima holocausti.”

“Victims of the Holocaust?” He stared up at the bloody manacles and shook his head. “This is a weird place for a Holocaust memorial.”

There was a pained look on Vykos’s face as she turned to regard him. “Victima holocausti. It means ‘burnt offering.’ Tell me, where exactly did you study… no, never mind. Don’t tell me. It will only anger me. The full inscription reads ‘Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ It’s from the Bible,” she added hopefully, seeing the blank look on his face. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The story of Abraham and Isaac?”

“’Course I’ve heard of it.” He scuffed angrily at some loose pebbles that had crept into the circle. “Haven’t bothered to read it in the Latin.”

“When I first learned the story,” Vykos’s voice was distant, her thoughts already far away, “you couldn’t read it in anything but the Latin. Or the Hebrew…”

She turned her gaze out over the courtyard, picking out the familiar hint of the Kabbalistic underpinnings that lay beneath the arrangement of the Garden of Forking Paths. Three paths departed from Malkhut, the Earthly Prison, branching, transforming, ascending toward Kether, the Crown. The palace of undiluted divinity. On their journey, the three paths branched, crossed, divided, until they were twenty-two in number—one for each manifestation of the Major Arcana. She could pick out nine other circular clearings besides the one she stood upon, representing the planetary spheres, the waystations upon the journey of inner discovery. Some boasted clogged fountains, others discolored statuary, others still, neglected memorial stones.

As the familiar mystic pattern unfolded before her, however, what Vykos saw was not Jacob’s shining ladder ascending step by step from the human to the divine. Rather, she saw a trap. A labyrinth of false turnings, blocked paths and dead ends. The serpentine routes that should have heralded revelations coiled only inward upon themselves—growing stagnant, brooding, bitter. At the very center of the gardens, the dragon gnawed its tail.

Vykos inhaled deeply, savoring the miasma, the utter refutation of her rival’s scheme to grasp immortality. She was sorry Goratrix himself could not be here to witness this, to share in this moment. But perhaps his absence was the most damning refutation of all. Perhaps he had finally succumbed to death’s gentle reproof.

“You may follow if you wish,” Vykos told the green man. “But be wary. There is death here among the Forking Paths.” She strode off boldly down the central path, toward the very heart of the corruption, the dragon’s maw. After a while, crunching footfalls told her that her guardian had fallen into step behind her. Foolish. The path of white pebbles was the Axis Mundi, the cosmic pillar; its secret that it knew only departures, never returns.

The path wound toward the central sphere. Already she could pick out the stunted apple tree at the heart of the gardens. Many paths converged upon it, forming a crossroads. In her younger days, Vykos remembered, they used to hang people at crossroads. Such a quaint old custom. “It would have been better for you if you had remained at the rock,” Vykos called over her shoulder.

Her escort grunted and hurried to catch up. “Gave me the creeps. It felt like there was something hanging over me, circling, waiting. I had to get out from under. That and the smell of the blood. The manacles, they oozed blood! I swear it. I about freaked. And it wasn’t like fake blood or special effects either. It was vitae, old and potent. Couldn’t figure where it was coming from. Couldn’t just ignore it. It was getting all up and inside my head.”

“You should have waited outside, with William,” Vykos replied sensibly. She brooded in silence for a time as they wended through the undergrowth. “It is well that you did not taste of that blood. It is the blood of the Betrayer. This is his House; those are his chains. They are left there as a reminder, no doubt, for his deluded followers. A sign of the price he paid for their sake.”

The path opened out before them into another circle of open ground. A low wall of brick, no more than a foot in height, encircled the clearing. It was clearly the work of a master mason. The bricks fitted together seamlessly, without benefit of mortar or concrete. It was no mean feat to have wrought a perfect circle using solely rectangular bricks. Vykos kicked at the wall, found it solid. This was Yesod, the Foundation.

She drew up short before the weathered statue at the center of the enclosure. “Ah, here you are, my old friend. As ever, your ambition is exceeded only by your modesty.”

The statue stood just over eight feet in height, not including its pedestal. The subject was young, dashing and exultant. His head was thrown back, his upraised fist clenched tightly around some hidden prize.

“This is him? He looks awfully young,” her companion said skeptically. Seeing Vykos’s disapproving look, he added, “Looks like he just nicked something.”

At that Vykos smiled. “He did. He was their Prometheus, their Light-Bringer. But Prometheus stole for man only the secret of fire. Goratrix laid at their feet the secret of the flame eternal, of life everlasting. He struck his Dark Bargain and he signed it, not only in his own blood, but in the blood of all his brethren. And finally, he paid its price.”

“You mean they killed him? Chained him to a rock?”

“Prometheus,” Vykos corrected, “was chained to a rock for his presumption. Each day a vulture would tear out and devour his liver, which would regenerate itself for the next day’s feast. Goratrix would like us to think that he, like Prometheus, has suffered nobly and unjustly. That his blood is shed nightly for his people. I had hoped that we had seen the last of his blood.”

“What’s the inscription say?” The green man jerked one thumb in the direction of the pedestal. The writing around its base read: Quasi tempestas transiens non erit impius iustus autem quasi fundamentum sempiternum.

Vykos’s mood was improving steadily. So much so that she failed to rebuke him as she had William over his lack of classical education. “‘As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.’ It’s from the…”

“Oh yeah, the Bible. The wicked is no more, huh? Peculiar epithet for your own memorial. Do you think,” he mused aloud as they struck out again from the other side of the clearing, “that he ever actually saw all this? That he might have walked these same paths that we’re walking?”

Irritation flickered briefly across her features. This was the second time this evening she had been met with this line of inquiry. But it was not enough to distract her long from the rapture of walking among the ruins of her enemy’s house. “I could not say for certain. It is possible. House Goratrix could not have held more than a dozen chantries worldwide. We’ve discovered and breached three of these enclaves now. Four, if you count the charred ruins of the fatherhouse beneath Mexico City. I’d say it’s very likely that he at least put in a single appearance here, perhaps at the dedication of the new community. If only to extract oaths of blood and allegiance.”

Before her, the path opened up again. Vykos stepped at last into the central clearing. Her companion cursed as he joined her, pressing his hand over nose and mouth. “Ugh, that stench.” Flies clustered thickly about the pendulous fruit of the blackened tree. This was the focal point of the pattern, the crux where the emanations of the divine met the strivings of the mortal. The place where the dragon’s tail and maw met in the humble perfection of

the circle. Enrapt, Vykos pressed forward.

There was a marble plaque set against the trunk of the stunted tree. She clawed away the encroaching undergrowth and read aloud, “Eritis sicut dii scientes bonum et malum…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Vykos did not turn. She squinted up into the tattered canopy of dead branches as if searching for something, some glitter of scale, some flickering of tongue. “And you shall be as gods,” she replied, “knowing both good and evil.”

Tentatively, she extended one hand to pluck the forbidden fruit. The apple. The Malum. The symbol of House Goratrix and of the temptation with which he had both betrayed and damned the Tremere. You shall be as gods…

The cloud of flies parted before her amidst a buzzing of jealous reproaches. In its wake, Vykos saw revealed, not the lustrous red gleam of the Malum, but the deeper red/ black tones of a withered human heart.

The tree was festooned with stunted life. With a deft motion, Vykos ruthlessly plucked the pendulous fruit and savored its slimy wet heft. A single bead of blood glistened on the broken aortal stem. Closing her eyes upon the sublime anticipation, she raised the fruit to her lips and bit into the sweet flesh.

There was the unmistakable sound of muscle rending. Crisp, moist, warm. Then the rush of juices. A mouthful of long-forbidden sunlight. Vykos was aware of the warmth spreading throughout her body. Fanning out. Following, not the course of gullet and gut, but rather surging through the atrophied channels of disused veins and arteries.

Vykos felt an answering fire from her own blood. It leapt within her, boiling, raging. She doubled over in ecstatic pain.

There was a shriek from behind her. Vykos forced her eyes open upon a scene of mayhem. The body of the green man had erupted into flames, consumed from within. He raced from the circle, plowing straight through a dense wall of vegetation in his efforts to reach the nearest fountain. Scattered fires caught in his wake, playing among the dried leaves.

The screams and the crashing through the underbrush ceased abruptly. Judging from the location of the wavering column of smoke, he had never reached his destination.

Saturday, 14 August 1999, 4:14 AM A House in the Shenandoah Valley Frederick County, Virginia

An anxious voice reached Vykos from the direction of Malkhut, the Earthly Prison. The exit. “Are you all right, Your Eminence? I heard…”

William broke off abruptly, catching sight of his mistress. He was propped up unsteadily against the boulder. His entrails dangled freely, twining in and amongst the rusty manacles, blind white serpents testing the air with darting tongues. William was oblivious to the spectacle he presented. He had eyes only for his master.

Vykos was radiant. Transfigured. A brilliant light shone through her. Like a prism, she splintered it into shards of color.

“It’s all right, William.” The voice was strong, comforting. Not at all the alien musical tones he had come to expect from his master. The prism of light drew closer, moving jerkily. It crunched heavily up the pebbled pathway. It entered the Earthly Prison with the ringing sound of hollow brass striking stone.

With each halting step, its radiance faded, dimming to a calm, reflective luster. William stared in open wonder at the image before him. It was no longer that of his harsh mistress, but rather a reflection of himself. But what a reflection! This was not an image of himself as he was now; it was a reflection of what he might be. The mirror picked out all that was noble, all that was praiseworthy, all that was desirable within him and magnified it. Laid it before him like a gift.

It was disorienting, seeing himself standing there in Vykos’s place. He looked upon a William who was a millennium-old predator, a pillar of the Sabbat, the leader of a city feared the world over.

But even as he gazed, the image was already shifting, refining. His double straightened, seeming to hang effortlessly in midair. The clumsy brass crutches fell away, neglected, forgotten. The image twisted, withered, curled in upon itself, a serpent swallowing its own entrails. It shed its skin, its physical form peeling away like layers of cumbersome winter clothing, revealing ever-lighter garments beneath. Wrappings of skin gave way to muscle, and then tissue, and ultimately bone. The trailing clutter of ribs and vertebrae fell to the ground like a gentle rain. The skull followed with the musical sound of hollow bone struck against rock.

He stood before himself as he was in essence: a light, drifting mist of blood. There were tears in his eyes as he reached out one tentative hand.

“Why, whatever is wrong, William?” The voice was little more than a stirring of the mist. He felt a cool, soothing moisture as the wisps of crimson danced between his fingertips.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

He was silent a long while, oblivious to all around him. Then he spoke aloud, to no one in particular, to Vykos (where had she gone?), to himself. “I’m afraid it will end. I’m afraid it will not end.”

“William? Come back to me, William.”

The cloud resolved into the shape of a face. Vykos’s face. She was bent over him in concern. Her features came into sharper focus, resuming their habitual dispassionate scrutiny. A look that wielded a scalpel.

“Your sentry has met with an accident. Some sort of warding, no doubt, to keep the uninitiated from tasting of the fruit of the tree. You really must be more careful in your recruiting efforts. There were some glaring oversights in his formal training. You will keep that in mind when securing a replacement, won’t you, William?”

William could not focus on his master’s words. His thoughts were still on that simple, dancing wisp of crimson. Physical form distilled to the essential. Already, he knew this was to be his obsession, his calling, his lifework.

It was an ambiguous, double-edged gift that his master had laid before him, here in her rival’s Garden of Forking Paths. He pushed himself upright, free of the bloodstained boulder, wondering what price might be exacted of her in return for this indiscretion.

But already, he knew the price.

“Come along, William. You will see to the dismantling of this enclave tomorrow. You may apportion the plunder as you see fit. But make sure that the ruins are burned. And William,” she turned back to him, “I will have that statue for my museum. My museums. You will see to it that it is brought to the Castle, won’t you?”

“Your will be done, Your Eminence.” Ahead of him he saw, not the familiar silhouette of his master, but only a drifting wisp of red. Temptation distilled to its purest, its most essential, its most lethal form. He knew now why he, like all who beheld her, could refuse her nothing.

Saturday, 14 August 1999, 10:30 PM Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

“Ramona,” Khalil said, as they pounded the pavement, hunting together. “Yeah?” The Gangrel kept her eyes on the street; she was hungry.

“Find me a fence. A classy fence.” “What d’hell you mean, ‘classy’?”

The Ravnos lowered his voice. “I’m planning something big.” Ahead of them, a lady was walking toward… was it a bar?… by herself. “I can’t keep going to the same vulgar little hock shop. I need a man who can move quality items.” He bent their path to take them closer to the watering hole. Ramona stopped dead, flaring up in a now-familiar way—what the hell have I said this time? Khalil asked himself.

“Why d’you think I’d know anything about that shit? I come from a good family, you son of a bitch. I’m no thief—I don’t go stealing shit unless I really fucking need it—”

“But you know New York better than I do,” he flattered her. They were outside the door of the bar, and he could see from here that his lady was sitting self-consciously by herself. “I’ve found my mark. Go get yours and meet me back at the post office by midnight, or I’ll go off to the meet by myself.”

Private Correspondence, Sent 14 August 199 From Sir Talley the Hound, Templar of the Sabbat

To His Eminence Ambrosio Luis Monçada, Sabbat Cardinal of Spain

My Most Eminent and Beloved Cardinal, While I have no inkling of what I have done to displease you so greatly that you have decided to sentence me to penance among this den of madmen, brutes and liars, I would most humbly beseech that you would tell me so that I might make amends and thus be done with this entire matter.

The offensive on Buffalo was a qualified success. While the city was taken, as you no doubt have heard, the casualties were a bit heavier than expected. The intelligence Archbishop Vykos’s spy provided was mostly correct, but as you and I both know, the Devil himself lurks in the details.

One of those details was Lucita, who made an appearance. For whatever reason, she was intent on dealing with the ductus whom Polonia had put in charge of affairs. It seems odd to me that Lucita’s talents would be wasted on such a—and pardon me for saying so—pathetic excuse for a Lasombra.

The paranoid in me bears in mind your mention of a potential traitor. Of those I have observed among the high command here in the New World, only the archbishops would have access to the financial resources required to entice your prodigal childe. Polonia and Borges profit from drugs, graft, et cetera, in their respective cities; Vykos has had centuries to hoard its treasures. There are others, of course, in the Sabbat Internationale who would have the interest and the means to destroy an archbishop—the regent springs to mind—but you have narrowed the field to my unhappy triumvirate, and in this I trust your impeccable judgment.

I cannot believe, however, that any of the archbishops would have required the services of an assassin, particularly one as expensive as Lucita, even had one of the three harbored a desire to dispatch this MacEllen. Borges would have crushed him; Don Polonia would have simply clutched the man’s neck and twisted—from what I understand, he nearly did so at a war-council meeting just prior to my arrival—and Vykos would have turned the fellow into a nice footstool or end table. None would have faced recrimination.

The matter smells of outside influence. I suspect this is no longer simply a family affair. Not that a third party arranging MacEllen’s demise—if such truly is the case— exonerates our beloved archbishops of designs upon one another.

Speaking of the archbishops, they are a fine set indeed. Vykos, when not busying herself with the siege of the stubborn Tremere (which continues apace without notable result), is the perfect hostess, deferring to Don Polonia in most matters of strategy and concentrating on her duties as archbishop of this fly-ridden city. She seems in little hurry for the offensive to continue north, now that her territory and status are fairly secure. With Washington embedded between Miami and New York as it is, she stands to benefit should a tragedy befall either Borges or Polonia, as would they if something untoward happened to her.

As for Don Polonia, he is a bit more of a cipher. His devotion to the sect seems single-minded and his strategies are excellent. But little things about the man still rankle. Why does he take such delight in baiting Archbishop Borges? Sheer perversity? Certainly Vykos is the more formidable threat to Polonia’s ascendancy to a position of prominence over the American Sabbat. Why, then, does he risk driving a potentially powerful enemy into his rival’s arms? It makes little sense to me, but in the meantime we have suffered no major setbacks in the field, and no losses of any Cainites of consequence.

Finally, we have Archbishop Borges, who seems intent on challenging his fellow archbishops at every opportunity, generally to the advantage of Polonia or Vykos. Borges may have bludgeoned his way to the top of that rubbish heap that is Miami, but he lacks the subtlety of his rivals. What were Les Amies Noir thinking when they extended to him the highest honors the clan can offer? His forte is the bullish, straight-ahead assault; he spends most of his nights feverishly scrutinizing reports from the field, looking for evidence that his people have done something praiseworthy. Perhaps he is intimidated; much of his support is scattered in the wake of the offensive, while much of Archbishop Polonia’s is close at hand. I would not be surprised to discover him either the object or the instigator of Lucita’s attentions.

Beyond that, there is little to report. Vallejo seems to be edging toward Polonia’s service, presumably because service with a Tzimisce disagrees with him. He is often away on business of his own, which seem to be trips into the field to observe some of the more efficient packs in action. Perhaps he is looking for potential recruits.

On the whole—aside from the unmitigatedly disastrous assassination attempt on the Ventrue, Pieterzoon—the operation stands somewhat satisfactorily. Information flows on a steady basis. However, since the surprises at Buffalo (which, besides Lucita, included a clever little fellow of a Nosferatu who stayed behind long enough to make an extreme nuisance of himself), it has been decided that such intelligence should be supplemented by more extensive field reports from scouting details. A half-dozen or so have been dispersed, including some of Borges’s and Polonia’s favorite subordinates. Supplies continue to flow freely, though the antitribu Munro overseeing the operation is as unpleasant to deal with as he has ever been.

Other than that, the captured territories are being scoured and Buffalo fully invested. Several smaller cities nearby—Rochester, the ironically named Syracuse—have also been taken, to little fanfare. Again, the resistance was minimal. The enemy seems to be concentrating in Baltimore. One wonders precisely to what end. A counteroffensive to relieve the Tremere in Washington? Sensible, but unlikely; this whole thing smacks of the Americans’ Civil War, where opposing capitals glowered at each other from a few dozen miles away while war raged everywhere else. Atlanta? Nonsense, it’s too isolated and too far away from any other theater that matters. Still, I have made recommendations to the various archbishops that we prepare for the Camarilla’s resistance to stiffen. Even a dying dog has one last bite in it.

As for myself, I generally stay within the city, attaching myself to one archbishop or the other. Borges is resentful, Vykos distant, and Polonia utterly unconcerned. There has been no sign of Lucita since Buffalo, though I expect she will make her presence known shortly. Beyond that, there is no news to report. Decisions will be made soon on the Giovanni presence in Boston and the next target for assault—I would expect the so- called New England to bear the brunt of it—but now all I have is idle speculation, with which I would not waste your time.

May this letter find you in good health, and please keep me posted on the resolution of the chess game you had begun with Don Ibrahim. I have been playing in my mind with the board I saw, and think I may have found a way for black to triumph after all.

Yours in Utmost Respect, —Talley

Saturday, 14 August 1999, 11:18 PM Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

Talley reread the finished letter and frowned. The opening was perhaps a bit strong, but he was not in a mood to be delicate. Besides, Monçada valued him and his service too highly, he hoped, to get overly upset over a letter. And if Monçada was right and there was a God inclined to rain miracles down upon the unworthy, this missive might even serve to get Talley out of here.

The rest was hardly literary, but it would serve to keep Monçada informed. Hurriedly, he stuffed it into an envelope and addressed it; one of the couriers constantly winging back and forth from Europe would convey it shortly. Hopefully, the messenger would be clever enough not to open and read it en route. Good couriers were, after all, very difficult to find.

Sunday, 15 August 1999, 12:25 AM

The Nawab of Bengal Restaurant, Manhattan New York City, New York

Their cab rolled up in front of the small, ornately decorated restaurant. Sarat Mukherjee put the car in park, turned off the engine, got out and held the car door open for Khalil—a courtesy Ramona had never seen from him before. When the Indian didn’t get back in the taxi, she stared at him strangely. To Khalil, she whispered, “Is he coming in with us?” The man scampered toward the establishment with enthusiasm and a promise that it was all ready, just one minute, please.

“Sure. Why the hell not, it’s his cousin’s place.”

“You set this up on your friends’ turf? I can’t believe you, man. Putting them in that kind of danger—”

“What danger, sweetheart?”

She mouthed the word over the top of the cab. “Sabbat.”

“They’re already in danger, darling. They’re alive. They know me.” He smiled wickedly and passed through the arched entryway.

The Gangrel followed him guiltily. A hostess in sari came up and greeted her. A little boy turning chairs upside-down onto tables for the night gave her a shining, curious grin. Sarat, Khalil, a man in a suit, and a man wearing aproned white were all talking together near the center of the room. Ramona couldn’t follow the language—couldn’t even guess which one it might be—and sat down heavily at the table closest the door. The little boy came over to her and wiped the table clean, still beaming, showing off his mismatched front teeth (two grown-up, one baby, and one gummy gap where only the thinnest line of new enamel poked through). She thought of a biker—a Sabbat enforcer she’d last seen with his jaw sliding half off his face—and she thought of Gehenna, of the skinny chick on guard, of the guy Khalil had had words with, of Yve and of that stick, Jean-Paul—and sprang up again.

“Khalil, we gotta talk.” All four men turned to look at her.

“That’s what I came to do, sweetheart.” He checked his watch. “That’s what I was doing. The Sabbat’s emissaries will be here any minute, and the Mukherjees and I need to finish arrangements.” He shot out another quick phrase in that tricky language, and the cook, the hostess, and the little boy started dragging furniture around.

“Khalil! You get them the hell out of here before your goddamn ‘emissaries’ arrive.” Her companion turned slowly to face her. “Scruples, dear heart?” He glanced about— there was one table and two chairs left in the middle of the floor; two large, round tables, one on either side of the door, surrounded by six chairs each. “They were going to sit with you while I talk to the bigwig. If they leave, the bigwig will know for sure that you and I

are all there is to us. Do you really want to sit alone across from one of those gangs we met the other night?”

Ramona clenched her fists in an agony of fear and self-control. With a major effort, she managed: “Send them home.”

Khalil came closer to her, laughing. “They live here. Sarat and his family on the third floor, the restaurant owner on the second. I’ll get the boy out of sight, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

Ramona spat out a few choice expressions she’d learned in the LA barrio growing up. “So long as that means ‘yes’. Now have a seat, sweetheart.” Another word to the man in the suit, and the lights dimmed. The Mukherjee family—adults only—took their places by Ramona, and Khalil settled down in one of the chairs at the center table.

Presently, the door opened and the bells hung from it chimed faintly.

Khalil watched, as coolly as possible, as the shark and the cat slithered into the room. They checked the setup and beckoned to a little face at the entrance. The monkey came through, and the dog held the door for the rest of the party: The turtle and the rooster took up posts nearby, and Jean-Paul walked calmly in behind them.

His icy glance took in Ramona, Khalil’s props, the empty table for six, and the seat left open for him. He sniffed the air with obvious distaste. With a snap of his fingers he sent the gang to their place. After a careful scrutiny of his own chair, he sat down himself and began speaking without greeting or prelude.

“Regarding Hesha. We are willing to take that commission, but the man has dropped out of sight. There is even a suspicion that the reason we cannot trace him is that—there simply isn’t such a person anymore?”

Khalil frowned slightly. “I don’t believe it. I would know.” Jean-Paul’s face registered well-bred surprise. “Really.”

The voice in Khalil’s head picked that moment to reassert itself: You would only know if I told you, you squealing runt. And you would beg before I told you.

Khalil ignored the interjection; this was his deal.

You are more than welcome to your “deal,” boy. Just wait and see.

The Sabbat lifted an eyebrow, and continued. “If we find him, of course, we will fulfill our bargain… but to protect ourselves from fruitless work, I have to ask whether, if the man has met his second and final demise, you will honor whatever price we set?”

“So long as you prove it.” “Quite so.”

Jean-Paul took out a small leather-bound notebook and a gold pencil. “Is there anything you can tell us about Ruhadze’s recent activities that might help our search?”

“You want information from me?”

“This Setite’s enemies, friends, associates, habits, haunts… whatever could be of assistance.”

The Ravnos’s expression soured. “Put something definite on the table for that. You may not catch him, and then where would I be, giving you all this for free? This is the goods on a high-ranking snake, you know. From the inside.”

The aristocrat’s mouth twitched. He tore a leaf from his little book and wrote down a name, a description, and a location. Jean-Paul slid the paper across the table and remarked pleasantly, “That is the prince’s latest baby girl. She misses Mommy and Daddy, poor thing. She sleeps at Michaela’s haven, of course, but goes most nights to visit her old home after the lights go out. Take her in that place and you may get away with it. Is that enough for you?”

Khalil read, smiled, and nodded. He folded up the scrap and stuck it in his bag. And then, carefully, ignoring the ill-tempered rumblings of the voice in his head, he spilled everything he knew about Hesha Ruhadze. The Sabbat (A renegade Ventrue, Khalil decided. This fop couldn’t be anything else.) took it all down. He asked the occasional question; the Ravnos answered almost all of them truthfully. He skirted, gingerly, anything and everything to do with Elizabeth and Hesha’s interest there—he didn’t care for the chance that the animals might pay a visit to the apartment he had made his own refuge.

“Excellent,” said Jean-Paul. “Now. As to the Eye. We are not ready to discuss payment for the bulk of your offer; it’s hard to judge the extent of the debt we would incur, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Khalil grinned. What price the Eye of an Antediluvian vampire? Or a Methuselah, depending on which story you believed.

I shall give you warning one last time. You are young and foolish, thinking to meddle with the affairs of your elders. Bargain with these things without my sanction, and you will regret it. “There are… certain gaps in our knowledge. You know how difficult it can be to sort truth from fancy with these fabulous objects. We were hoping that you could tell us something more of the Eye. I need a little less legend and a little more fact to whet my

associates’ appetite. I’m not sure they realize the full importance of the thing.” Jean-Paul sighed and smirked slightly; he gave the impression of a man taking the Eye seriously, despite old-maidish doubts from above.

He didn’t fool Khalil. The Ravnos’s eyes blinked once, startled, but other than that he gave no outward sign of his near-paralyzing fear. They didn’t know what the Eye was after all. This couldn’t be happening to him. He didn’t believe it.

“Fact, legend, a tricky distinction, eh? I can tell you what my own people speak of among themselves….” He launched into the legend that was supposed to have made the Eye of Hazimel the Evil Eye in mortal folklore. And while he spoke, he thought hard about the misstep he’d made. He’d assumed the Sabbat knew the thing existed, that they were aware of what it was doing and the havoc the monster who possessed it had wrought. And they didn’t, or surely this whey-faced French creature wouldn’t be poncing around the issue like this.

Khalil rambled on, telling how Hazimel had sent his own Eye out from his tomb. Everything they knew about it, he told them himself. Why would they believe the danger when he told them truth about it? Why should they give him anything he’d asked for, if they gave his information no credence? Or worse, perhaps, they would give him what he’d asked for, but reject his payment. Information was all he had. He flinched to think what else these creatures might consider coin in kind. If the Sabbat didn’t appreciate his real value in relation to the Eye… his solid bargaining position was cut right out from under him by the ignorance of the enemy. His safety lay in his value—and his value, apart from the Eye, was in his clan (which was gone), his inside information on Hesha (which he had just given away), and his blood, which was a commodity he would rather keep to himself.

Deep in the corners of his consciousness, he could hear hateful, mocking laughter rolling across barren distances, and he barked mentally for the poisonous old monster inside to shut the fuck up.

Jean-Paul finished writing, looked at the page, and slipped the pencil back into its sleeve. “I believe that will do very well for now.” He stood. “You will hear from us as soon as there is any progress with Hesha or with the… Evil Eye. May I say, it has been a pleasure working with you. I must confess, I had some worries, dealing with a Gypsy… Rom, you call yourselves?”

Khalil rose. “Some of us.”

“Times change, don’t they. A Ravnos and a Gangrel working together… a man like yourself coming to my organization for aid…. Having any trouble finding your own clansmen in New York?”

“No,” the Ravnos answered abruptly.

“Strange,” the Ventrue mused, gathering his guards with a gesture. “Most strange. Good night, Monsieur Khalil.”

Sunday, 15 August 1999, 2:55 AM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

After Sarat’s taxi had deposited them on the street outside the warehouse, Ramona gave her partner the once-over. Swarthy, shiftless, thieving…

“Gitano,” she said aloud.

Khalil stopped fumbling for his keys and regarded her resentfully.

“Why can’t you find your own fuckin’ fence, gitano? I thought you people had that down to a fine art.”

“‘You people’?” He grinned mirthlessly. “I hate to ruin your sense of romance, sweetheart, but ‘my people’ are just as honest as any other dago or spic or nigger.”

Flame rose in the girl’s eyes.

“Mongrel blood, too, aren’t you, darling? Know your own father?”

He saw the shot hit home, and her claws prick out a bit. He resumed, in a less taunting tone, to give her her answer. “Except by the most fabulous stroke of luck, I’m not going to find a crooked dealer from one of the tribes I’m in with, even in one of the world’s largest cities. And if he or she were the real thing, they’d spot us for shilmulo the moment we walked in the door. ‘My people’ see little things like that. ‘My people’ have a reputation for it, too.” He paused. “And just because I am a thief, doesn’t mean my family or my tribe were thieves—they were tinsmiths. Poor and spat-on tinsmiths.”

“Sorry,” Ramona mumbled.

“Just ’cause a shilmulo can’t help himself shining up the truth a bit, or taking something no one was using—”

“I said I was sorry.”

The voice from Calcutta, from inside Khalil’s head, added: Enough about family weaknesses, jackdaw. Perhaps you would not be in this mess if you had not been too busy crowing on your dungheap to listen to your elders. Open the door and shut up.

Sunday, 15 August 1999, 2:41 AM A network of tunnels and caves New York City, New York

The sun sank under the curve of the earth; the gods of day followed it and left the gods of night, their worshippers, and their slaves free to do what they would.

The Setite who called himself Hesha Ruhadze woke, and knew the unbearable face of Ra had gone on to other lands. He was stiff. In pain. He had been sleeping… how long? Limbs and mouth and eyes refused to obey him; he was as immobile and as helpless as the truly dead. Vague shadows floated up from his memory, and he remembered the Toreador, the statues, and the Eye in the churchyard. Could he have survived that? Or the dawns since? This must be Duat, the afterlife, and his pain the punishment for failing in his duty to Ma’at and Set and the honor of Henem….

He felt something press on his face. His teeth were forced apart (strange to feel, when he himself was not resisting) and a trickle of blood (his heart leapt) dripped into his mouth. Desperate hunger drove every consideration from his mind—the flow stopped, and he sucked on the aftertaste. Fresh, warm, weak, and unpleasant. Another stream of life ran down his throat… enough to bring him to full awareness. Rats. He was drinking rats. A third struggling rodent was held to his teeth and he obediently, gratefully, resentfully, disposed of that as well.

Slight sounds of movement began to reach him through the darkness (or blindness) around him. And conversation:

“Bring me some more….”

“Call the Monster in…. If he starts moving, I’m running, not holding him down!” “Somebody run and tell him.”

There were more rats brought, and then silence. Hesha was left alone inside his corpse, and he bent his mind to the slow, difficult repair of bone and flesh.

Monday, 16 August 1999, 3:55 AM Presidential Suite, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

The knock of this particular hand against his door was a sound Jan had not heard before but, nonetheless, he knew the identity of his caller before Hans van Pel announced the guest.

“Mr. Bell to see you, sir.” “Show him in, of course.”

A moment later, Bell filled the doorway. To the Sabbat, he was a dark angel of death; for Jan, the Brujah might yet prove the staunchest of allies. While Victoria could be outmaneuvered, and Garlotte usually prodded in the direction Jan wanted the prince to go, the Brujah was one to be dealt with forthrightly. Thankfully, that suited Jan’s purposes, for he and Bell were unswerving in their loyalty to their masters—though it was common knowledge that the archon despised Justicar Pascek—and they had both been assigned the same task: turn back the Sabbat tide.

“Bad news,” Bell said without preamble. “Buffalo is gone.”

Jan received the shock silently “Lladislas was okay with the plan. He’d delegated the Embracing to some nobodies and caught the last train out of town. I was more surprised than he was when the Sabbat actually attacked.”

Deep in thought, Jan sat at the nearby cherrywood table. He gestured for Theo to join him. For as large a man as he was, the Brujah was surprisingly graceful in his movements. He was anything but the bull in a china shop as he eased into a seat among the exquisite trappings of Garlotte’s personal suite.

Jan had been planning for this eventuality—that Buffalo would fall. But it had happened so soon. He’d been figuring in terms of weeks, not nights. “They didn’t divert forces from Washington,” Jan commented.

“They didn’t need to. Those were babies with fangs they were facing.” “But they shouldn’t have known that.”

“I know.”

The hard gazes of the Ventrue and the Brujah met and held steady for several seconds. “Could it have been a raid that got lucky?” Jan asked.

“Too big for a raid. Too small for an all-out assault—unless they knew what to expect.” Bell took off his baseball cap and tossed it onto the table. His jacket creaked with the movement of his arm. “I I should have stayed. I could have stopped it.”

“You had no way to know. And we need you more here.” Jan’s comment, though calculated for effect, was true enough. “If I only I’d convinced Garlotte to let us send at least a few squads….”

“He wasn’t about to let us take anything from here,” Bell said. “If you’d given him an ultimatum, he’d have sent you packing. He knew your hands were tied. You couldn’t go back to Hardestadt empty-handed.”

Jan had to agree. Hardestadt would have been… displeased, to say the least. Jan also found himself surprised by Bell’s insight. Perhaps I’ve been underestimating him, Jan thought. And perhaps that insight could be brought to bear on other matters.

“Too big for a raid,” Jan repeated Theo’s words from a minute before. “Too small for an all-out assault—unless they knew what to expect.”

“That’s how it looked to me.” Theo crossed his arms. He sat straight as an oak. “Which means… ?”

“They knew.” Those two words from Theo carried the impact of certainty. He’d obviously been pondering this very question since leaving Buffalo.

The Brujah’s conviction strengthened the suspicion that Jan had been harboring for some time now, since the night of the attack on his unlife. Something that Blaine had said that night, a comment that hadn’t really made sense at the time but which Jan had been too busy trying to survive to give much thought to, came back to him: They know what you know. Remembering those words, and hearing Theo give voice to what Jan was already thinking, made it that much easier to believe. Only one question remained?

“Who?”

Theo took his time thinking about that.

“Could it have been someone on the ground in Buffalo?” Jan asked.

“Maybe. But we ran a pretty tight damn ship,” Theo said. “Nobody but me and Lladislas knew everything. I guess somebody could’ve figured it out.”

“Possible,” said Jan. “Who else… on this end?”

“Anybody who was there the night we decided,” Theo answered right away this time. Jan pictured the scarred conference table in his mind and began listing the participants from that night: “Garlotte, Gainesmil, Roughneck, yourself, me, Victoria, Vitel, Colchester, and Malachi.”

“Colchester wasn’t there that night,” Theo corrected him. Jan raised an eyebrow. Theo sighed. “You’re right,” said the Brujah. “He wasn’t at the table, but so what? Okay. Colchester. Fin came in too. He could’ve heard.”

“That’s a formidable list.”

“Hold on,” Theo said. “You’re not done yet. Then add anybody that any of those folks might have talked to. That gives us, what… maybe a hundred possible spies?”

“Gainesmil has proven himself to be opportunistic,” Jan suggested.

Theo shrugged. “So? Roughneck’s crazy, and Victoria’s a bitch. Don’t prove nothing.” Jan didn’t know much about Roughneck, but Victoria could not be dismissed so lightly. “Victoria was captured by the Sabbat in Atlanta. She may have been… tampered with. She could have arranged the Maria Chin assassination and sold us out on Buffalo. Garlotte could have been trying to make sure there was no competition for Camarilla resources,” Jan continued. “He’s made it clear he wants everything and everyone he can get here to protect his city. Vitel?”

Theo seemed reluctant to hazard a guess, even after hearing Jan speculate about possible treachery from a fellow Ventrue. The Brujah archon shrugged at last. “Trying to get hold of Baltimore?” He shook his head. “But I don’t know how Buffalo going down would do him any good. Maybe same as Garlotte, except instead of wanting everybody to protect Baltimore, Vitel wants an army to retake D.C.”

Jan couldn’t fault that suggestion. “That leaves Malachi—revenge for the Gangrel?” “And maybe Colchester,” Theo added. “Who the hell knows?” He was clearly frustrated by the wide range of possibilities.

And you, Jan thought. After all, Theo had been in the know about Buffalo, and he’d been on the docks the night of the assassination attempt on Jan. Coincidence? But why would he have saved me from Blaine? Unless he had more to gain by me trusting him. There was no way, at present, to know for sure. But Jan would have to find out, so he hardened himself to the tasks that lay ahead.

“It was bound to happen,” he said, steering the conversation back toward Buffalo, “but a few more weeks would have been nice.” Jan paused and regarded the Brujah for several seconds. Theo’s face was expressionless again, inscrutable as ever. “I have several ideas about how we should proceed,” Jan said. “I’d like your opinion.”

Theo shrugged. “I got nowhere to be.”

Monday, 16 August 1999, 8:44 PM Rutherford House, Upper East Side, Manhattan

New York City, New York

Elizabeth Dimitros held her fistful of keys in her hand and hesitated. Physically, she was unshackled. Mentally—Khalil had taken delight in pointing out that every man, woman, and child they passed in the street was his hostage, and their lives depended on her good behavior. Now she stood at the back door of the antique store, of the Rutherfords’ business, just as she had a thousand times before. If it were morning…

Amy Rutherford was her best friend, despite the difference in their ages. Even the tyrannical Miss Agnes or the autocratic Mrs. Rutherford would have been a welcome sight, a flashback to normality. What she would give to be mothered by Amy or bullied by Agnes or ignored by Hermione Rutherford…

There would be no more mornings for Elizabeth. She prayed fervently that none of the staff would be in; that the senior Rutherfords were in London; that Amy had gone home; and she turned the key in the lock.

Khalil pushed past her, saw the alarm box, and pointed her toward it. Lord, if only she knew whether the store were occupied. She could trigger the silent alarm from here… she could lock him in and hide herself… the police would come… and they’d be slaughtered, she finished the thought. Liz punched in the code, and her captor looked a question.

“Storage to your left. Mostly furniture and paintings. Offices, restoration rooms, and access to the showroom up the stairs ahead of us.”

“You go first.”

Elizabeth mounted the steps slowly, trying still to think of a way around Khalil. If the offices weren’t lit, the staff and the partners would surely have gone home for the night. She opened the door at the top, and the lights were on. Damn. She turned the corner and there, just walking out of her office to see what the noise might be, was Mrs. Rutherford—substantial, pampered, face-lifted, and looking like a genteel reptile within an elegant shell.

“Miss Dimitros.” Hermione’s dry tones held unpleasant surprise. “I trust you have come to explain your vandalism of the apartment we have been so generous as to entrust you with?”

Liz flinched, and for a fleeting second she was almost glad to think of the monster standing behind her. God forgive me, and let her be frightened, not killed….

“Miss Dimitros isn’t here to explain anything, you old tart.” Khalil shoved his prisoner forward roughly and brandished a large and impressively ugly knife at the Mrs. Rutherford. “Get moving. Downstairs.”

“Hermione? What is going on out there?” Liz recognized Miss Agnes’s high-pitched, cultured voice. Two of them—please, let Amy have gone— she prayed, though she knew Agnes and Hermione would never send their junior home while they worked themselves.

“You, too, grandma.” Khalil waved the knife and herded the old ladies down the corridor. “Liz… which way to the good stuff?” He held the blade to Miss Agnes’s pearl- clasped neck and demanded, “Answer me!”

“Turn right, go downstairs to the showroom.” “Anything I ought to know about?”

“Three panic buttons. In the consultation desk, on the light-switch panel, and behind the door jamb.”

“Elizabeth!” Mrs. Rutherford’s voice; Liz could not look at her… only follow the

shilmulo, the knife, and her former fears down the steps. “Lizzie?!” Amy called up in disbelief.

“Quiet, Amaryllis. We have a problem,” Mrs. Rutherford said calmly.

“Amaryllis? Amy? Got your message.” Khalil grinned at her, and recognized her as the original of a photograph in the warehouse loft. “Hey, Liz, why didn’t you tell me she’s the woman on the end table?”

Khalil herded them all into the center of the room, well away from the walls and desk and phones. “There you go. Sit down on the floor, nice and easy, ladies. Hands where I can see ’em. Cuff them,” he ordered the Setite, “hands and feet.” Liz reached slowly for the duffel bag he had made her carry, and pulled, reluctantly, four sets of handcuffs from the depths of it. “Hurry, girl, or I may have to carve one of them instead.” She quickened her pace.

Agnes first… lessons from the old woman on manners ran through her head… always greet the eldest lady of a party first, Elizabeth, to show proper respect…. Miss Agnes looked at her former employee with a petrifying stare. “Why are you doing this?” she hissed under her breath.

“You sold me to Hesha Ruhadze. Hesha left me… for him to take.”

“What’s that?” Hermione, dignified and determined to deal with this crisis as though it were a mere stock-market crash or warehouse fire, held her hands out regally. Liz bound them, then knelt to put the steel around the senior partner’s silk-clad ankles. “You sold her, Agnes?”

“She did,” Amy said quietly.

“That is not what happened, impertinent girl. Mr. Ruhadze needed a restoration expert; and I agreed to lend Miss Dimitros to him. It was a measure I took for her own safety. Ruhadze assured me there were terrorists marking her down as a target because of an antiquity she—”

“Enough! Quit your chattering. Lizzie—these are too loose. I warned you not to play tricks on me. Go stand in the corner.” Khalil picked a roll of duct tape out of his bag, bent over the Rutherfords, and strapped Agnes’s thin, rage-livid mouth shut. “Not a word out of you, unless you’re asked,” he warned Mrs. Rutherford. “Or I’ll tape her nose up, too.” He laughed, and started stripping them of necklaces, earrings, watches, rings….

“Let them keep their wedding rings,” Elizabeth pleaded.

“Sentimental,” he accused her, taking them anyway. “Shut the fuck up.” He looked around. “Cameras. Why didn’t you tell me? Go turn them off.”

“I can’t. I don’t have the keys to the security room.” “Who does?”

No one spoke. Khalil turned in a blur of speed and slashed out with the knife.

Elizabeth stumbled backwards, spun, and fell. She looked at her arm in shock. A long slice curved across the fleshy part of her upper arm. It was like looking at an anatomical diagram in a book—muscle, nerve, tendon, bone, all laid bare. There was a very little, sluggish, blood. The wound grew smaller as she watched it, closing up before her eyes. She got her feet under her. There had been a scream. Her own? Amy’s, she realized. Liz stood up, a little weakly. Miss Agnes was sitting stiff as a poker. Mrs. Rutherford was pale, shaken, telling Khalil where he could find her own set of keys and the security room. She held her sobbing daughter-in-law the best she could with fettered hands, and Amy wept and trembled on her husband’s mother’s shoulder. The Ravnos threatened them once more and ran up the stairs to the offices.

Hermione Rutherford was the first to notice Elizabeth’s rise. “Miss Dimitros? Are you… all right? What—”

“Lizzie!”

“Amy—” The Setite reached out to take her old friend’s hand. “He cut you!”

“He did.” Liz realized, suddenly, that she was hungry, and pulled away. “I’m all right now.” None of them understood; what could she tell them? “Just a little weak. No—don’t come any closer. It’s not safe.”

“What’s happened to you?” “Where is Hesha Ruhadze?”

Looking nervously at the stairs, Liz spoke as quickly as she could.

“Don’t contact Hesha. He’s as rotten as this one. Keep away from the apartment, Khalil’s made it his base. He’s here to steal as much as he can; make the most of the insurance, but don’t send anyone after him. They’ll die.”

“What about you?”

“You can’t help me. Just don’t make him angry.” She paused, listening for the shilmulo’s return, and a thought came to her. “There is one thing. Call Professor Kettridge and tell him what’s happened. There might be something he can do for me—”

Khalil clattered happily down the stairs, and the Setite leapt away from the other women. His bag, Liz noticed, was heavier now, probably with the Rutherfords’ wallets. He hung the duffel off one shoulder, hooked a crowbar on the other, and proceeded to clean out the room.

The Ravnos’s tastes were magpie-basic. He skipped over a million-dollar display of china to grab a watch worth only ten grand. Anything bearing gems, gilt, silver, gold— that he took, and the dull-looking reality he let sit. A glass case—the crowbar swung at it—and he turned and bragged to his guide.

“This is easy. Why the hell did I bring you?” He swept the contents of the cabinet into the bag and reached down a little statue from the top shelf. “That’s gold, darling, that’s solid fuckin’ gold. Don’t have to be a bloody expert to know that,” he sneered. “Good gods, what a haul.”

He finished the room in five minutes, spent another five picking through the table displays, and finally smashed into the little window boxes for the jewelry inside.

“That’s set off the silent alarm. You’d better go now,” Mrs. Rutherford spoke with glacial disdain.

“Shit. Why the fuck didn’t you warn me, Lizzie?”

“You didn’t give me time.” Elizabeth glanced at the Rutherfords, and crossed her fingers. And I didn’t think of that trick….

The Ravnos looked savagely from one to the other. Then he flipped open his phone and called the cab around. “Sarat—front doors, this instant,” he yelled in Bengali.

“Come along, sweetheart, and give us a hand.” Liz opened the locks for him and held the doors open while he dragged the heavy duffel along the floor. He tossed the crowbar away and stuck the knife in the sack. The taxi screeched to a halt halfway up the sidewalk. Khalil was busy with the bag; she could close both sets of doors between them and go back to the Rutherfords—

“1774 Church Hill Lane…” the shilmulo began, tauntingly. It was Amy’s address, and it got Elizabeth into the car.

Day chamber, Alamut Eastern Turkey

Darkness. It gave way only grudgingly after she opened her eyes. There was no window amidst the great stone blocks to allow light of moon or stars to enter, but slowly the surface of the stones became apparent. Then the thin, ordered crevices that were the boundaries between mammoth slabs. Eventually texture, too, revealed itself to her. The smooth surface of the ceiling and walls was occasionally interrupted by tiny pock-marks, unilluminated constellations sprinkled across the interior sky.

For the briefest instant, Fatima clung to the comforting oblivion that was her rest, but the fog lifted from her wits before even the darkness had settled into its familiar patterns of gray, black, and purple. Quick of mind, strong of spirit; thus had she ever been. And unfailing in service to the needs of her people.

She slid her legs from the stone pallet and sat upright on her stiff sleeping mat. There was no blanket to kick away. She who climbed the mountain had no fear of cold. No pillow, no fine or even threadbare sheets graced her bed. Day, by necessity, was a time of rest, a time for the blood of Haqim to heal the body if need be, but to accord those hours luxury was to begin along the road of slothfulness. To waste an hour, even a minute, was not to take a step on the true road, the road of the hijra, that could have been taken. And for one who was chosen to walk the night eternal, wasted minutes grew into wasted hours into wasted years—years that should have been spent serving the Eldest, and the ikhwan, the brotherhood. For how many more years would the children of Haqim have suffered under the curse of the kafir warlocks had not wise al-Ashrad dedicated himself so unfalteringly to its breaking?

Fatima rose from her pallet. She shed her garments, donned fresh, white robes, then stepped across the tiny cell to a fired-clay basin. In the darkness, the water within lay still like a great salt sea of the desert as it would appear from a mountaintop miles away, and when she dipped her fingers into the sea, concentric dunes rippled across the great expanse. The water she raised to her face was cooled by the night, but was not so chill as her mahogany skin. After her face, she methodically washed her hands, then forearms. Droplets clung to the discolored scar tissue on her right arm, a pale mark of poison that would fade only with time, if at all. She dried with a rough towel, then turned to her templum, facing the tiny alcove, nearly due south, in calm repose. The woven patterns of the prayer rug beneath Fatima’s feet were largely lost to the darkness.

She raised her open hands: “Allahu akbar.” Then clasped them together: “All praise be to Allah, Lord of all the worlds, most beneficent, ever-merciful, king of the day of judgment. You alone we worship, and to You alone turn for help. Guide us to the path that is straight, the path of those You have blessed, not of those who have gone astray.

“Say, God is One, the eternal God, begetting not and unbegotten; none is equal to Him.” Fatima leaned forward from the waist and placed her palms on her knees: “Allahu akbar. I extol the perfection of my Lord the Great.” She stood erect again: “Allahu akbar.”

“Allahu akbar,” she repeated, having prostrated herself on the rug. She touched her forehead to the floor, then rose to sit on her heels, hands resting on her thighs: “Allahu akbar.” Then sujud a second time, prostrate, surrendering to God: “Allahu akbar.”

A full rak’ah completed, Fatima offered her prayer twice more. As she uttered the ritual words of salah, the moments drew out. The sound of her voice, of her faith given form, stretched back across the centuries; it touched her sense of what was, and she became again what she had once been—a young woman, a girl, surrendering herself to God, offering herself to Him in hopes that she might be worthy to defend her family, her home, from the kafir. In those days of innocence, she had seen and felt the ravages of the mortal barbarians, but she’d been ignorant of the monsters that clung to the deep shadows of the Christians’ passing, ignorant of the true beasts, creatures of blood and unending death of whom the mortals were mere puppets. Now, she knew better. Much better. But never did she lose heart.

Amidst the serenity and surrender of the salah, Fatima was again that innocent girl, as she had always been, devoted to God, an instrument of His will.

La ilaha illa ’l-Lah. There is no god but God.

Wa Muhammadan rasula ‘l-Lah. And Muhammad is the messenger of God.

None of the years upon years since, nor all the sand that blows across the face of the desert, had robbed her of this. She was Fatima al-Faqadi, named for the daughter of the Prophet.

Salla-’l-Lahu ’ala sayyidina Muhammad. May Allah cause His prayers to descend on our lord Muhammad.

Al-salamu ’alaykum wa rahmatu ’l-Lah. May peace and the mercy of God be with you.

Atop the battlements of Alamut Eastern Turkey

Fatima was reviewing the fida’i on watch when the messenger found her. The sky was clear tonight, a black dome of ether that seemingly stretched not so far beyond the surrounding peaks and hugged them close to Alamut. The Eagle’s Nest was nigh unapproachable, save by one route through the treacherous crags and chasms. Hundreds of feet below, assassins more aged and accomplished than the fida’i patrolled a perimeter of many miles and controlled every approach. In addition, the mystic shrouds woven by the amr, greatest of Assamite sorcerers, hid the mountain fortress from eyes modern and arcane, spy satellite and wizard alike.

The captain of the watch and those in his charge had acquitted themselves relatively well. There was, in Fatima’s opinion, however, considerable room for improvement. Though the guard was unlikely ever to be confronted with actual intruders, the assignment, as a matter of training and discipline, was not one viewed lightly by the elders. Much of an assassin’s time, in fact the majority of his or her hours spent plying the trade, was occupied by watching and waiting. Constant vigilance was essential. Skills of observation were of equal importance to proficiency with weapons, poison, or disguise.

Fatima questioned various members of the watch relentlessly regarding countless details that would have escaped a wandering mind: the number of circuits they’d made along their assigned section of the battlements, the approximate drop in temperature in the last hour, the names of certain stars and constellations, shifts in wind direction… One neonate’s estimate of the height of a nearby mountain peak did not satisfy Fatima. She sent him to scale the peak.

The fida’i responded satisfactorily to most of Fatima’s questions. Though relatively young in the blood, these children did Haqim much honor. Otherwise, they would never have progressed so far. Starting with the intensive screening process that began long before any mortal knew that he or she was being observed, the wheat was sifted mercilessly from the chaff. Only candidates of unquestioned potential were ever introduced into the outer mysteries of the Path of Blood, and only those who took definite strides in fulfilling that potential, after seven years of study as mortal and ghoul, were initiated into the brotherhood—where their virginal feast was upon those less worthy candidates who had trained beside them.

The messenger stood nearby patiently, not stepping forward until Fatima had completed her inspection. Despite the youthful appearance of his dark-skinned face, Fatima knew the messenger to be of the family Marijava and a ghoul who had served faithfully over four centuries in the service of Amr al-Ashrad, grand sorcerer of the children of Haqim.

“The amr would speak with you,” said the messenger, eyes downcast in deference to Fatima.

Fatima nodded curtly and started along the battlements at once. The messenger fell in step behind. The caliph still had not responded to her requests for audience; she had not so much as seen Elijah Ahmed since the attack by the Kurd. Perhaps the amr wished to speak to her about that matter. Fatima, though sensitive to matters of protocol, was not accustomed to being put off for weeks on end, even by members of the du’at.

She and the messenger traced a route down steep, carved stairs, open to the alpine night, then into the mountain itself and along stone corridors awash with the sounds of activity: metal ringing against metal; grunts of exertion, frustration, and pain; bodies landing hard on stone. Everywhere, in every room they passed, fida’i trained. They sharpened their skills with blade and staff. In the Hall of Ikhwan, a group practiced grappling and throws. As Fatima and the messenger descended farther, the sound of muffled gunfire met their ears; the sound might have come from miles away, but such was not the case. The firing was right there with them, in the mountain. Several decades before, a great hall had been transformed into a shooting range and spells woven to dampen the reverberant explosions. With death, as with any art or profession, time and technology brought change. The purists had once cried out against the crossbow, the compound bow. Now, the assault rifle, the sniper rifle, were often the weapons of choice, and the purists were left to lament the shameful inexperience of fida’i with the bow—a charge that, of course, lacked merit. Fatima, among others, saw to it that no aspect of an initiate’s education was neglected. The old ways had long since proven their worth, yet humanity was constantly devising new and more efficient ways to kill.

Fatima continued downward, and soon all sound but two sets of footsteps faded into the distance. The echoes of combat gave way to the silence of ages. Here the air was slightly warmer, unaffected by variations of external temperature. Little in the way of draft survived this deep within Alamut, and few were those of the brotherhood who had cause to walk upon the stone of this, the heart of the mountain.

They came to a wooden door, tall and strong, one of the few imported along the treacherous paths to the fortress. Fatima waited, standing perfectly erect, chin raised, while the messenger took hold of the large, metal ring handle, tugged the door open, and stepped within. Several minutes passed. Eventually, the messenger ghoul stepped back through the doorway and led Fatima through a series of tight passages to the proper room. There he left her, standing before the pale blue, shimmering silk curtain that hung across the stone archway. Fatima gently pulled the curtain aside and stepped inside.

Al-Ashrad sat not far away, on the other side of the bookshelf-lined room. He was a single diamond among the coal-blackness of his brethren, his skin the color of ivory. An actual diamond filled the place where his left eye should have been, countless facets of white upon white tucked within one of the deep crags of his angular face. His head was clean shaven, but rather than a smooth dome resembled more a mountain bald, worn by weather and time yet stolid and strong. Along the hems of his white muslin robe, only faint stitches marked where garment ended and flesh began. One sleeve of his robe, pinned up to his shoulder, was empty. He neither wore nor carried any regalia of office; the empty left sleeve and diamond eye were his only visible badges of distinction—for arm and eye, so said the lore, were taken in judgment by Haqim himself. For the great magician had walked the earth during the nights of the Eldest Elder and was blood of Haqim’s blood. Al-Ashrad had offended in some way, yet the wizard had been too valuable for the Eldest to destroy. The amr was said to have served Haqim for millennia.

Al-Ashrad did not acknowledge Fatima. His right eye, pale blue like the curtain across the doorway, stared in her direction but did not see. What he observed through the diamond orb—this room or some place thousands of miles away, centuries long passed or yet to come—she had no way of knowing. There were legends of ancients whose eyes were scattered about the earth, and thus they saw—and ruled—where they could not be.

The cleft of al-Ashrad’s sharp chin rested on his thumb; index finger crossed his lips, as if shushing Fatima before she spoke. The shelves lining the room were filled with worn tomes, their leather spines cracked with age and use. The right wall supported a rack overcrowded with scrolls. There was only the one stool, upon which the amr sat, and even had there been more chairs, Fatima would not have presumed to sit in his presence. She stood and waited as the lone candle in the room burned lower. She was anxious to ask him about the Kurd, but whereas if she’d been facing the caliph, with whom she might speak more freely, she would not ask the amr unless he first broached the topic.

She waited for an hour. And much of another. All this time, al-Ashrad did not move or change expression. As always when in his presence, Fatima felt that the very air itself was charged with… energy, magic? The hair on her arms tingled; she felt every so often what might be a breeze, but there was no breeze. The space between her and the amr seemed to ripple at times, but she would notice this as if it were happening just beyond her peripheral vision—though she had been watching all the while—as if her eyes were too weak, her mind too feeble to capture reality. And so she waited, very nearly in awe.

Then al-Ashrad did move. He cocked his head slightly, and the gaze of his remaining eye, the gaze that had traveled through Fatima to somewhere beyond, came to fall upon her. “Ah. Fatima,” he said, a spark of recognition crossing his features. “I have kept you waiting. You will forgive me.” His words echoed within Fatima’s chest cavity; the restless air, chased by his voice, had seemingly crept inside her body. He spoke casually, but there was a gulf of… experience between them, a chasm of qualitative existence that Fatima

could not begin to bridge, as if she were a desert flea and the amr a great ocean. “Salaam,” she bowed to the amr. “There is nothing to forgive.”

And then a strange thing happened. The slightest bemused smile crept over the amr’s face. His gaze, without shifting, again traveled far away. Fatima thought for a moment that she might need to wait again to speak with the wise and mighty al-Ashrad, but his distant preoccupation passed after just a few seconds, and he was with her again. He regarded her with the piercing blue eye; it burned cold like a star of ice fallen from the northern sky.

“Always there is something to forgive,” he said at last. Fatima knew not how to respond, and so kept to her silence.

Al-Ashrad held her in his gaze. It was as if such intense scrutiny was the only way he could maintain his attention on her, as if whatever he saw through his diamond eye demanded his undivided energies and only by conscious act of will did he navigate the immediacy of here and now. And all the while, the air around him seemed to shimmer, to grow restless and stir of its own accord.

“Do you rest well?” the amr asked. Then, in response to Fatima’s puzzlement, added, “During the hours of the sun, do you rest peacefully?”

Fatima thought on this for a moment. Though she could not divine the purpose of al-Ashrad’s question, neither did she believe that he had summoned her here for idle conversation and pleasantries. She had hoped to speak of the Kurd’s attack, of the impossibility of it all, but it was the amr who would decide that of which they spoke. “I do,” she answered truthfully, speaking to him forthrightly as would a child to her father.

“Do you rest as might a mortal, asleep, or as one who has cheated death?” he asked impassively.

Fatima pondered this question also—it was not a distinction that had concerned her for centuries, not since the earliest nights of her Becoming—then spoke: “For me, there has never been much difference between the two, the sleep of a mortal and the rest of our kind.” She thought back to those nights so long ago. “As a mortal, there were sometimes sleepless nights… from worry or sickness or dreams. Now there is only rest.”

“There are no dreams?” He asked the question in the same tone as those earlier. He did not lean closer to her or harden his gaze, yet the words echoed within Fatima, his voice rattled with great weight in her chest. Perhaps there was also a crackling of electricity in the air, a stirring of forces invisible to her, but she could not be sure.

“There are no dreams,” said Fatima. “I have not dreamt since…” She searched her mind, sought out the memories of the last time. It had been so very long ago. Nearly a millennium had passed since her mortal life. But she remembered. The dream had not been of a young lover, as might have befitted a woman of tender years. No, it had been of violence and fire and death, of barbaric marauders, armed, bloodthirsty Christians hacking her family to pieces, raping her mother and sisters before the eyes of her male relations, all bound, and then killing them all. It was a dream that, in what had been left of her mortal days and in the nights since, she had made sure was not fulfilled. It had not come to pass. She had protected her family. Some had died in the cause, as was fitting, but none like lambs at the slaughter. In time, each of them had passed beyond. There were, of course, descendants. Many descendants, in fact. But at some point after the grandchildren of her parents’ grandchildren, the connections grew too distant. How many times could she watch from the distance as a babe was born, grew and played and lived, loved and married, had children of his own, grew old and died? The cycle was ever-repeating, and though she was removed from it, it was her very separation, her exclusion from the cycle, that had ensured the family’s survival. They were spread across the world now, blood of her siblings’ blood. Her duty to them was complete.

“I have not dreamt since long ago.”

Al-Ashrad said nothing, yet Fatima felt he knew her every thought, her every sorrow, her every longing. And for a reason she could not quite touch, the feeling disturbed her unduly. “You rest without dreams,” said the amr, “and rise each night to serve your master.”

“Yes, my amr.”

“And his name is the first from your lips. Your first thoughts each night are of your duty to him.”

Fatima paused. The statement—for it was not spoken as a question, but as fact— seemed innocent enough at first, but then she realized the dilemma in the words. Her mouth had opened slightly, but she did not speak. She was wise enough not to speak words of a forked tongue to al-Ashrad.

“We do not speak of the same master,” said the amr. “Not entirely,” she assented.

She thought briefly that al-Ashrad was drifting away again to that other place beyond her comprehension, but then she was suddenly overcome by the feeling that he saw her only too well, that he gazed within the very essence of her being and uncovered contradictions that she hadn’t known were there. Was that a glint of light in the diamond eye? Did it see within her soul, knowing the secrets of her heart more completely than she could? Or, more likely, the glint was merely light reflected from the candle on the small table in the corner.

“There is no creature walks the earth who may long serve two masters,” spoke al-Ashrad. “It has ever been, my amr, that I have served my two masters.” Fatima’s words, though she disagreed with the amr, were not haughty; they were spoken from conviction, from faith, and she hoped that al-Ashrad would hear the words for what they were, that he would see her heart as it truly was—but she also feared that. And the fear was growing.

“It has ever been,” he repeated quietly, and the rumbling echo of his voice in her chest spread clear her error before her.

It has ever been.

“Since the night of my Becoming,” Fatima retreated in her assertion. “Since the first nights of my training, I have served Haqim. Before that, there was only Allah.”

“That which is ever to some,” said al-Ashrad, “is not so much as long to he who turned his back on the sun before the Holy Prophet walked the earth, to he who knew the rites of blood before the Christ, al-Masih, called in pain to his God, to he who was ancient before Musa toiled in the land of Egypt, to he who stood against Khayyin before the fall of the First City.”

His words gripped her more firmly than even the gaze of the diamond eye; they took hold of her from within. Fatima hung her head. “It is as you say, my amr. I spoke from pride.” “Not pride,” spoke al-Ashrad. “From single-mindedness. The desert mouse that watches only the snake does not see the owl.”

“But do you not… ?” Fatima’s words trailed off. She realized the scale of her distraction, that she would speak unbidden to al-Ashrad, and this after just having spoken hastily. The questions thundered in her breast; a storm raged in her heart. There was great meaning in the amr’s words, if only she could see beyond her own confusion. Perhaps it was the diamond eye that let him see such things.

“Speak, child. You do not offend.”

She began again. “Do you not, wise one, walk the night single-minded? How else might you have achieved the Tajdid? You have broken the curse. You have restored the Path of Blood to those who would follow.”

Fatima almost thought she saw al-Ashrad wince at the words. Perhaps it was merely another ripple of the air, her young eyes playing tricks in the presence of one so aged and potent.

“Two roads may lead the same direction,” he said. “The sure of mind and heart may follow with one foot on each road. But what of when the roads diverge?”

“Then the traveler must choose. Or go no farther.” The swirling grew fiercer in Fatima’s heart. The road of the Holy Prophet, that God might be glorified; the road of Blood, that the faithful might rise to be one with the Eldest—long had they been the twined cord of her existence, yet now was al-Ashrad suggesting… a fraying?

“But must the roads diverge?” she asked.

The eyes of al-Ashrad, blue and white, flesh and stone, were now inscrutable as the stars in the heavens, his face clean as the desert floor after a scouring storm. “That is a question to be answered in dreams.”

In dreams. In dreams that Fatima, like all of her kind, did not have—or had not had… yet. “Now is the time,” said al-Ashrad, “for the faithful to prepare themselves, to make themselves worthy, so that they might endure.”

Prepare themselves. Prepare themselves for what? she wanted to ask, but her question was held in check by a subtle change that came over al-Ashrad. Fatima wasn’t sure how she recognized the change; perhaps it was her years of study, learning to read the emotions, almost to read the thoughts, of those around her. But the amr did not shift in his seat, nor did he visibly soften his expression, and she was not so proud as to think she could know his thoughts if such was not his intent. Perhaps it was instead the restless air, the energy that seeped from al-Ashrad like light through a thousand pinholes, that conveyed his mood to her. Whatever the medium, she could feel reluctant, almost wistful kindliness radiating from him. And sorrow. There was sorrow, as well.

“My hope,” said al-Ashrad, “is that you might prove worthy.”

His words, in a vague way, were kindly as well. There was a hint of fondness that, on rare occasion, crept into the speech of the elder of the elders. Such was never the case with those younger of the blood. Even one of Fatima’s age and status could afford no lapses into sentimentality, for therein lay the seeds of betrayal. While the brotherhood was intensely personal to each individual, dealings within the brotherhood were necessarily impersonal, for only the strong survived to serve. Attachment was weakness. And yet here were the words of al-Ashrad, he who had no fear for his position, he who was closest in blood to Haqim as any among the clan. Thetmes, her sire and once caliph, had spoken to her in such a manner, though rarely; Elijah Ahmed, now caliph, had also. Yet coming from al-Ashrad, the words were more ominous, more confusing.

“My hope is that you, Fatima, might endure.”

She stood dumbfounded; she could find no words to respond. But the rumble of his voice in her chest, the swirling chaos in her soul grew into an ache, as if al-Ashrad had not only seen her heart, but had also taken hold of it with his one hand. And with gentle words he would rip it from her body.

Prepare herself. Prove worthy. Endure.

She had spent over nine hundred years enduring. Every day and every night of that time, she had spent attempting to make herself worthy in the service of Allah, in the service of Haqim. How else was she supposed to prepare? Was this what he meant about the roads diverging?

Al-Ashrad watched Fatima as she puzzled these questions, and though still she could not pinpoint the telltale sign that indicated his mood to her, the softness, the concern, was gone from him. Absent, though gaze of eye and diamond still held her. Gone so completely as to make Fatima wonder if she had not imagined it entirely. The amr was from a world as removed from hers as was hers from that of a mere mortal. Could she truly expect to comprehend him? Or must she wait for the dreams?

The confusion and unease did not sit well with Fatima. They rankled like leeches burrowing into flesh. The foundations of her existence had always been solidly laid, and for quite some time her every act had been an effort to build upon that foundation. Yet now, those of the clan elder to her said and did things that she did not understand, that undermined her foundations. The generalities and abstractions that al-Ashrad spoke of were shifting sands, and they threatened to swallow Fatima.

She grasped for any stone-hard fact within her reach, even at the risk of presumption in the face of the amr. “I have endured an attempt on me within these sacred walls,” she said.

A flash that might have been anger crossed al-Ashrad’s face. The shadows cast by his sharp brow seemed suddenly darker, harder. “The elders have spoken on that matter,” he said. Nothing more.

There was nothing else for Fatima to do but bow her head in acquiescence. The subject was off limits. To such an extent that the amr had grown short with her. Was it really anger that she had sensed in that brief instant—or alarm? But what on heaven or earth could alarm the amr? Another riddle. But Fatima preferred the riddle beyond her to those within.

Watching her with again inscrutable expression, al-Ashrad reached out with his hand. At once, a goblet fashioned of bone rose slowly into the air from its place beside the candle on the corner table. The goblet’s mate as well as a bone-white decanter also rose into the air and made their way dutifully across the room. Al-Ashrad took the first goblet. The second presented itself to Fatima. She took it in hand. The decanter, she now saw, was an inverted skull lacking mandibula. Orbits and nasal cavity served as handle, while the occipital protuberance was filed back to form a small but functional spout. The decanter—seemingly of its own accord, for al-Ashrad had given no obvious instructions since raising his hand—poured first into the amr’s goblet, then floated to Fatima and half-filled hers, and finally returned to its place on the table.

“To strength,” said al-Ashrad, raising his goblet.

Fatima nodded. “To strength long sought,” she said in homage to her host.

A wan smile touched his lips, as if her words were amusing but painful. Perhaps he regarded her idea of a long time as ironic, considering that he had just made clear that her conception of time was shaped by her limited perspective. But somehow Fatima didn’t think that was what caused him to pause, goblet to lips. She sensed something more personal, a mixture of relief and regret, in his hesitation. Besides, the Tremere curse had lain on the children of Haqim for over five hundred years and, no matter what anyone said, it was a long time. Like seconds before the burning sun, or hours unsure of the fate of a loved one, it was a long time.

Waiting for al-Ashrad first to drink, as was proper, Fatima then partook of the blood in her goblet. The fragrance washed over her as soon as she raised the vessel near her face. She sipped slowly, and the rich liquid eased down her throat, setting her insides afire with life. It was rich, too rich to be mortal or of the various concoctions the amr and other wizards of the clan had produced for centuries so that the assassins could keep their strength. No, this was vitae of the get of Khayyin.

“From Clan Tremere,” said al-Ashrad, his face slightly upturned, eyes closed as he savored the libation.

Though she thought she drank slowly, Fatima found her goblet empty too soon and her tongue licking bone, seeking that which was no longer there. What torture was this to have only half a goblet of such heady vitae? She tried to fight down the hunger, but she wanted more. Almost frantically, she cast a glance at the decanter in the corner. So close! Then her gaze fell on al-Ashrad, neck stretched taut, eyes closed, and for an instant Fatima imagined herself drinking his blood—so close to Haqim’s own! The Beast stirred within her. Her hunger cried out. The ecstasy that blood would bring her… and the power. Surely she would be like a god on earth!

And then the amr’s eyes opened. They took Fatima in, and she stood as if naked before him. The hunger, her impulse to fall upon al-Ashrad, withered away to nothingness, and in its place was left only shame.

“To strength,” said al-Ashrad once again. “To strength long sought.”

Fatima stood perfectly still. She forced her fingers to ease their grip on the goblet lest the bone shatter. She forced her shame down into the same places where the Beast, cowed by al-Ashrad’s gaze, had retreated. She resisted, too, the anger that now flooded in to fill the emotional vacuum, her rage at her own weakness. She pressed the turmoil beneath hundreds of thousands of nights of death and days of oblivion—their weight was too great for any feeling long to survive.

At last, she was her own master once more; the calm, so essential to survival, returned. The truth within again matched the facade without. Al-Ashrad still held her in his gaze, and she was too wise to think that he hadn’t witnessed her struggle, that he wasn’t aware of her weakness.

“Weakness must be rooted out, if we are to serve our master,” said al-Ashrad.

The words were spoken casually, but they struck at Fatima’s very thoughts. She managed not to flinch. There was no purchase in her soul for seeds of fear. If her elders found her lacking—for whatever reason—and decided that she was not worthy to continue in service to Haqim, then she would accept that judgment.

“For that reason,” the amr continued, “it may be necessary that we reclaim the blood of one of the brethren.”

All thoughts of self retreated from Fatima’s mind. The amr did not speak of her own weakness—at least not solely. Whatever lack she had shown here, she had not transgressed to the point of destroying her usefulness to the brotherhood. This time, she latched on to the stone-hard fact the amr had dangled before her; she clawed her way from the shifting sands. “One of the fida’i?” Fatima asked. Mentally, she combed the list of recent initiates. Dragomir had failed several tests, but only because Fatima had pushed the Russian woman harder than she had the men. There were too many among the elders, still, who felt that women had no place in the halls of the assassins, and Fatima had worked too hard over the centuries earning the traditionalists’ grudged respect, proving them wrong, to risk losing ground because another female slipped. So Fatima pushed the women candidates and fida’i even more mercilessly than she did their male counterparts. And the elders recognized this. They would not misinterpret Dragomir’s failures as weakness, but would know that, if she survived, she was made of sterner stuff than many.

Fatima continued down the list. Who else… ? “Not one of the fida’i,” said al-Ashrad. “Rafiq.”

Not one of the fida’i. Fatima found that difficult to believe. Occasionally, the worth of a new initiate would be reconsidered; the passage of what promised to be an endless succession of nights sometimes took too heavy a toll on the heart or mind of the freshly undead after a year or a decade. But Fatima could remember only one instance of a more veteran assassin’s reclamation.

“The Greek,” al-Ashrad said at last, dispassionately.

Fatima nodded. The Greek. Parmenides. She remembered the luster of his skin, which had been dark no few years. She remembered his initial insolence, his pride, the swagger of which he’d never been completely broken.

“You opposed his Becoming,” said the amr.

Fatima nodded again. It was true. Mortal assassins were a notoriously and uniformly arrogant lot. Only through the harshest training did they ever come to recognize their own smallness, the insignificance of the individual. From that point, they could begin to see how their existence could achieve meaning—through service to the Eldest. The lowliest, cast-off block of wood became, through the brotherhood, a cog among cogs on a wheel grinding toward destiny. Fatima had never been convinced that Parmenides had truly learned that lesson. He spoke the words of brotherhood well enough, but to Fatima’s ears they rang hollow; they flowed from his tongue, not from his heart. But Thetmes had been caliph at the time and had championed the Greek, and Parmenides had been accepted. Despite his excellent performance over the years, the arrogance had remained and perhaps increased, lurking never far below the surface. So Fatima was less surprised to hear his name than she would have been many others.

Al-Ashrad paused, perhaps waiting for Fatima to speak, but she saw no reason to dwell on past disagreements, even if her position seemed to be vindicated. This was a matter of shame for the clan, not pride for her.

“The fault may not lie entirely with Parmenides,” the amr continued. “We placed him in a situation that the caliph hoped he would be able to survive.”

“Will the caliph be joining us?” Fatima asked. Al-Ashrad was obviously preparing her for a mission—the amr would not summon her merely for consultation—but normally Caliph Elijah Ahmed chose the hands that would wield the blade of Haqim’s will. Perhaps he would come now, and soon answer her questions about the Kurd.

“No,” said al-Ashrad. “He will not.”

The finality of the statement was jarring to Fatima. No. He will not. The amr’s flat, even tone left no room for further questions or for the expectation that the caliph might arrive at some later time. Al-Ashrad’s voice, lacking all emotion, devoid of life, carried a weight of permanence. Back when Thetmes had fallen into torpor, as those of elder blood sometimes did, Fatima had been told forthrightly. None could know how long her sire would rest, how many nights or years would pass before he again rose. The master, Jamal, the Old Man of the Mountain, had chosen a new caliph, and the nights had passed like those before. Something about what al-Ashrad said—or what he didn’t say, and how he didn’t say it—led Fatima to believe that whatever kept away Elijah Ahmed would continue to keep him away. Forever. But if something had happened to him, why had the master not named a new caliph?

“There is another matter,” said al-Ashrad. “Contracts outstanding that must be fulfilled.”

Fatima, though she betrayed no outward emotion, felt her heart constrict as if squeezed by the amr’s voice. As a favored rafiq, even she was not likely to speak with the amr more than once in twenty years. Suddenly that was seeming far too often. For centuries, Fatima had felt a clarity of purpose, had led an existence of near certainty. In so little time tonight, al-Ashrad was plucking the few uncertainties from her heart and spreading them before her. Contracts outstanding. There was only one contract Fatima had ever failed to execute.

“For yourself, as for your sire, there is one mark of failure,” said the amr. “As Thetmes is unavailable, you must see to both.”

Fatima knew she could not avoid her duty, but the knowledge did not make her more eager. The briefest delay was better than none. She wanted to think of anything else. “I was not aware of my sire’s failure,” she said.

“It is not often discussed,” said the amr. Perhaps he smiled for an instant, or perhaps it was the crackling of the air around him that gave that impression. “Just as you failed against the childe, so did your sire fail against the sire.”

Thetmes. His failure. Fatima latched onto that rather than facing her own. Her sire, too, had failed to destroy one of his intended victims, though Fatima had never known this until now. For so many years, the clan’s tradition was that a target fortunate enough to thwart one of the brotherhood had thus proven himself honorable—trial through combat, only the worthy persevered. The surviving target was then beyond the reach of the brotherhood; no further contracts against him would be undertaken.

The mood of the elders had shifted in modern nights, however. Traditions stood only to serve Haqim, some argued. Haqim’s will was clear. No creature of night beyond the brotherhood was honorable. Each and every one was marked for extinction. Did not the Path of Blood say so? The Reckoning would not be denied. How then could any kafir prove worthy?

The change had come about around the time that Thetmes had succumbed to the lingering sleep and Elijah Ahmed had succeeded him. Few kafir had noticed, for the tradition had been little more than rumor to those beyond the clan. But one by one the survivors had met their judgment. The children of Haqim had claimed their due. Now no get of Khayyin was protected. Fatima locked away the confusion and pain brought to her heart. There was no room for them. Duty crowded them out. Al-Ashrad seemed intent on releasing all the confusion, all the dilemmas she had denied for so long.

“The childe is not so important at the moment,” said the amr, “though you must claim her blood soon… if you are to prove worthy. But the sire you must destroy.”

The sire. Monçada. And his childe—Lucita.

“Has this to do with the war among the kafir?” Fatima asked. She had to focus on Monçada, else she would lose control again, and that she would not allow herself. She faced the diamond-blue eyes of the amr, forced herself to confront the facts, to bury the emotions. Monçada… not the childe. Monçada.

Al-Ashrad regarded her, and Fatima felt that this moment was but one grain of sand in a mammoth hourglass resting in the palm of the amr’s hand. “The time has come,” he said, “when we must reclaim the blood that is spoken for. We must prepare the way.”

Fatima nodded. Monçada. Cardinal of the Sabbat. The mission would not be simple. Already her mind was fastening on to the details that would prove her triumph or her doom. No room remained for confusion, for doubt. Monçada, not the childe. Monçada.

“There are immediate considerations, as you suggest,” al-Ashrad said, “involving the conflict between the kafir. While they war, they do our work for us, winnowing the weak. But if the war ends too quickly, our task is that much larger. And time is growing short.” “Is Monçada such a potent leader?” Fatima asked. She was dredging up what little she knew of the cardinal’s haven in Madrid—a deadly labyrinth beneath a church.

“He commands fear that few others in the Sabbat can match, and he is very nearly beyond the reach of the regent and the Black Hand. He has chosen this time to stretch out his own hand. We must cut it off.”

This Fatima could understand, if only she could keep her mind on the immediate task. She must. Thankfully, there would be a multitude of details and arrangements, enough to occupy her thoughts for many nights to come.

For now, Monçada. The sire. Not the childe.

Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 1:37 AM HolyLand Amusement Park Waterbury, Connecticut

Lucita had been to the Holy Land several times, and she could say with reasonable certainty that it was not located on a hill overlooking I-84 in central Connecticut. Still, “HolyLand USA” was what the sign on the dilapidated gate read. Above her, on the summit of the slope, a huge cross outlined in yellow and white fluorescent lights cast a sickly glow over some of the sad-sack displays from the life of Jesus that dotted the hillside.

Once upon a time this place had been a curiosity, an inspirational amusement park for the good people of Waterbury. But that had been years ago, and now it was a ruin of overgrown weeds and broken-down fiberglass and chickenwire displays. The disenfranchised youth of Waterbury had long ago found their way here, and the park’s tumble-down remnants showed the effects of their long occupancy. Graffiti defaced the surviving figures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the disciples. Some of the latter were without heads; Lucita was fairly sure she’d stepped on part of Peter after hopping the ineffective fence. Some of the displays had simply been smashed or otherwise desecrated, and at least one had been carved by a particularly enterprising youth with a rough inverted pentagram.

Lucita stopped for a second and gazed at that, surprised that a mild twinge of anger still roiled in her gut at the sight. She had long ago left the Church behind—her sire’s attentions had seen to that—but found this petty sacrilege irksome. She’d seen evil—to some, she was its very personification—and this tribute to what some idiotic child thought was naughty belittled what she’d seen and done. She made a mental note that, when her work here was finished, she should find the author of this indignity and show him precisely what he was making pathetic reverence to.

But that would come later. Now it was time for business. Talley and Monçada be damned—she had a contract.

Broken glass, cigarette butts and other, less identifiable things were scattered everywhere on the ground. A less cautious hunter would have been betrayed by the crunching of the omnipresent glass under her feet, but Lucita had taken certain precautions. She smiled. Even if she hadn’t known that her prey was here, she would have guessed that he’d pick someplace like this to go to ground.

The traffic from the highway below was steady and insistent. It did a good job of masking whatever noises Lucita’s target (and any company he had) might make. The constant flow of cars added another concern, however—everything she did on this hill was highly visible to the mortals below, and that meant that her arsenal was limited. The tactics she’d used to distract Talley from MacEllen wouldn’t work here. Monstrous tentacles and forms of shadow silhouetted against a twenty-foot cross might be seen by her employers as a breach of the Masquerade, and part of the terms of any contract with the Camarilla was abiding by its rules.

She looked around. Nothing stirred on the hill. Lucita pursed her lips in an almost- frown, the yellow light from the icon above her making her appear almost jaundiced. She’d have to flush Torres out. Oh, he was here. Of that she had no doubt. There was evidence of him here if you knew where to look—tracks in the high weeds that were made by someone dragging off a body, odd spatters of blood on the ground, a discarded shoe along the side of the path that looked too new to have been there more than a week. Actually, from the amount of evidence, Torres definitely had company.

Well, there was no time like the present to begin. Lucita dropped to her haunches and concentrated. The light from the cross, far from being the bane its manufacturers would have expected, instead helped her. Shadows sprawled behind every rock and bush, and crawled out from each of the surviving displays of crumbling piety.

It was very simple, really. Torres was nowhere in the light. He couldn’t move, for fear of being spotted. That meant that he was hiding somewhere in the shadows. And no matter how tough or learned Torres might be, it was certain that the shadows would not hide him from Lucita’s attentions.

She closed her eyes and listened through the darkness. The sounds of the rushing cars and of the wind skirling between the displays faded. Instead, Lucita’s world filled with darkness. She cast her consciousness about, from one place to another, seeking the faintest noise, the slightest movement….

There. And there. And over there. There were three of them, all doing their very best not to be seen. It meant that they’d seen her coming and probably had a good idea of who she was. It would make her work more difficult. She pulled back from the shadows even as she sensed the three moving to the attack, and spun to meet them.

There were already two knives in the air as Lucita stood. She dodged to the left, vaulting over the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and was rewarded by a pair of muffled crunching sounds as the blades cut into the fiberglass behind her. She could see all three of them, with the two she didn’t recognize leaping to the attack and Torres hanging back. He looked as if he couldn’t tell whether to help his friends out or run, and that indecision was exactly what she needed.

The two moving toward her were fairly nondescript, as far as vampires went. One was tall and lanky, with a straggly red beard and stragglier red ponytail, while his partner was shorter and broader, and had dark hair. Both wore what she’d heard disparagingly referred to as “Sabbat uniform”—black biker jacket, jeans, boots and leather gloves. The tall one already had another knife out, while the shorter vampire rushed her position with a scream. Farther back, Torres seemed to have finally made up his mind. He ran.

Lucita smiled. As the shorter vampire closed on her, arms wide and fangs bared, she simply dropped to a knee and rammed her fist into his gut with enough force to crumple a car door. The man’s scream abruptly transformed into a gasp as she felt something in his entrails give, and he suddenly sat down hard with a stunned look on his face. He tried to scrabble to his feet, and Lucita lashed out with a kick that collapsed his cheekbone and eye socket. He fell over with astonishing speed.

Even as she rose out of the crouch, the other vampire threw his knife and reached for yet another one. It was a good cast, and the spinning blade caught the light from the cross in bands of yellow and gold.

Lucita didn’t duck out of the way. Instead, she merely extended her left arm, palm out. Beside her, the man she’d punched whined in pain. She ignored him.

And the knife smacked neatly into her hand, the blade slicing through her palm and out the other side. Lucita gritted her teeth, but made no other show that the impact affected her.

Thick blood dripped down her hand onto the ground, but she ignored it. Perhaps fifteen feet away, the vampire who’d thrown the knife paused, mid-cast, as she removed it from her hand. “Care to try again?” she said, as the hole in her palm knit itself shut. The knife in her right hand was slick with her blood, but it was weighted well, and sharp. The blade was leaf-shaped, about three inches long, and it had been polished to a high shine. Idly, Lucita wondered precisely how many more the childe had on him.

The vampire snarled something that might have been a curse, and let fly with his remaining knife. His aim was off, however, and the throw missed her by a good foot to the right. She laughed, taunting him, and he leaped over the display in front of him to come after her. Lucita circled right, placing his downed friend between the two of them, and feinted first left and then right with her stolen blade. Her attacker backpedaled, clearly not ready for a taste of his own medicine, and in that instant she rammed the knife down on the crippled vampire on the ground in front of her. The point of the blade went into the back of his neck as easily as if it were going into thin mud, and the man spasmed once before collapsing completely.

The other vampire didn’t care about his friend, or perhaps simply saw that Lucita’s knife was now stuck between a pair of his cohort’s cervical vertebrae. He charged in, reaching out for Lucita with the obvious intent of tackling her and using his superior size and weight to bear her down. Behind him, Lucita could see Torres making for the fence. The sight sobered her. It was time to finish this, and to see to her real target.

The lanky vampire charged, and Lucita shoved the body of his ally at his ankles as hard as she could. As Lucita could lift small cars if she put her mind to it, the cadaver went flying at her assailant fast enough that he had no time to leap over it. Instead, he crashed to the ground as the dead weight of his friend took his feet out from under him. The man’s jaw hit the hard ground with an audible crack, and before he could scramble to his feet, Lucita brought her booted foot down on the back of his head.

The vampire’s skull collapsed messily, as Lucita’s boot went through his skull and nearly out the other side. She stared down at the corpse for a long second, then shook her foot free and took off after Torres.

He was over the fence by now and headed for the highway. Lucita summoned the strength of the blood within her (less than she thought she’d had, as healing the knife wound had taken some doing) and surged forward. Torres saw her coming and panicked, leaping the rest of the way over the fence and stumbling forward as fast as his legs could carry him. Within seconds, Lucita saw, he’d reach the highway. There was light traffic, and with a little luck Torres would make it across the road and into the maze of buildings on the other side. She might catch him there, or she might not. And if he got away, he’d go to ground so deep that she’d probably have to spend weeks to find him again.

It had to end now, witnesses be damned. She stopped running and seized hold of a shadow on the far side of the fence.

Torres was a bare twenty feet from the road. The headlights of eastbound cars illuminated him in flickers. Lucita concentrated and, under her breath, muttered a prayer.

The tendril of shadow shot out and wrapped itself around Torres’s foot. He screamed and fell, hard. Lucita smiled and made a “come-hither” gesture. In response, the tentacle of blackness started dragging the howling vampire back away from the road. Torres clawed at the dirt, which came up in his hands. He clung to weeds, which broke under the inexorable pressure Lucita’s servant exerted.

A car coming around the curve slowed, a face peered out from the window. Lucita cursed, and called more darkness to hide the scene. No other vehicles gave evidence of any observation, and Lucita smiled. Torres was ranting obscenities, but the sound of the passing cars drowned them out. He was as alone and lost as if he were in the middle of the Sahara. “My most sincere apologies, Rey,” she said, not particularly caring if he heard or not. She blew him a kiss, and another shadow tendril joined the first. His screaming could be heard now over the din of the traffic, mixed in with curses and pleas. The shadows had tugged their victim nearly back to the fence by now, and Lucita idly added another tendril to the mix. The three hauled Torres to the chain-link fence, and Lucita made another gesture.

The third tendril wrapped around Torres’s chest and hauled him upright. The others still held his ankles, pinning him against the fence. He struggled, but to no avail.

Lucita strode purposefully down to where her prisoner waited. She walked up to the fence and prodded him in the small of the back with a single finger. “A pleasure to see you again, Rey.”

Rey spat. “Go fuck yourself, Lucita. What the hell are you playing at?”

“I could ask you the same thing, no? This place is a long way from your usual nest.” “I’m a tourist. This is my vacation. Any other stupid questions?”

Lucita made a great show of considering the lie, even though Torres couldn’t really turn his head far enough to see her. “Oh, I see. How could I have been so mistaken. Here I stood, thinking that perhaps you were here scouting, and I think that you’re trying to preserve your worthless skin a few seconds longer by attempting wit, which has never been your strong point. And furthermore, I think that I really have no inclination to stay in this city any longer than I have to, Rey, so I do not think your little delaying tactic is going to work very well.”

“Oh really?” There was bravado layered over desperation in his voice. “So what’s keeping you here?”

“You’re not dead yet,” she said. “But this can be remedied. You’d be surprised how little they’re paying me for your life. And did you know something else, Rey? I forgot to eat before I got here. Imagine that.”

When she finished supper, Lucita dusted her hands of what was left of Rey and headed back up the hill. She left the two corpses of the younger vampires arranged neatly in front of the remnants of the Last Supper. It seemed, she thought to herself, entirely appropriate— at least as far as Rey was concerned.

Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 2:57 AM

Interstate 84 Central Connecticut

The phone rang precisely thrice before someone picked it up. There was a moment of fumbling noises, then finally someone rasped “Hello?” into the receiver.

“Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Schreck’s personal secretary?” Lucita was in a good mood. She was headed eastbound on I-84 with the top of her convertible down, the wind in her hair and a completed assignment behind her.

The Nosferatu (for now Lucita recognized the voice as belonging to the “woman” from the basement in Baltimore) on the other end of the connection chuckled briefly. “If that’s what you want to call it for the moment. Good evening, Lucita. How’s the convertible holding up?”

“The car is lovely, thank you. Most satisfactory.” The Nosferatu made as if to say something else, but Lucita cut her off. “Are you finished with the pointless chitchat so that I can make my report, or do you wish to continue pretending that you actually enjoy talking to me?” On the right, a sign marking the turnoff for I-691 and Middletown flashed by in the night. Lucita ignored it, cut into the left lane and looped around a rig that was doing a mere eighty-five.

There was silence on the line for a second. “And here I thought all of you Lasombra appreciated the social graces.”

“Courtesy, yes. Breeding, yes. A sense of propriety, yes—even if one is no longer welcome within the loving arms of one’s clan. Assumed, unearned familiarity is another matter entirely. Do not presume on a business acquaintance, and do not pretend you know me or my kind. Now, do you want the evening’s report, or shall I hang up and simply enjoy driving this wonderful car you’ve given me?”

The wind made it hard to hear the Nosferatu’s response, but Lucita was certain it was something quite rude. It was followed by an expectant silence, so she shifted the phone to her left hand, tucked it under her chin, and rattled off the evening’s details.

“Torres is dead. Your spotter’s information was good, and once I was in Waterbury I was able to find him easily. Your man did not mention that Torres had runners with him, but I expected as much. They have been dealt with as well, but their bodies were left as a message.” “You didn’t get that?” The Nosferatu sounded surprised. “That should have been in the last transmission.”

“It doesn’t matter at this point. Both are dead.” She blew her horn as she nearly ran up the tailpipe of an Infiniti, which took a moment to wobble over to the right lane. “And no, I did not hear that. Interesting.”

“Curiouser and curiouser. Well. Damn. You said you got both?”

“I did. Out of the goodness of my heart, I will not even add them to the bill.” She paused. “I must admit, I was surprised to find Rey here, of all places.”

“It was a lucky break,” the Nosferatu admitted carelessly. “We knew that they’d sent out scouts, so we put people out to watch the main roads. One of our roving spotters on interstate detail caught him by accident in Duchess County and called it in. From there, it was just a matter of getting people on the right roads to look for him. Are you still on for the last two targets?”

Lucita’s expression melted into a frown. The next mark was insignificant, but as for the archbishop, she’d been contracted not once but twice to take out that target, and Talley, damn him and his “professional courtesy,” would oppose her. The money was frankly unimportant. It was the principle of the thing. No one kept her from what she had claimed for her own. No one.

Not anymore.

“Lucita? Are you still there? Lucita?” “Hmm? Yes. Just… some difficult traffic.”

There was a deliberate pause at the other end of the line. “Are you sure that you can handle Talley?” the Nosferatu asked, as if reading Lucita’s mind long distance. “We can send in help if you need.”

Lucita’s brow darkened with anger. “Good night,” she said, and broke the connection. In the near distance, the lights of Hartford obscured the stars and turned the night sky a sickly purple. The city was still in Camarilla hands, for the time being. She’d stay here for the next few nights, regrouping, and then press on. One more simple assignment, and then it was on to the big one.

Not to mention, she thought, Talley.

Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 4:10 AM (5:10 AM eastern Daylight Time) Harmony High-Rise

Chicago, Illinois

The large studio apartment had remained virtually undisturbed for the past two years. There had been a police investigation when the artist who lived and worked here was reported missing. That artist, a young man named Gary Pennington, never did turn up, but the case was still open in the Chicago Police Department files.

Steps might have been taken to close the studio and even seize the works within to pay off various debts the sculptor had incurred. Loan-holders were quite excited at this prospect, as only a few months prior to his disappearance Pennington had been part of a three-man show at a fine gallery located along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. His work was the most highly praised of that on display, but he offered only a limited amount of work for sale. The sculptor claimed that, with the exception of some early pieces not fit for sale, the pieces on display were all he had available.

Detractors, rivals, and shrewd-minded investors declared this short-selling a calculated move to drive up prices on his works. Well, the sculptor was proven an honest man; or at least if other completed works were in existence, they were hidden somewhere other than this studio. They must have been hidden well, if so, because many adept at ferreting out secrets had attempted to track down potential hiding spots.

But the early work was much better than Pennington had let on, and a sizable quantity of it existed, so the debtors had been crawling out of the woodwork. Until an anonymous benefactor stepped in and paid off every dollar of every debt—including a spurious one or two—owed by Pennington. The same benefactor continued to pay the rent, and did so even after one of the debtors arranged for that rent to be dramatically increased; a tactic that did not even serve to flush the anonymous patron out of the shadows to file a lawsuit or seek other recourse.

And that was the situation as it existed to this night. And that was the essence of what the mostly silent Jeremiah told Anatole on a number of their visits to this space high enough above other buildings to its east that it afforded a respectable view of Lake Michigan, which even from the height of the twenty-fifth floor stretched to the horizon to the north, the east and the south. By day it would be choked with sailboats, and even at night the lights of many boats, including a number of dinner-cruise vessels, blinked a path in the boating lanes.

But despite the constant recitation of the facts Jeremiah again outlined in his head, Anatole offered little by way of imagery to advance an understanding of what had happened here on June 28, 1997. Not as either Jeremiah or Calebros hoped, at least. But it had been a gamble, a desperate ploy for information that even if received might be unintelligible to anyone but another Malkavian who operated on the same wavelength as the Prophet of Gehenna.

The fact that this Malkavian was the so-called prophet was reason enough to watch him, and the observer’s master felt that, as long as this was underway, and as long as efforts would be made to record and decipher the mutterings of the madman, then the visionary might as well be put toward a purpose the clan required.

Fortunately, Jeremiah was uncannily skilled at remaining undetected and at insinuating himself into the thoughts and minds of others. Those with an already tentative grasp on reality obviously proved to be even easier marks for such tactics.

The two men sat motionless within the confines of the art studio. Anatole sat within the work area, the portion of the place to which he’d gravitated immediately and had not yet abandoned for long. There had been brief forays into the other areas of the space, such as a corner set aside for displays frozen for two years in mid-completion, as well as the actual living rooms, which included a small bedroom, bathroom, and front room, all sparsely furnished.

Even now, so seemingly distanced from the world, and not engaging it at all with speech, Anatole’s eyes were lit with a fearsome fire. The only evidence that suggested the vampire had not entered complete catatonia was that he’d slipped the sandals from his feet and onto his hands, and he rubbed the soles of the sandals together in a circular motion.

Strangely, Jeremiah presented much the same picture, at least as far as emotions were concerned. He appeared seemingly at peace, for he sat motionless for hours and hours as he meditated upon every word and recorded every movement Anatole made, which meant that for many nights now Jeremiah had indeed been motionless, except for a notation or two over the course of many, many hours.

Anatole did not wait for prompting when dawn approached. Of his own accord, the prophet rose and exited the studio, heading directly toward the oft-used elevator. From there the journey to the store was a brief walk.

Jeremiah trailed behind, and for the twelfth day in a row dropped a meticulously folded paper into the mail transfer box on the corner of the street. He dearly hoped something was being made of the information he sent along. Prior to the mission, it had been determined that there would be no outside contact unless absolutely required, because while he could safely remain hidden, another agent might begin to create a situation too complex to hide from the Malkavian.

Jeremiah sighed, and reclined on a bed near the one Anatole chose. The prophet appeared to fall asleep immediately. Even though there was mechanical back-up for times when Anatole might rouse prior to the observer, the other remained awake and alert. Only once the sun was high enough over the horizon that it seemed a great weight crushing him did the observer also slip into a daytime slumber.

Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 10:37 PM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

“Nobody looks up.” Khalil sat alone. His feet dangled over the edge from his perch atop the warehouse that contained Liz’s—now his—apartment. Every few minutes, a car drove by below.

“And everybody’s got a car. Everybody who’s somebody.” He mulled that over for a minute, until the next car passed. “I need a car,” he decided. It seemed a basic truth. In a way, it was simpler just to have Sarat drive—the cabby knew his way around the city. But that was something Khalil could learn easily enough, if he bothered to put his mind to it.

On the street below, a black stretch limo cruised past—and Khalil began to salivate. “Sarat could drive one of those.”

You should hoard your wealth, boy. Not waste it on trinkets.

“So you’re back again, are you? Who asked you? Besides, did I say anything about buying one? Everybody in America can hot-wire a car.” Khalil had seen enough late-night TV to know that.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the wad of hundred-dollar bills that was never far from his side. “And who are you to tell me to hold onto things? You can’t even keep up with your own damned eyeball.” Illustrating his disdain for the voice’s advice, Khalil peeled off one of the bills and dropped it over the edge of the building. The first moment of exhilaration—as some fat, bald guy named Franklin drifted away—gave way almost immediately to a flash of panic. Khalil forced himself not to lunge after the bill.

“Plenty more where that came from. I’ll do whatever I want with my hard-earned cash.”

Hard-earned—?

“You know,” Khalil said through clenched teeth, “it sure has been nice not having you bossing me around the last few nights.”

You would be nothing without me.

“I was nothing with you. Now I’m something on my own!”

Are you?

“Yes, fuck you.”

You have some money, which you will spend. You have a haven, which will be taken from you eventually—

“Those old ladies were too scared to do anything but soil their panties. The cops would’ve been here last night if anybody’d called them. And I plan to get more money.”

You have a chained snake, who will bite you at the first opportunity. You have an ignorant outlander—an outlander! the bane of our clan—and a cab-driver ghoul….

“What did I have before? I had you telling me what to do. Now I’m calling the shots. So you can just piss off, Mr. Whistle-Through-His-Eye-Socket.”

You would speak so to your elders? You certainly called the shots with the Sabbat, did you not? I shall laugh when they come for you. Your weak blood is not worth preserving.

“Well, let’s just say that I’m not planning on heading back to Calcutta for you to spank me with a ruler.”

There was a silence. Khalil looked around. He self-consciously slid back from the edge of the roof. Breaking the old one’s hold had not been easy—or pleasant. Just the memory of the pain threatened to nauseate the shilmulo. He wasn’t at all sure that his former master couldn’t “urge” him off the roof, and although the fall wouldn’t do him in, it would damn well hurt. And he had no desire to spend nights and blood recuperating.

But perhaps you are not as completely rash as I suspect.

Khalil didn’t trust the conciliatory tone of the voice.

Perhaps you might still serve me—in a more limited capacity. And I, of course, would reward you.

Khalil hesitated. “Now, when you say reward… are you talking about your idea of reward, or my idea of reward?”

I could remove the attention of the Sabbat from you, to begin with. I could give you knowledge, power… you know what an elder can do..

“Hm. That sounds like my idea of reward. So you’re not going to get cute and say reward, and then nail me to the wall, or something like that… ?”

You have my word.

“Yeah, right. That’s a great comfort.” Khalil hesitated again. He felt that he was backsliding, throwing away all the progress that he’d made—but there was no guarantee that the voice couldn’t somehow make him do what it wanted. At least this way, he’d have some say—and compensation.

Although he was reluctant to concede that his brilliant plan to deal with the Sabbat hadn’t been so brilliant after all.

“Okay, look… I’ve got one more condition.”

Speak it.

“I don’t ever want to hear you call me ‘worm,’ or ‘dog,’ or ‘boy,’ or any of that stuff again. My name is Khalil.”

Silence.

“I’m not kidding. I walk away….”

Khalil.

Khalil liked the sound of that. He stretched slowly, luxuriously, and popped his knuckles. He had every right to be satisfied—he’d exacted concessions from an elder, and his other assets were not inconsiderable, no matter what the voice said.

“You know,” Khalil said, thinking of those assets, “I don’t plan on staying here forever.”

Of course you don’t.

“And Ramona doesn’t know enough to do me real harm.”

Not yet, she doesn’t.

“And you’re the one who wanted me to hold onto the snake. Personally, I could go for that high-octane Setite blood.”

Yes, very sensible to be rid of the girl. Now, listen. This is what you do next—

“I think what you mean to say,” Khalil said with a finger in the air, “is that you have a suggestion about what I should do next.”

There was a pause, and a flash of distant anger like heat lightning.

As you say… Khalil. You must do nothing from this point to enrage the Camarilla—

“But there’s this Ventrue chick, the name the Sabbat frog gave me—”

Nothing to anger the Camarilla, especially the Nosferatu. They are how you will find Hesha. I know what has happened to him, but still not where he is at present. Offer them the knowledge to heal wounds caused by the Eye, in exchange for his location.

“I don’t know that I want to find him anymore.”

Not even for his blood?

That caught Khalil’s attention—but he also knew that there were lots of reasons why Hesha had survived long enough to become old and powerful. “I’ve got the next best thing to Hesha’s blood chained up downstairs. I don’t see any need to tangle with her sire.”

There is no need. Hesha will take the Eye from this Leopold, and then Hesha will be under my power. I will deliver him to you.

“Doesn’t seem like Leopold is exactly under your power.”

His mind and his blood are too weak. He slips through my grasp like water. Hesha will be a more able servant.

“So I can’t piss off Hesha either.”

Not yet.

“So I can’t have his little sweetheart.”

All in good time.

Khalil didn’t like it. He’d kept Liz around as a taunting reminder to his distant master that he’d been able to break the old one’s hold, but now that they seemed to be back where they had begun… “Instant gratification is more my style.”

Perhaps the Nosferatu would not be upset by one fewer Ventrue whelp.

Khalil clapped his hands together. “Now you’re talking!”

Thursday, 19 August 1999, 2:08 AM Bauer House

New York City, New York

It was among the most nauseating views Khalil had ever encountered—he who had waded through shit waist-deep in the housing districts of Calcutta. Really waded through shit waist-deep whenever he stepped that far into the Ganges. Seen blood and mucus and every other bodily fluid spewed and sprayed in situations from decapitation to orgasm to vampiric feeding frenzy.

But this bland, lifeless room was among the worst. The clinical perfection of the arrangements of flowers, the icy-smooth bedcovers, the dustless windowsills… it all added up to an environment so alien to the shilmulo that he shivered and frankly could barely stand the wait.

Wait he did, however. This Bauer House was the address the Sabbat had provided for his delectation. And the one his ethereal master had been forced to allow him to visit. Whatever came next in his dealings with Jean-Paul, he would take his blood-prize now, while he could. He was, after all, a clever Rom, used to living by his wits. Somehow, this gypsy boy would get what he wanted. Somehow, he would outmaneuver both the Sabbat and his so-called master.

Khalil chuckled silently when there was no retort sent streaming through the atmosphere from India. He really had fought the old goat to at least a temporary draw, despite this latest awkwardness.

These thoughts managed to keep Khalil’s mind off the distasteful surroundings for a few moments. Around him was everything for which the United States was hated and ridiculed in the poorer nations of the world. Not because everything in here was wastefully expensive and tacky. Not because one of the walls was adorned with glamorized photos of Hollywood celebrities and sports heroes. But because the occupant of the room, and hence the occupants of the house—for they’d taught the bitch who had lived here—were so far removed from the realities of the everyday. The concrete truths, like blood and filth and terror.

That’s what the world was like, everywhere but in this bedroom, the Ravnos thought. He sat down roughly on the bed, purposefully wrinkling the covers. Then he cursed, stood and straightened the bed. He wanted to get her from behind. Get her when she didn’t know what was coming. He wanted to do this because she was certain to be an overconfident bitch who thought she knew everything that was important, and mostly that meant knowing

what she should do next, because the world had clearly been designed with her exclusively in mind. Hell, the payday of her mortal years was when she was chosen among the billions to be made immortal. Clearly, life on Earth revolved around her!

Khalil clenched his fists in anger. Then he laughed it off. Maybe there was a reason other than blood that he wanted—needed—to do this. But he laughed that off too, because thinking about the reasons behind things wasn’t what he did. After all, everything was about instincts.

He patted the bed a final time and walked toward the large closet he’d inspected earlier. He walked past the walls of magazine photos and glossy candids pasted to the wall. Khalil had been confused at first, because among the pictures of singers and actors and sportsman on the wall, was an attractive young woman who was doing all those activities among the celebrities. Khalil admitted that this woman looked pretty fine, with the soft, sun-bleached blonde peach fuzz on her arms and legs, her long hair pulled back or hanging, her blue eyes triumphant in a field of countless other bright colors. He finally realized that woman was his mark tonight, Tabitha Bauer. She was a stereotypical California blonde, despite living in New York City.

He stepped into the closet and pulled the door nearly shut. Entry to the house itself had been just as simple. He had waited until the girl’s folks were returning from whatever gala event they’d dragged themselves to in the wake of their little girl’s disappearance a month ago. In the span of the twenty-odd seconds it had taken for them to disarm the alarm, enter the house and re-arm the detection devices, the slippery shilmulo entered as well.

A rustling at the door to the bedroom silenced Khalil’s thoughts. Instincts prepared to take over again.

It was Tabitha. Visiting her old room just like Jean-Paul had indicated. He watched tensely as she stepped into the room and quietly closed the door. Clicking on a small table lamp, the girl turned and opened a drawer in a long dresser against the wall. From it she pulled a flowery nightshirt. Laying it on the pillow, Tabitha began to disrobe. Her long, slender legs emerged from the confines of silky pants. She brushed the covers smoother as she placed those slacks on the bed, and she smoothed the sleeve of her violet blouse when she folded it on top of the pants.

Khalil watched, and thought that this was another reason the world hated Americans. They really did have the best-looking women. He could almost smell the sunshine drifting off her skin, and she retained a sheen of tan despite her weeks among the undead and away from the sun itself.

As she unhooked her bra, Tabitha shook her hair out. It was so long that it fell well down her back and far enough across her chest to veil her rounded breasts and supple stomach.

When she leaned forward to pull off her underwear, Khalil emerged.

Tabitha jumped at the sound of the closet door, but turned slowly toward her assailant, narrowing her eyes at his cocky smile. “Be careful, stranger. You don’t know what you’re getting into here.”

Tabitha clearly didn’t realize he was a vampire. Khalil pounced, one-handing the young Ventrue onto the floor between the dresser and the bed. The girl cried out in surprise, struggling against his unnatural strength and speed, but he muffled her voice with the nightshirt. He pushed her roughly down on her back and made a seat of her smooth and writhing stomach.

She was muttering and pleading and cursing, but Khalil couldn’t make out any words, nor did he want to. While she tried to buck him off her, Khalil briefly suckled each breast and then plunged his anxious fangs into the large artery in her left armpit exposed as her arm was stretched upward.

Unbelievable sweetness drowned his mouth and drenched his senses. He pulled back after two big gulps, the girl still thrashing but now also shivering and he in complete control.

He said, “Thanks for shaving there, sweetheart. Another nice American habit.”

And then he was at it once again, his tongue probing the walls of the artery. As the ambrosia of her life force swept into him, Khalil tingled from head to toe. He regretted that her struggles lost energy as he became stronger, because he liked the semblance of fight.

But more than he’d ever regretted anything before, he lamented the flow of her blood slowing. The gushes became a trickle and what had swept into his mouth now required sucking to extract.

Tabitha was virtually motionless by then, so as he dragged on her flesh like a second- hand cigarette, he flipped the nightshirt off her face. She had just enough energy left to look at her murderer.

“Just sucks, doesn’t it,” Khalil said with a growl, as he returned to the attack and extracted the very last drop from her. And it was the brightest, tastiest drop of the liters he’d swallowed. It was the essence of sunshine, and Khalil felt that tingle in his body become a warmth and he knew the favors bestowed by devouring a Kindred with older blood. Diablerie.

He reveled in this sensation as it passed ever so slowly. And when he recovered, all that was left of the All-American girl was a delicate outline of ashes as soft and silky as her hair had been.

Khalil stood, but then paused, crouching with his head low to the floor. He inhaled and blew a big breath that scattered the dust across the breadth of the room. The meticulous mother would never know exactly why the room was so dusty that Thursday morning in August.

Thursday, 19 August 1999, 3:49 AM Wisconsin Avenue Washington, D.C.

Four vampires could often do safely what no mortal in his right mind would even attempt, in this case wander the streets of Washington, D.C., after dark without the slightest fear for their personal safety. The fact that three of the four were archbishops of the Sabbat, and the fourth was a bodyguard who could, on any given night, give each of the three a run for his money didn’t alter the situation that much. It simply meant that the quartet was impossibly formidable, instead of just being extremely nasty.

Currently the four—Archbishop Sascha Vykos of Washington, Archbishop Domingo Polonia of New York, Archbishop Borges of Miami, and the ominous, silent Sir Talley, who strode four paces behind them—were taking their ease on Georgetown’s main drag, walking past closed pizza joints and used-CD stores. The homeless, who normally dotted the street after the students and tourists and Eurotrash had gone home, took a look at what was coming down the street and, one by one, withdrew into doorways or side streets or alleys, shivering there until the four predators had gone.

They needn’t have worried, however. Three of the four were after bigger prey, and the last wasn’t after anyone in particular at all.

“It seems that we have two problems,” said Vykos, who had slipped her arms through those of the Lasombra flanking her. Borges flinched at her touch, while Polonia accepted it without hesitation. Talley, stalking behind, noticed this as he noticed everything else. Mostly, however, his gaze was on everything but the three vampires in front of him. Instead, he kept an eye on the rooftops, the doorways and the alleys, and especially the shadows. He knew better than to expect his warning had served any purpose, other than to allow him to say he’d made every attempt to comply with the letter of Monçada’s instructions not to harm the cardinal’s childe.

Talley didn’t think Lucita would be brash enough to try anything here, but then again Lucita had been brash since before her sire had brought her from life into unlife. Surely she couldn’t be rash enough to try to attack all four of them… but then again, deciding that she couldn’t possibly do something meant that you stopped defending against that particular eventuality.

Lucita, he knew, was very, very good at finding out where you’d let down your defenses. So, Talley decided, the best course was to assume nothing, prepare for everything and use that as an excuse to ignore the discussion the three vampires he was escorting were having. It was, he found, surprisingly difficult. His eye kept being drawn back to the obvious tension ahead of him. To the casual observer, the trio might look like three friends on a night out, possibly students or, given their exotic features, attachés from one of the nearby embassies.

But Talley could read the body language of those three like he could read a map, which was to say with but a quick glance, and what he read bothered him. Polonia’s movements were graceful by human standards, but compared to the archbishop’s usual feline grace he was positively wooden. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere.

Vykos, by comparison, was almost too ostentatiously at ease. She laughed too loudly and too often. Her walk was still predatory, but overexaggerated.

As for Borges, he moved under tight control. Every brush against Vykos, every laugh or comment made him stiffen.

“So we have two problems,” he heard Polonia say. “First, there is the matter of the most noble and notable Theodore Bell, who seems to be behind many of our problems. Pieterzoon appears to be leaning on him heavily. I would very much like to see what would happen if we removed that crutch, and would be very pleased if the Ventrue toppled as a result.”

Borges spat. “Should we even be discussing this here? This is neither the time nor the place to be planning serious matters.”

“On the contrary,” Polonia’s voice was smooth and a bit amused, “it is the perfect time and place. For once there are no idiot Panders banging on the table, no ghouls snacking in the corner and no pack priests needing to be disciplined just so we can all agree that fire is hot. We, and Mr. Talley behind us, are the real powers here. What we decide is what happens. The rest is mere shadowplay, a puppet show to make the others follow us more willingly. For the moment, however,” and a note of surprise crept into his voice, “I find myself a bit weary of playing to the crowd.

“So, we have a problem. Two, actually, but I think we should deal with Bell first before moving on to the other.”

Borges harrumped. “I think I’d rather hear what you think our other problem is, Don Polonia. We keep on trying to tackle things piecemeal, and I worry that we are spending too much effort and time by doing so. Perhaps one of our problems can help solve another, yes?”

Vykos gave a silvery peal of laughter. “Why, Archbishop Borges, that’s an excellent notion.” Borges almost skipped a step and Talley could see his shoulders tense in a way he’d seen in wolfhounds about to leap to the attack. “What else do we have on the agenda, Archbishop Polonia?”

Polonia gracefully disengaged from Vykos’s arm and made a gesture that was more or less equivalent to a shrug. “I don’t see how it will help in this instance, but the other concern I have is Boston.”

“Boston?” Borges snorted disbelief. “What about it? It’s been ripe for the taking for years. It’s a rotten fencepost. All we have to do is lean on it and it will fall over.”

“As far as the Camarilla is concerned, yes. However, there’s another power there that concerns me far more. The Giovanni are strong there, and getting stronger, and unlike the Camarilla they don’t play by any rules.”

“True enough,” Borges chimed in. “Half the time, you can trust the Camarilla’s own Traditions to hamstring them in a fight. The necromancers are under no such compunction. Unfortunately, they fight to win.”

“Indeed. And their allies among the dead make them more formidable than their numbers would indicate.” Vykos sounded a trifle concerned, though Talley admitted to himself that it could just be wishful thinking. He’d known Vykos a long time, known of Vykos for even longer, and had only heard the Tzimisce sound afraid all of twice in all that time. He liked hearing Vykos afraid. It let him know how, should it become necessary, he could take the freshly minted Archbishop of Washington down.

Then again, there was quite a distance between “possibly mildly concerned” and actually afraid, and Talley knew better than to confuse the two.

“…Saying we should ignore the Camarilla for the moment and just strike full force at Boston?” Polonia’s voice was incredulous.

“Not ignore it. Keep up harrying attacks at the cities on the front. Wait for Archbishop Vykos’s friend to tell us where they’ll be weak and hit there with small units. Such tactics brought us Buffalo, did they not? And in the meantime, go after the Giovanni sons of bitches so hard with everything else we’ve got that Venice sinks another six inches in sympathy.” Borges was flushed with excitement, his left hand tracing maps in the air as he outlined his plan.

Vykos frowned and interjected. “It’s a good notion, but how do we put it into practice?” Polonia sidestepped a pile of trash in the middle of the sidewalk and nodded. “The difficulty is in getting men there. We can’t come down from Montreal because the territory in between is hostile, rotten with lupines. We’d lose most of our forces before we got within shouting distance of the city. Heading north from New York forces us to strike out across Camarilla territory, which negates the whole point of your excellent strategy, Don Borges. The same holds for any move east from Buffalo. And the Giovanni have a very firm hold on the airport and docks, so sea or air maneuvers are unlikely at best.”

“Are you so sure of the latter, Archbishop?” Vykos asked.

“Quite. I’ve had occasion to use their services.” That almost broke Vykos’s stride, and Talley gave a quick laugh that he swallowed in a cough. “Oh yes, they’re excellently professional.”

“Dare I ask why you placed yourself in their hands?” The laughter and coquettish tone were gone from Vykos’s voice. “A whim? Surely not.”

Polonia laughed. “More of a fact-finding mission. I wanted to see first-hand how they were managing to smuggle so many Ventrue into New York. I came away slightly waterlogged and very impressed. They have a superb, almost enviable operation.”

“And did you learn how to end the flow of Camarilla vampires into your city, Archbishop?” Borges’s tone was deceptively mild, implying that the whole thing was a trifling affair and that anyone of reasonable competence could be expected to handle it with a minimum of fuss.

“No,” said Polonia softly, “but I did learn some other very interesting things.” The implications hung in the air a moment, and Talley watched the other two very carefully for their reactions. Unfortunately, he was predictably disappointed by what he saw.

“Ah,” replied Borges, dismissing Polonia’s comment. “Well, sooner or later they won’t have anywhere to come from, no?”

Talley could almost hear Polonia forcing his face into a smile at the insult. “The man with snakes in his garden has more to worry about than the man with uninvited guests, Don Borges. You’d do very well indeed to remember that.”

Borges bristled, and for an instant Talley thought he’d have to intervene. Fortunately, Vykos did so before he had to. “The truism is quaint, but I still haven’t heard what you intend us to do.”

Polonia took an extra step forward, spun on his heel and bowed deeply. The entire procession ground to a halt as he did so. “The noble archbishop is, of course, correct. May I beg your indulgence one moment, then, to explain my humble plans?”

Borges frowned. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, Polonia.”

“Nor in yours, dead man. Now hold your tongue for a minute, before it flaps out too far and gets cut off.” Pushed too far, Borges descended into angry sputtering, which Talley was quite certain was what Polonia had wanted all along.

“As I see it, the key is still Bell. Pieterzoon leans on him, relies on him. He is the means by which the damned Ventrue integrates himself into the machine of the American Camarilla. Soon, the two of them will function in harmony, coordinating their efforts and maximizing their results. It is at that precise moment that we must remove Bell, once and for all. If we do so, we succeed twice over. First of all, by destroying Bell, we take a dangerous piece of the enemy’s off the board. Even better, we hamstring Pieterzoon, who must suddenly start to function without his ever-reliable crutch. It will take him more time to rebuild his operations than it did to build them, and in the meanwhile the advantage is all ours.”

“Ambitious,” murmured Vykos.

“A simple law of statecraft,” replied Polonia. “It is axiomatic that one expels the spy after he has taken over the local network, rather than before. It disrupts all of his half- achieved plans, and makes it take that much more time for the next spymaster to settle in, after all.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “If you wish to know who’s been spying, my sire used to say, look to see who’s been deported.”

Vykos nodded. “Still, you’ve given reasons why Bell should be removed, not plans for how to do it.”

“Patience, my dear Archbishop. Here is what we will do, combining our problems as Don Borges suggested earlier. We will kill Bell. With him removed, Pieterzoon’s operation collapses into temporary chaos. During that opportunity, we drive toward Boston across the heart of New England. To prepare the way, we send out a pack as advance scouts during the first part of the operation, and in the confusion they can slip through the Camarilla cordon into Boston proper. Then they go to ground and begin laying the groundwork for a full-scale operation against the Giovanni.” Polonia smiled, and not kindly. “As you seem to be a bit short-handed on personnel, Don Borges, I will even volunteer one of my packs to run the gauntlet into Boston; I can think of one already who’s been doing so off and on for years, and which has established something of a safe haven there. You, my honored peer, can have the honor of leading the guerrilla operation instead, with Sir Talley at your side.”

“Hmm.” Vykos waved a finger in the air lazily, as if conducting an orchestra no one else could hear. “I think I see one flaw in your plan, Archbishop.”

“Oh?”

“You said ‘kill Bell,’ as if it would be that easy. Do you have any ideas as to how this might be accomplished, or were you just trusting Jove to send down a convenient thunderbolt?”

“Tsk tsk, such blasphemy. Your patron would not appreciate it. Besides, I thought I might indulge in your favorite political tool.”

“Ah. I see.” Vykos’s face was expressionless. “That tack failed once already, you know.” Polonia waved the objection away. “We failed with the master, now we try the man.

I doubt he’ll be as difficult a target. Besides, the Camarilla has a unique blind spot in their tactical vision. For some reason, they think that if they foil a stratagem once, it could never possibly work again. No doubt Pieterzoon and Bell and Vitel and all of the others are sitting around, congratulating themselves on the fact that they’ve outsmarted the assassins we sent after the Dutchman. Surely we would not be so gauche as to try the same trick again. They won’t expect it, not at all.”

Vykos steepled her fingers and frowned. “I hope you are right, Archbishop. Am I to assume that this portion of the operation is mine?”

Polonia bowed from the neck. “You assume correctly, Archbishop. And even if we fail here, we succeed. We shake the Camarilla’s faith in what they ‘know’ about us. We decrease their trust in their safety. We make them worry. And a worried enemy, as you both know, is a beaten one.”

“I’ll think on it,” said Borges brusquely, and he turned and walked off. Polonia raised an eyebrow, and Vykos nodded and went after him. As the sound of their footsteps on wet cobblestones faded, the Archbishop of New York looked at Talley, who remained before him.

“Excellently played, Archbishop,” said Talley mildly.

Polonia regarded the templar with disinterest. “You would be referring to… ?” “Your baiting of Archbishop Borges. You goad him toward… rashness. You drive him to acts that could cause him harm.”

“And that offends your sensibilities, my dear Templar?” Polonia asked casually. “Tell me, if you feel Archbishop Borges to be in such danger, why are you still here with me?”

Talley spread his hands. “I assure you, Don Polonia, I am merely doing my job.” “Ah. I see. And that job is?”

“Keeping Archbishop Borges, among others, functioning. Would it surprise you to hear that my actual orders from Cardinal Monçada are slightly different from the ones that were communicated to you?”

Polonia inclined his head slightly. “Not at all. Walk with me, Templar.” Without looking back, he headed down the street, in the direction opposite that which Borges had taken. Talley frowned, and then followed.

“So,” Polonia said, “what are you doing here? Or does the cardinal not wish that to be known?”

“More or less what you expect. I am to protect you and your fellow archbishops— because while we have very good evidence that one of you has been marked for assassination, the details are still a bit unclear—and generally to make my presence very publicly known.” Talley’s voice was expressionless, his eyes everywhere but on Polonia.

“Known to whom?”

“To whomever is employing Lucita, Your Excellency.” Polonia sighed. “And that brings you to me?”

Talley sidestepped a garbage can. “Call it a preventative measure, Don Polonia. Rey Torres, one of Borges’s most loyal associates, has been sent away and cannot reach the archbishop in case of trouble. Don Borges himself is the target of constant goading, and sooner or later he’ll erupt in a fashion that I can’t contain. It behooves me to go to the source of this problem and try to eliminate it.”

Polonia turned with one eyebrow raised. “I had no idea that Torres was such a matter of concern.”

Talley nodded. “By himself, he’s not. He’s a coward and a braggart, but right now I’m more concerned with where he fits into the larger puzzle.”

“Fit in the past tense, I expect, at this point. But that is neither here nor there. Hmm. Had I known that you were so suspicious of my motives, I would have insisted that Torres not take point. No doubt Borges would have objected to my stealing his people’s chance for glory, however, and…” Polonia’s face curved into an expression of contempt for a second, then he looked up. “Again, that is of no consequence. Say what you have been waiting to say, before we walk ourselves out of the city.”

Talley stopped and sat down on a concrete step. “If you insist. Tell me, Don Polonia, why do you want Archbishop Borges dead?”

“That is easy. I do not.”

“No?” Talley almost snorted in disbelief. “Then please, explain to me how it is that so many signs point to you.”

Polonia gave a thin smile. “Allow me to explain something to you, Don Talley. Borges is an impetuous man. He is a man of strength and passion, but he has little control or subtlety. He can be led much like the bull is led in the ring, coerced into a rage and then turned at a target. In that, he is useful while the war lasts, and I do not discard tools while there is some use in them. This fight is not yet over, and for all his faults, Archbishop Borges would be a hard man to replace. Besides, I suspect that Borges’s temper will kill him long before I decide it is necessary to bring his name before Les Amis Noirs for judgment or execution. So I do not wish Borges dead; or instead, let me say that I do not wish him dead any more than I have for the last two centuries, and possibly less so at the moment.

“If I wanted Borges dead,” Polonia said softly, “he would have been dead before the gracious cardinal sent you here. Do you understand me, Templar?”

Talley almost caught himself flinching. He was older than Polonia, and probably more powerful, but the man had an air of veiled menace about him that chilled the blood.

“But of course,” Polonia came to a stop as he paused, “you ask me if I’ve hired Lucita to destroy a fellow archbishop. What else would you expect me to say?”

With that, the Archbishop of New York continued on his way, leaving Talley to stand alone in the night.

Thursday, 19 August 1999, 4:55 AM Smithsonian Building (a.k.a. “The Castle”), National Mall

Washington, D.C.

Vykos returned to her nest after a pleasant stroll with her fellow archbishops. They met and planned at the Presidential Hotel, but Sascha’s lair remained the Castle. It was hers and not even the insufferable Talley could follow her here.

For Sascha Vykos, the Americas felt oddly comfortable, and Washington more so. The buildings and monuments just outside the museum that she had made hers owed much to a Roman muse, as did its herald eagles and laurels. The Americans even shared their pledge of allegiance, one’s right hand—stretched across the breast—to cover one’s heart, with Imperial Rome.

Hail to the chief....

Ave Caesar indeed, Sascha thought to herself. Although she had never seen Rome in its fullest glory, the fiend carried enough of the Methuselah Michael, Toreador patriarch of Constantinople, in her breast to remember such legacies as Imperial Rome. The memories weren’t by choice, either, but Sascha had welcomed them. Michael had infused those dreams in Sascha, hoping someone would carry forth his vision of fashioning a Heaven on Earth, and Sascha complied because she had loved Michael dearly. Michael believed himself angelic, and tried recreating God’s paradise. Constantinople had been closest to success, its beauty unsurpassed and its function perfect for brief, intermittent moments at every level of society.

But it had failed.

Now, Sascha stood in Washington, snatching glimpses of yesterday in everything around her. But if Washington was Rome’s successor, then it was a poor imposter at best.

The ancient Tzimisce turned away from the window, from the string of lit pearls lining the night streets and the black Potomac winding its course through the web of lights. The modern nights were brighter, but they lacked the aesthetics, excitement and energy of previous millennia. Sascha felt disappointed and even a trifle pensive. The fiend needed some distraction.

A heavy satin curtain fell into place behind Sascha, framing the fiend’s terrible form against the deepest red. Her thick robes—black, long and embroidered with silver thread— hid the many horrors crafted of the fiend’s flesh. Sascha’s face, alien in the severity of its androgynous touches, reflected little emotion. Immediately, the two kneeling szlachta bowed their heads down further, their black hair brushing the thick carpet, the thin flesh on their necks and arms pulled tight to reveal muscle clusters unknown to mortal physiology. Where bone broke the surface, it was braided for strength, and even carved and lacquered, a practice pursued by Sascha’s Praetorian Guards. Sascha had crafted these two, both of whom were older than most vampires, herself.

“Still?” Sascha asked in ancient Romanian, impatient.

“Forgive us,” the szlachta captain said, his voice steady. “The intruder won’t escape.” “Take me there,” Sascha instructed.

“Milady,” the captain responded, “we still haven’t captured the intruder. He poses a risk.”

“Nonsense,” Sascha said, marching past the two praetorians. The szlachta immediately fell into step behind it.

“If he were truly dangerous, I would find him at my neck by now with neither of you the wiser.”

Sascha walked through the museum corridors, reconverted to accommodate the fiend and her entourage. Within moments, the trio walked into the cavern of a large display hall. The building’s cabled intestines drooped from holes in the riot-damaged ceiling. Once there, Sascha found herself facing two more szlachta. One, mortal in form and intellect, immediately dropped to his knee, pulling his barbed forearm spikes back into his flesh. He appeared injured, a recent head gash still bloody and pulped from a shredding blow. The other, Yorgim, was a giant by comparison—his wrists alone measured larger in diameter than most men’s biceps, but Sascha had reduced his intellect to that of a pea— a cunning pea, mind you, but a pea nonetheless. His eyes and genitalia lay shielded behind the broad curves of armorplated bone, and his hands and feet hid many tiny fishhooks to shred his adversaries all the easier. Hardened skin scales normally sheathed these hooks, but Yorgim was impatient for the impending kill and shifted his weight from one leg to the other, pulling and shredding the carpet beneath his feet.

“Well?” Sascha demanded.

“The intruder manipulates shadows with enough understanding to blind and suffocate us,” the kneeling szlachta reported.

Sascha looked past the columns, to see darkness pulled like a bed sheet in several unnatural directions. Sascha also smelled the sharp iron bite to the air.

“We’ve lost two hellhounds in the darkness, milady,” the szlachta reported.

“But you’ve critically wounded him as well,” Sascha said, her voice barely a hum. “I smell the vitae. There is much of it for someone so inept.”

“He can’t escape. He’s cornered himself, but that makes him more dangerous.” “Indeed,” Sascha said, almost bemused. “What language does he speak?” she asked,

almost as an afterthought.

“I believe it was English,” the kneeling szlachta reported. “He cursed when Luperca and Fenris attacked him.”

Sascha walked forward, towards the small patch of unnatural darkness, but stopped well from its reach. The szlachta immediately took their positions behind Sascha, ready to come to their mistress’s defense, but they also eyed the killing shadows warily.

“As you’ve likely discovered,” Sascha said, her English baroque with Romanian inflection and her voice laced with no small hint of smug satisfaction, “the two hellhounds you slew are not fit for consumption. You’ll find none of my entourage palatable, if you hoped to feed from them to strengthen yourself.”

A voice drifted from the shadows, low and dispersed through whatever foul vapors served as the backbone of this Lasombra gift. “Then I’ll just have to satisfy myself at your neck.” The intruder spoke English, though Sascha was always hard-pressed to distinguish American English from British or Australian.

“Another enemy? Excellent.” Sascha’s voice rose to meet her curiosity. “You’re making fun of me?”

“Hardly. I value my enemies. Their hatred sings my praise.” “You’re nuts,” the voice said in disgust.

“Show me a Cainite without enemies and I’ll show you a vampire without ambition. The greater your enemies, the greater your ambitions. Have you any?”

“Enemies? Yeah… you.”

“How sad. I was hoping for something more challenging. Something less disappointing.” Sascha sounded truly crestfallen. “I hoped it would take more to provoke a response from you. I must therefore surmise that this ill-conceived venture against me is personal? You seem too eager to part with your words, and Lasombra machinations are not normally so brutish.”

“I’m not Lasombra,” the intruder said, indignant at the suggestion.

“Your clumsy attempts almost mark you as Brujah, though they are pack animals,” Sascha said, speaking more to herself now. “If there’s one Brujah, there’s usually a handful. You are alone, but not Gangrel, since you haven’t summoned any animals upon which to feed. Neither are you a Nosferatu—I smell nothing fetid in your stench, save perhaps for your ill-conceived plan. No self-respecting Ventrue would be caught using a Lasombra’s gift, and no Toreador would consider so inelegant an approach.”

“Fuck you, monster.”

“Ahhh,” Sascha said, slowly walking the perimeter of the darkness. “Struck a nerve, did I? Monster am I? And you are the first among our lot who is not? Assembled kinsmen in Caine,” Sascha called out to a nonexistent audience, “I give you our first Cainite saint.” Sascha turned back towards the shadows. “So blinded by your desire to reach me that you didn’t consider this all the way through, did you?”

“Come in and find out. I’ll show you how well equipped I am to handle you.”

Sascha shook her head and then walked away, calling back to the unseen intruder. “You no longer hold my interest. I was hoping for some diversion this evening, but there’s an unflattering desperation to your voice—a need to confront me with some truth pivotal to your existence. Only I am not interested. You’ll find Yorgim more than a match for your enfeebled skills.”

The darkness seemed to shrink when Yorgim chuckled and moved forward, his footfalls reverberating through the floor, his fishhooks snagging and pulling carpet.

“Face me you coward!” the intruder shouted, the edges of his voice frayed.

Sascha turned, a feral smile creasing her alabaster face. “Coward? Perhaps,” she conceded, “but the very nature of survival is, in itself, cowardly. Even ‘Creation’ is a matter of cowardice. God was too afraid to be alone so he created humanity.”

“God? What do you know about God!”

“Ah,” Sascha said, and walked back slowly. Something in the intruder’s voice and the way he spit the word “you” was revealing. This attack was deeply personal. “Yorgim, stop,” Sascha instructed. The szlachta, complied, a discontented sigh rumbling in its cavernous chest. “This is about revenge,” Sascha said to the darkness. “You’ve come here for vengeance.” “I’m going to put you down. You’re a rabid dog, spreading your infection with every bite,” the intruder said.

“What did I do?” Sascha asked, ignoring the intruder’s threats. “Did I partake of your sire’s vitae to the killing drops? Did I torture your beloved? I know I didn’t torture you myself. I remember all those I’ve worked those arts upon. Your voice is unfamiliar.”

Sascha’s probes produced only silence in turn.

“Reveal yourself,” Sascha finally said. “You know that’s what you ultimately long for.” “So your ghouls can tear me to pieces. Never.”

“They will hold their place.”

Silence again.

“You obviously have a need to confront me, and I tire of addressing shadows. I give you my word.”

“Your word?” the intruder said, almost laughing. “The last thing I’ll ever take is your word.” “To hate me is to know me. I am a fiend of my promises—if you do not know that,

then your hatred of me is shallow and you are a pretender to misery.”

A scream ripped through the shadows, primal at its heart, piercing in pitch. The darkness surged forward and slipped over Sascha in a blur. The fiend, however, did not move. Instead, pinches of her blood evaporated on mental command, suffusing the dead membranes of her body. Sascha could smell the vitae in her own form, filling and saturating her nostrils and dimming her vision to the red.

The attacks came, furious, clumsy and surprisingly powerful. From the darkness, two mallet-like fists arced down and slammed Sascha to the ground. Then claws tore into her, but the attacks were wild and undisciplined. Sascha quickly realized her szlachta had joined the fray and provided an entirely unnecessary distraction. Sascha was fully capable of resisting the onslaught. A foul smell, like pig grease left in the sun, caught Sascha’s attention next, and the fiend immediately understood the nature of her attacker. More vitae evaporated from Sascha’s body, suffusing flesh, muscle and tendon this time, soaking them. Bone stretched and pulled the fleshy canvas, tightening it until Sascha felt like her eyes would pop out. Spines erupted from her back, and her fingers lengthened into black claws.

Sascha set upon her opponent, tearing long strips of flesh and chitin from her carapace- protected foe. The attacker howled in pain, his voice deep and nearly guttural. Although Sascha and the intruder had adopted the same form, Sascha was better at absorbing the blows rendered against her. The intruder, however, could do little against Sascha’s and Yorgim’s attacks, even with the darkness in his favor.

As quickly as it had begun, the battle ended. The unnatural shadows evaporated, and the unconscious intruder, slumped on the ground, slowly returned to his normal form. Sascha quickly raised her arm to stop her szlachta from administering what would undoubtedly be the coup de grace. The intruder’s gray-black chitin armor softened and faded to a pale pink, the thorns along his spine receded back into his vertebrae with pops and snaps, and the black ooze covering his skin dried and crusted almost immediately. Sascha and her szlachta now stared down at a naked young man, soft in features and body tone, pale of skin and nearly hairless, save for the bedraggled mop of black on his head. Tatters of clothing, shredded when the intruder assumed the Tzimisce’s war form, hung from his body. Sascha, however, remained unchanged, her long arms and simian features standing in startling contrast to her philosophical intelligence.

“He is Tzimisce?” the szlachta captain asked, startled.

“There are fools who do not share our blood but who practice the fleshcrafts. I’ll admit, however, few outsiders possess such advanced skill in our gifts.” Sascha licked one of her bony claws, where she had drawn blood. The intruder’s vitae was potent, far stronger than Sascha would have expected. With a few decades more experience, this intruder would prove dangerous. Now, however, he was a threat only by virtue of his blood, not learning, and that was not enough to fell Sascha Vykos.

“What are your orders, milady?”

“Bring him to my chambers. He bears further investigation. And, oh yes… I have need of five mortals.”

Friday, 20 August 1999, 11:32 PM Smithsonian Building (a.k.a. “The Castle”), National Mall

Washington, D.C.

The cries and whines had continued for the last two nights, but Sascha barely heard the five different voices. She only searched for the one that had piqued her interest earlier, the sixth. Sascha sat on an office chair, studying the large puddle of flesh squirming and staining the thin-carpeted floor. This pink, quivering mass—deflated arms and legs flopping helplessly, faces stretched flat, organs pulsing and beating beneath layered blankets of skin—consisted of five mortals and one Cainite. Sascha had spent much of the previous night doing little but plucking their bones from their bodies (save for their skulls) to rob them of mobility, connecting their autonomic systems and fusing organs together to service the whole. This anatomical medley shouldn’t have survived the night, but now that they shared the same circulatory system, the Cainite intruder turned all that mortal blood into his own, thus making the pitiful assemblage into warped ghouls and keeping them alive at the point of death. Now, when one person thought to lift an arm or cry out in horror, the message split through the different junctures to everyone. All the arms flailed and all the voices spoke. With all six fighting to be heard and saved, it produced a stuttering, hiccupping chorus of voices and spasmodic movement.

In this misery, however, there was no joy for Sascha. There was only analysis and understanding. She wanted to know more about the intruder, but the Cainite’s voice seemed lost in the shuffle. He didn’t appear strong enough to pull himself free of the mental quagmire of five thoughts colliding with his own, shouting to be heard. More the pity, for Sascha appreciated individuals of singular will, perhaps more so than solving existence’s small mysteries. The intruder was either willful or ignorant to attack someone of Sascha’s ability, but the drive was present. This small test in torture would separate the chaff from the wheat, and determine the intruder’s true strengths and capacities.

Unfortunately, this had so far netted Sascha nothing for her troubles. Sascha stood. This experiment was at an end. Yorgim, standing guard in the corner of the room, sensed his mistress’s displeasure, and bounced eagerly from foot to foot. Yorgim knew Sascha would allow him to feast on the wretched collection, and was now waiting for the word.

“You may indulge yourself,” Sascha told Yorgim. Yorgim came close to giggling, and advanced.

“Please,” the chorus of voices moaned in unison. They sounded like a choir of bees, their voices lacking in intonation or emphasis. It was a byproduct of the collapse of most of the air pockets in their body. Their voices barely carried through the empty space.

Sascha studied the mass, twelve eyelids blinking in unison, all staring back at her. There was no dissent, no struggle for control. “Please?” Sascha asked.

“Don’t leave us… me, me,” the voices corrected themselves, fighting for identity. “Don’t leave me here. When you aren’t looking, your beast,” all twelve eyes darted in Yorgim’s direction, “your beast bites us.”

“Yes, I know,” Sascha said. “He does hunger easily. He will consume you until you all stop screaming. Then I suppose he’ll grow bored and find some new toy to torment.”

Different voices surged forth through the mouths, stumbling in panic and sending spasms of movement across the entire body. The speaker lost control for a moment, but just a moment. The speaker regained his hold over the others.

“Please,” he asked again.

“I’m not one moved to pity,” Sascha said. “You’ll have to offer me more than your pathetic mewling to stay my hand.”

“What… what do you want then?” “Let’s begin with your name.”

All twelve eyes darted to the right side, a subconscious act when trying to access memories. “It’s difficult, isn’t it?” Sascha asked. “Trying to access information with six brains interconnected, all supplying their answers.”

“I’m… Michael?”

Sascha shook her head. “One of you, yes… but it’s not the name I seek. I have identification slips for these five mortals. I know their names. I don’t know yours. Try again, Child in Caine.”

“Anthony,” the voices finally said. “Anthony.”

“Anthony. That name is unfamiliar,” Sascha said. “What are you to me?”

The room grew uncomfortably quiet, all twelve eyes narrowing and trying to sift through the collected experiences of six individuals. Several answers almost found voice, from “you fucking bastard” to “don’t kill me, please.” The mass finally trembled, several faces trying to shake their heads, but quivering instead.

“Too hard to think,” Anthony said. All the eyes closed, a look of utter concentration creasing their flat brows. The fleshy puddle vibrated again, accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh and snapping bone. Multiple screams tore through the victims.

Sascha knew what Anthony was trying to accomplish. She waited patiently while seams appeared in one corner of the mass, followed by a discoloring of the flesh around the wounds and ruptured veins. Suddenly, one pair of eyes belonging to an Asian man in his early thirties —Tung was his name, Sascha believed—flared wide open.

“No… No!” Tung’s solitary voice cried as Anthony separated him from the gestalt. Tung’s arms and legs flailed helplessly.

Blood and organs spilled from seams, washing the floor, but Anthony quickly sutured himself and the remaining four back up. Tung didn’t have such luxuries. His eyes rolled backwards, and his mess of flesh deflated from the escaping viscera.

Sascha looked at Yorgim and nodded. Yorgim immediately set upon Tung’s remains and devoured what he could, lapping and gorging upon the mess. Sascha waited until the chorus of eyes finally opened again.

“What are you to me?” Sascha repeated.

Ten pairs of eyes narrowed, Anthony’s hatred more focused now. “Father,” Anthony said. “You’re my father.”

Sascha sat back, nonplussed at the revelation. “Father?” Sascha asked. “Those are mortal words. The gestalt still tempers your responses.”

Sascha stood over the coagulated mess of flesh and stared down directly at the intruder’s young face. “I give you one more night to break free of this prison. You possess the skill, now let’s see if you possess the will to dispose of these mortal dressings.”

Before Anthony could respond, Sascha strode for the door. “Stand guard, Yorgim,” she said. “I want all of him there next evening, but you may eat what he discards completely.”

Saturday, 21 August 1999, 9:07 PM Smithsonian Building (a.k.a. “The Castle”), National Mall

Washington, D.C.

The deep, pungent smell of freshly spilt innards permeated the back of Sascha’s nostrils before the fiend even entered the room. Sure enough, the intruder, Anthony, lay in a pool almost black with viscera, his pseudopodic limbs moving and swaying of their own accord. Anthony’s conjoined partners, the last two that Yorgim had yet to eat, lay nearby, shuddering out their last breaths. Anthony lay connected to them only by a twisted umbilical cord of arteries and major veins. Gone were the intertwined neural bundles and braided spinal cords. Anthony slowly regained form, growing new bone and stopping occasionally to draw blood through the arterial straw to replenish himself.

Yorgim and two szlachta stood guard in corners of the room.

“Three nights ago,” Sascha said, sitting on the office chair, “you proclaimed me a coward, to which I said survival entailed acts of cowardice.”

Anthony offered no answers and instead concentrated on growing bones in his arms and hands.

“Look at you now,” Sascha said. “You’ve killed five mortals to ensure your own survival. One at expense of five—would you not call that coward’s odds?”

“I didn’t kill them,” Anthony said, “you did. I just ended their misery.”

Sascha laughed, her amusement a cold knife across Anthony’s already frayed nerves. “Claiming the mantle of Samaritan, are we?” Sascha finally asked. “Well, Anthony, Samaritans don’t plead for their lives. You begged me… please… and not for their salvation. You begged for your own existence.”

“But you killed them,” Anthony said, almost spitting.

“No, I gave them brief meaning against a briefer existence.”

“Meaning! What meaning? You tortured them. You let them die. Where’s the meaning in that?”

“You tell me,” Sascha said. “They died for you. What does their death teach you?” “Oh, you’re screwed. You’re so fucked in the head. Teach me? Teach me what?! That you’re a fucking monster?”

“If true, then we’re both the beast for it. You obviously believe me capable of singular acts of evil and cruelty, but in all fairness I cannot accept the compliment as uniquely mine alone. You see, Anthony, we Cainites are all equal in our ministrations. We no longer operate within the confines of mortal ethics, and thus appear cruel. Ask the cows and the sheep. What tales do they speak of mortals? What horrible light falls upon humanity in their eyes?”

“What are you talking about?” Anthony said, confusion and pain lacerating his voice. “That we are not like them, the kine,” Sascha said, waving to the remaining victims. “That survival is about cowardice and taking”—Sascha pulled both hands to her chest— “instead of demanding. You took what you needed to survive: their lives. Therefore what angers you isn’t what you see in me, it’s what you see reflected of yourself.”

“I’m nothing like you!” Anthony cried, clawing his way across the floor, dragging his sack-like body behind.

“But you are.” “No!”

Sascha listed the qualifiers: “You believe me the embodiment of horror, you believe my touch rabid and you called me father. Ergo, following your logic, if you are indeed my childe, then you inherited my madness and are a fiend of equal stroke.”

Anthony collapsed, unable to move further.

“After all,” Sascha continued, “why despise me so if you don’t believe yourself wicked? You hate me because of what you believe of yourself.”

“You… you were my sire,” Anthony said, his voice low, his words soaked with betrayal.

Sire said father, father said trust, and trust said security.

“And?” Sascha asked. “What of it? I’ve offered many the glory of Caine.” “Look at what you did to me!” Anthony said, his voice cracking.

“I elevated you, turned you into an angel,” Sascha responded, her words dancing like flames. “You turned me into a monster!”

“Angels are often monsters. That’s how God intended them, so that their purpose might remain inscrutable to humanity.”

Anthony hesitated, stunned by Sascha’s admission. “You think you’re divine. An angel?”

“I’m certainly not mortal,” Sascha said, almost spitting upon the thought. “Humans are genetic happenstance, their lives a series of accidents from the cradle to the grave. I am nobody’s accident. I was born human, but have since created and recreated myself. I am god of my destiny, of my existence.”

“How can you claim that?” Anthony demanded. “Your sire took you the same way you took me. I didn’t choose this. Where was my choice, huh?”

“Did you demand these questions of God when born as a mortal infant? Did you storm his cathedrals exacting answers of his priests?” Sascha asked. “No, you did not. You accepted your fate because you had little choice in your future.”

Sascha paused, allowing the words to register in Anthony’s head.

“Choices,” Sascha said, continuing. “Choices are never about what is past and gone. Choices are about what lies ahead. So again, you can choose the past and exist as a martyr, or you can steer your destiny. It’s where you choose to dwell that matters. That is what I offered.”

“Your destiny?” Anthony said. “You’re fucking kidding, right? What destiny do you have, living like a rat, hiding from the sun? You face destruction, like everyone else. At the end of it all is dust—”

“No,” Sascha said, interrupting the young man’s tirade. “There is transformation.” “Transformation.”

“Azhi Dahaka,” Sascha said, barely whispering the word.

“Not this pseudo-mystic crap again,” Anthony said, his expression soured. “Each Tzimisce pursues transformation through his path.”

“Yeah, I know,” Anthony said. “The Tzimisce Holy Grail. All you fiends talk about it like it justifies your every sadistic little whim.”

Sascha smiled and walked to the window. She pulled the curtain back with a sleeved arm and studied the dew droplets of streetlights that rested along the web of streets. “In that, you are correct. Not everyone understands Azhi Dahaka. They hear the words and rally about its standard like a torch. They blind themselves staring into the light and never see what it illuminates in the dark.”

“Do you?”

Sascha turned from the window and let the curtain slip. “Watch your tongue. You exist on my courtesy and generosity alone.”

“Alright then, destroy me.”

Sascha shook her head slowly. “Death is not owed you, yet.”

“Fine. Then maybe I should ask—what does a scholar of death and pain like you know about Azhi Dahaka?”

Sascha sighed. “You are a fool if you believe yourself capable of challenging me in philosophy.” “Afraid?”

“No. I’ve argued faith with Christian crusaders, Byzantine monks and Islamic scholars at my table. You have yet to force my redoubt. I’m not frightened, but I believe you are. What path do you follow? Where do you draw your strength?”

Anthony paused. “My faith is in God.”

Sascha laughed. “I’d warrant I was speaking with a Nosferatu from long ago, not a Tzimisce.”

“You mention God often enough. Don’t you believe in Him?”

“I do indeed. It was difficult existing in Constantinople without seeing His glory in every golden reflection and in every action of His children. I believe in God. I simply have no faith in yours.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Your groveling, self-deprecating manners are abhorrent to my faith. The greatest perjury is in being unfaithful to your intended role.”

Anthony laughed, skin still draped over growing portions of his skeleton. “That’s a joke, right? You’re living the way God wants you to?”

“Living is a mortal affair. I exist. I am a state of being beyond humanity.” “An angel?” Anthony asked with a sneer.

“No. I am possessed of a soul, a gift denied God’s avatars. My flesh, though, is clay once more, and beyond all the tiny mortal indignations. We are between humanity and angels.”

“Bullshit. We’re cast down. God cursed us,” Anthony said, addressing more his misery than Sascha’s comment.

“It was not God who cursed us. God supposedly cursed Caine, but it was Caine who then cursed us.”

Anthony fell silent a moment and flexed the small bones comprising his hand, threading the tendons and muscles.

“Do you know why I don’t believe in your God?” Sascha asked. “Because if He exists, then he is a petty tyrant. You claim God cursed us? Why?”

“Because we prey on humanity, because we kill to feed.”

“You’re not listening to the question. If our condition is a curse, then what did you do as a mortal to deserve such a fate? If you are merely a victim of my ‘rabid touch’ then ask yourself, what gross negligence did I commit as a child to have drawn this lot? If it was not my fault, then what was my sire’s crime, or his sire’s crime? It stands to reason that if each of us is a victim of our progenitor, then the true curse falls upon Caine’s head and not ours. You would have me believe, however, that I am a devil because it was He who arbitrarily cursed me? Who then is the greater monster? Me, for forcing the blood upon you? Or God for cursing you with this malady? That’s why I have no patience or interest in your God.”

“But we kill to feed.”

“We exist with every natural right given unto man and beast. God left Caine with immortality and the most basic of animal gifts—the desire to survive. Had God truly wished to curse Caine, might he not have granted him immortality, but with no ambition to survive? How cruel that would have been. Instead, God bequeaths Caine longevity and the means and intent to carve out an empire? I believe God omniscient in all things, and that includes His imagination.” Sascha squatted down to face Anthony and to study the ribs pushing up his skin like circus tent poles. “And I believe Him far more capable at barren, withering curses than that with which he smote Caine.”

“You mean like never seeing the sun again?” Anthony asked, trying to shift flesh over growing shoulder blades and pushing shin bones through his jelly-sack legs.

“Albinos are likewise victim to sunlight, and I’ve heard of a mortal girl whose skin blisters when touched by water.”

“Albinos don’t fucking burst into flame in sunlight.”

Sascha shrugged. “God must somehow keep us humble. Mortals live brief, flickering lives; angels have no souls or true will to show for their immortality; so too must we have our Achilles’ Heel.”

Anthony remained sullen, but continued his physical resurrection.

“Believe yourself cursed and wallow in your misery, then. Face the sun or drop into torpid slumber until your God proclaims that all is forgiven. I care not. I know I have no regrets, and I understand my place in this existence. Call me a monster, but never a hypocrite. I recognize my values and my failings, and I place each in context with the other. You allow your shortcomings to rule you instead of guide you. Your context is still mortal while your hungers and ambitions, most certainly, are not.” Sascha watched as Anthony grew and threaded bone through muscle, sinew and organs. The two remaining mortals had stopped moving, the umbilical cord gray and dry of vitae, their bodies ashen and deflated. Sascha regretted not studying their passing, a momentary flare of impatience for wasting this small opportunity. Still, their deaths were not entirely wasteful if they fed Yorgim.

“If …” Anthony said, then fell silent. Sascha waited patiently. “If I’m not mortal,” Anthony finally said, “then what am I?”

“Is it not that question that troubled you in the first place?” Sascha said. “The question shouldn’t be ‘What am I?’ It should be ‘What will I become?’ One is a matter of easily victimizing yourself. The other speaks of choices.”

“Azhi Dahaka?”

“Most fools who seek this so-called ‘Fiend’s Grail,’ see their brothers and sisters in Caine change, so they too pursue its course like sheep. They believe change is a rote, a predetermined chain they must follow to emulate success. But imitation only flatters monkeys. True transformation is difficult, for it is a personal exploration and it comes with blood and twisting flesh. True transformation is more terrifying than Final Death, because it means you exist in your most pure and honest form… and our most honest form is never what we expect. It changes you, absolutely. It is rebirth. The essence of what you are now then—”

“Vanishes,” Anthony concluded.

Anthony stretched against the ground, his vertebrae pushing against his skin. Sascha studied the young man a moment, then nodded to the szlachta. They both left, leaving Yorgim to eye the two corpses with an eager gleam to his beady eyes.

Anthony tried kneeling, but something felt conspicuously off. His knees ground together uncomfortably. He quickly realized he forgot the interlining cartilage, and concentrated on regrowing that padding.

“So,” Sascha said. “Is your bloodlust abated or do we begin this anew?”

“Abated,” Anthony admitted, sitting in the viscera. “Though I can’t make any promises.”

Anthony paused, wary confusion suddenly etched across his face.

“Why haven’t I destroyed you?” Sascha said, voicing Anthony’s concerns. “Yeah,” Anthony responded cautiously.

“Because your end serves no purpose.”

Anthony stood, gingerly, his body out of sorts, the regrowth of bone imperfect in a dozen minute ways. Anthony concentrated on what felt natural, allowing his body to slowly flow into that form. He studied his hands and naked legs, then his arms. His brows furrowed. Something was amiss.

“This isn’t my body,” Anthony said, turning his hands over. Sascha shook her head. “It is most decidedly you,” she responded.

The two szlachta returned, carrying a full-length mirror from some abandoned corner of the castle. Sascha motioned Anthony to stand before the mirror. He did so, on trembling, uncertain legs. Faced with his own reflection, his hands flew immediately to his face, massaging the flesh and bone beneath. His form was soft, his physique bereft of telling lines. His eyes were more almond-shaped, and his mouth a pursed butterfly. Gone were body hairs and mortal scars. Gone was the jagged cut of a poor circumcision, his penis now sheathed in pristine flesh and almost white.

“My face… my, my body. What—” “Azhi Dahaka. You are transformed.” “What did you do?”

“I merely wiped away your physical identity and forced you to recreate yourself. Nothing more. You fashioned yourself, your subconscious taking a subtle hand in the crafting.”

“This can’t be Azhi Dahaka…. It can’t be this easy.”

“It isn’t, but this is an appropriate beginning. Your proverbial first steps.” Sascha studied Anthony’s form, running curious fingers across his flesh. Anthony recoiled slightly against the touch, but otherwise stood his ground.

“Accept the change offered you,” Sascha said. “Your error lay in that you stared in the mirror and found a mortal’s face watching you in return, assessing you in mortal ways. You believe yourself a monster because you measure yourself with mortal eyes, speak with mortal tongue and hear with mortal ears. I’ve changed that. I’ve done what you’ve been afraid to do.”

“This is who I am?”

Sascha shook her head. “I know not, except that somewhere inside you, this portrait exists.”

Anthony turned and studied his new body at different angles. Another szlachta entered and placed a folded pile of Anthony’s clothes on the floor next to him. Anthony looked at them, then at Sascha.

“Why?” he finally asked. “Why are you doing this for me? It can’t be compassion.”

Sascha did not answer. Instead, she settled an unwavering gaze on the szlachta. They responded immediately, setting the mirror against a water-stained wall and leaving. Only Yorgim stayed. Sascha motioned for the beast to kneel at its master’s side with another glance. Yorgim did as commanded, its head still reaching Sascha’s shoulders. The Tzimisce rested one hand on Yorgim’s neck. The ropy hide on the szlachta’s neck immediately shivered apart, revealing its spinal column. A pop filled the room and Yorgim slumped to his side on the floor, his spine disconnected from his skull.

Anthony was shocked, his almond eyes wide with horror. He could see the breathing swell of Yorgim’s flanks, but the horror overrode his capacity to process the information. “I have no compassion,” Sascha said with even weight on each word, then stared down at Yorgim. “I could as easily slay him and you with no other concern but for my next meal. But neither death serves me.”

Anthony nodded and immediately noticed his throat and mouth felt parched and cotton dry.

“I disconnected Yorgim’s higher cognitive functions. His autonomic functions remain.” “Why?”

“So he would not hear my words and so that you would listen with all the greater intent.”

Anthony fell silent and simply nodded.

“I spared you because I could. I spared you because I haven’t experienced the utter rapture of Azhi Dahaka in decades.” Sascha leaned in and ran her lips against Anthony’s. “I wanted to remember how it tasted, even if on your lips,” she whispered.

Sascha drew away, glancing at Anthony’s garments. He man understood the gesture, and grabbed his clothing. He ran naked from the room.

Sascha sat in the darkness, contemplating the groans from the building’s soaked wood. She had instructed her szlachta to allow Anthony to escape. Outside it rained, a cascade of thunder and lightning careening against Washington’s night, but there was no Jove in the heavens hurtling down spears. Rome was gone, and Constantinople as well. There was nothing here of yesterday save for what Sascha protected in her breast: Michael’s dream of Heaven on Earth, a new Constantinople of ordered precision. Sadly, Michael’s vision was an obligation that Sascha carried. She didn’t regret the burden or enormity of its scope, but it was not Sascha’s true calling. Azhi Dahaka awaited and had for years now. Sascha was ready. It was a moment of final and ultimate transformation, where Sascha would adopt her truest form… and it lay on the tip of the fiend’s tongue, a ready moment waiting to unfold, waiting for Sascha’s consent.

But Sascha denied herself that reward.

Sascha had spoken true when she’d told Anthony that Azhi Dahaka was a rebirth, where the old vanished before the new. Therein lay the problem. If Sascha accepted Azhi Dahaka now, Michael’s dream and memories would evaporate, shucked away with Sascha’s old skin and no longer a concern to whatever the fiend became.

So, Sascha fought the urge to surrender to change and abandon Michael to the yesterday where Rome lay in ruins and Constantinople burned. She struggled against the change almost nightly now, and her resolve grew weaker with each year.

Perhaps then, Sascha had lied to Anthony. Perhaps in beginning Anthony’s path along Azhi Dahaka, Sascha somehow justified her sacrifice to remain behind. Perhaps it had been compassion that staved Sascha’s hand from destroying her childe.

Sascha didn’t know anymore. Azhi Dahaka called with growing vigor, and Michael’s dream threatened to slip away.

Sascha sat and contemplated the silence, wondering how much longer she could resist.

Sunday, 22 August 1999, 12:32 AM Margaret Reilly’s haven in Manhattan New York City, New York

“You look tired, Isabel.”

Isabel stopped in the middle of removing her jacket. “Does that strike you as a pleasant thing to say, Margaret?” She looked at her host with large, brown eyes, trying to read the other woman’s intent. Did she plan to put Isabel off with insults and aggravate her into making a mistake? Or was she just boorish, selfish, and so far withdrawn from polite society like most Sabbat that she spared no effort on civility?

Margaret, the leader and priest of a pack of rabid Cainites that reported directly to Sascha Vykos, shrugged her shoulders. “You’re not here for me to flatter you.”

“No, I’m not, but a bit of decorum would certainly be appropriate.”

“Fine. You look simply ravishing. If I wasn’t dead, I’d want to fuck the hell out of you.” “How sweet. If you weren’t dead, though, I wouldn’t give you the time of night, especially in that outfit. Now, do you just want to exchange bon mots or did this invitation have some sort of purpose behind it?”

Isabel looked at herself as she passed a mirror in the foyer of Margaret’s haven. The witch was right—she did look tired. Unconsciously, Isabel drew in a breath. The events of the past few months had worn on her, and she didn’t intend to let this negotiation go sour as had the one Chas accidentally bungled with Pieterzoon’s flunky. If she had any luck at all, Isabel would find out that Gauthier had been unceremoniously discharged from Pieterzoon’s entourage, so bad a showing had he made, himself. Still, despite the fact that she had no intention of forging any kind of alliance with either the Sabbat or the Camarilla, she did her best to entertain their courtship. If either of them perceived the Giovanni as a threat, either of them could forestall their efforts against the opposite sect and turn their attentions to the necromancers.

“You’re not going to like the purpose; I can guarantee that. But I’ve never been one to soften the blow, so I’m not going to song-and-dance you with such fruitless consideration.” Margaret’s diplomacy style differed a great deal from Gauthier’s.

Isabel once again stood stock still. “Then why bother with the pretense of proposal at all? I know what this is about. It’s about the Sabbat and the Camarilla lined up on either side of Boston and laying claim to it.”

“Smart girl.”

“Well, it doesn’t take a genius. You’re forgetting something, though.” “And what’s that?”

“Not every city needs to be under the thumb of the Sabbat or Camarilla.”

“Isabel, I think you’re being a bit naïve, no? You know that we’re fighting a war, and if a city’s not with us, it’s against us.”

“But what does that mean? I’ll tell you plainly, the Giovanni have no interest in pursuing an alliance with the Sabbat. Now, wait; nor do we have an interest in leaguing with the Camarilla.”

“Yes, I heard about how your dialogue with Pieterzoon’s man went. And for the record, the Giovanni have indeed formed relationships with the Sabbat, albeit on an individual level.”

“You mean Genevra? She’s dead, you know.” “Aren’t we all?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Me neither.” Margaret smiled wickedly. “Sooner or later, even the eldest among us has to fall. Genevra’s not the only necromancer to negotiate with the Sabbat.”

“Well, she’s the only one dealing with the Sabbat who was in Boston. I know Francis Giovanni sold guns to Max Lowell, but that’s a commercial arrangement, not some high- handed philosophical alliance in your religious war.”

“Such a smug tone! You know that we could just focus on the Giovanni in Boston and turn our attentions back to the Camarilla later, don’t you, Isabel?”

“I know you could, but you won’t. The very night you make Giovanni enmity a priority, the Camarilla will crawl into Boston from the woodwork. You might—emphasis on the possibility—rout the Giovanni from Boston, but in doing so you’ll double the effort it takes to infest it completely.”

“Infest, eh?”

“Yes, like vermin. You and I both know your resources would be better used either against the Camarilla or—and I know sensibility is a stretch for you zealot-types—more sensibly by taking from Boston what you want and not worrying about the nebulous sect affiliation of the city, which isn’t quantifiable anyway. At least, we Giovanni see it that way. We know you have people in Boston; so does the Camarilla. And it doesn’t affect us in the least. Kindred… excuse me, Cainites battling in the streets, however, doesn’t do any of us any good.” Isabel took a seat on what she assumed to be a leather chair and crossed her hands in her lap.

Margaret followed suit. “Moderation is not diplomacy, Isabel. But we should take refreshment before we continue further. Jonathan!”

From the shadows beyond the room emerged a thin, pale young man, perhaps in his early twenties or late teens. He wore no clothes, and all external evidence of his gender had been removed—he displayed no phallus, nor pubic hair, and the only reason Isabel guessed him to be male at all was a suggestion in the tone of his musculature. His head and face were likewise hairless. And most unsettling of all was the fact that Margaret had removed all traces of Jonathan’s mouth and nose from his face; his sorrowful eyes peered out from the otherwise featureless alabaster expanse of his countenance.

Isabel kept her revulsion in check—of all the things she’d done in life and unlife of which others might have disapproved, at least they were basically human in nature. What some might have considered sexual perversion, acts of brutality or even depraved indifference all had their origin in the original humanity of their perpetrator or, more often, the mortality of their victims or subjects. With members of the Sabbat, like Margaret, viciousness often had no relation to humanity. Jonathan, for example, had been remade in the image of some androgynous ideal Margaret at some point had found aesthetically pleasant. Or perhaps she had so little sympathy with or empathy for the kine that Jonathan existed to serve her needs and deny his own. Surely, though, if he was a ghoul, he would need to take blood from her in some way. Were he not a ghoul, he would still need to eat. Perhaps he was some sort of Tzimisce “performance,” which Margaret fleshcrafted again and again as his needs arose, only to revert him to his present state afterward. Isabel dropped the train of thought entirely; there was no telling with someone so completely outside of normal thought as Margaret.

“Oh, don’t be so particular. I sealed his mouth as a service to you, so you wouldn’t have to hear him scream when you took blood from him. I know how agonizing the Giovanni Kiss is for its victims. I must also confess that I’m interested in seeing your feeding peculiarity in practice. You don’t mind, do you Jonathan, that my friend Isabel will be removing your head?”

“Don’t tell me you believe that rubbish, Margaret? That I can drink only from severed heads? Why, if that were true, wouldn’t I have sunk to your level of depravity long ago? After all, if we’re to believe everything we hear, I should suspect your Sabbat of mindless, destructive, cackling Satanism. And the simple fact that I’m here and willing to discuss your plans about Boston proves that rumors are sometimes unfounded, does it not? Would I bargain with such a fool?”

“You disappoint me, Isabel. By all means, though, feed. I was hoping for a display of madness or excess, and instead you tell me that I’ve placed too much stock in urban legend.” Isabel took the opportunity to feed. Jonathan buckled beneath her, falling to his knees as she supped his life’s blood from his throat. As she drank, Isabel heard a reedy whine punctuated by incomprehensible clicks. She looked down, lost in the burning thrill of the vitae, to see two opening and closing scolices on the insides of Jonathan’s palms. Apparently Margaret had not bestowed voice boxes upon them, and the thin whine was just air drawn in and expelled from them. The clicks came from the tiny needle-fangs that surrounded the openings, grinding and clashing as the hand-mouths writhed. Disgusted, she pushed him away.

Margaret met her eyes with a grin. “Well, the boy must eat somehow, must he not? Here, Jonathan, my poor child; take back some of what our judgmental saint Isabel has taken from you.” She opened the front of her sheer silk shirt, exposing a flawless ivory breast, the peak of which had been fleshcrafted smooth and unnippled. Jonathan reached out his hand and caressed his domitor’s skin, piercing the flesh ever so shallowly and no doubt drawing out savory trickles of her rich blood. “You should be glad, Isabel. Surely you would suspect me of attempting to forge a blood bond, had I given Jonathan his nightly due first.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Isabel broke off the conversation. She rose, returned to the foyer and collected her jacket. Without even attempting to make eye contact with Margaret, she shouted into the other room, “And I’m sure you can see that we have nothing in common, and therefore nothing to gain with even an empty alliance. Don’t be so foolish as to think you can pluck Boston like a ripe plum. Neither of the groups of Kindred who stand against you would permit it.”

“Ah, simple Isabel. Permission is not part of the problem. Within the week, Buffalo will fall to us. Hartford will be ours before year’s end. Already, a war party of archbishops has gathered a group of Cainites to dominate precious Boston by force or fortune. Take my advice, Isabel. Pay tribute, or crumble like the rest of the East Coast.”

But Isabel never heard this last; she had left Margaret’s wretched haven and summoned a private car to take her to Grand Central Station.

Tuesday, 24 August 1999, 11:48 PM Cherry Hill

Baltimore, Maryland

“Where the hell is Katrina?” Jazz yelled.

Tarika answered from downstairs: “She had to go talk to her daddy!”

“Hmph.” Her daddy, the high-and-mighty prince of vampires. “She oughta tell that old man to go kiss his own ass, instead of getting her to do it all the time,” Jazz muttered to herself. She sighed as she pulled on her pants. The upstairs of the house was too stuffy— no wonder, with the shutters nailed shut and covered with tar paper. Katrina had been talking about boarding up the downstairs windows too. Jazz wasn’t sure why. The bars kept out intruders—the curious, criminal, and stupid—and since she, Katrina, and Tarika were never downstairs during the day, the sunlight didn’t really matter.

“Whatever.”

Katrina would do what she wanted to, whether Jazz and Tarika liked it or not. Jazz briefly considered making the king-sized bed where the three of them spent their days, and was on the verge of deciding it would be too much trouble, when she heard some kind of crash from downstairs.

“Tarika?” Jazz started downstairs to see what the noise was. “Girl, what the hell you doing down here?”

The living room and the Naugahyde sofa were empty, but through the doorway to the kitchen Jazz could see the naked lightbulb that hung over the table swinging back and forth. She walked into the kitchen and tripped.

Several details registered in Jazz’s mind at once: Tarika’s head, which Jazz had tripped on and that now bounced across the floor; the open window and bent bars; the recognizable hairy face of Malachi, one of the prince’s thugs; and the bloody machete he was swinging at her.

Wednesday, 25 August 1999, 12:05 AM USS Apollo, the Inner Harbor Baltimore, Maryland

Prince Garlotte sat and brooded. His three childer stood before him. The gently swaying lantern that usually soothed him was, tonight, merely another source of aggravation. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his high-backed wooden chair—the action was partially an indulgence of habit, partially calculated to irritate his audience. He knew them well, though often he saw them as he wished them to be rather than as they actually were. No more.

“Did you want something?” Katrina finally asked, after only an hour and a half of waiting. Garlotte smiled. He’d known she would be the first to challenge him, but he’d hoped she might hold out longer. “Ah, Katrina, are you in such a hurry, with eternity stretching out before you?” The prince gestured toward Isaac. “You should be more like your elder brother.”

Katrina sneered. “What, a pussy?”

The sheriff, to his credit, didn’t respond to her taunt. Reluctantly, Garlotte rose from his seat and pulled his flowing, regal robe close to him. It was the type of attire that was useful when he wished to emphasize his authority. He stepped toward his childer and stood directly in front of Katrina, who was in the center, but when he raised his hand, it was on Isaac’s left shoulder that it came to rest.

Staring intently at the girl but squeezing Isaac’s shoulder, Garlotte said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” Well pleased was somewhat of an exaggeration, but the prince had already left out beloved, and he hated to carry poetic license too far. Isaac was solid, if uninspiring, and he would continue to grow into the role of sheriff over the years.

Garlotte released his grip on Isaac. “And you, Fin,” he said, still staring directly at Katrina. “When last we spoke, you claimed the right to Embrace your mortal girl. Though I was pleased to see you assert yourself this once, your choice of venue for that conversation was… ill-considered. Who prodded you in this decision?”

Fin hesitated, but only briefly. “Ms. Ash. She suggested….” His words trailed off quickly. “Do you see now,” asked Garlotte, “that she had motives other than your best interest?

Though I have no doubt she was persuasive. Do you see it?”

Fin nodded meekly. His voice was barely audible. “I do.” “Good.”

With blinding speed, Garlotte’s right hand shot free of his robe and slammed a stake into the chest of his youngest childe. Before either of the others could even react, Fin staggered and collapsed to the floor.

“I reclaim this blood,” said Garlotte. Not once had his eyes strayed from Katrina’s face. She was struggling not to glance down at Garlotte’s robe, to try to see if another weapon lurked beneath the folds, perhaps a stake meant for her.

But the prince turned from her, at last, and took three deliberate steps back to his throne. He settled himself comfortably before again taking notice of his two remaining childer. Garlotte gestured toward Fin. “His mortal is dead. I instructed Malachi to be sure she felt no pain.” The prince pressed his fingertips together, making a child’s steeple. “I gave him no such injunction in dealing with your… playthings, Katrina.”

Her eyes grew wide with surprise and fear.

She’ll hate herself for that slip, Garlotte thought. And she’ll hate me.

“Go to them,” he said, and as if his words released her from a spell, Katrina broke for the door in a dead run. A few seconds, and her footsteps receded into nothingness.

Wednesday, 25 August 1999, 10:20 PM (4:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time) Iglesia de San Nicolás de los Servitas

Madrid, Spain

“I am curious, Cardinal. Tell me: What game are you really playing?”

Cardinal Monçada spread his hands beatifically. “Why, chess, of course. And I will allow you to take back that last move, unless you truly do wish to sacrifice that bishop.” “I thought you were sacrificing an archbishop,” grumbled Don Ibrahim. He peered at the board. “Let the move stand. I would rather lose than take charity and score a tainted victory, bismallah.”

“If you insist.” Monçada reached ponderously over the board and swept the bishop aside with a knight. “I admit, the symbolism of the move is a bit cloying. One can read too much into such things, Don Ibrahim. As I told Talley before I sent him away, the chess metaphor is a weary one.”

Ibrahim crossed his arms and sat back. “If it has gotten weary, that is because it has given honorable service upon so many occasions. So what game are you playing, Cardinal? Sate my curiosity. You know I have no stake in these American squabbles, and no interest who lives or dies.”

“None whatsoever?” “Talley will come back.”

“I should hope so.” Monçada heaved his immense bulk from the chair and stood, blinking. “And Lucita, as well. Vykos? Probably. It is old and powerful, and while it is in danger, it is skilled at survival. As for the others, well, if Lucita survives, one of them will not. It is simple logic.” He began a slow circuit around the room, rubbing his hands and sighing. “As for what my game is, well, I confess to you that I have none. I am protecting my assets and trying to flush out a traitor. There are too many subtle signs of wrongness emanating from this entire escapade. There are too many powers in one place, too many agendas. Sooner or later it will all thin itself out, and I want to make sure that it does so in an orderly fashion. I don’t expect Talley will succeed in his stated mission, in truth. I simply expect his presence to eliminate waste and unnecessary carnage.”

Ibrahim nodded and studied the board, then moved a pawn forward to threaten Monçada’s knight. “Sensible. Eminently sensible. But what do you do when the smoke has cleared?”

Monçada stopped and gazed up at a tapestry that was almost as old as he was. It depicted the opening of Jesus’s tomb on the third day, and it had a curious stain down the left side. “We shall see what we shall see when it does, Don Ibrahim. Someone may require punishment, if he has been too avid in following his own agenda and not the greater one that God has allowed us to set for him.” The latter was said mildly, in a matter-of-fact tone that might deceive any who did not know the cardinal. Don Ibrahim, on the other hand, had a very good idea of how Monçada defined “punishment,” and suddenly felt a bit anxious himself.

“What if it’s one of your archbishops?”

Monçada frowned. “Then I will punish an archbishop.”

Ibrahim nodded. “I am pleased to hear that. Some of them grow too confident in themselves if left too long to their own devices.” A sudden thought struck him. “But what do you do if Talley actually succeeds?”

The cardinal turned, an unguarded, unwholesome smile on his face. “Against my daughter, Don Ibrahim, do you really think he will?”

Don Ibrahim said nothing for as long as he dared, then turned back to the board. “It is your move, Cardinal,” he said quietly.

“Indeed it is, my friend. I thank you for reminding me. Indeed it is.” And he settled himself back into his chair and stared at the board, concentrating once again on the game at hand.

Wednesday, 25 August 1999, 9:59 PM A network of tunnels and caves

New York City, New York

Hesha, from his sickbed, half-saw, half-smelt a figure in the dark room’s open door. He considered the shape and the odor. It was not the small one, smelling of mange, who brought the rats each night; not the busy, cheerful man who came to joke with the boy; not the tall one with the laptop who sat and typed through his visits; not the woman who inspected his carcass each evening and brought needle and silk to help mend him. Not these, not any other he knew, and he felt, by now, he knew the whole warren’s worth by scent, voice, or build. Therefore, this was a new person—very possibly “him,” the chief the others mentioned from time to time.

The squat, rather crooked person turned up the lights, very slightly. It was a much older Cainite than the others: an elder Nosferatu, clinging to leper’s dress of hood, cloak, mummy-like wrappings. The young ones took more to overcoats and sweatshirts. It had been hats and trenchcoats, forty years ago. How old would this one be?

It shuffled closer. Hesha caught a glimpse of misshapen face and the impression of large, black eyes that neither matched each other nor occupied their proper places in the very round skull’s sockets. The jetty orbs pored over Hesha’s face. Gnarled, clawed fingers reached out and took off the blanket. There were dark red and brown stains on it in the shape of the Setite’s body. Some of the wounds, Hesha could feel, would not knit. They leaked what blood was sent to them, and it was caked now on the cloth. Gently, with the backs of the terrible claws, the elder probed the ragged wounds, and seemed dissatisfied.

It sat down, rustling in its robes, in the chair by the foot of the Setite’s bed. It looked toward (not threateningly at) its patient’s face.

“They tell me you’ve regained consciousness.” A hoarse voice, probably male.

Carefully, Hesha tried speaking. A rasping, painful “Yes” emerged. He would not have recognized it as himself. He said nothing more, though the silence dragged on.

“Cautious. No ‘Where am I?’ from you; that’s the classic first question, I understand.” The Setite said nothing.

“Would you care to introduce yourself?” After a brief wait, the Nosferatu went on. “Well, then, Hesha, Hunter-of-the-Sun, Prophet of Henem.”

“Who… gave you that name?” the Setite croaked angrily. “Don’t profane it by—” “Prophet of Typhon, if you prefer.”

“I do… and I like—Ruhadze far better,” Hesha whispered.

“As you like. You may call me Calebros. All of my young friends here know me by that name.”

“I am honored,” managed Hesha.

“You have heard of me?” The Nosferatu seemed almost alarmed. “No,” replied the Setite, meaningfully. His host chuckled.

“I see you understand us.” “I thought… I… did.”

“What doubts do you have now? You were an ally to us.”

“Atlanta—” Hesha gasped. Talking hurt from the chest upwards, and there seemed to be trouble with his lungs. “The Toreador’s party… you invited me… to,” he waited and struggled to pull more air in. ”Sabbat ambush. Vegel killed… by Sabbat, or by you… trap either way… raises… suspicions, yes?”

“I see,” Calebros replied tonelessly. “And did these suspicions give rise to any retribution on your part?”

“…Beg… your pardon?”

“Retribution,” Calebros repeated. “Not against us. I suspect you’re too canny for anything so direct, and frankly, you need our assistance every so often, it seems.”

Hesha couldn’t speak—his mouth and throat were flaky, like scorched paper—but Calebros could read the bewilderment on his patient’s face.

“I’d always heard you had a mind for details,” the Nosferatu said, reaching into a fold of his cloak and producing what appeared to be a thin paper roll, the receipt tape from a cash register or adding machine. “Let me refresh your memory.” Calebros began to unroll the tape as if it were a treasured scroll, and to read aloud from the tiny, cramped scrawl of handwriting on the reverse side of the purple numbers:

“Atlanta. Your associate, Mr. Vegel was present. A certain warlock regent evidently disappeared. There seemed to be Assamite involvement. This is difficult to confirm since the Sabbat blew up the chantry shortly thereafter, and the Tremere high command doesn’t exactly return our calls—not when their internal affairs are involved.”

The Nosferatu unrolled the tape a bit farther. He read almost disinterestedly, as if relating items from a grocery list. “Calcutta. A warlock you contacted was fatally attacked on his way to meet you. The assassin was an Assamite. We have confirmed this. Also in Calcutta, the Rani Surama, after a visit with you, came due for some rather severe punishment from her sire, Prince Abernethie. Surama is reported to be no longer among the living or the unliving.”

Calebros pulled more tape from the roll. “Perhaps Surama’s demise is less significant, considering that, during your stay in Calcutta, every Kindred in the entire Bengal region was mysteriously wiped out… with the exception of yourself and an associate.

“Closer to home, it appears that two Tremere, a regent and a council representative, had their service prematurely abbreviated in New York and Baltimore, respectively—two of your centers of operations. Assamite involvement strongly suspected in both cases again. “You can imagine my hesitancy to meet with you,” Calebros said. “A tête-à-tête with Hesha Ruhadze does not seem to be a boon to longevity.”

Hesha painfully cleared his throat and politely turned away from his host to spit bloody phlegm and charred throat tissue in the other direction. “Three survivors… Bengal.”

Calebros double-checked his notes, then looked quizzically back at Hesha.

“Three survivors,” Hesha repeated, his voice gaining a little strength. “Nosferatu bookseller. I spoke to him before and after… whatever happened. Promised he’d contact Bombay for me—about Atlanta.”

“We’ve heard nothing of that,” Calebros said.

Hesha rested his voice. He was no more in a position to explain lapses in Nosferatu communication than he was to understand the great upheaval that had struck Calcutta during his sojourn there. Nor did he have an explanation for the coincidental Assamite activities that seemed to follow him and his personnel like a shadow. Could the Children of Haqim be tracing the Eye as well? That was an unwelcome thought. The less contact with Assamites the better.

Wearily, Hesha lay back on the bed. He was too weak to defend himself properly. The Nosferatu might have nursed him along this far, but merely to find out what he knew. This Calebros was obviously a suspicious one—and Hesha had no proof to offer of his innocence. If the sewer rats suspected him of harmful designs, his convalescence would ultimately prove short and unrewarding. Non-threatening, he thought. That was his only hope. There were other paths to ruin, Hesha recognized—paths from which he would be powerless to detour once upon them. If the Nosferatu had turned on him, and Vegel’s death had been a trap, then Hesha didn’t stand a chance anyway.

“Erich Vegel’s death,” Calebros said, breaking the deepening silence and seeming to guess Hesha’s thoughts, “was, we believe, an accident. Not his actual death, of course— whatever Sabbat pack he ran into certainly did what they did to him intentionally—but the circumstances leading to his death were not of our design.”

Calebros paused. “Did Vegel contact you at all after entering the High Museum?”

Hesha shook his head. He, in fact, had tried to call Vegel that night, but somehow had only reached Victoria Ash on Vegel’s cell phone.

“We arranged for you to receive the invitation to Ms. Ash’s party,” Calebros said. “We discovered the whereabouts of an object you have sought for many years, and we thought to turn it over to you. We have not forgotten the service you rendered us at Bombay.”

Hesha nodded his understanding.

“Prince Benison’s Elysium seemed the perfect opportunity. You see, the Eye of Hazimel was hidden within one of the statues Ms. Ash had acquired and which would be on display.” Only with great effort did Hesha maintain his air of weariness. The Eye of Hazimel. He’d held it in his hand just… several nights ago, however many he wasn’t exactly sure.

It had been given to Vegel? Then Hesha had lost it not once but twice.

“The Eye was delivered to Vegel,” Calebros said, “and he was given an escape route from the trouble we expected. The trouble we expected, unfortunately, was not the trouble we got.” The Nosferatu crumpled up the receipt tape he’d been reading earlier and stuffed it into a pocket. “Or at least it wasn’t all we got. We were expecting a Sabbat raid on the High Museum. Perfect opportunity to hand over the Eye to your man. What we got was an all-out attack. War. And what Vegel got was dead.”

Hesha lay on his back and, to an observer’s view, listened impassively. Within, he was not so placid. A knot was forming within the atrophied organ that had long ago been his stomach. The knot had begun with the news that both he and Vegel had held—and lost—the Eye. But the knot was growing.

The news of Vegel’s destruction—an event that Hesha had assumed, though unconfirmed, weeks ago—was merely the outermost layer of information, the outer skin of an onion, and Hesha was nothing if not skilled at peeling away layers. If Calebros’s account was to be believed, then the fact beneath Vegel’s death was that someone, some Nosferatu somewhere down the line, had miscalculated. And badly. Someone had made unwarranted assumptions, and those assumptions had been passed along the lines of communication. Those higher-ups in a position to do so—maybe Calebros himself—had failed or been unable to detect the erroneous assumptions.

For most clans, an embarrassment. For the Nosferatu, who made themselves useful to other clans and thereby survived through collecting and bartering information, a dangerous blow to their credibility.

Peel away a layer. What was the mistake about? The Sabbat raid was in fact a full frontal assault on the American Camarilla, and now the Nosferatu had more to worry about than a credibility issue. The sect they supported was on the verge of being annihilated from a large portion of the continent. Survival was suddenly much less abstract. Although, in truth, if any Camarilla clan were to survive the dissolution of the sect, the unobtrusive sewer rats would certainly have the best chance.

Peel away another layer. The Nosferatu had thought a Sabbat raid was going to strike Prince Benison’s Elysium, yet they had said nothing. Surely the benefit of chaos in which to complete a transaction with Hesha’s retainer was not great enough a reason to undertake such a risk. The Nosferatu unquestionably had other schemes at work. The question that remained was, what? What profit was important enough to risk the enmity of a prince and possibly charges of treachery from the rest of the Camarilla?

Peel away another layer. Why should a Nosferatu elder—a being well-acquainted with the power of inference and deduction—share such information with a Setite? This was where Hesha’s stomach began to curdle. Why, indeed? The most likely reason was to find out what the Setite knew, and in this case—with the Setite in question barely strong enough to sit up and take nourishment, much less defend himself—there seemed to be every likelihood that the Setite would never leave this place. That the knowledge, in short, would die with him.

“We found his clothes later,” Calebros said. Hesha’s mind switched back to Vegel.

“And then his body, some distance away,” Calebros continued. “One-eyed corpse, drained of blood, starting to turn to dust. We’re virtually certain that the body was his.” Hesha felt that each new detail was a scorpion tossed among his ragged bedclothes, another piece of information that would never leave that room. Why tell him so much otherwise? But then the other possible answer dawned upon him. Calebros was attempting to convince him, to persuade him that there’d been no foul play on the part of the sewer rats. And why would the Nosferatu bother to convince someone he was simply going to destroy?

“So you say,” Hesha said painfully. If his goodwill still mattered here, he was not completely helpless, he realized, although words were his only defense. He fought the urge to sit up and gauge Calebros’s expression. The disarranged features would be too difficult to read anyway. There was only a long pause for Hesha to measure.

“I cannot think of a way to prove this to you,” Calebros said finally.

Hesha nodded and cleared his throat again. “In Calcutta… I met with Michel, the Tremere. Owed me a favor. I was tracking the Eye… someone who was seeing through the Eye. Assamite got to Michel before I learned anything. I destroyed the Assamite. Your source tell you that?”

Calebros did not answer but merely continued to watch, and to listen.

“As for… Kindred population of entire Bengal region,” Hesha went on, though his voice was again growing weak, “flattered that you would blame that on me… but far beyond my capabilities.” Hesha was seized by a fit of coughing. His throat and chest burned.

After a few moments, the fit passed. “I cannot think of a way to prove this to you,” he added, mimicking Calebros’s own words. “You know my true title. The Assamites are as much a threat to my responsibilities as the Sabbat. Perhaps more so.”

The two elders, Setite and Nosferatu, sat in silence for some time. They stared into the darkness, each weighing suspicion against fact. For Hesha, the questions were moot. Even if he disbelieved Calebros—and what the Nosferatu said seemed likely enough—he was in the care of the sewer rats, and his safety depended upon their good graces.

Eventually, Calebros spoke: “It seems we each have our story. We each also have no way to prove our own or to disprove the other’s.”

“So it seems.”

“It would also seem that it is in my clan’s best interest for the Eye to pass to less… shall we say, conspicuous ownership than that of the present time. Fewer questions about how it got out and about. You remain interested in possessing it?”

“I do.”

Calebros paused for a moment. “Then I see no reason that our cooperation should not continue.”

“Nor do I.”

“I should think not.”

Through the darkness, Hesha thought he could see what might be a smile upon the Nosferatu’s face.

“We do not forget our debts, Hesha, Prophet of Typhon.”

The Setite did not miss the hint of warning, but chose to address Calebros’s tone of gratitude. “You and your people have done me great service.”

“Trust me,” Calebros said, his voice conveying none of the words’ irony. “Preserving your mere existence is hardly on par with the debt of Bombay or the value of the Eye. I would be pleased, though, if you would consider it partial repayment for the loss of your friend, Vegel, in Atlanta. Chance worked against us there; it worked against you at St. John’s.”

“Perhaps it will work for us, soon enough,” Hesha suggested. “Thank you, all the same.”

“You’ll be wanting to contact your retainers, then.” From somewhere amidst the folds of his robes, the Nosferatu produced a cellular phone. ”Your favorite weapon, I believe. Certainly mightier than the sword, in some hands.”

The phone was oversized and flat, with huge yellow-green glowing buttons—the type of headset manufactured for the disabled, a designation not lacking in application to Hesha at the moment.

“Can you see to dial?” asked his host. The Setite peered through ragged eyelids at the glowing grid, and hissed assent. He lifted his hands—only the left obeyed him—and began picking out one of Janet’s direct numbers with one fingerbone.

“Do you mind?” Calebros gestured to another extension—a black, two-piece bakelite telephone—and picked up the receiver.

Hesha tried to smile. “I would be more offended, I think, if I were no longer worth spying upon….”

Friday, 27 August 1999, 12:03 AM Wisconsin Avenue Washington, D.C.

Polonia and Borges shared grave looks, which gave way to avaricious, vulpine smiles. Polonia cocked an eyebrow and closed his eyes in concentration.

Hundreds of miles away, a mortal, animated like a puppet by Polonia’s formidable will, rose from her prone pose and raised her arms above her head. Around her, in a circle, loomed a pack of ravenous Sabbat, waiting for just this signal.

Polonia released his control of the subject, whose last conscious thought was, What am I doing here? before the frenzied Cainites tore her to dripping shreds in their excitement. An expressionless vampire touched each of the howling Cainites on the forehead before turning them loose into the night.

Like rabid wolves, the pack descended upon Boston.

Brooklyn Bridge New York City, New York

“Listen, you said find a fence, and I did,” Ramona said crossly. “If you don’t like him, then you can find the next one, okay?” She threw her body into corner of the backseat of the cab. She was angry and directing her pointed words at Khalil, but she didn’t miss the protective glances Sarat was aiming in the mirror at her from the driver’s seat. She didn’t like that one bit. “Or maybe Sarat can find one for you.” She grunted in finality and lowered her eyes to her lap, but the fierce energy didn’t leave her body.

Khalil wasn’t ready to stop being mad, but he knew that Ramona was done arguing, and he didn’t want to push the Gangrel over the edge. At least until he was sure she couldn’t help him any more. On the other hand, she couldn’t be allowed the last word. He curled his lip and softly snarled at her, “Well, it’s a sorry fence that can’t afford our goods, says they are too hot if he could, and doesn’t know if he could find buyers even if they weren’t so hot.”

Ramona continued to stare sullenly at the floorboards, and Khalil was content to have shut her up after ten minutes of arguing. Another ten minutes passed in silence as Sarat made his way back into the city.

Khalil scanned skyscrapers with the ridiculous notion of spotting the fence that would make him wealthy. He figured he must have a hundred thousand dollars or more in stolen goods in the trunk, and the realization that it might all be essentially worthless after all ate at him like a carrion beetle attacking rotting flesh.

Then, as Sarat coasted to a stop at a traffic light in the city, a jovial asshole standing in the middle of the busy street practically shoved a bundle of roses through Khalil’s half-open window.

The man chimed, “Roses for the pretty lady?”

Khalil’s impulse was to slash the fool’s throat, but a number of thoughts sprang to his mind and persuaded him to stay his hand. The fact that he would have a corpse dragging from his cab in the middle of New York City was not one of the deterrents that occurred to him.

First, he thought of Mary. The image of her with a rose clenched in her teeth while she danced sensuously those long years ago in Delhi was among the handful of genuinely emotional memories Khalil possessed. Even so, part of the allure of that image was how like blood dripping from her mouth before a packed house of kine that rose had seemed. Khalil had never laughed to so hard as then, and that’s how he’d met Mary: She’d come to him later to ask what about her dance was so amusing.

And the roses also struck Khalil as an opportunity to seduce Ramona back to him. She was so damn quiet all the time, and that either meant she knew shit, or she knew a hell of a lot more than she was sharing. Until shown otherwise, he would have to assume the latter.

So Khalil smiled invitingly at the man, and said, “Sure, pal. How much for the dozen?” “Only twenty bucks,” said the man, now looking past Khalil at Ramona. “She’s a pretty one; good move gettin’ the flowers.”

Khalil looked back at the man and said, “We just had a silly spat and I want her to know that it’s no big deal. I was the one being an ass.”

Meanwhile, the Ravnos fished in his back pocket where he’d stuck the Yellow Pages ad for Madama Alexandria. Without looking directly at the tearsheet, Khalil read the address to Sarat and then he handed the torn yellow paper to the flower seller. Khalil smiled magnanimously. “Keep the rest, pal, to pay for some flowers for your own sweetheart.” He then took the flowers from the man, pulled one from the bunch and passed the remainder to Ramona with a flourish.

When she mutely accepted the roses, Khalil again had to fight back an impulse to gut her and be rid of her. Instead, he just sighed, and said, “Shit, what’s a guy gotta do?” When the light changed and Sarat pulled away, Ramona said, “What was all that?

You gave him a page out of the phone book for the roses.”

“Ramona,” Khalil sighed again, “that’s why you need to stick with me. So many tricks you got no clue about. A little twinkle of my nose and I made him see that yellow sheet as an American fifty-dollar bill.”

He stretched forward toward Sarat, “You get that address?” Sarat tossed the reply over his shoulder, “On our way, boss.”

“Good.” Khalil looked back to Ramona. “Sorry to filch one of your roses. We’re going to go see Mary.”

Ramona rustled the tissue paper that wrapped the roses and said, “Yeah, okay. Anyway, I still have a dozen.”

“Huh?” Khalil looked at her. “I took one.”

“Must’ve been a baker’s dozen.” Ramona spread out the roses.

Khalil made more than a pretense of counting them; he touched every single one and made certain of the number. “Damn. Shit like this doesn’t happen randomly, don’t you understand? This is bad… bad, what do you call it here, mojo? Damn it all.”

They both sat silently for a moment, as Sarat glanced nervously back in the mirror at his blood master.

Finally, Khalil said, “Something bad is going to happen.”

A few minutes later, Sarat whistled and said, “Something bad already has, boss. I’m sorry, but it already has.”

Khalil and Ramona both became instantly alert. Ahead of the cab, they saw a diminishing plume of smoke trailing away from the charred husk of a building. A trio of fire trucks was still parked in the road, but traffic was being let through now. Now that there was nothing left to save.

Sarat confirmed, “That’s the address you gave me, boss.”

The cabby began to slow as he neared the wrecked building. It was completely demolished. The street was soaked and rivulets of water still flowed away from the burned building and into a storm grate. Firemen were everywhere, rolling hoses and packing equipment.

Suddenly, Khalil demanded, “Move it, Sarat. Get this car rolling. Not too fast, but don’t stick around.” The Ravnos then sank down in his seat and pressed Ramona to do the same.

In the fashion typical of New York cabs, Sarat slipped his car into the end of a pack being let through one direction before waiting cars facing the other way were allowed through. Several honks and Bronx cheers hailed the passing cab.

Still crouched in his seat, Khalil said, “Damn it all, Mary. Looks like someone’s decided to settle some scores around here.”

Forest Hills MBTA Station Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

“What we have here,” said Angela with a plastic smile, “is a failure to communicate.” The man she was speaking to didn’t answer, possibly because his mouth was filled with blood and fragments of his own broken teeth, but that didn’t seem to be an acceptable excuse to Angela. She reached down and grabbed him by his stained shirt front, then hauled him to his feet. He kicked feebly, once or twice, but to no avail. Overhead, the occasional car rumbled across the Jamaica Way overpass; in the near distance an early Orange Line train screeched its way into Forest Hills station. Other than that, however, the night was deserted, which struck Angela as something of a pity. A witness, in her mind, would make a convenient excuse for more exercise than her current victim was providing.

He was a small man, with black hair and swarthy features that might have been almost handsome before Angela had gently applied a tire iron to his lower jaw. He wore a shirt that had once been white but now was stained with dirt and blood, a black vest and black slacks. There was a ragged and bloody patch on his scalp where Angela, in her enthusiasm, had torn out a hunk of his hair, and a trail of blood leaked from his ruined mouth. When he breathed, bubbles of pinkish foam formed and burst on his lips.

Angela figured he had maybe five minutes, ten at the outside. There was plenty of time for her to get the answers she needed and have a little fun besides. She thought for a second, then grabbed her victim and turned him over. He spat gobbets of half-congealed blood onto the cobblestones. “You have one chance to make this painless,” she said. “Tell me where your boss parks his car, and I end this right now. Play stubborn, and you end up like them.” She pointed straight up with her off hand.

The man followed her gaze. Directly over them was the overpass that took the Jamaicaway over the southern terminus of the Orange Line subway: four lanes’ worth of concrete and steel stretched thirty feet straight up. On the underside of the construction were corpses, at least a dozen. They were impaled on spikes that jutted down from the overpass, and crudely but securely manacled and gagged. A stench of rot drifted down lazily, to mingle with the garbage and urine smells that were thick on the breeze. “Hmm?” Angela asked.

The man laughed. Startled, Angela dropped him. “What’s so funny, you little shit? What’s so funny about that?”

The man spat more blood, choking on it even as he tried to rein in his amusement. “Man, you just don’t get it, do you? That’s what you’re threatening me with? Man, you don’t know a damn thing.” His voice was thick and slurred, but his mocking tone came through regardless.

Angela looked down at him, tapped his jaw with her foot once, and waited. “Lemme explain something to you, okay? You’re gonna kill me? Great. You’re gonna break every bone in my body? Fine. You’re gonna make me hurt like no one has ever hurt before, and eventually you’re going to kill me. Fan-fucking-tastic. Do it. I’ll scream as much as I can, even, if it makes you feel better. But what you don’t get is that in the end, it’s all gotta end. You’re gonna kill me, and I’ll be dead and then you can’t hurt me any more.” He coughed once, a rattle in his chest that hadn’t been there before. “But once you kill me, it’s over. If I sell out, well, I die anyway and then the hurting really starts. And you know what? Once my boss gets his hands on my soul, I’m gonna hurt forever.” He spat and grinned bloodily. “So do your worst, you bitch. I’m not going anywhere.” He started laughing again, loud enough that it could be heard over the thunder of the eighteen- wheeler passing overhead.

Angela stared at him thoughtfully for a long moment. “Hmm. That’s a good point. Unfortunately for you, you’ve missed what’s really going on here. Look up again. Look very carefully at the people up there. Then count how many are still moving.”

The man looked up once again, and his eyes got very wide. “Oh,” was all he said.

Angela smiled, not unkindly. “The sun never, ever gets under here, you know, and we just drape a tarp across the whole thing and make it look like there’s someone doing maintenance. It’s worked for years.”

“Years?”

She nodded. “Years. That’s how long I’ve been visiting town on Polonia’s orders. That’s how long Arnold’s been up there… you remember Arnold, right? I think he had your job before you did, then he disappeared.

“Even your boss didn’t know what happened to him, did he? Well, here’s the story. He wouldn’t talk, either, so I decided to let him hang around until he changed his mind.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead with an almost maternal gesture. “Don’t worry, Danny. You’re going to be hanging around, too.”

It was nearly dawn when Angela finally got the tarp back in place, with a little help from an early-rising phone crew she flagged down and pressed into service by dint of one of her better-developed vampiric abilities. Danny was up there, his mouth still open in that stupid little “oh.” He hadn’t talked yet, but Angela was sure he was going to, soon. And when he had, she’d leave him up there anyway, as a little payback for laughing at her.

Already, the first commuters were straggling along the path to the train station. Some looked blearily at Angela, no doubt seeing her as a late returnee from a night of partying (never mind that Boston rolled up its sidewalks at 1 AM). All of them walked right under where Danny now rested, two feet of sharp steel through his sternum. None of them even bothered to look up; there were times when the vampire felt that the tarp covering her little menagerie was a wasted effort.

Angela felt herself smiling, and broke into a brisk walk. The temporary haven where the others were waiting with their news was only a few blocks away, so there was no need for her to rush. She felt good, however. Soon the Giovanni’s chauffeur would break, and they’d know everything they needed to in order to deal with the man’s master. Then that knowledge could be passed back to Archbishop Polonia, and he could get it to those who needed to know.

It was going to be, Angela decided, an absolutely beautiful day.

Friday, 27 August 1999, 9:12 PM Dulles Airport

Washington, D.C.

“Professor… Professor Sturbridge!”

A flicker of surprise or annoyance crossed Aisling Sturbridge’s features as she turned. She tried to pick out the source of the voice from amidst the press of—distractingly warm—bodies. Angrily, she forced such thoughts aside. There would be time enough to feed later, once she had reached the relative safety of Baltimore. Here, at the very doorstep of Sabbat-torn Washington, she was vulnerable, exposed.

She must remain vigilant not only against overt threats—and a fifteen-foot-tall, gibbering Tzimisce war ghoul was not entirely outside the realm of possibility here, she reminded herself ruefully—but especially against the more subtle dangers: impatience, indulgence, indiscretion. These three deadly sisters would kill as surely, if not as swiftly, as any fiend.

The surge of human bodies parted midstream, breaking against her rock-sharp gaze. Falling back, the river of humanity regrouped and then swept around her on both sides. Sturbridge could not seem to focus on the individual faces streaming past, no more than she could pick out the individual heartbeats. But someone in this crowd had recognized her, or worse, anticipated her.

She needed to find that person and quickly.

Sturbridge’s first reaction had been to wheel and confront this unknown presence head- on. As she scanned the crowd, however, she began to gain an appreciation for just how many dangers this sea of blood might conceal. Cautiously, she retreated a step, hoping it was not already too late, and allowed herself to be borne slowly backwards by the crowd.

An arm clutching a mass-market paperback thrust into view above the throng. It waved back and forth in an exaggerated manner, pages fanning and flapping. “Professor Sturbridge!” The arm seemed to be attached to a baggy gray sweatshirt (proclaiming, GEORGETOWN)

and a headlight-white grin. Shifting pocketbook and paperback to the same hand, a slight young lady plowed forward. She clasped Sturbridge’s hand and squeezed. She shook hands with her whole body, straight-armed, from the shoulder, pumping up and down repeatedly as if for emphasis.

“Professor, I am so delighted to finally meet you.” Again the beaming smile eclipsed her entire face. “Francesca Lyon, anthro department, call me Chessie. I am a major fan.” “Miss Lyon,” Sturbridge replied, holding the girl’s hand at arm’s length. She regarded the newcomer skeptically.

She was in her early twenties, slight, her dark hair unkempt. Her glasses were probably the main perpetrators in giving her the air of being somewhat bookish. Her jeans, however, were muddy about the knees. To all appearances, Sturbridge’s accoster was exactly what she presented herself to be—a grad student dropped by to pick up a visiting professor at the airport.

Sturbridge’s suspicions, however, were not allayed. Perhaps because, for starters, she knew just how deadly a mistake it would be to assume that she, herself, was merely a “visiting professor.”

But there was something more disturbing here. Sturbridge had gone to some pains not to advertise her itinerary. She was not certain who (if anyone) outside the Tremere hierarchy might know of her new “appointment” to the ad hoc Camarilla council in Baltimore. Reflexively, she ran down the possible suspects in her mind.

Pieterzoon would know to expect her, of course. As de facto leader of the council, he would have been informed that she was to serve as the new Tremere representative. He might even have a rough idea of when to expect her.

But he could not have anticipated that she would come from the south, from war- torn D.C., from the very heart of the Sabbat threat. Sturbridge had relied upon that particular piece of misdirection—and willingly submitted herself to the additional risks— to buy her safe passage into Baltimore.

From the moment she had first heard that voice calling her name, however, Sturbridge had known that her safe conduct had been summarily cancelled. She was now alone, on the ground, in enemy territory.

For all Sturbridge knew, Pieterzoon might have announced her pending arrival to his fellow councilors. He might have been so incautious as to speak of it before a full assembly— including not only all the Baltimore Kindred but the uncounted swarm of refugees fleeing the Sabbat occupation in the South.

Too many people, she concluded. Too damned many people. Too many damned people.

Chessie’s voice broke in upon her calculations. “Dr. Dorfman was so sorry he could not be here to meet you in person. But he’s still out of the country. Vienna! Lucky bastard, couldn’t you just kill him?”

“There is no need to apologize.” Sturbridge’s gaze bore into the girl, trying to wrestle her meaning from behind the screen of ambiguous commentary and that infuriating grin.

Dorfman. That was something concrete. Pontifex Peter Dorfman. In Tremere circles, that was a name to conjure with. The mere mention of that name would throw open doors against which the last three centuries most concerted advances of money, power and privilege had availed nothing. Dorfman was what the novices back at the Chantry of the Five Boroughs unguardedly referred to as a “Ramses”—a major figure in the Tremere Pyramid.

It was no secret that Dorfman headed up the clan’s political operations on the North American continent. Nor was it any surprise that he made his base of operations in Washington, D.C. Outside of these two critical bits of trivia, however, there was very little obvious about Peter Dorfman.

Dorfman had taken the Tremere proclivity for casual subterfuges and intrigues and turned it into an art as precise, beautiful and deadly as a clockwork cobra. He was a da Vinci of deadly machinations.

He was also the man responsible for drafting her to this ambiguous honor— representing the Tremere to the besieged Camarilla forces in Baltimore. The thought did little to comfort her.

It was not a glamorous assignment. Her fellow councilors would, no doubt, want to know when they could expect some concrete assistance from the Tremere. By “concrete”

they would mean “arcane.” By “arcane” they would mean something along the lines of raining fire down upon the Sabbat war parties or psychically assassinating their leaders, or perhaps merely reversing the flow of time so that their homes had never been sacked, plundered, razed in the first place.

Sturbridge did not come with miracles in hand. She didn’t even have the answers they wanted. She expected resentment. She anticipated feelings of betrayal. She would not be surprised by accusations of treachery.

“I’m sorry to have missed him,” Sturbridge replied. “But it was kind of you to come in his stead.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Things have been a bit hectic since Dr. Dorfman left, but we do what we can. I have a car waiting outside and Dr. Dorfman has left you some material on the conference in Baltimore. I would love to drop in and hear you speak. What will you be presenting?”

“A little piece about the Evil Eye in New England folk custom. Give me your address and I’ll send you a copy. When did Dr. Dorfman say he’d be returning?”

Chessie laughed. “It’s always so hard to tell. But I’ll tell you this, if they were to fly me to Vienna, I don’t know if I would ever come back.”

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

The apartment door slammed open against the wall, and Khalil slammed in after it. “Damn it! Why do I even bother?” He stomped across the living room and threw the small canvas sack he was carrying down onto the kitchen counter. A few pieces of gold and gem-laden jewelry slid out of the bag.

Ramona, vaguely bored, leaned against a bookshelf. “Let me guess,” she said. “Your bright idea to try Sammy’s Pawn ’n’ Gun wasn’t much help.”

“That idiot wouldn’t recognize the crown jewels if somebody stuffed them up his ass! And believe me, I was tempted.” Khalil continued stomping around the apartment, picking up and slamming back down various of Liz’s possessions.

Liz sat on the couch, studiously not looking at Khalil or acknowledging his presence in any way.

“I don’t see why you need so much money, anyway,” Ramona said.

“I need it because I need it!” Khalil raged, caught off guard by the strength of his own frustration and anger. “And I would remind you that I’m the one who knows what’s going on around here! I know you go out and sniff around, but I don’t see you finding the Eye.” It wasn’t a healthy habit—yelling at a Gangrel who might well rip his head off. To soothe himself, he grabbed a book from a shelf—some god-awful, boring-looking archeology text—and began to rip pages out and sift them across the floor. With each page he tore, a small amount of control returned to him.

“Besides,” Khalil added after quite a few pages, “do you want to stay in this dump forever? What a mess.” He indicated the now-sizable pile of torn and crumpled paper on the floor around him. Ramona, he knew, was the one he should have been trying to placate, but Khalil couldn’t take his eyes off Elizabeth—sitting there chained to the couch and trying not to cringe with every page he ripped from the binding. Khalil dropped the book. He took another from the shelf and began tearing. His nostrils flared. The Ventrue blood he’d tasted was sweet, but he could smell Liz’s—and it was sweeter still.

Khalil stared relentlessly at Elizabeth. “You’d be amazed how well a leech can set himself up if there’s only enough money in the bank….” Half to Ramona, half to himself, he said, “Her sugar daddy’s that rich. Those pasty-faced hens I snatched my pretty baubles from—they’re that rich. You want to hire an army to avenge your wrongs? Buy a blood bank and never have to hunt again? Start a cult to worship the ground your immortal feet walk on?” He sneered and rubbed his fingers together in front of the Gangrel’s face. “You can do anything with money, Ramona.”

The Ravnos turned suddenly, threw down the book, and grabbed the sack from the counter. He brandished it at his prisoner. “Tell me how to sell these!” He threw the bag at her feet, spraying jewelry and gold figurines and watches across the floor. “You must know how!”

Liz’s quiet, gold-brown eyes rose slowly from the stolen treasures. She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then said softly, “I won’t.” She looked at Ramona, and then at him. “Find your own crook.”

Khalil, again rigid with anger and false hunger, literally shook with temper. “What’s this?” “Death to tyrants,” whispered Elizabeth. Gods! thought Khalil. She was goading him with the fact that she knew he wasn’t his own man. But he was now. He was working on his own terms. He planned to do everything on his own terms from now on.

“You want me to go back to Rutherford House?” the Ravnos shouted. “I could see Amy again; I could ask her.” He snatched up her photograph and shattered the frame under Elizabeth’s nose. She flinched. “I think she’d tell me, if I asked her hard enough.” Shards of glass covered the Setite and the couch now. Khalil tore the picture to shreds and let the pieces fall into his captive’s lap.

“Fred Summers, in Tribeca,” said the girl at last, staring at the shreds of film stock. “He has… a reputation….”

Khalil, completely calm in an instant, smiled and patted her patronizingly on the head. “That’s a good snake.” He turned away toward the phone books.

Elizabeth, carefully collecting the pieces of Amy and the shards of glass, her chains rattling quietly, caught sight of Ramona in her peripheral vision. The girl was surprised, angry, and unhappy. She glared at Khalil; she twice moved as if to help Liz clean up. Elizabeth placed the strips of picture into a nearby notebook, closed it, and drooped submissively. She saw Ramona’s jaw clench tightly, and she settled in, content with her progress.

McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Sturbridge paused outside the double doors, weighing her options. It was not too late just to turn around now. The doorman would even hail a cab for her. She could be at the airport in half an hour and back in New York in time to frustrate any of a half-dozen petty intrigues that would have hatched in her brief absence.

No. Better to go in and get it over with. She braced herself and entered the auditorium expecting the worst. It seemed the festivities were already in full swing.

“What in the nine hells were you thinking?” The voice, which Sturbridge instantly recognized as belonging to her dear neighbor, Prince Lladislas—most recently of Buffalo— resounded from the rafters. The fact that the party he was addressing—a dignified man matching the briefing description of her host, Prince Garlotte—stood a mere two paces away from him in no way moderated the volume of Lladislas’s outburst.

Garlotte weathered this fresh insult with visibly fraying patience.

Sturbridge performed a hurried calculation as she slipped into a seat in the front row. Lladislas and his remaining entourage could not have been in Baltimore for much more than a week now. Judging from Garlotte’s expression, it had been a very full week.

“Since embracing a bunch of know-nothing neonates worked so damned well in Buffalo, you’re planning on doing it again in Hartford? What the hell! What’s the matter with you, Garlotte? Letting these boys run wild? And Theo—”

The Brujah archon calmly and gently placed a restraining hand on Lladislas’s shoulder. The displaced prince shook him off with a snort, but abandoned his tirade. His voice was pitched low, but his accusation carried.

“I trusted you.”

Bell regarded him levelly. “Good. That and a dollar gets me a cup of coffee.” He smiled broadly and clapped Lladislas on the shoulder. “Buffalo was a deathtrap. You know that; I know that. Sorry if it’s hard to hear. There wasn’t anything more you could have done there but go down swinging. But I’ll tell you this, there will be other fights, real fights, fights that mean something. And I want to have you there for them. Do we understand one another?”

Lladislas threw up his hands. It seemed he was still adjusting to the humbling role of prince-in-exile. Sturbridge could follow his tortured thoughts in the lines of his face as Lladislas struggled to gauge exactly how far he might push his host.

“I’m sure you like pulling all the homeless Kindred down here so you have a strong city,” he finally said to Garlotte. “Wouldn’t have minded doing that myself—rather than abandoning my city.”

Friday, 27 August 1999, 11:55 PM McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Jan Pieterzoon wanted very much to cover his eyes. He prayed that Garlotte would exercise restraint and not say something like, We can’t waste our resources in inferior cities, Prince Lladislas.

This once, Jan’s prayer was granted. “The decision has been made for the present, Prince Lladislas. If you would like to discuss the matter with Mr. Pieterzoon, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Gainesmil—at a later date…”

Lladislas tossed up his hands. He was still, Jan knew, adjusting to the role of prince- in-exile. It was a tricky thing—judging how far to press one’s case when a guest in the domain of another prince, especially if there was no home to go home to. Aggravating as he could be, Lladislas’s disgruntlement was promising in one sense—it meant that Theo had not let his fellow Brujah in on the plan to which the defense of Hartford was only the beginning. Gainesmil, too, though he’d had a hand in the strategizing, knew only so much. Secrecy was everything at this stage.

Garlotte set aside Ladislas and turned to address the council in toto. “It is our privilege to have with us once again Regent Aisling Sturbridge of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs in New York. May I say that it is a great honor to have such a seasoned and steadfast opponent of the Sabbat advances here among us, and pleasing to learn that you have brought new information for us. Regent Sturbridge?”

Sturbridge rose easily to her feet, almost without Jan realizing that she was moving. She nodded to the principals on the council: “Prince Garlotte, Archon Bell, Prince Vitel, Prince Lladislas, Mr. Pieterzoon.”

The Tremere regent had spent most of the past weeks at her chantry in New York City, where she apparently felt her presence was most needed. The Camarilla portion of that city was under perpetual siege by the Sabbat, so she might well have been correct.

After the assassination of Maria Chin here in Baltimore, in this very inn, Sturbridge might have felt safer in New York as well as most needed, though if Colchester’s information were accurate, the chantry was not exactly a safe haven.

Something about the woman struck Jan as… otherworldly—certainly not angelic, but not necessarily demonic. But detached, aloof. Aside from acknowledging those seated in the places of honor, she might have been lecturing a group of school children, or giving directions to a lost motorist, so dispassionate were her words.

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 12:00 AM McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

“Three weeks ago,” Sturbridge began, “Prince Garlotte informed the Tremere office in Washington of the assertions that Justicar Xaviar of Clan Gangrel made before this body. Speaking officially, on behalf of Clan Tremere, we can lend no credence to the wild claims that have been reported to us.”

Her tone was carefully dispassionate, formal. She might just as easily have been lecturing a group of school children, or giving directions to a lost motorist, as addressing the remnant of the pride of the East Coast Camarilla.

“We have no reason to doubt the justicar’s veracity. He has ever been a tower of strength and a pillar of integrity. We deeply sympathize with his unsettling loss. We mourn our fallen comrades. We cannot, however, accept at face value the justicar’s assessment of the situation. There are monsters enough slavering at the very gates of this city. There is little need to conjure up mythical Antediluvians to further distract and demoralize our forces. We can ill afford to draw off much-needed resources from the present conflict to avenge the personal loss of Xaviar’s warband.

“Make no mistake, their loss is a tragedy. They will be sorely missed in the troubled nights ahead. But the Tremere will not be swayed, nor driven to petty vengeance by the justicar’s less-than-veiled threats to this council.”

Sturbridge looked to each of her fellow councilors in turn. She saw her sentiments echoed silently in the stoic looks, the downcast eyes, the averted faces of her peers.

“What is most troubling,” Pieterzoon said, breaking the uncomfortable silence, “is what could have frightened someone like Xaviar that badly. Some of us are known for hyperbole, but Xaviar just doesn’t seem the type.”

“Whatever they ran into up there,” Prince Garlotte said, “it’s best given a very wide berth. It may sound callous, but my feeling is that whatever it is, it’s the Sabbat’s problem now.”

“Just like New York.” Sturbridge’s words fell heavily into the silence. “Beg pardon?”

“New York. It’s the Sabbat’s problem now. Buffalo, Albany, the Bronx. What’s one more nightmare loose upstate?”

“Ms. Sturbridge,” Garlotte said, “I have been a poor host. I did not mean to offend. Nor did I mean to rush you straight into council session before you could rest and recover from your voyage. I hope you will allow me to make amends.”

“That will not be necessary, Prince Garlotte. I spoke out of anger. The comment was not representative of my clan’s position. I withdraw it.”

After a moment, and a beatific nod from the prince, she continued: “It is not my intention to dismiss the justicar’s concerns out of hand We have uncovered further evidence that I hope may shed light on just what exactly Xaviar and his band ran afoul of in those mountains.”

She placed a leather attaché case on the table and removed a plain manila envelope containing a single piece of parchment. She handed it to Pieterzoon, who opened it.

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 12:07 AM McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Staring up at Jan was a single unblinking eye. Or rather a sheet, densely illustrated and annotated in the same sprawling, desperate hand, whose central image was that eye. In the left corner was a particularly gruesome image, a hastily sketched portrait of a man, unremarkable except for his left eye, which was grossly oversized and bulged from its socket. The parchment seemed to writhe in his grasp, and Jan shivered involuntarily.

“What, and who, is this supposed to be?” he asked, then passed the parchment to Marcus Vitel, who sat to his right.

“That, Mr. Pieterzoon,” Sturbridge answered, “we do not know. The page was discovered with the remains of one of my associates who perished during the execution of a rather… unorthodox ritual.”

Despite Sturbridge’s low-key delivery, Jan was amazed by her words. The Tremere— a regent from that most secretive and suspicious of clans—were admitting publicly what they did not know and even going so far as to seek the opinion of the other clans! Some might have taken this as a hopeful sign of cooperation. To Jan, it was a signpost of the dire straits of the Camarilla. If the Tremere warlocks did not see the end looming near, Sturbridge would not be here.

“The reason I wanted to place this sketch before the council is that illustration in the lower left—the one-eyed man surrounded by what looks to be a mound of splintered bones. The sketch put me in mind of…”

“Yes, I see.” Vitel passed the paper to Theo Bell. “Xaviar’s description. The monster with the blazing eye.”

“The circumstances surrounding the creation of this picture are still a bit muddled, but the timing coincides almost exactly with the confrontation described by the justicar.”

The parchment passed from Theo Bell to Lladislas, then to Robert Gainesmil, who let out a low whistle. “Some piece of work, whoever thought this stuff up. A real head case.”

Garlotte took the parchment next. “Is this creature Kindred or kine… or something else?” “A reasonable question,” said Sturbridge. If she had any reasonable answer, she did not offer it.

The picture passed from the Prince of Baltimore to Isaac, to Colchester the businessman. “I don’t know who this is, but I could find out,” said the Nosferatu.

Sturbridge nodded. “We had hoped there would be a variety of resources that could be brought to bear upon this question.”

Jan still marveled at her frank admission of ignorance in the matter. The phrase that, in all his years of undeath, he had never heard a Tremere utter rang in his ears: We do not know.

Colchester passed the leaf of parchment to Victoria Ash, seated just on the other side of Sturbridge. Victoria, still unusually withdrawn, straightened slightly in her seat. She stared intently at the picture.

What, Jan wondered, did the Tremere hope to gain from this?. Did they think they could divert the suspicions of the other clans by appearing inept? No, he decided, that couldn’t be it. The clan had survived this long because of its strength. Other Kindred knew little about the warlocks, and what common knowledge did exist—actual or perceived—was disturbing, not comforting. Jan could not believe that the Tremere would attempt to coddle the other clans and make nice.

“Leopold,”

Victoria’s voice came to them as from a great distance. A hollow plish from the depths of a well.

“Beg pardon?” Garlotte turned toward her.

“It’s Leopold,” she said quietly, her eyes never leaving the parchment.

“Yes, I think that’s one of the inscriptions here.” Vitel leaned over the parchment. “Leopold. And this one looks like Hazima-el. And this one, Occultum…”

“No, this. This is Leopold,” Victoria’s fingers were so knotted around the edges of the page, it seemed she would surely tear it.

“You know him?” Gainesmil asked incredulously. “Who,” Prince Garlotte asked, “is Leopold?”

Victoria stared at the picture without acknowledging the prince. Her hands shook. Jan couldn’t believe that this was the same woman who had inspired such… confusion in him, and who had been such a thorn in his side. She seemed to grow smaller and weaker before his eyes.

“Can someone tell me, who the hell Leopold is?” Lladislas was on his feet.

“No one,” Victoria said with a wave of her hand, not yet looking up from the picture. “A sculptor… a Toreador, from Atlanta.”

Everyone spoke at once.

“I don’t believe this. What you’re trying to tell us is…”

“Are you quite sure you recognize him? It is just a penciled…” “This is ridiculous. I’ve had quite enough of…”

“I’m sorry. Did you say ‘Atlanta’, Ms. Ash?”

Atlanta. To Jan’s thinking, too much was connected to that city to be coincidence: Victoria escaped from there after the first Sabbat attack; a Tremere was possibly assassinated; and now this sketch that might be the creature that—

Jan was not the only one doing that calculation, apparently, for Lladislas’s voice rose above the others suddenly: “You’re not suggesting that a lone Toreador neonate destroyed thirty or forty Gangrel?”

Now Victoria did look up. She looked directly at Jan, silently entreating his belief. “I’m only saying that this is Leopold.” She slid the sheet across the table toward Sturbridge.

“You’re sure?” asked the Tremere. “As sure as you can be with a rough sketch?”

Victoria thought for a moment, then began to nod, slowly at first, then more confidently. “It… it feels like Leopold. I can’t explain it exactly. But I’m sure.”

Sturbridge nodded also, as if she understood something that escaped the others. “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “It’s not your fault.” She looked pointedly at Lladislas, as if daring him to contradict her. “It’s not your fault.”

“Then we must find out what’s going on with this Leopold,” Garlotte broke in. “If he’s possibly connected to whatever happened to the Gangrel, he may be responsible for Buffalo falling. He may be a tool of the Sabbat.”

“He sure as hell ain’t no Antediluvian,” Theo Bell said, eliciting a few grim chuckles. “It would seem not,” Garlotte pressed on. “Shall we send someone after Xaviar? Tell him it’s all been some form of misunderstanding? That the thing he ran into out there was just…”

“Oh, that will go over well!”

“I’m afraid there is little you could say to our proud justicar at this juncture.” Vitel’s voice was calm, reasonable. “I’m not entirely sure that there is any practical benefit to be gained from this information. No offense intended toward the Tremere representative.” He inclined his head in Sturbridge’s direction.

Sturbridge turned to face this subtle attack. “None taken, Prince Vitel.” “I’ll go.” Victoria said in a quiet voice.

The others didn’t seem to hear her, but Jan did and he on the opportunity by instinct. The words escaped his mouth almost before he realized he’d spoken: “That has some merit to it, Victoria. You know the city; you know this Leopold. You may well be the best candidate.”

He felt a vague sense of guilt immediately—punctuated by a glare from Sturbridge of all people—but the pity he’d felt for the disturbed Toreador had given way instantly to his businessman’s instinct for the kill. This was his chance to get rid of this woman who had challenged him, this woman he couldn’t be near without wanting to possess.

Prince Garlotte, though he’d been harsh to Victoria recently, had reservations about that idea. “Out of the question. Dangerous and pointless. Surely the Nosferatu would be better able to—”

“The Nosferatu know Atlanta, true,” Jan said. “But Victoria knows Leopold as well. She has a feeling about this. I trust Ms. Ash’s intuition.”

Victoria didn’t seem aware of the debate over her future. She stared after the sketch that now rested close to Sturbridge. Garlotte was clearly the most conflicted. For a long moment he wavered. Jan worried the prince was about to veto the suggestion.

“My prince,” chimed in Gainesmil, also worried by the developments, “I must suggest—” “That she shouldn’t go alone?” Garlotte put the words in his lieutenant’s mouth.

“Are you volunteering to accompany her, Robert?”

Gainesmil’s mouth hung open for several seconds. “I… uh… I believe… with all due respect, my prince… that perhaps my particular skills are needed here?” He obviously hadn’t intended to phrase his suggestion as a question, but his voice betrayed his near- panic and the final word jumped at least an octave.

Prince Garlotte pondered the question for several moments during which Gainesmil sat perfectly still. “I suppose you are right, Robert.”

Gainesmil tried not to sigh too audibly. He seemed to have salvaged his place at the prince’s side, for the time being. Jan admired the prince’s deft handling of the situation— almost as deft as his own. Garlotte could have agreed to Jan’s suggestion, but the prince had been making an effort to curb Jan’s influence, by measures such as insisting that Gainesmil had a part in strategic planning. Conversely, to protect Victoria after she’d obviously fallen out of favor and spurned Garlotte’s hospitality would have been seen by many as a sign of weakness.

Gainesmil had unwittingly saved the prince. His interference allowed Garlotte to shift the focus of the decision—of course Victoria would go—to his own largesse and mercy in disciplining a wayward subject.

Continuing to ply his part, Gainesmil addressed Victoria. “You are quite sure you want to do this?”

“I will go,” Victoria said, not having herself expressed an opinion on the subject until now. “I’ll go. I’ll find Leopold.”

Jan felt another twinge of guilt. If the conduct tonight of the Tremere had been puzzling, Victoria’s recent behavior was dumbfounding. Since Xaviar’s appearance, she had completely abandoned her various attempts to influence the council. She had retreated from the world around her… like Estelle, Jan realized. Like a victim who denied that with which she could no longer cope. Suddenly, he saw Victoria in a new light—and Jan wanted to care for her, to protect her. He saw her beauty and remembered her earlier strength of will, a fire that might yet be rekindled.

But—at his urging—she was being sent back to the city she had fled, back to the Sabbat. “Very well,” said Garlotte, maintaining control of the situation. “Find this Leopold.

Find out what’s going on with this… this eye.”

“I leave at once.” She pushed back her chair, almost toppling it to the floor. “Robert, Alexander.” She faced Jan. “Mr. Pieterzoon.” She all but fled the table.

Jan sat back quietly in his chair. Victoria was no longer his problem. There was still the Sabbat to contend with. Prince Garlotte was a necessary, if not steadfast, ally. Jan would guide the prince where he could, and circumvent him otherwise. The weight of the world rested on Jan’s shoulders. Still, his mind wandered back to Victoria and to the cruel hand he had dealt her.

Of one thing he was certain—Hardestadt would be pleased.

Part Three:

Running True

From Saturday, 28 August 1999

to Tuesday, 31 August 1999

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 12:48 AM McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

With Victoria Ash’s departure the council became again a series of more isolated conversations, from which Aisling Sturbridge hoped very much to extricate herself.

She remained stunned at Pieterzoon’s casual betrayal of the Toreador beauty. Throughout, his features had been impassive, while. smoothly, almost effortlessly, he had completely redefined Victoria. Where once she had been a peer, a fellow councilor, perhaps even a rival, she was now just another expendable to be thrown into the teeth of the Sabbat forces. It was unsettling.

Marcus Vitel, the exiled Prince of Washington, broke in on her reverie. “Tell me, Ms. Sturbridge, did you say you had come through Washington? How is…”

My city. Sturbridge could hear the words as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud. “How is the effort to reclaim the capital progressing?”

There was a groan from nearby and Lladislas threw up his hands in exasperation. “Not that old song again!”

Sturbridge ignored him. “The chantry still stands, my prince. And while it does, there is still hope.”

Vitel nodded and walk a ways from where Ladislas was sitting, compelling Sturbridge to follow him. “Still hope. Of course. Of course. But tell me, Ms. Sturbridge, what word of my old friend, Peter Dorfman? I must confess to being… saddened by his silence. Since I have gone into exile here.”

Sturbridge felt a chasm opening up beneath her. Dorfman. Vitel. Damn. How had she missed that connection previously?

She tried to push back the rising insinuation. “The pontifex has been out of the country for some time, my prince. The motherhouse. Vienna.”

The words turned cold and heavy upon her lips. Lies, she realized too late. Transparent lies. “Vienna,” Vitel repeated absently. “I see. So he has not been involved in the resistance,

the defense of the city? He might, even now, be unaware of the cruel card that fate has played his old friend?”

Sturbridge saw the horns of the dilemma bearing down upon her. She tried to beat back the insinuation. “It is my understanding that he has been there since before…”

“The surprise attack? A fortunate man. A very fortunate man. There is no taking that away from him. I am sure he will do well for himself. In Vienna.” He added pointedly.

Prince Garlotte would not let the two isolate themselves in his council chamber, however, and came to Sturbridge’s rescue. “What is it you’re getting at, Prince Vitel? Surely you are not trying to imply that the pontifex had some advance warning of…”

“No, no. Nothing of the sort. How could you even suggest such a thing? Why, to know of a Sabbat attack upon your own city and fail to warn your prince, why it would be…”

“Preposterous. Baseless suspicions. Really, Vitel, this is unworthy of you.”

“It would be almost as bad,” Vitel continued in a quiet voice, “as actively courting such an attack.”

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 1:00 AM Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

Jacqueline closed her eyes, counted to three, and tentatively pushed open the little door. Nothing. The room beyond was silent and pitch dark. From the tiny square of her field of vision, her eyes—long accustomed to nocturnal hunting—could pick out the shadowy outline of some of the room’s more dominant furnishings. She quickly identified the leonine supports of the ponderous worktable, the lower drawers of two overfull file cabinets, the gangly legs of a stuffed ibis, and a number of books, curiosities and other obstacles scattered haphazardly about the floor. There was a stillness hanging over these objects, a stagnation that was more than simply the musty air of a room that had been closed off for several weeks.

Jacqueline crawled forward on all fours, ducking her head to avoid hitting it on the lip of the cupboard. As she emerged, breaking the plane of the low doorway, the vertigo slammed into her like a physical blow to the pit of her stomach. Both of her ears popped at once and she felt a tiny trickle of blood begin to trail down her left cheek. The floor lurched up at her and was only narrowly warded off by a sharp, if unintended, blow from her forehead. It was probably as well that she had not been standing. Jacqueline shook her head to clear the ringing pain and crawled fully from the low cupboard into Foley’s sanctum.

She did not close the little door behind her, lest she sever the link back to the vestry—the tenuous connection that she had so painstakingly constructed over the past two weeks. She was discovering that the actual use of this particular ritual was more taxing than its preparation.

Master Ynnis, her former mentor, had made it all seem so effortless. She vividly recalled the first time she had seen him absently fumble open a drawer of his rolltop desk and extract a cleaver—one she knew very well to be in the stainless steel drawer just below the washbasin in the refectory. (Jacqueline was more than casually acquainted with a wide range of mundane tasks necessary to the maintaining of the chantry.) The blade had still had drops of water clinging to it.

Ynnis was an undisputed master of translocation. He could work the trick on just about anything that opened and closed. He maintained a regular correspondence with an associate in the London chantry by means of an ornate bamboo bird cage and a particularly threadbare stuffed carrier pigeon. She had seen him drive Foley into an apoplectic rage by “accidentally” removing papers from the secundus’s jealously guarded file cabinets and then apologetically returning them to him. There was always a feeling of trepidation when putting your hand to a door handle in his presence. One was never quite certain where an ordinarily reliable door might lead.

Jacqueline did not recall, however, ever experiencing this disorientation, dizziness, nausea. She tried to ignore the unexpected side effects and push herself to her feet. A bad idea. She found herself unceremoniously returned to the floor.

She forced her eyes to focus on the small square of floorboard directly in front of her. The dizziness receded a pace. From this proximity, she could pick out even the grain of the wood through the faint smear of chalk and dust, scuffed by the passing of feet.

Foley would not have tolerated it, of course—were he still around to object. To leave the residual traces of ritual wardings, even until the next morning, would have ensured a harsh reprimand from the secundus.

Jacqueline was particularly interested in the wardings, after the rumors she had heard whispered in the novice hall. Experimentally, she lifted her head to follow the line of the hermetic diagramma. Seeing that the vertigo did not lash out at her for this presumption, she made so bold as to creep forward along the line on all fours. Yes, it was as she thought. The diagramma had been purposefully obscured, erased. But why?

The junior novices were full of tales of unwarded summonings and dark rites and devils. Jacqueline blamed that fool storyteller Talbott for fanning their wild speculations. The first thing to do to forestall further talk of the dark arts—a discussion that might lead to a closer examination of the ceremonial tools employed in the ritual and certain suspicious ingredients used in their creation—would be to let it become known that the proper wardings had been in place. That the ritual was perfectly normal and perhaps even mundane. But—that the wardings had been purposefully obscured by Foley’s murderer.

It would not be prudent for Jacqueline to point this fact out herself, but there were ways in any tight community to ensure that certain things were spoken of.

Jacqueline raised herself to one knee, leaning heavily upon the nearest file cabinet. Better. Another long pause, and she felt confident enough to regain her feet. She had some things to gather and, even with the thought of another wrenching translocation before her, the less time she had to spend here, the better.

Looking around the room, Jacqueline discovered that there was, as she had suspected, at least one other warding in the room. This later addition was quite obviously installed after the discovery of the murder. It adorned the near side of the room’s only door—the one leading to the adjoining office. It was not difficult to extrapolate the existence of a similar warding upon the outer door of Foley’s apartments.

It was her anticipation of these wardings that had led Jacqueline to the avoid the standard means of ingress altogether. Her ritual had cost her two weeks’ time—a small price to pay under normal circumstances, but time was dear because there was much more at stake here. Jacqueline lived those weeks in constant dread of a summons to appear before the regent for judgment.

But that summons had never come. Jacqueline had weathered the initial interview by adopting the time-honored persona of the terrified novice. She had blathered, she had fumbled, she had begged forgiveness for each time she had thought ill of the secundus. She had steadfastly maintained the ludicrous assertion that she was personally responsible for Foley’s demise because deep down she had wished him dead.

It was entirely possible, of course, that her efforts had not been convincing, that she had not escaped judgment at all, that her sentence of Final Death was only a bit delayed in arriving. If Jacqueline could remain patient through those agonizing weeks, certainly Sturbridge could as well.

Now, even with the regent away in Baltimore, Jacqueline knew her very presence in Foley’s rooms put her at grave risk. The warding on the door would certainly bring a full security team down on her, should she inadvertently trigger it. And this was assuming, of course, that it was not efficiently designed to neutralize any intruders by itself.

With agonizing care, Jacqueline crossed the room to the worktable. She stooped and studied something lying neglected on the floor. A red candle. Satisfied, she nodded. From the voluminous folds of her robes, she extracted a bundle and unrolled it flat upon the table. It contained precisely seven red candles and seven wooden sticks. She removed one gloved and, lifting the first pristine candle, traced a line down its edge with her fingernail. Where she touched it, the wax melted and ran. She judged the length of the candle and then of the wick, pinching it off neatly and noting the clean, black, seared edge. She cracked the candle at precisely the same point where the other had been broken in its fall, and then examined her efforts with a critical eye. That would do.

She swapped her less-incriminating replica with its twin on the floor, taking a moment to get the positioning just right before beginning her hunt for the next of the scattered candles.

In the end, she only recovered five candles and six pine sticks. She would have to hope that the rest had been consumed in the fire. She did not care to dwell on the alternative—that they had been removed from the scene.

She carefully repacked her bundle, pulled on her glove and turned back toward the low cupboard. There was a reassuring faint crackle of energy from the arcane membrane that remained stretched taut across the opening.

Jacqueline froze. The sound had nearly, but not entirely, masked a faint noise from the outer room. The unmistakable sound of a doorknob turning.

Her first instinct was to dive for the cupboard door. She could still make out the sizzle of arcane energy stretched taut across the tiny opening—a sign that the temporary passage back to the vestry was still operational. She could probably scramble through the low door and, assuming the vertigo was not so severe that she blacked out entirely, slam the corresponding vestry door shut behind her, severing the connection. But this flurry of activity would certainly alert whoever had entered the adjoining room that there had been an intruder present.

Her second thought was to stealthily move around to a position behind the door. From this vantage point, she might fall upon anyone foolish enough to enter the sanctum and take them unawares. She had already taken two light steps in that direction when it occurred to her that she did not want to be anywhere near that ward when the door opened.

She stopped again, feeling awkward and exposed in the middle of the room. The light in the outer office clicked on. The brightness sliced under the door, the glaring artificial light stretching across the floor in a shape like a guillotine blade.

Jacqueline cursed silently. Stupid. If that was not the security team—traipsing through the front door, poking around in Foley’s office and flipping on the lights—then they would not be far behind. Whoever was in the next room was either stupid, careless, or… The glyph on the door flared suddenly to life. Already, Jacqueline was diving, not for the cupboard (now precisely two full steps too far away), but for the protection of the solid worktable. There was a sharp cry from beyond the door, followed shortly by the sound of something heavy collapsing to the floor. On the inside of the door, the glyph drifted away from the wood and fell gently to the floor in a trail of spent ashes.

A stillness settled over Foley’s chambers. Forgotten, the adjoining door swung slowlyinward.

Jacqueline scrambled for the cupboard. If she were lucky, that concussion would have knocked the unwelcome newcomer out cold. The security team would have their intruder and Jacqueline would hear all about it tomorrow. If she were not lucky…

Perhaps unwisely, Jacqueline spared one quick glance toward the open doorway and Foley’s office beyond. There, across the threshold, lay Eva, shaking her head groggily and struggling to pick herself up off the floor.

In that instant, their eyes met.

Damn.

Jacqueline abandoned her mad scramble and with visible restraint, composed herself. There was no point in running now. She turned upon the fallen novice.

“You little twit. What could you possibly have been thinking?” She took the girl roughly by the arm and made to haul her to her feet. “Can you stand?”

Eva nodded and pushed her away. “I’m sorry. I heard someone inside. The regent was quite specific. No one—not even the security team—was to enter these rooms while she was away. What were you… ? Oh.”

“I might ask you the same question. But my guess is that we’ve only got about two minutes before we’ll have even more unwanted company.” Jacqueline found her hand unconsciously straying to the carefully rolled parcel concealed beneath her robes. Blood of black cat; heart of black cockerel. Company’s coming.

She cursed herself and then turned her outrage upon Eva. “I can’t believe you. Walking right in through the front door. Flipping the lights on and off. Just what exactly did you expect to… ? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. Look, here’s your story.

“You were passing. You heard a noise. You could have gone for help, but then it might have been too late. Against your better judgment, you decided to try the door…”

“But that’s exactly what did happen.”

“All the better. But if they decide to double-check your story, you insist on seeing the regent before you let them open a vein. You’re her favorite; everybody knows that. They won’t risk it—her displeasure, I mean. They’ll probably just put you away under the keystone for a few days until she gets back. Now listen.

“You came in here, got as far as the sanctum door and bam! When you came to, you knew you had to stay put and report the whole incident to the security team. You never saw anyone or anything. You understand?”

“I’m not stupid and I’m not a child.” Eva straightened her robes. Without looking up, she asked, “Why did you kill Foley?”

“Look you, I didn’t kill anybody. You understand me? I’ll go under the knife on that point and the blood will run true. I didn’t like Foley—God, I hated Foley—but I didn’t kill him.”

“Then why are you here? How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“No time for that now. Tell me we’ve got a deal so I can get out of here.” “Why should I cover for you?”

Jacqueline rose over her. “Because I am your superior, neophyte. I can make things easier for you or… quite difficult.”

“Not if I don’t cover for you.”

Jacqueline calculated quickly, weighing Eva’s stubbornness against the time remaining. Not worth chancing it.

She rolled her eyes in dismissal of the threat. “All right, look. There are some things here that are just not right. But I had to see for myself. To be sure.”

She expected an argument on this point, but getting none, she hurried on. “I can’t go into a lot of detail right now. The wardings, they’re not missing, they’ve been erased. Now the notes, they’re missing. Foley made a great fuss over his photographic memory, but he always wrote everything down. He was obsessive. He couldn’t do his laundry without making a list.

“And the gem is gone. You’ve figured out that much at least, haven’t you? The one he kept in the fleur-de-lis box. The one he had those three novices flogged down to the bone over. That’s really what this whole ritual was about, the gem. The Keyhole, he called it. Ugly little lump. Red with black smudges at the poles. I told him I didn’t know what he saw in it and he laughed at me. He said whenever you peeked through a keyhole around here, all you saw in it was another eye, staring back.”

“‘And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’” “What?”

“It’s nothing. Something the regent told me when we… found him.”

“Look, you’re trying to find out what happened to Foley. I can tell you more about the ritual. About what should have been here, but isn’t. I can help. But if the jackals find me here, I’m just another victim. Do you understand? Do we have a deal?”

Jackals, Eva thought. Anubis. Pyramid security.

“Deal. But I need to talk to you—to talk to somebody—and soon. I think someone’s been…”

There was the sound of purposeful footsteps approaching.

“Tomorrow night. Midnight. The refectory.” Jacqueline pressed her hand, held it to retain the novice’s attention. Already Eva was worriedly craning toward the outer door. “If you don’t show, I’ll know they’ve got you under lock and key. In that case—listen to me—in that case, they’re not going to let you out of their sight until the regent returns. You’ll be safe enough. And we’ll meet on the night of Sturbridge’s return. Do you understand? You’re going to get through this. You’re going to be fine.”

Eva nodded and Jacqueline gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Now get out there and buy me some time.”

Eva carefully closed the sanctum door behind her retreating co-conspirator. Turning, she put on what she hoped was her bravest face to meet the jackals.

Saturday, 28 August 99, 1:35 AM Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Sturbridge paused, one hand on the antique oak-paneled door that stood vigil before her suite at the Lord Baltimore. The entire wing was silent. A welcome change from the uproar of the council chambers. Given the fate that had befallen the last Tremere that had been the guest of this establishment, Sturbridge had had little trouble convincing her host of the necessity of setting aside this entire floor for her personal use.

She was in no mood for company.

Events in the council chamber had taken a dramatic and unexpected turn for the worse. She had been caught badly unprepared. She had not anticipated such concerted opposition from the former Prince of Washington, D.C. With a few carefully chosen insinuations, Vitel might have systematically destroyed what credibility she—and by extension, the Tremere—had with the council.

Immersed in the nightly struggle for survival in New York, Sturbridge had been isolated from what she imagined must have been a truly epic and ruthless rivalry being played out behind closed doors in the nation’s capital. Dorfman and Vitel. In hindsight, Sturbridge was surprised the city had managed to contain two such ambitious and unscrupulous powermongers for so long.

Vitel’s claims were patently ridiculous, of course. Dorfman was a keystone in the Tremere Pyramid. One simply did not rise to that level of influence without learning some hard lessons—prominent among them, that you don’t bankroll private grudges with clan credibility.

Sturbridge had been there, so she knew what it was like. She had a chantry of her own to look after. The very thought of putting all that on the line—the decades of careful planning, the hard choices, the sacrifices—just to settle some personal vendetta… It was unthinkable. It was monstrous. It was…

It was, she realized, exactly what the others might expect of such an influential and unscrupulous Tremere powerbroker. Vitel’s claim struck so dangerously close to exactly what they wanted to believe, that they accepted it instinctively. Her efforts here had been utterly undermined before she had properly begun.

Sturbridge leaned heavily into the weathered door to her suite. It looked as if it had come through a shipwreck, long ago, in the days when the tall ships still dominated the harbor.

Perhaps that was what stopped her. The sense of age—of history—about it. Sturbridge scrutinized the lines and knots of the old wood like a palmist, trying to divine the meandering threads of its past and future.

She could pick out the tracery of gangly masts and flapping sails that once swooped in and out of the harbor like exotic birds. They skimmed the surface, snatching a glistening cargo, and fluttered away again.

She laid bare the door’s story with her fingertips, feeling its grain, its warmth, its solidity. The telltale remainders of a distant life. Some distant part of her—an ancient, weathered, wrecked part of her—stirred in answer.

Maeve.

She forced the thought down and away. Far away. Back down into the furthest recesses of pain and loss.

But even this instinctive defense hurt her. In some inexplicable way, banishing the memory felt like banishing Maeve, herself. It was a betrayal. As she shoved the recollection back down into the well of memory, it was Maeve’s face that she forced down beneath the surface of the dark waters. She held it there until it stopped struggling.

After a few moments, the memory had sunk beneath the depths and Sturbridge again mastered herself. You would think that after all these years—all these lifetimes of training! Sturbridge raged against herself, against her own weakness, against her lack of discipline. It gave her focus. It was worth being angry at herself if only to have something concrete to be mad at. She could not rage against memories and regrets. There was no substance to push back against there. And, she realized, she was as helpless to prevent these onslaughts as she was powerless to strike back against them.

Still chastising herself for her frailties, Sturbridge turned her attentions back toward the door. There was something about the ancient wood, something in its slumbering pulse of life, that had reminded her of… that reminded her. Hesitantly, Sturbridge reached out for that something.

She wrapped her awareness tightly around the old wood and felt it slowly warm to her touch. She slipped between the bars of its grain. Her footfalls echoed deep within the labyrinth of wood fibers. The corridors and galleries were draped in dangling pulpy tendrils. She turned each damp coarse thread over in turn, separating, scrutinizing.

There. She pounced upon a single strand and held fast. Triumphantly, she squeezed down upon the tremulous pulse. A vein. A lifeline.

It tried to flee her, to escape deeper into the labyrinth. But Sturbridge only clung the tighter. She rode the dim pulse of life back to its source, to the very heart of the wood.

It was a fragile thing, the wood’s heart. A crystalline skein woven entirely of rope fibers. It was lustrous with life.

Sturbridge breathed deeply of the aroma of green growing things, of loam, of life. She drank in the delicate pattern ravenously. She traced every twisting, searching for the resonance of the living crystal, its still point, the very crux between its growing and its dying. She tapped once, her finger falling with the surety and grace of a jeweler’s hammer.

She felt the crystal crack, cleave. The fibers groaned, twisted and popped as the elaborate knot began to unravel violently.

Sturbridge retreated back up the coarse, fibrous corridors, fighting off the flailing and groping tendrils, each as big around as a ship’s anchor line. With a final heave, she broke free and staggered back a step away from the door.

A single bloody palmprint showed clearly on the ancient surface.

The wood creaked, buckled, split. New green shoots broke from the cracked surface. The entire doorframe seemed to shudder, to draw breath. The ancient wood festooned itself with new life.

Sturbridge took a step closer to the unfolding wonder. Reaching out gingerly, she felt the emerging knobs of new buds beneath her fingertips. The newborn shoots drew toward her instinctively, as toward sunlight. They coiled about her fingers, caressing, intertwining. Enrapt, Sturbridge watched as leaves appeared. They slithered forth from the living wood and unfolded like the mouths of serpents. Each gaping maw revealed veins of sickly red and black that pulsed slightly. The barbed leaves snapped at her fingertips as Sturbridge recoiled, tearing out a fistful of questing greenery in her hurry to free herself.

The shoots hardened into twigs and then quickly into wicked thorns that glistened wetly with some dark, viscous substance. As she staggered backwards, Sturbridge saw that a red, slightly phosphorescent fungus had already engulfed the upper portion of the door.

The entire surface creaked and writhed. It strained toward her, its creator, its life- giver, its mother. Her first reaction was to shrink back from it, to withdraw.

Maeve. Somewhere, not far away, (although whether separated by an intervening space of distance or time, she was not certain), she heard the cry of a child. Her child. To her shame, her first reaction had been to withdraw.

Her first reaction had always been to withdraw.

Damn it. Not again!

Sturbridge fought to force the rising tide of memory back down, to drown it in the black waters of oblivion. But it was stronger now. Fed by the strength of new life. New life given and new life scorned. She could feel its undeniable hunger, its need. It was overwhelming. It was dragging her upwards by the heels, toward the surface, toward the light of recollection.

The first touch burned like the noonday sun. Sturbridge screamed.

Behind her a child was crying, an infant. Before her the works of Aesclepius lay open amidst a clutter of candles, chalk diagrams, elemental regalia. She tried to ignore the crying. The hunger, the incessant need. She tried to focus on the discipline of the Great Work, on the calm grandeur of the Mysteries.

Sturbridge could feel her flesh begin to blacken and crack beneath the relentless sun. Blood began to well from the split skin.

Angrily, she slammed the book shut and snatched the child from its cradle.

A beautiful little girl. My Maeve. My beautiful little angel.

The evaporating blood felt cool upon the surface of her parched skin. Slowly, tortuously, the life-giving liquid boiled away into the parched air. Rippling waves of rising heat drifted lazily skyward before her eyes. It would not be long now.

She bounced the baby up and down gently, in a distracted attempt to calm it. “Mom- my’s. Lit-tle. An-gel. Mom-my’s. Lit-tle. An-gel.” This only seemed to increase the wailing.

It’s the blood. Sturbridge heard her own voice as if from a great distance. The sun, it doesn’t want me, it just wants the blood. Once that is gone, it will leave me alone. Leave me in peace. Soon now. Peace.

“All right, all right. Hush. Mommy knows what you want.” She returned to her worktable, swept aside the trappings of the arcane and sat down, putting the baby to her breast. It latched on readily and a contented silence descended once more over the tiny garret.

Sturbridge came to herself before the heavy oak-paneled door that stood vigil before her suite at the Lord Baltimore. One hand rested gently against the cracked, weathered surface. She felt its grain, its warmth, its solidity. The coarse red fungus beneath her hand did not disconcert her. Nor did the sting of the thorns cause her to draw back. Nor did the pricking of the ravenous leaves make her withdraw the flow of life-giving blood.

All around her, digging through the walls and furnishings of the suite just beyond, tendriling roots were spreading, searching, taking hold.

She could see them, follow the intricacies of their twistings and turnings. She could see where the latch of one shutter had been recently forced. She could see the listening devices concealed in the chandelier and in the vase of flowers on the nightstand. She could see an envelope that had been hastily pushed under the door.

The snaking tendrils started to retrieve the letter for her, but she dismissed their concern. There would be time enough—for reading, for letters, for plots and intrigues, for veiled threats and promises—later.

Sturbridge secured the door with a casual gesture. Gnarled tendrils of blackened wood snaked down from the overgrown network of vines that hid the ceiling from view. They lovingly embraced the ancient portal, bolstering it, reinforcing it. Sturbridge nodded her approval. Anyone foolish enough to attempt to force entry would have better luck tearing through the wall. That would delay them a few moments. Time enough to muster her defenses.

Satisfied, she crossed to the roll-top desk at the room’s center. A latticed arbor rose up behind her chair without visible means of support. It craned over her shoulder, forming a makeshift canopy over the desk.

She clicked on the banker’s lamp and picked up the first envelope. The engraved golden letters read, “Councilor Aisling Sturbridge.” She flipped the envelope over and sliced it open with a single motion. A card, similarly engraved in gold, fell to the desk— an invitation to dine privately with Prince Garlotte that very evening.

Councilor Sturbridge,

The prince begs the honor of your company this evening, that he might personally welcome you to our beautiful and historic city.

My lord will call upon you himself, at your apartments at three, to escort you on a tour of our renowned harbor.

Light repast to follow in the Master Library of the Lord Baltimore.

On this the twenty-eighth of August, in the year of Our Lord One thousand, nine hundreds, ninety and nine.

—R. Gainesmil, Seneschal

The invitation was concluded with Garlotte’s seal, the three ships riding at anchor beneath the crossed Keys of the Kingdom.

Sturbridge held the invitation at arm’s length, as if clutching an asp. She was far from convinced that the prince was the doting old gentleman he represented himself to be. She had seen some of the other councilors, Ms. Ash in particular, buy into that persona. It struck Sturbridge as a particularly dangerous miscalculation.

Her thoughts kept returning to Maria Chin, her unfortunate predecessor on this council. If the prince wanted to remove the Tremere presence from the gathering, or even from his entire city, nothing would have been easier. Chin had been his guest; she had placed herself entirely in Garlotte’s hands. Like all the other councilors (not to mention the horde of refugees), she had submitted to his rules, his curfews. She spent her days— her time of greatest vulnerability—under his roof. At night, Garlotte’s feeding restrictions dictated exactly when and where each of his “subjects” could hunt.

Sturbridge had been briefed on these “precautionary measures” on the way up to her suite. The bellhop had been both thorough and polite. Sturbridge was already getting a feel for the peculiar political climate in the besieged city.

Yes, it would be a simple gesture for Garlotte to reach out and pluck the unlife from any within his domain. He knew precisely when and where each of them would be when her defenses were down.

Sturbridge cautiously returned the invitation to its envelope. Withdrawing a sheet of stationary and a fountain pen from the desk, she dashed off a quick and elegant apology. She had no intention of spending a single day within this city. Baltimore was a city under siege—not only from the Sabbat forces slavering at the gates, but also from within. An entire city of kindred placed under siege by its prince.

Sturbridge could see that already many powerful players had fallen into the labyrinth that was Baltimore, this city of dead ends and false turnings—this elaborate trap. Jan Pieterzoon. Marcus Vitel. Theo Bell. All powers to be reckoned with in their own right. But each of them had been uprooted from his native soil and hastily transplanted here, to feed and serve the doomed city. Already, their roots were lost among the city’s roots. And, when the time came, the city would sacrifice them, willingly, readily, to preserve itself.

Sturbridge was not entirely sure that she herself would be allowed to walk away from this tangled city. But she would make the attempt this very evening. By morning she would either be safely back within the walls of her own chantry, or Garlotte would be explaining the latest calamity to a rather unsympathetic Tremere pontifex.

To lose one Tremere ambassador might be considered a tragedy; to lose two smacked of carelessness.

“Ready to go already, Professor?” Francesca Lyon hovered in the doorway as if unwilling to intrude.

“Very nearly, Miss Lyon. Please come in. It was kind of you to come on such short notice.” She gestured toward the seating arrangement near the fireplace and returned to her packing.

“Thanks. Can’t I give you a hand?”

“No, just finishing up now. Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

Sturbridge crossed to an intricately carved oak cabinet along one wall. The twin doors were decorated with a knotted design resembling a wreath woven of dried twigs. Her audience had the distinct impression that the cabinet door swung open a fraction of a second before Sturbridge’s hand found the latch. She withdrew a decanter and two crystal goblets from the shadowed recess.

It was not until that moment that Sturbridge committed herself to this course of action. Perhaps it was her unsettling experience earlier with drawing life from the ancient wood that had put her in mind of it. Perhaps it was the all-too-fresh memories of her own daughter. Perhaps it was only the frustration of the prospect of having this entire trip to Baltimore prove to be a waste.

As she crossed the room again, she studied her guest’s features for any sign of recognition, of apprehension. In this she was disappointed. Chessie’s demeanor remained friendly, personal, at ease.

Sturbridge began to fill both goblets.

Chessie raised a hand in polite refusal. “No, not for me. I’m driving. But thank you.” “But I insist. We will toast Dean Dorfman, so you can put it down to official university business.”

“Dean Dorfman warned me about drinking with any of his colleagues,” she said with subdued conviction.

“This is a particular vintage that I keep on hand for just such occasions. It has weathered the scrutiny of the most exacting of palates. I think you will enjoy it.”

Slowly, some idea of what she was being offered seemed to dawn upon Chessie. She regarded the proffered glass as she might a cup of hemlock.

“It is an old family recipe, handed down to me by my sire, and by his sire before him. There are many generations to its noble lineage.” Sturbridge swirled her chalice reverently, inhaling the heady aroma.

“It sounds delightful. But I can’t ask you to share such a family treasure with me. Dean Dorfman…”

“I will be frank, Miss Lyon. I am concerned for Dean Dorfman’s safety. He has been gone overlong in a time when he can scarcely afford to be absent at all. If he does not return quickly, you will find yourself in need of a new advisor. I would like to help you. Do not be nervous. This is how we sit down to discuss business in my house. Do you understand? First, there is blood between us. Then there is business.”

“I did not know that you trafficked in trust, Professor.”

“I don’t. I trade in blood, Miss Lyon. Only in blood. Everything else is fleeting, treacherous, and, in the end, inconsequential.”

“To blood.” Chessie raised the glass to her lips, closed her eyes and drank. Immediately, she slipped sideways into the whisperings.

“To business,” Sturbridge countered, savoring the heady vintage.

Elsewhere

Chessie was surrounded by hushed voices. A landscape composed solely of wisps of night and hushed voices. The whispers were pitched low, just beyond the range of her understanding. The words seemed to lose their way in the darkness; she could pick out only the symphony of tones. They tugged at her, poked and prodded. The voices seemed to be alternately urging her to action, consoling her, passing judgment, haggling, hinting at the forbidden, barking commands, reciting elegies, giving patient instruction—but all of them were quite clear on this one point. They all wanted something from her. Expected something. Something she could not quite make out from the incessant and hopelessly intermingled mutterings.

She was buffeted by the maelstrom of their expectation, drawn in, borne down. Her consciousness flickered dangerously on the edge of being extinguished. Each new gust threatened to snuff out the delicate flame utterly. She clung to life, to its broken fragments, like a person floundering amidst the wreckage of a sinking ship.

Chessie broke the surface, gasping, not for air, but for awareness. Her grasp found and latched on to some jettisoned piece of flotsam. It writhed in her grasp, but she held firm. Clawing the hair from her eyes with her free hand, she saw that which she clung to, and her hope failed her. A great eel, its lustrous skin gleaming redly, wound its way free of the wreckage and out into the open sea. Chessie watched in horror as her lifeline twisted, arced, and then plunged into the deep. She clawed at the slippery flank with both hands as it bore her under for the final time.

The eel was a streak of red cutting through the deep. As awareness faded to a dim glimmer of light far above her, Chessie found herself musing that the back of the great red eel resembled nothing more than a stringy tendril of blood suspended in the murky water.

Awareness flickered one last time and was gone. Blotted out by the weight of dark water above it.

Then there was only the blood.

The blood bore the broken shell down, down deep to the very heart of the sea. It buried it there in the powdery and ever-shifting sand.

Miserere nobis. Miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem.

The ocean floor was a vast hourglass. Years passed, their number measured out in the shifting of a given number of grains of sand.

Years later.

The bottom of the ocean.

The scratching of the grains of sand. Sliding slowly. Slowly sliding.

The sound intruded upon the welcome oblivion. Like a soft scratching at the coffin lid. The sound of years passing.

Scrape. Scrape.Scrape.

A drifting of three years.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

The sound rose in pitch and immediacy. It fell with the regularity of a spade.

Strike, scrape, slough. A shovelful of years. Strike, scrape, slough.

There was an urgency in the song of the spade. A compulsion. And a note of something familiar.

Fran. Ces. Ca. Fran. Ces. Ca.

The alien syllables meant nothing to the dead and broken shell buried at the ocean’s heart. But the sounds echoed and rebounded within the hollow of that shell— redoubling in meaning and intensity—until something deep within stirred at the sound of that summons.

Francesca.

Awareness came flooding back in an excruciating rush. She curled in upon herself, tumbling, kicking. She tried to burrow deeper into the sands, into the warm oblivion.

Still the voice would not let her rest.

Francesca.

She knew that voice. Sturbridge. Professor Sturbridge.

Francesca oriented herself by that voice and kicked out desperately for the surface. The first thing to return to her was light. Slowly it resolved itself into distinct shapes, patterns, vision. Soon she could not shut out the swarm of wriggling shadows that surrounded her.

The sea was filled with hundreds of drowning bodies, all fighting for the surface. The blue and bloated limbs of those who had already succumbed to the struggle snatched at her, clung to her, bore her down. Back down toward the ocean floor and the waiting arms of oblivion.

“Aisling!”

A swollen face pressed close to her own. It bobbed gently, aimlessly, from side to side, its hair fanning out in the current. It regarded her with a clinical, almost serene detachment. Thick, sausage-like fingers experimentally probed and prodded her. Chessie batted at the corpse, trying to dislodge it.

“Fear not. I am here.” The voice was small and distant.

The drowned body was much more immediate. Draped languidly in fetters of clinging seaweed, it embraced Chessie, entangling her flailing limbs as the pair tumbled over and over. From somewhere amidst the tangle, a glint of metal, the kiss of scalpel- sharp blade, and a viscous trail of blood extending out like a lifeline from an incision in Chessie’s chest. Lost beneath her own howl, Chessie thought she could pick out Sturbridge’s calm voice, plodding on with patience and reverence as if reciting some ancient tale or scripture.

“He was the serpent in the Garden of Hermes. Our beloved oracular serpent. The end product of hundreds of years of devotion to the Great Work.”

The apparition clutched its prize tightly within one oversized fist. With a deft motion, he snared the end of the trailing strand of blood, still uncoiling from the gaping wound in Chessie’s chest, and looped it three times about its fist.

He tested its pull. She bent like a bow.

“He was the object of our devotion, the meaning behind the sacrifice of uncounted lives—Pythagoreans, Catharists, Masons, alchemists—all struggling in darkness so that one day, generations hence, one man could hold in his hand the forbidden fruit, the Philosopher’s Stone, the elixir of life everlasting. His name was called Goratrix, our light- bearer, our Prometheus, our Lucifer.”

The bloated face leered over her in a mocking half-bow. It reeled Chessie in slowly, pressing uncomfortably close, a lover bent on confiding a dark secret. Its chill lips brushed her ear.

Helpless in that grasp, Chessie felt more than heard the words:

Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.

“Visit the center of the Earth,” she haltingly translated. “And by… purifying?… you will find the secret stone.”

A grotesquely swollen blue hand slapped her heartily on the back. The corpse’s head rolled back slowly in a laugh that Chessie thought might dislodge head from body altogether. In this, she was disappointed.

Shouldering Chessie’s lifeline, the drowned man turned and plodded off downwards toward the ocean’s floor. His captive had little choice save to flounder along in his wake.

Chessie felt the darkness closing in once again. Consciousness slipping from her. Seeping away through the hole in her chest.

Sturbridge’s voice was the sussurant lull of the ocean currents.

“It was in the blood, of course. The power was in the blood. But Goratrix did not partake of the dark gift. Not right away. Instead he returned to his House and sought out his master, laying before him the forbidden fruit.”

Chessie could not focus upon the words. She could no longer discern where she ended and the expanse of dark waters began. She drifted unhurriedly toward a murky hole in the ocean’s floor, following a distant bobbing light. The elusive light seemed to sneak past the tin shutter of an upraised lantern. The lamp was held aloft by a solitary laborer making his way home after dark, and struggling under a heavy burden.

As the laborer shifted the load to his other shoulder, Chessie perceived that the light was not separate from the lantern but attached, intrinsic to it. The light streamed out behind it—red, coiling, restless.

It is in the blood, of course, Chessie thought, a dark almost hysterical laugh welling up inside her. The light is in the blood.

My blood.

She was very close now. Close to the reckless abandon of hysteria. Close to the point of surrender, of returning to oblivion. Close to the dark hole at the center of the ocean’s floor.

Visita interiora terrae.

The center of the earth. The forbidden place. The dark region at the very center of herself that she dared not go (could not go). The place where she kept, carefully guarded, her secrets from herself.

It was a place denied her. Beyond the comforting walls of self-deceit, of self-delusion. She knew there was a still point, a place of searing clarity where all the justifications, all the rationalization, of a lifetime of inhuman hungers burned away. Leaving her alone with her sins, her shortcomings, her selfishness—her self.

It was a dwelling place of truths so dark they had to be forced down, chained to the bedrock, lest they rise up to assail her in the dark hours.

Visita interiora mea.

There was a movement in the deepest recesses of the dark hole at the ocean’s heart. A stirring.

Chessie twisted, thrashed against her tether. Trying in vain to avert her gaze from the presence rising up from the depths.

There was a swirling of sand, resolving itself slowly into a twisting funnel. A looming mass taking form, becoming.

The rising maelstrom howled with the grinding of sand and water. Chessie shielded her eyes. She could distinctly feel the impact of each grain of sand slicing into her exposed lifeline. The shadowy form that dragged her onward was already lost amidst the turbulent waters.

The only evidence that her predecessor had not already been utterly destroyed was the continued pull upon her yoke. Drawing her directly into the heart of the maelstrom. A great rushing of sand and water buffeted her, blinded her, snatched her up. She spun wildly, spinning end over end, dragging against her anchor line.

She could not quite shake the feeling that there was something behind the roiling waters, a presence stirring up the fury of the deep, a will. Chessie clawed sand from her eyes and squinted against the weight of the water.

There, at the very center of the maelstrom, a vast shape was rising, patiently, layer upon layer. She strained to catch a glimpse of it through the swirling sand that gouged at her eyes. She had to know. Had to understand. If only for this brief moment before her vision was taken from her.

Deliberately, she steeled herself and kicked forward into the depths.

Suddenly, there was still water all about her. Buffeted, bleeding, half-blind, she had flailed her way through the maelstrom. She now floated, suspended, inverted, at the very eye of the undersea storm—the still point at the heart of the swirling confusion of sensual perceptions.

Bracing herself, Chessie forced her eyes open, and she saw.

A gargantuan form loomed over her, filling her blood-glazed field of vision. Its feet were lost in the unguessed depths of the hole in the ocean’s floor. Chessie had the unsettling impression that its roots burrowed into the very core of the earth itself.

Visita Interiora Terrae.

Its stony visage glared down at her from high above. Its crown, exalted, streamed toward the surface—toward the world of light. In between these two extremes stretched the vast expanse of wall, its once-sculpted surface worn smooth with passage of water and years. Chessie’s gaze raced the length of that wall, fighting the feeling of vertigo as she struggled to orient herself.

The wall did not, as she first thought, stand fully erect. Rather, it leaned ponderously toward its fellows. Its two fellows, she realized with dawning clarity. A vast pyramid.

As the feeling of vertigo passed, she realized that it was she and not the pyramid that was moving. She sliced through the depths, plummeting toward the base of the great wall.

There was an answering motion, far below her, at the point that the pyramid had so violently pierced the ocean’s floor. Chessie thought she could pick out a familiar figure there, going through the motions of some elaborate ritual. She recognized the bloated corpse she had wrestled with earlier—her captor, the drowned man. Sturbridge’s voice echoed in her thoughts, confiding a name. Goratrix. The Tremere’s beloved serpent. Our Prometheus, our Lucifer.

Light streamed from the mage’s upraised fist as he hammered three times on the unyielding door of the pyramid. Chessie felt the repercussion of each of those blows within the hollow of her breast. She tumbled in her downward plunge and nearly smashed against the side of the pyramid.

From within an answering voice:

Who dares demand admission….

“It is I.” Goratrix raised his fist on high, revealing the blood-gorged heart cradled there. It was as red and lustrous as a polished apple. “Then your eyes shall be opened,” his voice assailed the impassive walls, “and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

For a long while there was silence upon the deep.

Then, in answer, the great portal of House Tremere swung wide to receive her prodigal son and his precious double-edged gift.

As her heart was carried over the threshold of the pyramid and into captivity, Chessie screamed and passed into merciful oblivion.

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 4:15 AM Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Chessie thrashed wildly, fighting the sensation that she was drowning, buried beneath a ponderous weight of water. She heard a familiar voice.

“It is enough, she is coming around at last.”

Chessie felt something massive uncoil from atop her chest. His eyes flew open in alarm, but her sight was filmed over with blood. She had a fleeting impression of a gnarled branch twisting away into one corner of the room and disappearing into rafters with a rustling noise.

“You have returned to us, Miss Lyon. I was beginning to fear for your safety.” “Professor Sturbridge.” She blinked repeatedly, trying to clear the haze from her eyes,

but found them wet with new blood. “What did you… ?”

“It was nothing, Miss Lyon, I assure you. Nothing I would not do for any novice entrusted to my care. Can you sit up? No, slowly. Better.”

Chessie wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “I apologize. I fear I am unwell.” As vision returned, she surveyed the wreckage of the fireside seating arrangement. The remains of an end table, its lamp, the crystal decanter and both goblets had been hastily swept to the side—leaving a clear spot on the floor. Chessie lay in the eye of the storm. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what…”

Sturbridge waved dismissively. “It’s nothing. I should not try to stand as of yet.”

Chessie was forced to agree with her assessment and crumpled back to the floor with what dignity she could muster. “It seems I find myself in your debt. You called me back.”

Sturbridge regarded her curiously. “Called you back?”

“Yes, back from the… tell me, was I dead? I mean, really dead.” “No more so than anyone else.”

“Please, Professor, this is quite distressing. You called me back from the bottom of the sea, from the very center. From the Interiora Terrae.”

Instantly, Sturbridge’s playful tone vanished, replaced with concern. “Well now, you did go a long way.” She stooped and took Chessie’s chin firmly in one hand. She prised open first the left eyelid and then the right, studying her eyes intently for the telltale gleam of delirium.

“Tell me about the bottom of the ocean. It must have been very… peaceful there.” Chessie recoiled as if struck, but Sturbridge maintained her grip. “Peaceful? The water was thick with bodies, corpses. They wouldn’t let you be. They kept poking at you, prodding, leaning into you. And their faces. Oh, if you could have seen their faces.”

“Eyes as round and bright as moons…”

“What’s that?” Chessie shot back.

“Nothing. An old dream, a poem, a snatch of song. It is nothing. You were telling me about the children.”

“The children?”

“The Children Down the Well.”

“No, no, you are not listening to me. There were no children. There was no well. I was telling you about the bottom of the ocean, about the Drowned Man.”

“I am sorry. I misunderstood. Please, continue.”

“…At least I think it was a man. It may very well have been a serpent. A sea serpent. Yes, I seem to remember a sea serpent. And a shipwreck. Oh, you will think me a very great fool by this point. What nonsense. What utter nonsense!”

With an effort of will, Chessie teetered to her feet. Sturbridge moved to help her, but the young woman’s look said very clearly that assistance would neither be necessary nor welcome.

“Not at all, Miss Lyon. Your tale is not so strange as you might imagine. You have my attention. Can you tell me about the Drowned Man?”

“Tell you about him? But you were the one telling me about him. ‘Our beloved oracular serpent,’ you called him. ‘Our Prometheus, our Lucifer.’”

“The Light-bringer. Yes, I see. But what was he doing? Did he do or say anything… unusual?” Her look became shrewd, predatory. “What did he tell you?”

Chessie hesitated, taken aback by the sudden intensity of Sturbridge’s interest. The young woman could feel it boring into her like the heat of a flame. She shifted uncomfortably, but could see no advantage in keeping this knowledge from Sturbridge.

“He told me… he told me to visit the center. Visita Interiora.”

A broad smile spread across Sturbridge’s features. Chessie exhaled slowly in relief, seeing the familiar Sturbridge return to her.

“Vitriol. He gave you the cup of vitriol? Are you quite sure, Miss Lyon?”

“Cup? I didn’t say anything about a cup. It seems to me that it was you who gave me vitriol to drink. I have not yet recovered from the effects of your concoction, and I am not entirely certain that I ever shall.”

“No, you misunderstand, Miss Lyon. Vitriol. V-I-T-R-I-O-L. It is an ancient alchemical formula: Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies…”

“Occultum Lapidem. Yes, his exact words. Strange. It seems an odd sort of thing for me to dream, don’t you think, Professor? The chances of my accidentally stumbling onto some disused occult proverb, well, you must admit it seems unlikely.”

“Do you think it coincidental, Miss Lyon?” “I do not,” she replied pointedly.

Sturbridge chose to ignore the tone of accusation. “Good. I will suggest to you, then, that it was no accident that you discovered this particular gem, this occultum lapidem, on your first journey inward. It is a road map, Miss Lyon. It will be a great comfort to you in the years to come, on your journeys into that inner country. It is also a promise—a promise that you will return there.”

“I am not entirely sure I wish to return there. It was not a… pleasant place.”

At this Sturbridge laughed aloud. “It is your place, Miss Lyon. It is the place from which you arise. It is the place you carry with you, even now. It is the place to which you must, eventually, return. But not tonight, I think.”

Chessie’s suspicions, however, were not allayed. “If you will forgive me saying so, Professor, it did not look like my place at all. It looked suspiciously like your place. It was filled with your forebears, your rituals, your symbols, your occult mutterings. Even I did not feel like me. I felt like some player in an ancient story—a story of your people.”

“Perhaps you still do not understand. You think that I have taken advantage of you, that I have doctored your drink, knocked you out and whispered hypnotic suggestions into your ear.”

There was an uncomfortable silence before Chessie replied, “I have suggested no such thing.”

“But you have. Listen to me, Miss Lyon. The things you saw, they were not of my creation. I did not know you had journeyed to the Interiora Terrae, I did not know you had met with Gora… the Drowned Man, I did not know what he said or did. It is not my voice that has been whispering to you, it is the singing of the blood.”

Something in her words both rang true and simultaneously filled Chessie with dread. “It is in the blood,” she recited hollowly, “the power is in the blood.”

Sturbridge nodded. “The blood that fills you, the blood we shared tonight, it is the blood of the Tremere. The Blood of the Seven. The mortar of the Pyramid. It is ancient, it is potent, and it speaks to each of us—in visions and in nightmares. In ancient words and lost ritual gestures. And in the quiet places, where no others may go, the blood whispers to us.”

Chessie felt a sinking sensation, a hole opening up at her very core. Anger bubbled up to fill the void.

“I did not ask for this! I came here in good faith, because you asked me to come. And this is how you have treated me? You would visit some measure of your curse upon me? You are a monster, a creature of deceit and of treachery. You would poison me with your tainted blood?”

Sturbridge held her gaze, felt the fever burning there, saw the hint of the earlier madness gaining full rein.

Chessie flung herself toward her. Sturbridge did not try to ward her off. An embrace fired by a warmth very different than that of two lovers.

The blood sang between them.

Saturday, 28 August 1999, 5:42 AM Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

Without a word or backward glance, Sturbridge eased the door closed behind her. Chessie was sleeping now, at last, her face buried in the bloodstained pillow.

Sturbridge had waited for the gentle sobs to subside before slipping from the chamber.

She crossed the sitting room to the closet near the hall door and withdrew the larger of two businesslike suitcases. She heaved the case onto the table one-handed. The latches sprang open in response to her low whisper, revealing precise rows of neatly pressed garments.

Sturbridge packed up the last of her things and tied the series of satin ribbons that held everything in its precise place. She leaned down hard upon the lid of the suitcase and the latches sealed with two distinct pings. She had turned to shoulder the suitcase from the table when her eyes lit upon the wreckage of the seating arrangement by the fireplace. Broken glass lay scattered in a glittering arc reaching out toward the room’s center. The wave of glass had broken more abruptly upon the hearth and arrayed itself in larger jagged shards.

Sturbridge started instinctively for the closet for a broom to set things in order. She stopped with her hand upon the knob.

She would go now. A cab to the airport. A plane back to New York. And safely home before sunrise.

She thought of the nights of sneaking back into her parents’ house, racing against the first hint of the sunrise. Charged on adrenaline, jazz, infatuation and bathtub gin.

Home before sunrise, she thought. The romance of the idea had begun to wear a bit thin after nearly a century. Her surreptitious early morning races had taken on a hard, ugly aspect. The consequence of losing that race now was far more severe than her mother’s displeasure. She had known of those, of course, who had been caught out by the jealous sun. Who had not? It was a critical part of a novice’s education. It was one of the Portals of Initiation.

But the steady progression of years had turned the tables upon Sturbridge. As the regent of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs, she more and more often found herself in the position of the anxious mother, waiting for her wayward daughters to return home. She had even—she remembered the incident with excruciating clarity—once ordered the door of her house barred against the return of an unrepentant and irreformable novice. The sun had caught her upon the doorstep.

Home before sunrise.

And six impossible things before breakfast.

She thought of Alice, and of Maeve. She thought of the nights of reading aloud the stories of the Caterpillar, the Duchess, the Griffin, the White Knight, to her little girl.

Her beautiful child. Her magical child. Lost to her and gone. Disappeared down a hole in the ground.

In a wonderland they lie Dreaming as the days drift by Dreaming as the summers die Ever drifting down the stream Lingering in the golden gleam Life, what is it but a dream?

Sturbridge swung the suitcase off the table in a great arc. It banged angrily against the wall before succumbing to the pull of gravity. She heard an answering stirring from the inner room, but Chessie did not awaken.

It was perhaps a small cruelty to leave her like this. But she did not repent of it.

It was difficult to say how much of this evening’s ordeal the girl might remember when she awakened. Would she recall what Sturbridge had done to her? Would she be able to call to mind the unique savor of the Blood of the Seven—its power, its compulsion, its madness? Would she be able to reconstruct the shards of memory from her journey inward—the touch of the Drowned Man, the majesty of the Pyramid, the terrible betrayal of the Sacrifice?

More importantly, Sturbridge found herself wondering if Chessie would recall her own weakness in the wake of potent vitae. The suspicions, the unreasoning rage.

Almost as an afterthought, she paused in the doorway. Crossing to the writing table, she extracted a sheet of creamy stationary and the fountain pen. In a bold, unquivering hand, she wrote:

Come to New York. Delay will bring only fever and torment. You are not alone.

—A.S.

She folded the note neatly in half and stood it on the mantle like a pyramid.

Running her hand affectionately over the wood of the ancient door, Sturbridge shouldered her cases and took her leave. The hallway and the rest of what had come to be known as the Witch’s Wing was, as might be expected, deserted. Only after the door had sighed shut did Sturbridge allow herself to doubt.

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

The click of the bolt seemed loud as thunder, and the creaking hinges more piercing than Ramona had ever noticed before. She had left when Khalil went out earlier that evening for his late appointment in Tribeca, but she’d doubled back before too long.

She shut and locked the door; she pressed her back against it. Elizabeth was sitting on the couch. Watching. Her chains were looped around and through the old radiator as well as a column.

“Who are you?” Ramona asked quietly.

Liz sat and continued to watch the Gangrel for half a minute before answering. “Elizabeth Ariadne Dimitros.”

Ramona shook her head. “That’s just a name—a mortal name. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

Liz’s gaze hardened. But then she sighed, and her eyes slowly closed. She seemed to deflate with the sigh. All the fight went out of her, all the defiance that was her impenetrable armor against Khalil. “You’re right,” she said quietly.

The Gangrel took a step closer. “I’m Ramona Tanner-Childe. I…” she struggled to find the words that defined her. “I saw the Eye destroy my clanmates.”

Elizabeth’s eyes opened, but she did not speak.

“Why are you here? How did this…” Ramona moved closer, bent down and rattled the chain on the floor, “happen?”

Elizabeth’s gaze was hard again. She started to say something, stopped, started again. “Why are you working with Khalil?”

“That thing—the Eye—it’s in the city. At least it was. He said he could find it.” “And you believe him?”

Ramona didn’t answer.

“You saw it destroy your clanmates,” Liz said. “Yes.”

“You couldn’t stop it?”

“No.” Ramona shook her head. I was too afraid, she thought. “And you think Khalil can?”

Ramona stood back up. She pawed at the chain with her misshapen foot, then shrugged. “Maybe. Worth a shot. I can’t just walk away.” Not again. She turned away from Liz and began poking around at some of the odds and ends on the work table—some of the odds and ends beneath the clutter of paint rollers, clothes, and random pieces of gold jewelry that Khalil had left scattered all around.

“I believe you,” Liz said after a while.

Ramona nodded. “Good.” She hadn’t really considered that her word would be in question. “Khalil said that you wanted to get back with this dude Hesha.”

Silence. Ramona continued to look around the apartment. Minutes passed.

“No,” Liz said eventually. “If you and Khalil find Hesha, please don’t say anything about me. Let him think I’m dead. Really dead.” But it was her words that were dead. Lifeless.

Ramona recognized that numbness—the wall that held back pain too great to face. Worse pain than what Khalil had caused Liz.

“He left me for the sun,” Liz said. “These are his.” She rattled the manacles. “Why?”

“Punishment. For rebelling against him. He was going to make another person into… into what we are. And this man, my friend, decided he would rather die than be this. So I let him. And Hesha came after me. He’s used to getting what he wants. He changed me and left me as a sacrifice to Ra—to the sun. Khalil actually rescued me.” She laughed dryly. “I’m not sure Khalil completely understands the situation. I think he expects Hesha to be grateful to him for sheltering me, or something.”

“I don’t think Khalil wants to make a deal with Hesha,” Ramona said. “He wants to kill him.”

Liz chuckled. “Khalil? Kill Hesha? Won’t happen. Hesha’s too smart, too organized, too… too damned perfect.”

“He’s hired the Sabbat to do it.”

That seemed to puzzle Liz. She didn’t recognize “Sabbat.” Ramona felt some slight satisfaction in finally finding someone who seemed to know even less than she did about what they had become. Liz lapsed into her protective silence again. Ramona continued to look around the apartment—to really look—and for the first time she could see what it was like before Khalil’s destructive energy had transformed it into a prison. It had been a home. Liz’s home.

Ramona worked her way back around to the couch. She bent down again and ran her fingers over Liz’s chains.

“There are bolt-cutters on the shelf in my workshop,” Liz said quietly, almost in a whisper.

“I know,” Ramona said. “I saw them.” She couldn’t look at the pleading eyes. Instead, the Gangrel stood and walked over to the work table. She stared at the bolt-cutters and thought about the chains that imprisoned Liz—and about the Eye.

“He’d know I helped you escape,” Ramona said. She could taste the guilt, but it was not as powerful as the guilt over the deaths of her clanmates. “I still need what he knows.”

“What he might know,” Liz said pointedly. “What he might know. I’m sorry.”

Ramona began to rustle through the debris on the work table. She ignored the large bolt-cutters but gathered up other, smaller, metal tools—several looked like dentist’s picks; one was some kind of file—and carried them over to Liz.

“These were in the sofa, down in the cracks beneath the cushions. Before any of this ever happened. Right?”

Liz nodded gratefully. “I never was a very good housekeeper.” Ramona spread the tools across a cushion. Liz took one of the picks and began working at the keyhole of the manacle around her left wrist, while the Gangrel filed away at a chain link that could be covered if Khalil returned.

Residence of D. Peter Munro, Esq.

Newark, Delaware

“You’re late.” The voice echoed hollowly through the empty room. The only piece of furniture in it was a straight-backed wooden chair, occupied by a short, black-haired man in an immaculate, and squeakily new, biker jacket. His boots were planted squarely on the floor and his hands were folded neatly in his lap. He was silhouetted against the moonlight that poured through the bay window behind him, but nothing in his posture betrayed the slightest tension or fear. The great wooden doors at either end of the room were barred from the outside, and the walls were featureless white. A single candelabra, marred by the wax drippings from countless tapers, swung silent and black from its chain.

Lucita walked out of the shadows like Venus rising from the waves at Cyprus. The darkness flowed off her, leaving her facing her prey alone. She wore her usual working clothes, and her hair was tied back with a simple black leather cord. There was a broad- bladed knife in her left hand, but her right hand was free. “I’m disappointed in you, Munro. The briefing my client provided said you’d be difficult to deal with, yet here I find you, waiting for me. Tired of existence?”

Munro chuckled for precisely two seconds, then cut himself off. “Hardly. Though I do confess to waiting for you. Have you been looking for me long?” His voice bore traces of a Scots burr, long since washed away by years away from his homeland.

“Not terribly, no. In most things, my employer is quite accurate. In this case, he told me where I’d likely find you and when, what defenses I’d encounter, what the floor plan looked like and the likelihood that you’d be wearing that jacket. It has been,” and she nodded primly, “a most satisfactory professional arrangement.”

The man in the chair blinked. “For a satisfactory professional arrangement, you’re going to destroy me? That hardly seems fair.”

Lucita waggled a finger. “Of course not. I am going to destroy you because I’ve been paid a great deal of money, as well as certain other considerations, to do so. The fact that I think you’re ridiculous, and that my employer is wasting his money by having me do this, is entirely beside the point. You never should have strayed, antitribu. The Sabbat doesn’t suit you.”

Munro deliberately crossed his legs but made no other motion. “Until tonight, I was happy with the choice.” He tugged at the creaky leather of his sleeve. “The wardrobe is a small sacrifice.”

“A poor one to make. You look like a clown, Munro.” Lucita began tossing the knife in the air and catching it with her off hand. The fifth time she did this, the knife never came down. She didn’t seem to notice. “It matters not, though. Your story ends here. I will let you pray for a minute, if you wish. You were wee kirk, yes? My sire has spoken highly of your devotion.”

Munro gave a tight smile. “Not necessary, I think. Besides, Lucita, I’m not quite ready to die yet. Are you?” He clapped his hands once.

Nothing happened, save that Lucita finally decided to look up after her knife. It hung, suspended in midair, with its blade reflecting the moonlight into a diamond shape on the wooden floor. “Hmm?” she said. “Were you expecting someone?”

Clearly angry, Munro clapped again. There was again no answer but silence. He leapt to his feet, knocking the chair over backwards with a loud clatter, and screamed, “God damn it, where are you? Get in here! She’s in here with me!”

Lucita turned to him, her eyes wide with mock innocence. “Oh, don’t tell me. You are calling for those twenty men you had waiting outside, yes? The ones who were supposed to charge in here when I approached you and then overwhelm me by weight of numbers, yes?” Munro turned to her, his mouth hanging open in shock. “I’m terribly sorry, Munro. They had a little accident.” She paused and appeared to reconsider. “I must correct myself. The ten through that door,” and she pointed to her left, “had a terrible accident. The ten through that door,” and she swung her arm around to the right, “I killed. Now, does that clear everything up? I think the next step is for you to attack me in a blind rage, and for me to kill you. Then I leave, collect my payment and take a few nights off before preparing for my next target. Yes?”

Munro glared at her with pure hatred for a moment, then turned and dove for the window. Lucita, surprised, was frozen for a full half second. Then she simply pointed at the fleeing vampire. The tendril of shadow that held the knife darted out and, with whiplike speed, slashed the back of Munro’s calves. He collapsed as the knife dropped to the floor. Lucita gave a cluck of disapproval, then walked over to where her prey writhed on the floor, still struggling to reach the window.

“You disappoint me, Munro,” she said. “Showing your back to the enemy? A poor tactic, even for a fool like you.” She stooped to pick up the knife and, after considering her options, drove it through the man’s hand and into the floor underneath. “Now, what to do with you?”

The bubbling noises coming from the floor might have been curses, or they might have been pleas. Lucita ignored them in either case, pondering. Finally, after a long minute, she leaned down close to Munro’s ear, and whispered. “Peter,” she said, “I want you to know something. It does not matter to me at all that you die now, save as a contract fulfilled with a minimum of fuss. I have been told that your death is necessary to limit the Sabbat’s ability to obtain certain firearms and other toys, but honestly, I do not care. What I do care about, little man, is this: You have wasted my evening with your posturing. You make a terrible villain. The role never suited you and you would have done better to stay where you were.” She dropped to her haunches. “You are also naïve, and a coward, and I dislike both of those things intensely. That is why I am taking this moment to speak to you, rather than putting you out of your misery immediately.”

With a snarl, Munro tore his hand free from the floor and clawed for her throat. Lucita danced out of the way, easily avoiding the strike. The knife clanked to the hardwood and Munro reached for it, but she kicked it away and it skittered to the far end of the room. He flipped himself and got to his knees, but as he did so she struck his nose with an open-fist punch. The man gurgled and nearly fell over backwards, fear in his eyes as Lucita took a step toward him. She raised her hand for another strike, and he toppled as it caught him in the throat.

She stared down at him, disgusted by the ruin of his face. Blood ran everywhere, but it didn’t interest her in the least. Munro’s vitae, she was sure, would be as thin and distasteful as he himself was. “Good-bye, Peter,” she said softly. “I won’t play with you any more.” Munro’s eyes, wild with terror and hatred, stared up at her as his ruined legs flopped desperately. He threw up an arm to defend himself, but she slapped it out of the way. Then, with slow deliberation, she cupped her hand below her mouth and blew him a kiss.

Munro gaped. Nothing happened for a moment, and then she exhaled as if she were blowing out a candle.

Munro’s face, for all intents and purposes, exploded. Lucita failed to blink as bits of it spattered on her legs, but she made a mental note to have these togs burned as soon as she could. Munro was precisely the sort of whiny soul who tended to linger as a ghost, and she intended to give him as few anchors for bothering her as possible. Without a second glance for what was left of her target, she walked to the door to her left and unbarred it. The carnage outside was, if possible, even more brutal than what she’d inflicted on Munro. Bits and pieces of hired thug and low-grade vampire were scattered across the room, from the curiously immaculate piano to the gore-spattered sofa. She ignored it all and kept walking, right to the kitchen and out. The stove was a massive cast-iron antique, squat and ominous. More importantly, however, it had four gas burners. Lucita turned each on in turn, then snuffed the pilot light with a breath. It was a pity to destroy such a lovely old house, she felt, but more of a pity to leave Munro’s corpse around to pollute the night.

Two minutes later she was on the road to Hartford, dialing the contact number for her client to let the mysterious Mr. Schreck know that three of the four targets were dead, and that the last one’s nights were numbered.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 12:07 AM Refectory, Chantry of the Five Boroughs New York City, New York

Eva was late, hurrying and obviously shaken. Twice she stopped abruptly, her ears straining to pick out the telltale sound of stealthy footfalls shadowing her. She was not altogether certain what she would do if her suspicions proved justified.

It was too late to turn back now. Where would she go? To chantry security? Somehow Eva did not relish the prospect of another confrontation with Helena and her jackals—especially one in which she would have to explain how and why she had slipped her tether. Her memory of their recent encounter was still far too fresh in her mind.

No, better just to get this over with and get back before her absence was noted. She would meet with Jacqueline. She would explain her suspicions and enlist Jacqueline’s help. With Sturbridge away, Eva was coming to realize just how vulnerable her position here really was.

Her agitation was not eased in the least by the fact that her path to the refectory— and her covert meeting with Jacqueline—would take her directly past the secundus’s chambers. They were just ahead now, around the next bend. She could actually feel their presence like a weight pressing against her, holding her back. Eva realized her pace had unconsciously slowed to a reluctant crawl.

Purposefully, she forced herself to turn the corner. She felt the first gentle touch of dread caress the nape of her neck.

She tried to ignore it. She kept her eyes fixed rigidly forward and counted off each quick measured pace. One, two, three… she was even with the door before she realized the source of her apprehension. The keyhole.

And if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

She closed her eyes tightly; she knew of no other way to keep herself from peering back at the keyhole. She willed herself forward. She pleaded with her feet to take just one more step. To lift, to fall, nothing more.

It was no good. She could feel the heat of the dead man’s all-seeing eye—squinting at her through the keyhole. Boring into her. Where it touched, it burned with the brilliance of sunlight, of truth.

Eva knew her continued existence depended upon shadows, upon murky reflections, upon misdirection and half-truths. She could not endure the searing intensity of that unblinking stare.

She might have screamed. She remembered picking herself up off the floor—ignoring the fresh pain of bruised knees and battered forearms—and stumbling blindly down the corridor.

She arrived at the refectory trembling and out of breath. She was certain the sound of her wild flight had attracted unwanted attention. Jacqueline would curse her (or worse) for allowing herself to be followed.

Marshalling her apologies and excuses, she pushed open the refectory door.

Even before she laid eyes on Jacqueline, all of her carefully ordered rationalizations had deserted her. She shut her mouth stupidly, backing away from the headless body crumpled before the stainless-steel double sink.

A murky swirl of blood floated atop the soapy water. The cupboard above the sink was open and empty. Eva pressed one sleeve to her face in a vain effort to block out the pervasive smell of spilled life. The scent of blood muddled her thoughts, picked away at the frayed edge of reason.

Faced with the sudden and overwhelming presence of yet another corpse, Eva did the only thing she could do. She threw back her head and howled. She summoned the jackals.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 9:46 AM (2:46 AM, Eastern Daylight Time) Day chamber, Alamut

Eastern Turkey

La ilaha illa ’l-Lah. There is no god but God.

Wa Muhammadan rasula ‘l-Lah. And Muhammad is the messenger of God.

Several hours ago, Fatima had completed her prayers of the subh, that time when the sky is light but the sun has not yet crested the horizon—for mortals, a time of beginning, of emerging from night; for her kind, a time of retreat, of banishment from day. But that was the will of God as laid upon Haqim and all his childer: that they would never again feel the warmth of the sun or see the bands of a rainbow after the storm; that just as the spider eats the buzzing insect, and the sparrow the spider, and the hawk the sparrow, the children of Haqim would some night rid the earth of the creatures that preyed on mortal blood.

Salla-’l-Lahu ’ala sayyidina Muhammad. May Allah cause His prayers to descend on our lord Muhammad.

Al-salamu ’alaykum wa rahmatu ’l-Lah. May peace and the mercy of God be with you.

The words of salah usually soothed Fatima, usually led her calmly into the rest that was not sleep, but this morning the peace of God seemed far away, a stranger traveling distant roads.

During the hours of the sun, do you rest peacefully? Perhaps it was the words that al- Ashrad had spoken that now burdened her heart. There are no dreams? There were no dreams. But, this day, neither was there rest. The lack of dreams kept her mind racing as much as dreams could have, because the amr had implied that she should have dreams, or that she would have dreams—dreams that would tell her whether she must betray her God if she wished to remain true to her blood. How would she answer those dreams if they did visit her? How could she?

Fatima felt the lure of oblivion, the call of day, but she could not answer. It tugged at her like a great hand risen up from the dark places of the earth that would take her back with it, but she was held fast in the waking world. She felt every twist of every reed in the sleeping mat beneath her back, and though her eyes were closed, she could picture every tiny depression in each and every great stone above, around, and below.

Even when she managed to set aside all thought of dreams, other words spoken by al- Ashrad that night weeks ago haunted Fatima. Just as you failed against the childe, so did your sire fail against the sire. The words resounded like crashing cymbals destroying peace.

Monçada, not the childe. But no matter Fatima’s denials to herself, she was sent for both, sent to cleanse not just her sire’s failure but her own as well. Eventually, she kept telling herself. First things first.

Monçada, not the childe. Not yet.

Yet it was the childe who had held a place in Fatima’s thoughts for hundreds of years. Lucita.

How long ago it had been, how young in death they had both been, when first they met, when first they battled. Fatima herself had been overconfident. After all, was she not the first of her sex Embraced by the children of Haqim? Had not her passion and her skill convinced the feared assassins that she deserved to stand among their ranks despite the perverse whim of nature that had created her female? Those were the nights when she’d strode with purpose across the rocky slopes of the Holy Land, when she was determined to prove to the brotherhood that she would be second to none among them.

Fatima and Lucita had met in the land of the Christ. To one he was prophet, to the other Messiah. And thus, for such a distinction, were they lethal enemies. Had their mortal lives in Spain coincided, still they would have been enemies: vengeful protector of the Almohads and daughter of a Christian king.

Fatima had approached Lucita directly, eschewing guile and stealth. The Dark Rose of Aragon was newer to the blood, but she fought with a reckless abandon that amazed Fatima. From the time that the moon was high in the night sky until it was long hidden beyond the horizon, scimitar met broadsword, steel rang out against steel. Fatima was the stronger and the more skilled with a blade, and she attacked relentlessly. Yet Lucita called the darkness to her aid, an army of shadows to distract and deflect. The Moor slashed through the black tentacles, kept one step ahead of the darkness that would smother her, and still rained blows down upon Lucita; but just when the Lasombra childe was forced to her knees, or pressed to the edge of a chasm without hope of escape, the shadows came to her rescue. They knocked aside Fatima’s killing blow, or dug at the loose earth beneath her, or pummeled her with attacks she must turn aside or fall beneath.

Daybreak found the combatants still at one another’s throats, but now the swords thrust more infrequently, and the shadows melted away before the coming dawn. Weakened by exertion, lack of blood, and wounds suffered throughout the night, each faced destruction by an impartial sun. Defeat was as foreign as compromise to both, but Fatima laid down her sword.

“There is no shame in honorable defeat,” Fatima said.

“That is what your masters would have you believe,” Lucita said, reluctantly lowering her own weapon.

It was then that Fatima knew for certain what she’d already suspected—that this tall, beautiful Christian, so full of fire, would have fought until she could not crawl away, until the dawn burned her to embers, rather than give in, had Fatima not first laid down her sword. The day had passed, as they huddled together in a shallow cave against the cruel rays of the sun, and the next night they had parted.

There had been other battles over the centuries, conflicting objectives that brought the two killers—for that is what Lucita went on to become, a feared assassin in her own right—into opposition, but always it seemed that each achieved her goal without completely thwarting the other, and without the need for a final, lethal confrontation. Fatima once killed a bodyguard of thirty men along with their German baron, rather than strike a week earlier when Lucita had been the baron’s only guardian. Lucita’s activities tended to follow a similar pattern, and though the two crossed paths many times, this state of live-and-let-live prevailed. The undeclared détente held not out of fear—for Fatima knew none and could not imagine such of Lucita—but out of admiration and respect… and yet, something more as well. Fatima had never fought so close a contest; she had never poured out all her energies and been denied. Nor, since her Embrace into the existence of eternal night, had she passed such a day, curled together with another body that, hours before, she’d tried so hard to destroy.

The elders, of course, were not ignorant of this relationship. Fatima had never been able to hide her heart from those stronger in the blood of Haqim. They might not have known that she and Lucita met other times—tense encounters where guarded talk only slowly gave way to begrudged trust, and where each eventually was drawn into the arms of the other. The elders might not have known the depth of the strange bond between the two women. But the elders sensed divided loyalty, and so they sent Fatima to destroy Lucita, to atone. Even now Fatima cringed at the memory. That time it was not the darkness that failed her, but rather her heart, and Lucita had survived.

There were those among the brotherhood who whispered that, had Fatima only fulfilled that duty, had she taken the blood that was spoken for and given Lucita unto Final Death, that the other childe of Thetmes would now be caliph, that she would be one of the three favored, the tripartite du’at of Alamut. Woman or no. She had betrayed that for which she had striven with all her will—all except the smallest portion that she could not hand over to Haqim.

At the very least, though, her failure had secured Lucita’s safety. The Dark Rose of Aragon had survived the assassin. She had proven herself worthy. There the matter had rested for several centuries. Only recently had the winds shifted on mighty Alamut and blown stormclouds over the horizon; only weeks ago al-Ashrad had again laid the demand of the elders at Fatima’s feet. This time, her defeat would only mean her disgrace or destruction, and others would follow to see that the deed was done, to ensure that Lucita was destroyed. Fatima, even through failure, could offer protection no longer.

The best she could do was to delay. There was less urgency that Lucita be destroyed. Monçada, not the childe. But for how long? How long could Fatima delay and thereby guarantee Lucita’s safety? For the time being, the death sentence protected Lucita—none of the brotherhood would attempt Monçada or his childe while Fatima was engaged. How long?

The time has come. We must prepare the way.

Fatima raised a hand to her breast. She felt that a great weight had been placed upon her, but no one had entered her cell. She lifted her other hand, pressed down hard with both upon her chest, tried to crush the breath that was not there, tried to find the peace of the grave, but still it eluded her. Peace was not hers. That which she had known was borrowed, stolen. Now her masters reclaimed it. Not two masters but three: Blood. Spirit. Love. Each jealous, each all-consuming. Somewhere above, the sun burned, waiting for its chance to consume, to reclaim the body, all the bodies that were rightfully dust.

At last, her patience at an end, Fatima rose and sat upright. She reached out and took hold of her jambia, which was never far from her hand. There was no light to reflect from the blade, but she didn’t need sight to know every inch of her weapon’s curve. She held the blade flat between her palms, felt the cool steel against her equally cool skin. Then she took the handle in one hand and pressed the blade against the tip of her other middle finger. The keen edge sliced easily through her flesh, down smoothly until it struck bone. Fatima gritted her teeth but did not stop. Slowly, she rolled the blade along the length of its curve so that it sliced downward along her finger, across the palm, and to the heel of her hand. She kept her blood from rushing to the wound, kept it from healing nerve and muscle, kept it from denying her pain.

There would be pain. There would always be pain. To see that pain served a purpose was honor. To ensure that the people of God survived and prospered—that was a purpose worth serving, and Fatima did so in the name of Allah. To see that the get of Khayyin vanished from the face of the earth—that too was a noble purpose, one that she served in the name of Haqim. How the two conflicted, she did not understand. She could not see what al-Ashrad saw through his diamond eye. What had become of the original orb? Did the amr keep the memory of it in mind and heart so that he might rule those fickle kingdoms? Or perhaps there was no strife in those lands. Fatima longed for such peace— such peace as she had sometimes known in Lucita’s arms. Yet there, Fatima could find no noble or worthy purpose. Only self-gratification, that which she denied herself in all other matters.

Now she laid the flat of the blade against her cheek. The selfish feelings would pass with the destruction of their object. The sire and the childe. This unworthiness Fatima could see within herself. But the other?

La ilaha illa ’l-Lah. There is no god but God.

Did even Haqim think to set himself above Allah? Did the Eldest dare?

Fatima traced a curve across her forehead, pressed with just enough pressure to leave a red crescent. The tip of her jambia slid lightly over her cheekbone to her nose and followed the low route to the soft tissue at the corner of her eye.

La ilaha illa ’l-Lah. La ilaha illa ’l-Lah.

And what of Haqim? How could she doubt the Eldest and still serve him? She could not see. The tip of the dagger pressed against the white of her eye, slipped easily through the membrane. Fatima would see. She would banish doubt and confusion. Through force of will, she would defeat them, just as through force of will she now kept open her eyes. More pressure on the blade. Deeper, into the orbital socket. She would rule her own mind and heart, as did wise al-Ashrad, through constant vigilance, unceasing dedication.

A slight flick, and the blade did its work. The eye came free, landed at her feet. A great trembling overcame Fatima. She was all pain and rage and sorrow. And in minutes the eye was dust, no more than a memory.

The sun was high overhead when, somewhere among the delirium, Fatima found respite, if not peace.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 3:55 AM Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

“So what do you think?”

“I think that if Lucita is after you,” said Talley carefully, “I am your only chance of getting out of this intact, Your Excellency. Mind you, I will bow to your expert analysis of the situation if you disagree, because you are an archbishop and I’m but a lowly templar. Never mind, of course, the fact that I’ve been doing this sort of thing for approximately six centuries and have acquired a certain familiarity with the ground rules of operations, while you were a by-blow of that ridiculous treaty signed in 18—”

Archbishop Borges held up a meaty hand. “Enough. Thank you. Yes, I trust your analysis. I’ve been given your services by the cardinal, and it seems prudent to make use of them. Now, what do you suggest I do about it?” he asked, levering himself out of his black leather desk chair and rising to his feet. Behind him, a screen saver busied itself in drawing pictures of plumbing across a monitor.

“You know, of course,” said Talley as he began taking slow steps forward, “that the assassin I’m supposed to be guarding you from is Lucita.” Borges visibly paled at the mere mention of her name, and Talley’s grin bared his fangs for the first time since he’d arrived in America. “Ah. I see you’ve heard of her. She’s a lovely woman, extremely talented and one of the most skillful killers I’ve run across. Oh, did I mention that she’s the cardinal’s childe, and that he’s very, very fond of her? Yes, that’s right, Archbishop. Changes your assessment of the situation, doesn’t it?”

Borges put a brave face on things. “Bah,” he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m aware of Lucita’s lineage—who is not? The childe does not always follow the sire’s path, else we’d still be skulking around Lasombra’s castle in Sicily waiting for Montano to fetch us peasants for dinner. Is there any particular reason you’re trying to scare me with old news, Templar?”

Talley made a mocking bow from the neck. “Ah, I should have known that you’d be well informed. But don’t you think it’s curious, Your Excellency, that Archbishop Vykos came here as Cardinal Monçada’s envoy, yet it was Archbishop Polonia who received word from the cardinal that I—the cardinal’s gift to the three of you—would be arriving? Furthermore, for what purpose do I arrive? Why, to protect that illustrious trio from the cardinal’s own wayward daughter.” He stepped closer to Borges until he was right in the man’s face. Patches of shadow still masked Borges’s eyes, and Talley got the definite feeling that Borges was not so much seeing as sensing him. “Fascinating, isn’t it, that all of the surviving players in this little tableau are somehow connected to the esteemed cardinal— except for you?”

Talley suddenly spun, and faster than the eye could follow he was seated in Borges’s just-vacated chair. “Does that make you feel… isolated? Nervous? Worried? Well, it should.” He leveled his gaze on his client, now pacing about the room. “You’re alone with me, Your Excellency, and I don’t think anyone other than Vykos and Polonia knows our whereabouts,” he said in a very quiet voice. “If this were all a plot by the cardinal, you’d be in a great deal of trouble.”

Borges fixed him with a tired glare. “Sir Talley, I have no idea what you are attempting to accomplish here, but whatever it is, I resent it. If you have finished trying to frighten me and have nothing new to say, get out. If, however, you’ve decided to get serious about fulfilling your duties, then do so. Do I make myself clear?”

Talley nodded. “Perfectly. I must say, it’s nice to see you deal with a stressor without immediately trying to throttle it. I was beginning to despair of you, but this gives me hope. If you continue in this vein, you have a chance. A slim one, but a chance.”

With a snort, Borges settled himself on top of the marble surface of the table behind him. “You don’t exactly sound confident, Talley. I thought you were the famous Hound, who could do anything his master set him to?” The archbishop’s expression was rather sour, and for an instant it struck Talley as humorous.

It was only an instant, however, and then the templar was all business once again. “Your Excellency,” he said wearily, “an unknown party has gone to great trouble and expense to set an extremely talented and professional assassin on what is most probably your trail.” Talley scrutinized Borges with a trained eye, watching for changes of expression, an unexplained tic, the slightest telltale sign of duplicity. Talley’s speculative scenario, after all, was designed specifically for effect. “Lucita’s been warming up with subordinates on this operation—at least, that’s how I read her exercises on MacEllen and Torres.”

“Rey, dead?” said Borges with sudden interest. “That hasn’t been confirmed.” Talley was carefully noncommittal. “He’s missed the past three arranged call-times.

Two bodies, the descriptions matching those of the two he took with him, were found in Waterbury, Connecticut. It’s one of the cities he’s supposed to be scouting.” He paused for a minute. “I saw the news footage of the bodies. It’s her work. You get to recognize styles after a while.”

“You say there were only two bodies found. Rey could have gotten away.” There was an unexpected tinge of hope in Borges’s voice, one that quickly faded as Talley raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Torres might be remarkably talented for his age and lineage,” said the templar, “but on his best night and Lucita’s worst, all he could do would be to extend matters another few minutes. Without help—and I saw what happened to his help—he had no chance.” There was another moment of awkward silence. “I’m sorry. If I’d been there, I could have saved him—but there’s no guarantee that Lucita wouldn’t have moved on you instead in my absence.”

“Dammit, Talley, when did this become about you?” Borges slammed his fist down on the table. The famous temper was on display again. “My second-in-command is missing and presumed destroyed, two of my best soldiers are curiosities for the local coroner to poke at in his spare time, and you’re apologizing because you couldn’t be in two places at once? Good God, you arrogant son of a bitch, do you think that I was given the blood yesterday, that I would be helpless without you? That I am archbishop because I won a popularity contest? By all the saints, Talley, you have no sense of whom you are talking to!”

Talley blinked, once, deliberately. “Your Excellency,” he said with cold formality, “whoever seeks your death has gone to tremendous lengths to ensure that you—if you are indeed the target—have no hope of survival. He has purchased the services of the one assassin that your ultimate patron in this affair cannot move against.”

“He’s not my patron.”

“Monçada is the patron of this entire affair, Borges, and you are just a small part of it. Be thankful he considers you worth preserving. My services are not assigned lightly, nor am I usually a watchdog. They call me the Hound for a reason. I hunt. If I am leashed to you, it is because the situation is most pressing indeed. Now listen to me; listen very closely. There is a pattern here, one you should fear. You are the one whom my instinct tells me most specifically to guard, and the one who has the least connection with the cardinal. Whoever has set this assassin on your trail—unless the whole thing is a ruse, and the cardinal has been fooled as thoroughly as I have—knows the cardinal well enough to know his weakness regarding Lucita, and has the resources necessary to make use of that knowledge. The implication, then, is that it is someone who knows Cardinal Monçada and knows how he works—but as yet, there is no telling who it might be.”

Abruptly, he stood and began pacing. “I find it highly unlikely that your indirect assailant is of the Camarilla. Archbishop Vykos would be the obvious target in that case, seeing as the Camarilla seems to fixate on destroying Tzimisce; it must be the Tremere influence. On the other hand, Archbishop Polonia would be the sensible target, as he is the commander and chief tactician, and surely the enemy knows it. But no, the target I feel the need to watch most carefully is you—the Lepidus in this little triumvirate.” Borges bristled at that, and Talley ignored him. “Furthermore, Lucita’s services are too expensive to acquire just for a feint, and she’d hardly consent to be a diversion. She has quite the sense of her own importance, you know.” He flashed a brief, humorless smile. “Still. It doesn’t add up. Nothing here says Camarilla, and yet the other options don’t make sense either. You simply don’t matter to the independents, except the snakes, and they have their own people to take care of matters without going to the expense of hiring Lucita. That leaves our own side, which would explain how the cardinal heard about it, but not who, or why. There’s been no notion put before Les Amis Noirs for your destruction; and frankly, it would seem more likely that you’d hire Lucita to eliminate Archbishop Polonia.”

“I need no assassins!” blustered Borges, but Talley wondered about the thoughts behind the shadowy façade. One did not become archbishop of anything if one were a total fool, and Talley suspected that at least some of Borges’s worst behavior was just an act.

“Indeed. I never said you did. What evidence could possibly point at you, Your Excellency? Now, Don Polonia might be another matter. If he was the one to send Torres on that recon—”

“I insisted,” said Borges.

“Ah,” Talley said. “No doubt wanting to garner some plaudits for you and yours. You played right into your enemy’s hands, you know. You sent your best man out where he could be isolated and destroyed efficiently. Someone wants to cut you off. Presumably, that someone also encouraged you to send Torres out. If not Polonia, then Vykos?”

“No, no.” Borges shook his head. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Vykos wanted him for something different, another of her fool schemes. Polonia said something suitably condescending, what was it? Ah, ‘Good officers shouldn’t be wasted on foolish missions,’ or something of that ilk. You know how he is,” he added irritably.

“I see,” said Talley softly. Inwardly, his frustration was mounting. He was having little success pruning his respective lists of targets and traitors: Each was still three names long. That being the case, he had little choice but to continue to prepare to protect all of the archbishops. “Fine,” he began again irritably. “You, Your Excellency, are going to keep your remaining people on a short tether. You will not let anyone get your goat and trick you into doing something rash, no matter what. I can prevent other people from killing you, but I can’t keep you from getting yourself killed. Furthermore, you are also going to follow my instructions any time we’re in a situation that I deem dangerous. Do you understand?”

“You are presuming a great deal, Templar,” said Borges in a low, dangerous voice. “You know something? I am.” Talley had suddenly had it with all of the damn touchy archbishops and their foibles that just made his job that much harder. “I am not doing this because I like you, Archbishop Borges. I don’t like you. But that doesn’t matter. I have been told to keep you from the Final Death, and that is what I will do—if you allow me to do it. If not, fine. I will declare my mission a miserable failure, return to Madrid and tell the cardinal what an uncooperative bastard you were. Mind you, the key word I use is ‘were’ because I have no doubt that without me to defend you, Lucita will fulfill her contract and be off spending her ridiculously large fee by the time my plane touches ground in Europe. At that point, I am sure that the cardinal will tell me that he’s very disappointed in me, and then he’ll ask me what I think of the latest move in his chess game, and if I am truly lucky, he will ask me to take confession. Then we will undoubtedly sit and talk, and wait for the official news of your demise.”

“I see.” The tone of Borges’s voice indicated quite clearly that he approved of neither Talley’s tone nor his manner, but there was a certain persuasiveness to the templar’s argument. “And if I cooperate, I have some minuscule chance of survival?”

Talley nodded.

“Ah. It appears, then,” said Borges, “that I have no choice but to put myself in your capable hands.”

Talley bowed, from the waist instead of the neck. “If you don’t mind, Your Excellency, I will take my leave. This room is, to the best of my ability, secure for the moment. I recommend, of course, bright lights throughout. If you need me, I will be down the hall.” He went out, shutting the door behind him with an audible click.

Archbishop Borges sat for a moment, then got up and turned off all the lights instead. Humming tunelessly to himself, he sat down in the dark to wait.

Hyatt Regency, Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

An hour after Talley’s departure, Borges was still waiting. The shadows around his eyes were even darker than those in the room, but darkest of all was his mood. His large body pressed deeply into the overstuffed chair of his unlit hotel room, and his two meaty hands supported and covered a fleshy face as they had for an hour now.

He was Borges, for Caine’s sake! Archbishop of Miami, here in Washington, D.C., to coordinate the continuing Sabbat offensive that was bringing the Camarilla to its knees. Unfortunately, the Camarilla, or someone sympathetic to them, or someone with an unfortunately timed and unknown purpose, was trying to kill him. Or maybe one of his Sabbat rivals—Vykos or Polonia—was the target.

Talley, the lapdog of Cardinal Monçada, believed Borges was the target. Well, at least he pretended to think as much. Borges realized it could all be part of the plot. Maybe just a plot to make him play it safe and so when it came time to hand out rewards for the East Coast bloodbaths, others would seem more deserving.

Someone wants to cut you off, Talley had told him an hour ago. The fool had said to keep the lights brightly lit as well. Why? So the presumed assassin could better see his target? To scare away the shadows that would be the archbishop’s best defense against a superior assassin? Anything less than a killer of surpassing skill would prove no match for the archbishop’s physical prowess.

Well, Torres was dead, though that was another conclusion of Talley’s.

All of this would be idle speculation of the sort that never caused Borges much distraction, but there had been the phone call from Vykos. That it-bitch had proposed a purpose for Torres that would have isolated him, though not the mission that might have in the end killed the man. And here it was again, calling with information supposedly hot from the presses for which Borges should just shit in happiness and gratitude. But it was information that further occupied the people he needed most.

This time it was Sebastian. Indeed, the young Lasombra was already far from the archbishop’s side, in Atlanta, where he was solidifying the Sabbat’s hold on the city. There was supposedly some trouble still. A Tremere and a Nosferatu were in hiding. Rumors persisted that the former prince had not perished in the conflagration that wiped out an entire unit of war ghouls and might still be at large in the city, with possible intentions to reclaim it. Other mutterings of less import.

But if Rey Torres did indeed turn out to be dead, or if he continued missing for much longer, then Borges would normally have called Sebastian to him. That upstart Sutphen could just keep a lid on things until Sebastian returned. Sutphen possessed no great leadership abilities, nor did he possess a tactical mind, and so Sebastian, who at least had the latter of those two attributes, would be welcomed upon his return. However, in the meantime, Sutphen would keep things from degenerating. The man could be a monster, and would ruthlessly harass those who tried to play while Sebastian the cat was away.

And because Sutphen would be incapable of rallying a cadre of supporters, Sebastian would have no conflicts upon his return.

But now Vykos had made this damned impossible, saying Victoria Ash was on her way back to Atlanta. It couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say why for certain, but thought—or wished Borges to believe—that she was going to organize a resistance. It claimed she was on the verge of ousting Benison, or was at the very least the one responsible for the Brujah archon’s presence at the party the Sabbat so rudely and merrily interrupted. And Archon Julius, along with Benison, was the cause of ninety percent or more of the casualties the Sabbat had suffered that night.

And Vykos made the damnable suggestion that maybe, just maybe, she was finding similar support to install her as prince.

In addition to all this, how could Borges overlook the fact that it was Vykos that had captured Victoria? How had she managed to escape? Either she is dangerous, or Vykos was incompetent. Or Vykos has included the Toreador in some long-range plan.

And if that was the case, then he would need a good man like Sebastian in Atlanta, even if that was exactly what Vykos wanted.

Borges shoved his head further into his hands. He imagined the Toreador could indeed be persuasive, and he wished he rather than Vykos had been the one to get his hands on her. He’d show her persuasive.

Borges growled and grasped the arms of the chair. When one tore off at the insistence of his strength, Borges almost tumbled onto the floor. He steadied himself and then decided his best course of action was to run right into the barrel of the cannon. He would leave Sebastian in Atlanta.

And as for himself… Well, he had no plans to remain on the sideline. If Lucita wanted a piece of him, then she could damn well come and get him. He refused, however, to lose because of inactivity.

A townhouse Avondale Estates, Georgia

He was dreaming, and he knew it. It would be terrible, and he knew it. But he could not wake from the dream.

Not only was it daytime, anathema for a vampire, but Prince Benison had descended into torpor. The injuries to psyche and physique he had sustained two months ago would not heal by even the supernatural means available to his kind. His only other memory since that fateful night was another dream, that of a beautiful woman who was not his wife. Though dreaming now, he was conscious enough to recall this other vision.

He knew that woman was Victoria Ash, and though he recalled his feelings toward her, and his uncertainty regarding the truth of the call for help he received from her, he could not find hatred or even dislike for her any longer. Was this numbing a result of the torpor he now realized had him gripped?

He could only admire her beauty, and weep for his Eleanor, who was never so lovely and who would never again walk this earth.

The tears of the former prince fogged the clarity of his vision as well, and through this mist stepped an eyeless man. Not just eyeless, Benison realized. Faceless too. The man was wrapped so tightly in a thick cotton cloak that he seemed a babe swaddled in a protecting blanket. But nothing had protected this man, for though he bore no visage to describe it, great pain and weariness was communicated by his gestures, his stride, his bowed head.

Benison thought for a moment that he saw himself, his own pain; but this man’s agony was more complete. Benison’s might be an acute ache, a yearning for things to be different, a desire for a path through a jungle of despair, but this other! His pain was Benison’s but without a past to covet and without a future to embrace.

He strode through the effluvium Benison’s tears had summoned in this dreamscape and approached the Malkavian former prince of Atlanta. The faceless man held his arms plaintively outstretched from his sides and fell to his knees before Benison. The Malkavian tried in vain to hear the words a mouthless man might speak, but this empty plane was silent too. It was a silence that began to hurt Benison’s ears, and he clutched them.

The faceless stranger stood and gestured toward Benison and then behind Benison. The Malkavian turned, and sitting where nothing had been before was a great black cauldron. Steam rose from it, and the surface of water within it bubbled and stormed even though no fire was beneath it nor any heat evident at all.

The huge pot was braided with the twisted shapes of tangled serpents, two of which rose with arched backs on opposite side of the container to form thick handles, although, full, the pot would test the strength of even one such as Benison, and even empty, few might budge it. As Benison watched, the snakes began to writhe and as they moved, the water bubbled more and more furiously.

Then the stranger stepped past Benison, interposing himself between the Malkavian and the cauldron. Benison shifted to the sides to gain a view just in time to see the stranger clasp the two handles of the massive pot. The skin on his hands sizzled and quickly blistered and burned red. Benison tried to call out, but he could manage no sound. The stranger’s hands turned dark, and surface flesh began to crack and flake into pieces like the delicate remains of paper thrown into a fire.

Benison stepped closer, and he saw that the water was now strangely still, and within the water the reflection of the stranger had a face. The Malkavian glanced at the stranger himself, but he still lacked a countenance.

When Benison gazed back into the water, the face within the water was staring at him. Its mouth was forming words, but there was no sound. Benison tried to make out the words, and though the lips seemed to form themselves around nonsense syllables—or perhaps words of a language unknown to Benison—and though the entirety of the landscape was still absolutely silent, the former prince could now hear the words.

The reflected face said, “Bring to me the Robe of Nessus.”

And though he knew not what this meant, what robe this was, and to whom it must be delivered, Benison nodded. When he did, the reflected image of the stranger became faceless as well.

Then the stranger unwrapped the folds of cotton surrounding him, and tossed the armful of clothing aside. It fell into a heap and was now a pile of filthy and worn cloth. Now naked, the stranger looked much smaller. He was lithe, and long hair draped his shoulders and obscured much of his still-visageless face. The stranger sat. Naked though he was, he pulled a dagger from somewhere and used it to cut the hair from his head in great, crude chunks. These he dropped wherever: to his side, on his lap. Then he stood.

Benison did not move to stop the stranger—or perhaps could not, the Malkavian was uncertain—when he dove headfirst into the smooth but steaming water. Suddenly, noise crashed into the dream, and the splash of water seemed a thunderous explosion. Only a few drops of water splashed from the cauldron, and this in midair transformed into blood. Several droplets of the blood landed near Benison’s feet and skittered away like beads of mercury, or as if the ground were highly polished or even frictionless. Some two or three landed on Benison himself and soaked immediately into and through the clothing the Malkavian wore.

Benison quickly tore his clothing off, but he was too late, though too late for what he wasn’t certain. Regardless, the blood now formed stains on the Malkavian’s skin, but the stains would not rub away or fade at all. They were more like brilliant birthmarks now, two on his torso and one on his left arm. Benison left his torso bare.

The water in the great pot bubbled for a moment and again subsided. Benison stepped closer and peered within, bending his face as near as the stranger’s had been before. Benison cast no reflection in the water, but instead a scene appeared within the water and began to play like a motion picture.

An emaciated, naked woman stood on a pedestal. She was beautiful in a disturbing manner. There was no depth of physical beauty, but the smooth lines and graceful stance gave her an animalistic aura. And a sense of her distance, a detachment from her viewer, gave rise to an arousing fecundity that made Benison nervous. He could only continue to look because her eyes were closed and he did not have the sense that she was returning his fascinated gaze.

A metal snake slithered from the rim of the cauldron and entered the scene in the water. Slowly circling the still form, the snake moved closer with each circumnavigation as if in the pull of a relentless gravity. Soon it brushed the woman’s feet and she flinched, but she returned to motionlessness as the serpent curled around one of her legs and methodically worked its way up her body. Past her knee and to her thigh until it pushed through the black hair of the woman’s pubis and slithered up around her waist. Then higher still past her stomach and over the small rises of her breasts, then pushing through the dark recesses of her unshorn armpits until it encircled her neck.

Then the serpent suddenly transformed into a thick jade robe that clothed the woman. Her eyes opened, and in a flash, Benison realized this woman was Hannah, the Tremere primogen of Atlanta when he had been prince. Now she did stare at Benison, and that face he’d never seen crack with emotion drew tight in fear.

Benison watched in confusion as the spots of blood that stained his torso and arm suddenly beaded into small red globules and plopped into the water. They were distended by an unseen eddy in the water and swirled into a spiral as they sank toward the image of Hannah. The three ribbons of blood reached her simultaneously and slowly closed as the Tremere witch looked from one to the next.

In a flash, Hannah had collapsed on the pedestal and her green robe was stained with blood. And an instant later, after just enough time for that scene to burn itself into Benison’s mind’s eye, the image in the water exploded in a furious bath of steam.

He stepped away lest more droplets splash onto him as before. Then a pair of feet began to stretch up from the water, and somehow Benison knew they belonged to the stranger. Calves and thighs appeared next, and then the stranger’s bare buttocks emerged from the surging water. The stranger continued to sprout from the water and turned at an angle so that in a moment he was standing with his back to Benison, hands clutching the serpent handles as before, but no longer burning at that contact.

With a great effort, the stranger hefted the cauldron upward. As he raised it, he also turned it upside down. No water spilled from it, even when it was completely overturned and above the stranger’s head.

Then the man turned to face Benison, and face he did, for he now bore the visage earlier reflected in the water.

He said, “The Robe of Nessus.”

Then, in a deluge of water and steam, the contents of the cauldron rushed downward and gushed over the stranger… and over the entirety of the dream.

Benison’s eyes flickered to life in a room on the interior of the second floor of his shabbiest haven. Thoughts of Eleanor, Victoria and Hannah blended together, and he snarled in anger. He would not be robbed of the pure memories of his wife!

Was this an effect of torpor? A “natural” means of self-preservation that was instinct in Kindred?

Despite his wish to feel an overwhelming need for revenge, Benison could not summon such emotions. Instead, with a abrupt flash of understanding, he knew what he needed to do, and he also knew the identity of the stranger in his dream.

He shrank from what he imagined to be an awful purpose, but his courageous heart stood strong to Anatole’s need.

Benison collapsed back onto his bed and slept the remainder of the day in peace, dreaming only of Eleanor.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 8:15 AM (9:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time) Harmony High-Rise

Chicago, Illinois

Webs of flesh and foliage in subterranean caverns filled with water and dragons. Geomantic webs arcing across cities.

A sculpted web of flesh and stone woven together that might entrap and combine them all.

A giant spider’s web inside a circle of stone. No… concrete. Webbing between the rim and four spokes directed, not at the cardinal points, but more in the manner of a chicken’s footprint.

The wheel turned and became a snake swallowing its tail. Became a road, a great highway clogged with traffic now stuck on streets tacky like enormous sheets of flypaper.

The web of the city.

A shimmering dove flew in the midst of all this. Trying to find her way. Turning suddenly and unpredictably to avoid the hunters. Desperate to fly higher and have a view from above. Not to comprehend the formations of the earth, but simply to know the lay of the land. The rules by which she must live.

A raven with a serpent head spied the poor dove. In the darkness, the raven could not be seen, and it sped past the dove toward a silent spider that waited in a corner of the city’s web. The raven alighted on the web, disturbing it, but was quickly away before the spider could step from its gloom.

The spider now also spied the dove and watched as the lovely bird landed in a gilded cage. But this cage locked from the inside and the dove rested its wings. The spider groomed its hairy legs and juiced its mandibles with poison.

Other foul creatures appeared on the periphery of the web: A scorpion with eight dog legs. A cockroach crisscrossed with rents and holes through which tussled and tangled a myriad of tiny worms. A bloated ant leaking a trail of oily black mucus from a weeping anus rimmed with small teeth. There were others in the darkness too, but they did not yet need reveal their monstrous selves.

They would drive the dove to earth where they would restrain her and pluck her feathers and piss on her brilliant plumage. Anatole knew he needed this dove. He needed her because he could not predict her flight, which might mean he didn’t need her at all.

But she had to bear his message. Anatole began to scrawl his words on a piece of coarse paper. Perhaps even her erratic flight would make her an able messenger. He knew it to be true—otherwise, he would not see her thus.

So if she was to be grounded, then it must be toward the old badger who has waited so many years. The badger was not sleeping now, but it was still waiting. Anatole needed but to write his message for the badger to receive it, if he wrote it in blood, which he did on his rough-hewn paper.

And the badger’s nose twitched. It knew the scent of this bird already and was not simply willing but eager to see it gently to the ground.

That exhausted union, side by side on the ground, faded from Anatole’s mind, and he found himself stalking the trails of another.

Rarely was Anatole the one found inside the dreams of another, but he had anticipated this one’s blood for two centuries. He would tread such ground. Perhaps to see himself symbolized would someday give him a clue to his own visions and metaphors.

Then he would return to the sleep meant for others of his kind during the day. Was their sleep as disturbed, he wondered, or did they slumber in peace?

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 8:54 PM A mansion in Buckhead

Atlanta, Georgia

That life was a matter of cycles Victoria would agree as she sat alone in her spacious drawing room. Unfortunately, she was forced to admit as well that the cycles that had recently snared her were more akin to a cyclone. She was caught and spinning mindlessly, aimlessly, purposelessly.

At least as far as her own goals were concerned. The remnants of the Camarilla she’d left two nights before in Baltimore were being served by her aimlessness.

She raised a slender finger toward her jawline. Meanwhile she stared intently at herself in the mirror. She was finally but barely able to stand to look upon herself again, but even so she did not watch her digit’s slow but mindful progress to the point on her face. Instead, she stared with astonishing intensity into the reflection of her own eyes. Perhaps she hoped a vision would be reflected therein, but all she saw was the same near- perfect face that had bored her of late but which still moved others to rapturously indecent thoughts. And sometimes action, if she allowed it, which she sometimes did, though without the kind of consummation expected.

The fingertip settled into place, and Victoria felt the barely perceptible but graceless ridges of the mark that refused to fade. All the blood of Baltimore had failed to overcome it.

A snake swallowing its tail. The story of her recent months. The symbol of the Sabbat who’d essentially raped her in this same city two months before.

For one moment she had nearly been prince of this city; now she was its prisoner. Not in any physical way, for a wily Kindred could find ways in and out of virtually any place on earth no matter the safeguards stacked against them. The Sabbat now in charge of this recently Camarilla-controlled city had failed to account for one with the guile and contacts of Victoria Ash, though entering the city itself was an easy proposition in this case. The former primogen had quietly driven down I-85 in a rental car. Dreadfully simple, but laughably beyond many Kindred her age, who had never taken the time to learn how to operate the no-longer-so-new gasoline-powered conveyances that until recently had been the dominant shapers of the landscape and pace of the world. That privilege now fell to computers and the wired world, so Victoria was learning that as well.

No, Atlanta enthralled Victoria’s mind. That’s why she was glad to be back. Not just for the vengeance she expected to claim, but because, if this was the starting point, then she wanted to start again.

She had gained this opportunity for renewal by means more foul than fair. Not that Victoria could particularly blame Jan Pieterzoon or Prince Garlotte for their maneuverings that had poised her for this trip. After all, the continuing failure of her own plans had left her in a position of weakness, and the continuing failure of her efforts to finally cleanse her body of the Tzimisce Elford’s vile touch left her mentally exhausted as well.

In fact, she’d barely managed even a simple test to decide whether she’d return to Atlanta or not. A glance at a wall clock showed the clock ticking to an odd minute, and that was the catalyst for this journey. Like any major decision in her life since shortly after her Embrace, Victoria relied on a random test of some variety to make the decision for her. That randomness was probably part of the explanation for the chaos that had engulfed her of late, but it had served her well for three centuries until now. Or so she assumed. The purpose of this seemingly frivolous and perhaps desperate (and probably both) ploy was to maintain her free will and make certain she had not become the plaything of an immortal more powerful than her. But what kind of freedom was submission to such randomness?

So, perhaps free will was sacrificed, but failing the embrace of the lovers’ arms that had safeguarded Victoria in her pre-Kindred days, this was the only protection she could find. At least the only of any enduring nature. Less important and less effective was the temporary shelter she had found at times like this in places like this mansion.

Owned by Harold Feinstein, a wealthy patron of the arts in Atlanta who had made and continued to amass a fortune in the booming real-estate market of this soulless city, the enormous structure had been home to a handful of Victoria’s soirées when she had begun to make her own mark in the city. The fact that Harold paid for these, and not just in money, mattered little to him. The fact that Victoria allowed herself to be undressed for the first time since her abortive attempt to seduce the Ventrue Pieterzoon mattered little to her. She took that as ample evidence that a return to this city was in her best interest.

What a long time ago those frivolities in this mansion seemed to Victoria. She examined herself closely in the mirror this time. She did not even pretend to look at herself as she had just a handful of months ago. Her beauty had always been a weapon for her, both as kine and through several hundred years among the Kindred, but the reflected classical features which adorned so many famous works, or at least admired pieces of artwork, because of her associations with countless mortal painters and sculptors no longer produced a sense of delightful whimsy in her. That feeling had been there since she was a mortal barely possessed of breasts with which to tease young men whose intentions were utterly transparent.

Her plight of late had finally burnt away that joy. Her gorgeous green eyes. Her slender neck. Her silken skin. Her lustrous hair. All once toys to her, now merely implements to serve her interests.

And at present, revenge would serve her interest even more than solving the puzzle of a young Toreador turned Gangrel-destroyer, but she wasn’t certain how to exact it. The Sabbat population in the city was surely relatively low, considering that these forces were the ones that pressed the attacks northward along the coast. Borges’s lackey Sebastian was now bishop of Atlanta, and was presumably somewhere within his new domain. She guessed that her persecutor, Elford, remained in the city as well. He was not a warrior, only a torturer. And though she’d healed the physical punishment that the Tzimisce had inflicted, the psychic scars persisted.

The memories of what Vykos had done when it had first captured her also remained. The serpent along her jawline was a remembrance of that brief time, although Victoria had been able to dismiss nightmares of the creature itself. So Vykos was exempt from Victoria’s hatred, but Elford’s remaining nights on this earth had begun a countdown the night Victoria escaped his clutches through the fortunate intervention of a pair of Kindred agents employed by the Setite Hesha.

Then there was the presumed purpose of her trip “home” in the first place—Leopold. It was only two days since the revelation that it might have been Leopold who was responsible for the decimation of Xaviar’s Gangrel in upper-state New York. On the face of it, the idea was preposterous. The young Toreador was a weak-willed whelp, and Victoria had last seen him as he was pounded repeatedly against the floor by a tendril of darkness made solid by Lasombra magic. But she also believed she recalled seeing him go flying out a window, so while the chance that he had survived the Sabbat ambush at the High Museum was remote, it was not an impossibility. The matter of the powers he presently seemed to wield, if in fact he had survived, was another mystery altogether.

On the other hand, to Victoria the involvement of Leopold somehow seemed appropriate. He was too intimately tied to the whole affair of the past months, at least where Victoria was concerned, for his potential resurfacing to be dismissed or even considered a mere coincidence. Nor could Victoria dispel misgivings about the affair, for it had the aura of deeply buried plots and manipulations of the sort she feared.

Not only had Leopold saved her life during the Sabbat attack at the High, but he’d also been the one whose entrance through the mammoth doors of heaven and hell Victoria had placed at the threshold to her party had determined whether or not she would strike to become prince of Atlanta. This last fact had occurred to her only as she considered the matter during her less-than-luxurious trip south last night. How ironic that he should have been the one to determine that she make an effort at princedom, and then perhaps somehow be at the root of her failure.

In any event, Victoria was curious what clues regarding Leopold—his past, his present, his plans—she might find in her former city. She knew of only one of his havens. It was likely that he had at least a second, for all wise Kindred kept a back-up; but if he was indeed only a young Toreador and not a power fearsome enough to demolish an army of Gangrel, then perhaps one was all he had.

Victoria smiled wryly. The fool had seemed genuinely smitten with her. Perhaps she would find him here, bend him to her will, and use him to reclaim this city. In actuality, though, Victoria expected and hoped to find only traces of Leopold, not the Kindred himself.

So her mission in Atlanta was twofold: revenge and discovery. Victoria was uncertain where to begin. She pondered this for a moment more and decided the only safe means of proceeding was the one she always used: a random test. She patted a dusting of powder over the coiled serpent scar and looked at herself a final time in the mirror. Without her usual flair or satisfaction, she found her reflection entirely ravishing, although her form was clad for the first time in years in blue denim jeans and a T-shirt.

She languidly gained her feet and smiled into the mirror, not with pleasure, but in recognition of how far she had fallen.

But should she pursue revenge or not? Which was the better path? A test would decide for her, if not truly give the best answer. But without a doubt, there was nothing more random than old Harold’s sexual prowess.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 9:18 PM Ponce de Leon Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia

Despite a heartfelt urgency for the matter at hand, Benison had been slow waking earlier. Normally he rose like clockwork with the disappearance of the sun, but that had been when he was prince, and before Eleanor—

Well, before a whole host of changes in his life.

He felt physically revived, and even his mental vigor seemed renewed. That, he suspected, was because he had something upon which he might focus, even if he didn’t entirely understand the mission vaguely explained in his dream.

What else could he expect of Anatole? Surely not a factual account of his needs!

But why did it seem so important to assist the prophet? Certainly there were ties of blood. Clan ties among the Malkavians—the mad, doomed, despairing, obsessing, discerning lot of them—were less than in many clans, but they could and did exist. But for Benison that didn’t seem enough to explain his current feelings. Surely too Anatole’s celebrity contributed to Benison’s willingness. It was much easier to refuse the request of an unknown than someone of stature, whether infamous or exalted.

Still, even this did not seem adequate. The only explanation that was satisfactory to Benison was that it had concerned his city. His former city. Something more important that a mere Sabbat ambush must have started in Atlanta. While he slept, Benison had received word from other Malkavians that the rampage was spread beyond this city; but it was to Atlanta that Anatole traveled, not the others.

Of course, there was also the possibility that he was being coerced, that though he felt willing, that agreeableness was an illusion.

Benison also recalled that Hannah had not attended the Summer Solstice Party where the ambush had taken place, and he wondered what part she played in the matter. Was the subtext of the dream he had had that of revenge against Hannah for some role she’d played in his downfall? Was she the one coercing him now?

Seek the Robe of Nessus, the stranger—Anatole—had said. This was the robe that had killed the Greek hero Heracles, or so said the book in the store in Little Five Points. Normally, Benison took questions regarding such matters to Hannah, not asked them about her, but as she was presumably unavailable, that was not an option. So the ex- prince braved a bookstore. The memory of himself in that retail store thumbing through books did not amuse Benison.

Regardless, the book had explained that the wife of Heracles, angered over some matter or another, gave her husband a robe from the centaur Nessus. But the robe was soaked with the centaur’s blood and the poison of an arrow Heracles had some time before shot at Nessus. When he donned the robe, Heracles ran mad and died.

Which led back around again to the question: Was the robe of the dream a symbol for something else such as Hannah’s treachery as the Greek hero’s wife was treacherous, or was Benison truly after the robe itself? The former was certainly more what one would expect from a Malkavian. Benison should obviously know, although he would never have gained and retained the title of prince if his abilities were specious.

So the only way Benison knew to settle the matter, or at least to begin to probe the problem, was to visit the Tremere chantry. He presumed it abandoned and overcome in the fighting that had surely followed the ambush at the High Museum, but there were many other possibilities. Perhaps a handful of Tremere—even Hannah among them—yet held out against the Sabbat from within the chantry. Or perhaps they were defeated on that solstice night or soon after that night, and the place was empty. Or perhaps the Tremere were defeated and the Sabbat now occupied or had at least ransacked the place.

If the latter was true, then the chances of discovering an actual Robe of Nessus seemed dim.

Benison had walked the handful of miles from that bookstore in Little Five Points to the Tremere chantry, which he now approached. He was glad to be away from the area around the bookstore. Not because it was a hotbed of counterculture in Atlanta, but because of those who sought such areas for their activity. Formerly that had meant a lot of deadbeat Kindred who had no legitimate place in the Atlanta Benison would have preferred to rule, but now that meant Sabbat anxious for easy victims in a city they might not yet completely understand. Where better to flaunt your fangs and hint of a dark soul than among those who relished it, or pretended to relish it in a pitiful attempt to find a place in the periphery of kine society?

Not that much of the length of East Ponce de Leon that Benison walked was any different. Hookers and drug dealers, flop houses and strip clubs lined much of it. So Benison remained wary of other Kindred, but he did not have any fears worth observing until he had come within a couple of blocks of the Tremere stronghold. Until that time, casual observers, even other Kindred, had had little chance of noticing the Malkavian, cloaked as he was by means of powers of the blood he’d learned long ago.

Even if no Kindred—neither Tremere or Sabbat—were present, then the boobytraps the wizard vampires had likely left in place to guard any remaining possessions were surely formidable in and of themselves. Perhaps the powers that rendered Benison essentially invisible now would prevail over the Tremere defenses. But he doubted it.

The Malkavian did his best to exert the fullest extent of his powers, and continued his approach. As the enormous building began to loom high in the humid night sky, Benison scouted the streets and buildings nearby. A suspicious couple in a diner across the street gave Benison some pause, but he was relieved of any worries that they were Kindred when he saw their food arrive and watched as both began to devour a repast that would not sit well in any vampire’s stomach. Well, some Kindred might possess the ability to hold food down, but they were the extremely rare exception.

Benison did not stop again until he stood in front of the massively gabled house. It was four stories high, and these were floors of great height, not the meager height of floors in office buildings or modern houses. This was a grand house of Atlanta, perhaps the grand house, and Benison again regretted that it had fallen into the hands of the Tremere. The prince recalled when its construction had begun early in the period of Southern Reconstruction following the War Between the States.

Now it was ruined. The top floor seemed to have been completely blasted away, and the floors below that were gutted and blackened by fire. How so much still stood despite what must have been a raging fire, Benison was unsure. He supposed the Tremere must have had magical and mundane protective measures in place.

A short walkway from the city sidewalk led to the great iron fence that ringed the mansion. Benison noted a few places where the fence was bent, notably at the gates on this walkway and the driveway, but much of it still stood. Beyond the gate in the front was a short brick walkway that led to the building’s monumental front doors. The doors still stood, although they appeared to be slightly ajar.

Benison approached. Perhaps there was still a chance of finding what he required— what Anatole required—within this burned and damaged building. He figured at the very least he would have the run of the place. It was unlikely that any Kindred yet remained within its walls, and he doubted that any kine had moved in. The place sent chills even down the spine of the former prince. Mortals would find the place unapproachable.

As he neared the six brick steps that elevated the walkway to a landing in front of the doors, Benison was overcome by a moment of vertigo. At first he thought he was under attack. Then he decided it must be a lingering weakness from the substantial wounds he’d endured and from which he’d only recently recovered. Then he realized it was just his mind playing tricks on him again, for out of the ashes of the present demolished structure rose the glorious old mansion of the past.

The blackened walls became pristine white once again. The crumbled walls became whole. The missing fourth floor materialized.

Benison shook his head. It was an odd kind of vision, not like his usual sort. Not like when he imagined a Confederate army outside—even inside!—the High Museum of Art. Those phantoms he accepted wholeheartedly, and even now with reflection he could not dispel a sense that they had existed. But this! This was a stranger trick, because he knew the building was in tatters.

In fact, if he concentrated enough, Benison could make out a vision of the burned building beneath the superimposed stately and whole one. Was this his own mind deluding him? Was he so attached to the beautiful structure of the past that he refused to give it up even though his eyes told him otherwise?

Or was this a trick of Anatole’s? A vision that other Malkavian had somehow made possible? Strangely, Benison felt much more comfortable with that. That, he could accept almost as a gift, instead of the apprehension he felt when forced to consider it might be his own mind manipulating him.

So Benison let go the image of the burned mansion, and embraced the image of it as it once was.

He entered. His memory and his vision both revealed a room that was nearly as high as the mansion itself, but was itself rather small in terms of floorspace. There were sets of double doors ahead of and to the right of the Malkavian, as well as a flight of curling stairs that led to a second-floor balcony. A third-floor balcony was above that, but there was no visible means of accessing it from this chamber.

An assortment of arcane curios furnished the room. There was a low-rimmed table flanked by a large red chair. Three tops spun constantly atop the table. There was a recessed and illuminated cavity in the floor that contained bones of some sort. Dozens of paintings hung high on the walls of the room, but only two hangings at eye level. The first was a framed document: a confession from hundreds of years before at the witch trials in Salem; the second, set near the double doors to the right of the entrance, was more interesting still.

The wall-hanging was in fact a mirror. It seemed plain enough. Certainly it was made of valuable materials—a silver rim inset with small diamonds—but the riches of the kine held less value to a discriminating Kindred. However, the mirror’s reflection was what startled and enraptured the Malkavian. When Benison stared into it, the image of himself was faceless. Where the Malkavian’s eyes and nose and mouth should have been, there was instead a flesh-toned void.

Just as in his dream, of course, except then it had been Anatole’s face rather than his reflection that was expressionless. Benison looked away from the mirror and at the set of doors next to it. He paused only a moment before approaching them. The left one opened when he turned its crystal knob, and Benison found himself at the end of a long hallway.

Where to now? he wondered. What had he expected to find when he entered? A robe draped over a chair inside the front door? Benison laughed at himself, but he knew this was no logical errand he pursued. His only option, failing further intervention of dreamstuff, was to wander the entire mansion. He had eternal nights for his search, and no other cause that pulled at him so.

So he started down the dark hallway. He did not touch them, but the walls seemed lined with a wallpaper of crushed red velvet, and the floor was covered with a plush rug of the same color and hue. Benison glanced at every door and every decoration, hoping for a revelation.

After traversing about half the length of the hall, the Malkavian got one. There was a picture on the wall of what he guessed to be a Japanese Zen mystic bowed over a spring of clear water. Another man stood beside him and shaved the hair from the mystic’s head.

It was a stretch, perhaps, nowhere as seemingly obvious as the mirror in the entry foyer, but the sight filled Benison with a sense of certainty. These were images from his dream! He tried to open the door nearest the painting. It was a sturdy wooden door with ornately carved lines along top and bottom panels. It yielded to Benison’s hand and swung open quietly.

The Malkavian stepped into a small room that was plainly decorated, at least for a Tremere chantry house. The walls were oak-paneled, and a rectangular oak table that stood in the center of the room bore the wounds of much use. Three matching armed chairs flanked the table, one at a short end of the rectangle and the other two in the middle of the long sides. Green leather cushions sat on the seat of each chair, and rows of small jade stones were inset into the arms of the chairs.

There were two doors in the wall opposite where Benison had entered, and between them hung a tapestry depicting a woodland scene. There were similar tapestries in the center of the walls to his left and right as well. However, the one immediately before him drew his attention again, for crouched among the woven images of trees and ivy was a druid. Before him, and therefore on the left side of the tapestry, was a little black pot elevated over a small but well-stoked fire.

It all seemed so natural, these pieces from his dream, but Benison involuntarily shivered regardless. Even so, he did not hesitate, but moved toward the left-hand door on the opposite side of the room. He accepted all this with such certainty that he did not stop to consider the potential inhabitants of the place any longer, or the fact that no traps or locks or magical or mechanical nature beyond the gate and the front door itself had yet sought to deter him.

Benison merely approached the door and swung it open.

And inside, he saw the robe. It was indeed draped over a chair.

As he stepped into the crudely furnished room, Benison laughed aloud.

The room itself seemed something from a catalog for corporate furniture, including a large desk, leather executive chair, a wet bar, and two chairs in front of the desk that flanked a small table supporting a humidor. The other details blurred as Benison approached the large leather chair and stared at the thick green robe that was draped over the back of it.

For the first time, Benison paused. Something akin to reverence washed through him, and it was only with determined effort that he raised his hands and actually grasped the robe. Once he touched the article, this odd sensation passed, and the robe suddenly seemed very ordinary. But the Malkavian knew better. This was what he had come to reclaim.

He held the robe in front of him and let it hang so the front of it faced him. Sure enough, there [were] bloodstains upon it, and not ones that had resulted from a casual wound. The blood was thick and stiff, and spread over much of the front and shoulders of the heavy green fabric.

Benison looked around at the office. He wondered if so strange, so mundane a room could be—could have been—Hannah’s. It did not seem to suit her; but then, who was to decipher a Tremere? Or for that matter, a Malkavian? At the moment, Benison felt incapable of divining much about either. He only knew that he had Hannah’s robe and must now see it into the possession of the Prophet of Gehenna.

After he escaped this labyrinthine mansion. Benison did not feel the urge to look further throughout the building. He had the feeling that would only bring disaster or at least danger. Best to leave immediately.

As he opened the door to return to the room with the jade-studded chairs, the illusion of the chantry as the jewel it once was faded. Benison found himself within a scarred and blackened chamber. The jade from the chairs was missing, and the chairs themselves were smashed and burned. The table still stood, but precariously so. Benison nudged it, and the table collapsed.

It reminded him of the debts he had to collect from the Sabbat, and suddenly he was certain that delivering this robe to Anatole was indeed the best means to advance that mission.

Sunday, 29 August 1999, 11:15 PM Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland

The vampire who signed his name “Lucius” was, for lack of a better term, disgruntled. The recent council deliberations had not gone the way he’d wanted them to, not at all. Oh, the others had agreed readily enough that they were not quite ready to make a stand (a stance he intended to perpetuate ad infinitum until such time as the entire American Camarilla was backed onto the tip of Long Island or some other equally hopeless place), but then things had fallen apart. Lucius had voted for abandoning Stamford and the Connecticut coast, under the premise that the population density was too low to make the shoreline defensible. That argument had been shot down from multiple directions. The Bridgeport ferry was access to Long Island for a possible counterassault there. Stamford had financial importance beyond its size. Groton’s nuclear submarine factory could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Blather blather blather, talk talk talk.

In the end, Lucius knew he was beaten. Ideally, his plan would have cost the Camarilla its main approach to New York, and isolated Hartford, Worcester and Springfield for the taking whenever Archbishop Polonia got around to it. Instead, the Camarilla had chosen to consolidate its forces along the coast, abandoning Hartford and indeed all of central New England. Hartford itself would be defended by a skeleton force à la Buffalo, as the lone ghoul to survive that attack had reported relatively heavy enemy casualties. Unfortunately, he’d also reported that the enemy forces were surprisingly sparse, almost as if they knew the city would not be heavily defended.

Lucius knew where that line of logic went, and did his best to discourage it subtly. He also took a moment to fudge as much of the ghoul’s memory as he dared, for the others would no doubt be looking for that sort of thing. Hopefully, that would turn suspicion in other directions. Lucius himself contributed the idea that the half-hearted attack on Buffalo meant that the Sabbat’s troops were clearly building up for an imminent assault somewhere else, and he had briefly whipped everyone into a fine frenzy of panic. That had passed, however, and as things stood Lucius simply wanted to be away from everyone and everything. He stalked out of the inn, brushing lesser vampires and ghouls out of his way with a word or sometimes even a look. They scurried off, compelled by the power of his will and his blood.

Eventually, he reached his haven and, with disgust, he slammed the door behind him. The Cainites he was forced to work with here, with their petty politicking and clinging ghouls, disgusted him. However, it wasn’t as if the Sabbat were any better these days. He’d handed that ungrateful wretch Vykos every tidbit he could pass to her. She’d learned troop dispositions, strategies, tactics—everything. But did she show gratitude? Did she offer the barest crumb of courtesy?

No. Instead, she’d threatened to expose him if he didn’t supply even more than he already had.

Lucius was the sort of Cainite who kept a very careful eye on his debts and credits, and from where he stood, by threatening him, Vykos had exhausted her credit line with him. It was too late to back out of the arrangement—the die had been cast, after all—but Vykos needed to be reminded that power still flowed in two directions. Grinning in a way that would have made a sane man flee, Lucius went to his desk, pulled out a piece of stationery, and began to write. He wrote quickly, though not necessarily neatly, and several times he had to resort to blotting paper to clean up the excesses of his enthusiasm.

The letter was brief and to the point, though a handwriting expert might have blanched at the style of what Lucius’s hand had scrawled. Carefully he folded the stationery and placed it in an envelope, which he addressed to “Sascha.” Then he flipped the envelope over and sealed it with wax, eschewing any particular seal in favor of an anonymous blob. “Jack,” he called as he watched the wax cool. “Jack! You’re needed!” Bare moments later, the door to the suite swung open to admit a younger vampire, dressed in what Lucius could only assume was the casual wear of this decade.

“Another letter?” Jack’s tone was laconic, but his service had thus far been exemplary.

Lucius handed the envelope across the desk to Jack, who took it by one corner, as if he were afraid to smudge it with his fingerprints. Perhaps he was. “The delivery is a little different this time, Jack. Are you ready?”

“Oh?” was all Jack said, with no discernible enthusiasm whatsoever. For all the world he looked as if, in a moment more, he’d fall asleep where he stood.

“Yes. Vykos has been disrespectful of late. I do not appreciate such things. Therefore, it behooves me to teach her that such disrespect has a cost.”

“Oh.”

“Therefore, Jack, you must deliver this letter and a message.” He leaned forward with a hungry gleam in his eyes. “Find her chambers. Make my displeasure known. Show her that anywhere she holds sacred, my servants can go. Anyone she values, I can destroy. Do you understand me, Jack?”

Jack nodded, slowly. “Of course. Back in three hours.” He sketched a quick bow and walked toward the door.

“Oh, and Jack?” Lucius called after him. “Yes?”

“Don’t forget to deliver the letter.”

With a pained expression on his face, Jack left.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 2:26 AM The Presidential Hotel Washington, D.C.

The corner of a letter stuck out from under Vykos’s door as she returned from her evening constitutional and meal. “Hector? Ilse?” she called out, cautiously. Neither of the ghouls assigned to her door were present. That was odd. They knew better than to abandon their posts, on pain of her extreme disappointment. Furthermore, each had seen the ramifications of her extreme disappointment before, and as such had presumably learned not to disappoint her.

She stared down at the letter for a minute. The deliberate placement was a taunt, but the question was whether or not there was a trap attached to it as well. Clearly she was supposed to do something to the envelope, presumably drawing it forth and thus triggering whatever might be attached to it. She frowned and delicately pressed her ear to the door. Nothing stirred within. Even straining her inhuman faculties to the utmost, all she could hear was the quiet wheezing of the air conditioning, the gurgle of water in the pipes and the vague confusion of voices from other rooms and other floors.

All of which meant nothing, of course. If a Cainite assassin, properly trained, waited behind the door, then of course she’d hear nothing. If there were some sort of electronic device tied to the letter, it would not betray itself through sounds she could recognize. The corner of the letter jutted from beneath the door, taunting her. She could not go forward, but could not just leave it there. Ordinarily, she’d call for a ghoul to deal with the matter, but none of her ghouls was responding to her calls.

Suddenly, the crunch of footfalls on carpet startled Vykos. She’d forgotten she hadn’t restored her hearing to normal levels, and hastened to do so before the intruder spoke. A normal conversational tone would be painful, while a shout might deafen her.

“Good evening, Your Excellency.” Talley’s voice carried ahead of his presence. “May I approach?”

Vykos smiled. This was a stroke of luck. The templar, as her protector, was among the very select few to know of this haven. “Of course. You’re just the man I wanted to see, Don Talley.”

“Just Talley, please.” He strode forward, a hint of confusion on his face. “Your Excellency, where are your guards? I had been led to believe that your protection was provided for by your servants. I don’t see them here.” Indeed, Talley and Vykos were alone in the hallway. There were no signs of even the briefest of struggles, no scuff marks on the paint or bloodstains on the cream-colored carpet. There was just one damnably insolent envelope sticking out from a door that it had no business being under.

“I was just pondering that same question myself, I must confess. I return from an evening’s work and find, not my servants, but this letter waiting for me. I am not pleased.”

Talley suppressed his urge to smile. “Have you read the letter?”

“Of course not,” Vykos responded irritably. “What sort of fool do you take me for?”

The templar made a vague gesture of obeisance. “Forgive me, Your Excellency. In my current line of work, one must ask even the foolish questions.” He touched his index finger to his chin, frowned, and pointed at the letter. “May I?”

Vykos backpedaled gracefully. “I should prefer to be elsewhere if you did.” Talley laughed. “You wound me, Your Excellency. I do have resources of my own, you know.” And with that, his form melted into a pool of shadow that, after a moment’s hesitation, oozed under the offending door. Careful not to touch the letter, the shadow wafted past it. There was silence for several minutes while Vykos stood patiently outside, content to let Talley risk whatever unknown dangers lay within. Vykos was more than reasonably certain that she could overwhelm or endure practically anything that might be waiting for her, but an incendiary device or some such might be extremely painful, and she disliked pain, at least her own. So she stood and waited, and half-amused herself devising suitable punishments for her missing ghouls.

The letter slid back beyond the door with a rasp. Vykos was suddenly alert again. She heard the sound of tearing paper, and then the bolts on the door clicking one by one.

The door opened and Talley stood there, the open letter in his hand. “Your Excellency,” he said almost apologetically, “you may want to see this.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked to the inner door of the suite. Here there were signs of struggle, long scratches in the woodwork and bits of paint and plaster from the wall on the carpet.

Talley reached the door and rested his hand on the knob. “Were you fond of those particular ghouls, Your Excellency?”

“They were ghouls, Templar. Stop wasting my time,” responded Vykos. “Are you telling me that my ghouls are dead? If so, say it and get out of my way so I can see what happened.”

“If you insist, Your Excellency.” And with that, Talley opened the final door.

The ghouls were in there, neatly laid out on the room’s single table. There was no blood anywhere, not even in the bodies, which had been cleanly dismembered and then reassembled. Nothing else in the room was even disturbed.

Vykos did not gasp. She did not reel in horror, nor did she angrily swear vengeance. She had seen worse, indeed she had inflicted far worse herself, in her laboratories and donjons over the centuries.

She was, however, furious over the insult. “Lucita?” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I would think rather one ‘Lucius.’ Would you be so kind as to verify this handwriting?

The letter is rather familiar in its tone, so I would assume you’d know his script.”

It was not often that Vykos lost control, but on those rare occasions when she did, the occasional survivor inevitably described the sight as “terrifying.” She snarled, impossibly deep in her throat, and tore the letter from Talley’s fingers. The beautiful woman, the artlessly crafted shell, slipped away for a moment and in that second, the templar found himself face to face with Vykos’s true self—a ravening, formless obsession, an ancient rage that wore flesh and blood only because they were the sole materials at hand, and that would gladly set aside all bonds of sense and loyalty to destroy Talley at this moment because Talley had taken, briefly, something that was hers.

Talley did not move, though in the split-second between his recognition of the threat and the time when the letter was pulled from his hand he went from relaxed to battle-ready.

The room was full of shadows and the draped windows offered the perfect escape if he needed it, but he sincerely hoped that neither would be needed. If Vykos attacked, there would be no way anyone could reach the room before one or both of them was dead.

“Your Excellency,” he said in a low, tight voice, “calm yourself. Read the letter if you must, though I recommend waiting. Yes, I read the letter, to make sure that the envelope itself was not trapped and to see if there was a clue as to what had occurred here. I am sorry if that offended, but I prefer to fulfill my office and see to your safety properly.” He raised his hands, slowly. Behind Vykos, the shadows coiled eagerly, silently, awaiting the order to strike.

Vykos stared at Talley through mad eyes. She said nothing, but with infinite slowness, sanity crept back into her gaze. Her loose, monstrous flesh slowly collapsed in on itself, revealing the elfin features of Elizabeth Bathory that Vykos had been wearing since her arrival. “Give me a good reason not to destroy you, Templar,” she whispered, voice shaking with the effort of control. “No one does this to me. No one sees me like this. No one tells this tale.”

For an instant, Talley considered offering up the fact that the fight would be no sure thing as a reason not to pursue it, but thought better of the idea. There was no sense in prodding the Tzimisce’s tender ego, not if he wished to calm her down.

“Because,” he said in a soothing voice, “I don’t think that our mutual patron would appreciate that, Archbishop, and because we are both old and wise enough to know that tempting the cardinal’s displeasure is a foolish thing to do. Because it would no doubt make this Lucius very happy to goad us to fighting amongst ourselves. And because,” and he very gently smiled, “my estate would not be able to pay for the damages no doubt we’d incur.” He took a step back, not coincidentally toward the window. “Do you agree, Your Excellency?”

Vykos’s eyes were sane now, but there was an icy hatred in them. “Fortunately for you, I do.” She glanced at the letter and threw it on the floor. “Lucius will pay for this.” “I would expect nothing less of you. He has, if I may say so, chosen perhaps the wrong Cainite to try to ‘teach a lesson.’” Talley pulled up a chair a respectful distance from the table and sat.

“He has the power to enforce his will, if he truly feels the need. His ego is such that, at the moment, he is content with small demonstrations.” She walked over to the table and flowed into a chair. Her elbows rested on the tabletop, bare inches from Ilse’s naked and abused cadaver. “This was by way of a demonstration that he feels I am not properly appreciative of his efforts on our behalf. It’s rather petty, really.” She gazed at the dead and drained ghouls, her expression now distant.

“It would seem, yes.” There was a minute of silence. “So it is to be Hartford?”

Vykos nodded absently. “The enemy prefers to protect Stamford, it would seem, and the other resources of the coastline. Hartford is being held with the same sort of screen we saw in Buffalo. It is ripe for the picking, and it is a big enough prize to take. Besides, it opens the door to Boston faster than even Archbishop Polonia anticipated. I wonder what they are up to.”

Talley licked his dry lips. “In truth, their overall strategy does not concern me, except as it relates to my assignment.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that, Talley?” Vykos’s voice was surprisingly mild. “I find it hard to accept that the notorious Hound has no interest in conquest and the chase.”

The templar shrugged ruefully. “You’ll have to believe it, Your Excellency, because it’s the truth. I loathe this continent and most everyone on it, and look forward to the end of the war simply because it’s the only end I can see to this assignment. So who gets to earn immortal glory at Hartford?”

“Archbishop Borges, most likely. I still have the Tremere chantry to deal with before I can move on, and Archbishop Polonia has too many other things to deal with. The pack leaders and Panders can shout and demonstrate about wanting to run amuck, but after MacEllen’s destruction, Hartford needs to be taken efficiently and without loss. An archbishop taking personal command of the operation lends a certain gravity to it. Don’t you agree?”

The Archbishop of Washington waited a solid three minutes after Talley had left, then turned on every light in her suite. She carefully gathered the first few chunks of Ilse’s body and brought them into the bathroom. Singing tunelessly, she worked the cold clay of the ghoul’s flesh into a clotted liquid that fell into the toilet, then turned and repeated the procedure. Within a few minutes, the bowl was nearly full. Dispassionately, Vykos flushed it, then went back for another load.

Sometimes, she mused, mindless work was the best thing for a stressful evening. Besides, she might need the table later.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 2:32 AM Main Street

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford was not a kind city to its resident Kindred. The city itself was relatively small, with a confused welter of streets making the downtown area an inescapable labyrinth for any first-time visitors. Proximate but distinct, East Hartford and West Hartford stubbornly refused to amalgamate into a single city, presumably for fear of lowering their property values. I-91 and I-84 trundled through the city, more or less, making for an eternal traffic bottleneck from construction, as well as a steady stream of accidents from improperly constructed interchanges. The Charter Oak Bridge arched across the Connecticut River from the city, hurrying traffic over to I-84 and the Massachusetts border, but most of the façade the city presented to the river was dingy, gray, and architecturally confused. In short, Hartford was hard to get around in, not well designed for feeding and generally confusing even if one had a map.

Lucita, there on her third visit, considered it entirely appropriate that one of the main traffic arteries was called “Asylum Avenue.”

She’d spent the evening studying her final target. Lucita had long since digested the provided material on the archbishop’s habits, favorite stomping grounds, abilities and resources, and had stepped out into the night to clear her head before planning the operation. Thus, she found herself strolling through the core of the city well past midnight, watching the occasional late-night reveler stagger off to his car. Under other circumstances, she might have indulged herself, but she needed a clear head tonight, and a second-hand drunkenness would hinder her thinking later. There was still an edge to her hunger, but a discreet encounter earlier in the evening had taken care of the worst of it, and she’d find someone else after the night’s labor was done.

In the meantime, however, any number of insurance executives, ad-copy writers and other denizens of central Connecticut passed under the shadow of death and moved on, never knowing how close each had come to destruction. Lucita prided herself on being able to move among mortals without them noticing anything untoward about her. Most young Kindred were in a tremendous hurry to acquire an aura of danger that would set them apart from the herd, while most older ones acquired that same air unconsciously. As soon as one stepped into a room, the kine knew that there was a wolf in the flock, and reacted accordingly. For that reason, humans always made excellent early warning systems against incursions by other Kindred. They were canaries in the mine, a superb if perhaps wasteful means of detecting the approach of invisible peril.

Lucita could blend into the crowd, however, and it made her that much more dangerous. She could still be detected for what she was, of course, but only if someone knew to look for her. The warning sign many Kindred used when deciding when and how to search, though, was the reaction of the mortals around them. It made Lucita’s job that much easier.

She strolled along past what had been a G. Fox department store, then in front of a raucous restaurant that advertised fresh beer brewed on site. Around the corner, cars began to line up anxiously as the Hartford Stage opened its doors after another performance. Beyond that, an overpass conducted 84 from West Hartford to the river. She could see that there wasn’t much beyond that save construction, and so she made a smart turn on her heel, sniffed the air, and started back the way she had come.

Presumably, that would give the man who was following her time to catch his breath. He’d been following her for several blocks, and doing a reasonable job of it for a human. He didn’t get too close, used the terrain to his advantage, and was remarkably adept at finding shadows to hide in.

Unfortunately for him, using shadows was not the best way to get a leg up on a Lasombra.

Lucita resisted the urge to smile. Her sudden turnaround had panicked the man, and he’d scrambled for cover. At the moment he was crouched down in an alley that ran along the side of the brew pub, trying hard to blend in with the darkness next to an overflowing dumpster. Presumably he was waiting for Lucita to go past, and for the last of the theater traffic to turn off so that he’d have a clear field to operate. If he were smart, he’d try to drag her into the alley and go to work there.

No doubt that sort of thing would work extremely well against a mortal woman. Alas for the spirit of street-level free enterprise in Hartford, Lucita was hardly an ordinary woman. A tinge of hunger reminded her that she hadn’t fed terribly well that evening, and with slow, deliberate steps, she sauntered back past where her would- be assailant waited.

Down the block, traffic cleared. A light changed from green to red, solely for the benefit of the night. Lucita paused, and bent down ostensibly to adjust the buckle on her left shoe.

The mugger, surprisingly, failed to pounce. Lucita held her position a moment longer, then turned and stared into the alley. Faintly, she could hear sounds of a scuffle, followed by a metallic clanging that could only be a human head being repeatedly bounced off a dumpster lid.

“Son of a bitch,” she breathed quietly, and stepped into the alley. Ahead of her, she could see two figures. One was moving, one was not. The one who was turned to her and hissed. Its visage was a horrific mass of scars and boils, and its eyes shone red. It dropped the body of the mugger on the alley floor and took a step toward where Lucita stood. Long, wicked claws curved out from the fingers and caught reflected light from the red neon sign out front.

“I’m not impressed,” said Lucita. “You’re sloppy and slow.”

“What the hell?” said the Nosferatu, dropping his aggressive pose. “Crap. You’re Kindred. Who the hell are you? I haven’t seen you present yourself… wait. Lucita?”

Lucita counted to ten, first in Spanish and then in Latin. “You will explain how you know my name, yes? Then you will explain what you are doing here, and why I should not do to you what you have done to my supper.”

“Him?” The hideous little vampire looked down at the broken wreck that had been the mugger. “He was yours? Damn. Should have figured that out, I guess. Saw him following a pretty lady, and prince’s orders are to keep downtown neat because he’s been trying to attract investment, and…” His voice trailed off lamely as he caught the expression of pure disdain on Lucita’s face. “Right. Whatever. I’ll get you another one. Over by the bus station is prime feeding ground.”

Her annoyance palpable, Lucita began tapping her fingers on the brick wall of the alley. “You are still not answering the questions I have asked you. You have ten seconds to do so. Nine. Eight. Seven.”

“I know your name because I work for Schreck. Well, I work with people who work for Schreck, at least at the moment—all right, all right! I’ve got a message for you from Schreck. I was supposed to deliver it to your hotel but I was going to wait until later. Then I saw this guy out here, and—urrrkk!”

The last came as Lucita simply grabbed the vampire by his throat, squeezed, and lifted him against the wall with impressive force. His feet kicked wildly, two feet off the ground, but to no effect. With desperate strength, he clawed at Lucita’s hands, but her grip was unyielding.

“Stop that,” she said curtly, “Or I let the shadows hold you instead. Would you prefer that?” The Nosferatu shook his head violently to the negative, at least as much as he could in his current position. “Good. Now at some point, I will have to sit down with Mr. Schreck and remind him not to employ idiots. If you have a message, you deliver it. Immediately. You do not speak about confidential matters anywhere but in confidence, and this alley does not qualify. You do not accept identification without proof—how did you know I was Lucita? Because I looked like a picture you saw? And what if I were a fleshcrafter, what then?”

She dropped him. He collapsed in a pile near the mugger, reflexively gasping. Lucita made a short, sharp gesture and the shadows of the alley began closing in on him. “Tonight you are lucky. I am exactly who you think I am, and I will take that message from you now. What is it?”

The Nosferatu looked at the encroaching shadows and gibbered, doing his best to curl himself into a small ball. “I’m supposed to tell you to stay in Hartford, that the target might be coming here! They’re folding the city the way they folded Buffalo, and they think that will lure him out for you.” One of the shadows, more daring than the rest, brushed against the withered flesh of his arm. “Oh God no, make them go away, I’ve told you what I was told!”

Lucita considered for a moment. She had no desire to stay in this place any longer than she had to—even under normal circumstances, Hartford was not precisely her favorite sort of city. On the other hand, Schreck had suggested two nights ago that Lucita head toward Hartford; now he was urging patience. Thus far, the Nosferatu’s intelligence had proven reliable. If the prey were being lured to her, she could afford to sit tight.

Besides, she had another source she could check to confirm her prey’s whereabouts, one that she was almost certain led back inside the Sabbat itself.

Her mind made up, she turned back to the quivering little Kindred, now almost completely enveloped in shadows. “I see. Thank you for your courtesy in delivering the message. I’ll make sure Mr. Schreck learns that you carried out your assignment.”

With that, she closed the fingers of her right hand into a fist. The shadows contracted as she did so. There was a brief, sickening crunch, and then the darkness melted back to where it had first come from. Lucita considered the cadavers, considered the overfull state of the dumpster, and then, with all due dignity, walked away.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 3:13 AM The Presidential Hotel Washington, D.C.

Talley shook his head as he made his way back to the Hyatt. He was a hunter, a tracker, a killer. His stock in trade was ending existences, not preserving them. And now he was faced with the prospect of Archbishop Borges leading a war party to Hartford. Talley didn’t approve of Borges going outside, much less to Connecticut. But the archbishops weren’t about to make their plans to suit a mere templar. This assignment was giving him a bad feeling in his gut. He was not being told everything, of that he was sure, and it would be impossible to do this right without knowing as much as he could. Damn all of them and their secrets. Damn Borges for being a fool and a blusterer, but not being enough of one to be controllable. Damn Lucita for being good. Damn Polonia for his arrogance that contributed to this madness. Damn Vykos for her games and her airs, and for causing problems with “Lucius” at exactly the wrong time.

“And damn you, Cardinal,” he muttered under his breath. “Damn you for not disciplining your childe, damn you for sending me into this, and damn you most sincerely for giving me no way out.”

Washington had slipped into a deceptive nighttime calm, but Talley felt as if he would explode.

“Damn them, “ he said to the darkness. “Damn them all.”

Monday, 30 August 1999, 10:17 AM A mansion in Buckhead

Atlanta, Georgia

“The old man’s got nothing to say,” the ghoul named Shilo reported to his boss.

The two of them and a third ghoul as well all stood within a sumptuously decorated room in a colossal mansion in the midst of Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead neighborhood. As a group, the Sabbat didn’t think much of ghouls, and that status was usually only achieved by mortals who nosed around too much and didn’t impress the Sabbat enough. Even so, these were powerful men—certainly possessing the prowess required to overcome kine security measures.

The boss called himself Stick, because of the omnipresent weapon he bore and which he wielded quite adeptly. He sat down and cursed, “Damn. We’re cooked, then. Sebastian’s looking for an excuse to clean house, and that’s just what we better do here if we don’t want to go out with the trash.”

Two maids, one Hispanic, one African, neither of whom could speak more than a few words of English, were already dead and clenching up in rigor mortis by the time the ghouls had found the master of the house, a corpulent Jewish businessman named Harold Feinstein.

Stick sauntered over toward Harold, who was naked and rooted to the spot because Shilo had his arm bent painfully behind his back.

Stick laughed. “Too fucking bad for you that we barged in when you were in the shower. Must be the only damn place in this whole fucking castle where you don’t have a phone. You could have had the city’s whole damn police force in on us before we ever found you, otherwise.”

Harold just stared at Stick in pure terror.

Fortunately for his sleeping guest, Harold’s feelings for her were much more pure.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 9:12 PM (3:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time) Iglesia de San Nicolás de las Servitas

Madrid, Spain

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

The cuerda stung flesh; the fragments of glass carefully woven in along the length of the cord peeled back skin.

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

And then the right shoulder as well.

“Mea maxima culpa.” Crack!

Cardinal Ambrosio Luis Monçada sat naked and half-submerged in the sunken, stone pool that was large enough to accommodate three or four men—if one of the men was not Monçada. As it was, though the pool had been less than half-filled before he lowered himself into it, water lapped over the edge with his every movement. Blood beaded on the surface of his back only slowly.

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

“Mea maxima culpa.” Crack!

He maintained a pace that would easily have killed a mortal, that would have driven many a Cainite to fatigue and beyond, perhaps into torpor. But Monçada harbored in his great bulk a well of devotion and determination that others could never comprehend.

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

He could tell from both feel and sound if the whip dug into an existing gouge or flesh still whole. How could he be sincere in his contrition if he still found unbroken skin? The first few hours were always the most frustrating. His vitae had the unfortunate habit of healing the chewed streaks of flesh. In the end, however, this circumstance merely drove him to redouble his efforts, drove him to greater heights of sacrifice, so that he might sufficiently abase himself in the eyes of his Creator.

The night wore on. The staccato crack of leather against unworthy flesh measured the passage of time like the clicking of a pendulum—steady, rhythmic, counting the unvarying movement of hours from present to past. Years and years ago it had been the pain that had drawn Monçada—the burning, mind-numbing pain that scourged his unworthy flesh and cleansed him of pride, of sin. Those were his mortal days when he would pass out from the agony, or in later years, from exhaustion. Those were the days before his Embrace, before that greatest of boons to his spiritual existence.

With unending night, came sure knowledge of his own damnation—as well as the physical capacity that allowed him to surpass all boundaries of pain as he’d known it. God’s vengeance upon the sinner, Monçada came to realize, was as liberating as God’s grace upon the saint. Perhaps more so.

Scourged away from Monçada’s bleeding soul was the salve of redemption.

“Mea culpa.” Crack!

Taking its place was the sharp, clean lash of predestination.

In those first heady years, he had spent nights at a time—and sometimes days, resisting the call of the sun—wallowing in the ecstasy of his torture, and his guilty pleasure had served only to strengthen his hand. He explored the efficacy of fasting, denying himself the blood—for was not all blood merely a substitute for the blood of Christ, which he did not deserve?—and then, with leather and glass, drawing his own vitae through the flesh— filtering, purifying, a spiritual aquifer.

Eventually, he would transcend the physical pain. The body fell away into nothingness and he saw it for what it was. Although powerful in earthly terms and fueled by the curse of Caine, his form was an empty husk, and the nights of his unlife were nothing more than damnation of the flesh. In those timeless moments of epiphany, Monçada saw that his true and eternal reckoning was yet to come. Not until the Endtime would he know true degradation. In the Final Nights, the black cancer of his soul would be revealed. Carrion birds would feed on his heart, and maggots consume his eyes and tongue. He would burn in hellfire long after his lifeless corpse fell away to dust. And on that glorious day of his final torture, God would be served. For there could be no ultimate good without pure debasement, no salvation of the saints without damnation of the sinners.

“Mea maxima culpa.” Crack!

Tonight, however, Monçada found himself distracted, and even hours of discipline had failed to banish the intruding thoughts. He paused in his strokes and slid lower in the pool, down far enough that the salted water washed over the churned flesh of his back and shoulders. Fire shot anew through the fibers of his body. He drew strength from the pain as dangling chunks of meat rose to float upon the surface of the pool. The water grew cloudy with droplets of his blood.

Still, he could not escape the present of the bathing chamber. He could not rise above and achieve that blessed state wherein his ultimate destiny was revealed to him. His ears captured the slapping sound of sloshing water; he imagined it as a chorus of angels, or as the voices of worshippers at the hours-passed midnight mass in the church, hundreds of feet above his labyrinthine haven. His eyes still saw the frescoes surrounding the pool: Eve, cursed woman, tempting Adam with the fruit of the tree of good and evil; those same first lovers, shamed in their nakedness, and then cast from Eden; Abel, giver of burnt offerings, lying dead at his brother’s feet.

But Monçada could not escape the place. He was not quite able to lose himself in the ritual of flesh and blood. Not even the cleansing waters were enough to visit epiphany upon him.

And what was the reason? What distracted him so and disturbed his holy contemplation? What, at times like these, almost always distracted him so?

Lucita. His daughter. The dark rose that, Monçada felt sure, would one night become his crown of thorns. The thought of her name pained him more deeply than the saltwater among the gashes in his torn flesh. She was his creation, yet to this point he had not controlled her, had not possessed her completely.

“Mea culpa,” he whispered at the thought of possessing her completely, at the thought of her bowing down before him, kissing his feet. He remembered the night that he’d watched from the spy hole as Lucita had grudgingly modeled, and Vykos had sculpted her likeness, first in black, then in white, for Monçada’s chess set. He remembered the line of her bare shoulders as she donned the opulent dress… the curve of her spine, her naked back….

“Mea culpa.”

But there was so much more to his desire for her than mere carnal lust. He could overpower her will, if he so desired; he could break her slender body like a dry twig, or call forth shadows darker than night to drag her away to the low places of the earth from which she’d never emerge. None of these things, however, would he do. For he had come to the same conclusion as countless Christian theologians over the centuries—without free will, there could be no true adoration. An automaton was not a worthy worshipper. Monçada had created the prodigal daughter in his image—spiritually, if not physically— and he allowed her defiance so that, eventually, she might properly glorify him. She would worship him. He would possess her, body and soul, and bask in her adoration.

“Mea maxima culpa.”

With a sigh, Monçada raised his cuerda again… but paused with the whip swaying gently in the air before him. “Alfonzo,” called out the cardinal, hearing the approach in the hallway beyond.

One of the room’s two heavy oak doors swung open with a labored creak. Alfonzo, eyes downcast, took a single step into the bathing chamber. He wore the dark uniform of Monçada’s personal legionnaires—that elite force created as a counterweight to the regent’s feared Black Hand.

“Your Eminence,” said the captain of the guard. “You requested to be informed immediately of any news about your… your daughter.”

“Yes. I don’t believe I need be reminded of my own order,” Monçada said coolly, squeezing the handle of the cuerda tightly in his fist. He found quite annoying the legionnaire’s hesitation in mentioning Lucita. Alfonzo had no prerogative to approve or disapprove of Monçada’s relationship with his childe—whether the cardinal considered her daughter, slave, or concubine. That was no business of a lesser. Vallejo had always recognized and respected that important fact. With Vallejo and the first squadron occupied in the New World, however, command of the half-squadron left as the home guard fell to Alfonzo. Thus far, Monçada was not overly impressed. Alfonzo, like so many military men, functioned competently when afforded the luxury of following orders—normally from Vallejo—but when forced to exercise his own discretion, the second-in-command seemed to lack the judgment and confidence required of a leader.

“What news?” Monçada prompted.

“She has eliminated another Sabbat member—one Peter Munro, in Delaware.” “Munro,” Monçada repeated. “I recognize the name. An arms dealer.” The cardinal reflected for a moment on what he knew of the Sabbat’s flow of materiel worldwide. The details, of course, were far beyond the scope of any one person to know, but he kept a multitudinous number of facts in his mind—for the only rule more cardinal than know thine enemy in the midnight struggles of the Jyhad was know thy supposed friends.

“Munro. That will produce some difficulty,” Monçada conceded, “but only temporary in nature. And Lucita is generally impeccable in her taste. I suspect this Munro was a disagreeable fellow and needed eliminating.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

Monçada glared at Alfonzo. What the cardinal did not need was an underling who felt compelled to agree with his every musing—as if Monçada desired another opinion, much less one rendered from perpetual obsequiousness. “That will be all, Alfonzo.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

After the door closed, Monçada sat for some while in thought with the strands of the whip pressed against his frowning lips. At intervals his tongue would slip from between those lips, alternately to reclaim a tantalizingly small amount of the blood he’d offered in sacrifice, and to be lacerated by the fragments of glass embedded in the leather. His mind, however, barely registered the succession of titillation and mutilation. His thoughts were drawn, again, to his childe, his prodigal daughter.

Monçada cared little about the random Sabbat lackeys she decided to remove from existence—not so random, he corrected himself. Pack leader, war chieftain, arms supplier. Her targets thus far did harm the Sabbat’s cause in North America in some minor way, most notably the loss of some arms procurement via Munro until he could be replaced. But they all could be replaced. The more telling effect, Monçada appreciated, was that her victims were seemingly random enough that every Sabbat member, from the lowliest pack leader on up, had to question in the back of his mind if he was next. This hesitancy, a slight psychological advantage for the Camarilla at best, suggested that someone among their ranks had contracted Lucita.

It also showed that they were desperate.

The assassinations would not be enough. Even should Lucita succeed in destroying one of the archbishops, the Sabbat advance would only be slowed, not crippled. Already, only a handful of eastern American cities remained in the hands of the Camarilla.

And where did this news of Lucita’s activities on behalf of the Camarilla fit with the conflicting rumors Monçada had received that his daughter had been retained to destroy an archbishop by one of their own? The accounts, Monçada knew, were less contradictory than overlapping.

The cardinal drew a small portion of the cuerda into his mouth and bit down. The glass ground satisfyingly between his teeth. Then he pressed his tongue hard against the tiny jagged edge, flicking up and down until vitae began to fill his mouth.

Monçada rose to his feet. Water cascaded from his massive body into the now blood- tinted pool. Upon first standing, he felt slightly dizzy. He’d fasted for many nights in preparation for tonight’s blood-letting. Tomorrow night he would feed, and feel the strength return to his purified body. And until then and beyond then, he would worry—not about the assassinations, for in the end they would accomplish only little; not about the rumors of a traitor among his archbishops, for ambition was law among the Sabbat. Like any father, he would worry about the safety of his daughter, for the cardinal had sent his clansman, Talley the Hound, to oppose her, and the English assassin-turned-bodyguard would play rough. Monçada suspected that Lucita would, at the very least, survive. But a father always worried.

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Khalil didn’t have time to grow impatient waiting for a phone call this night. In fact, he was rather perturbed that it came so soon. The sun had just set and the Ravnos opened his eyes and stretched the kinks of a motionless sleep out of his limbs when it rang. He looked about him fretfully, certain that he was being spied upon for such precise timing to be possible.

He also glanced at the suitcase on the floor. It was still chained to the old radiator, and its lock seemed intact as well. It made him regret this phone call even more, because what he really wanted to do was count again the cash stashed therein and gloat.

Liz had proven her weight in blood with that fence tip the other night, and last night, Khalil had profited greatly. Perhaps the snake could now serve her worth in blood twice over: once for blood money and the second for her purer strain of Cainite blood. He smiled at the thought of breaking her as he had that Ventrue princess. Liz was another snotty Western woman who needed a good, and permanent, lesson.

The singsong of the phone continued and Khalil dashed away the haze of his sleep by rapidly shaking his head. Then he picked it up and pressed the RECEIVE button.

“Uh huh?” said the Ravnos into the tiny receiver portion of the cellular phone.

“Khalil Ravana?” said a voice the Ravnos recognized as the Nosferatu he knew as Mike. “You were right, Ravnos, there is a coming storm. I believe we may need your umbrella.”

Khalil smiled. He pulled the phone away from his face a moment, afraid his smile was so loud that Mike might hear it. Suckers. He had them right where he wanted them. Right where he’d maneuvered them. He put the phone back to his mouth.

He tried to be diplomatic, even though he and Mike both knew Khalil had the upper hand here. Well, he could afford to be diplomatic because they both knew who had the upper hand. “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles. I can, of course, be reasonable in my requests for payment.”

Khalil smiled broadly again. He didn’t need some crumbling, thousand-year-old Cainite buried in the slime of Calcutta to manipulate silly vampires with ease. This whole thing about the power of the elders and the control they exerted on the world was obviously overrated. So he couldn’t choke someone halfway around the world like his once-upon- a-time master had done to him when last he’d spoken with Mike. Who needed that in a world with cell phones and computers? Brains could trump blood, in this day and age.

Khalil congratulated himself on being one of the new breed, the better breed, of vampire.

Mike had said something.

Khalil paused and then asked, “What was that, Mike? The connection was a little fuzzy for a minute there.”

Still sounding so damn polite that Khalil figured the sewer rats must be feeling caught over a barrel, Mike repeated, “I said that we’re looking now for that snake you’re after, and we have some good leads. Good enough leads that I think we should set a meeting for tomorrow night. I’ll have solid information for you by then.”

Khalil shook his head. Pity the poor Nosferatu, he thought. So desperate for the cure that they were arranging meetings before they even had anything to provide in return. But that was okay, because Khalil had other plans now.

“Mike? Don’t worry about the snake. I think I have the information I require on that count already. No, I think we’re just talking a cash transaction here. I’ve got quality info. Surely your kind has enough cash stashed away to make the price right.”

Mike stuttered a moment. “So you just want to sell the… umbrella?”

Khalil said, “Sure, but it comes high, Mike. It’ll cost you… a million dollars.” “Whoa,” Mike exclaimed. “We’re not talking rupees here, you know.”

Khalil hesitated, a little fazed by the exchange calculations in his head. “Half a million.” “Please. I’d think more like a quarter of a million would be more than reasonable.” “Well, sure, but we’re talking no ordinary umbrella here,” Khalil countered. “We’re talking one-of-a-kind, supernatural umbrella.”

Mike said, “For that much money, we should be able to buy a perfectly good raincoat elsewhere. How about I send someone to meet you tomorrow night, with a quarter of a million dollars? Ten o’clock okay?”

Khalil was silent for a moment, a little rattled, acting as if he was considering it. “Yes, that will do. Your lackey can meet me in Times Square. I’m sure you’ve got something like ten thousand tunnels radiating throughout the city from that spot.”

“Something like that.” Khalil disconnected.

CSX freight yard Atlanta, Georgia

Victoria bristled with nervous energy. The nights were so short these days. And it was difficult to tell time in a vault.

Yes, she’d literally been inside a vault: Harold’s impressive collection of antique and rare coins lined row upon row of the bunker room, and Victoria had decided it was the only place she would feel safe. Besides, Harold was something of a survivalist, and the vault could double as a sort of bomb shelter. It was probably the reason he’d built it in the first place.

So, after coaxing Harold through a tedious session of sexual fulfillment for him— and she knew it was indeed the height of pleasure and satisfaction for him despite his limp member, which endorsed her mission of vengeance—she’d explained that she would only feel loved, truly loved by him if he found her valuable enough to store in his vault. Now that idea had charged him right up, but it was the first course of the evening that had determined whether her mission was first to be vengeance before attending to the task the council of elders in Baltimore had given her.

The inside door of the vault was fitted with a coded opener, and while a maid cleaned the floor of the distasteful result of a human male’s lust, Harold showed off his other collection as well: a couple of cabinets’ worth of illegal weaponry and assorted other items that seemed more suited to guerilla warfare than life in a big Southern city. Victoria had taunted him then, claiming that was why he’d gotten off this time—his money, his guns and his woman all in one room!

But then she made him show her how to use the guns. They went to his basement firing range, and Victoria discovered that the basics of operating the weapons required no great skill. Her physical adeptness, honed over years of existence, made her nearly as good a shot as Harold. This despite the many problems Harold tried to adjust in her stance and grip.

They had returned to the vault then, and Harold demonstrated the code and made a great show of locking away his most prized possessions. He showed her the fold-down bed that he had not bothered with earlier, and pointed out a small refrigerator that was stocked with a number of gourmet items. There were dry goods as well, but he didn’t hint that Victoria would have any interest in those.

While Victoria had dozed earlier, waiting for Harold to recover from one extended bout of entertainment, she’d had the most vivid and uncharacteristic dream. Victoria felt rather unnerved by the experience. It was why she’d decided she must tuck herself away within this room.

In the dream, a white canary with coins for eyes had flown into a jeweled cage because a huge black cat menaced and threatened to devour it. So even though the canary moments before had gained its freedom from that very cage, it returned. Harold’s snoring had woken her then. She knew she was the canary, and the danger she thought she’d avoided while entering Atlanta was in fact lying in wait for her.

So she’d decided to act upon the apparent wisdom of the dream. After giving Harold strict instructions not to disturb her, Victoria spent a day locked away from harm.

When she awoke, Harold was dead.

In fact, when she opened the vault, there was a lockpick specialist working on the vault to see if the contents had been stolen. In the time it took his jaw to drop, his fragile mind was hers, and he arranged for her to slip from the house. Not only that, but she did so in one of Harold’s automobiles and armed with some other equipment as well. The car was a very new, peach-colored, two-seater BMW convertible, and while it could certainly be traced to Harold, she doubted any police officer would be snooping for it in this freight yard at night.

She sat in that vehicle now. The car idled nearly soundlessly as she looked down from an old overpass at an even older train yard. She was slightly south of a main convergence of rail lines, and when her gaze followed the lines northward, she saw where they radiated in every conceivable direction.

This bridge allowed access over the southern lines, and her eye roamed back in that direction and then over her shoulder to the right where the bulk of the lines continued south. A handful of spurs broke southwest and formed a sort of train graveyard.

Oh, it was a graveyard all right, Victoria knew. More so than the workmen or engineers who probably passed it every day could ever imagine. The score of old boxcars represented the concentration camp where Victoria had spent the eternity of two nights of captivity and torture at the hands of Elford, a cretinous Tzimisce cur that she needed to make certain was dead. If so, her thirst for vengeance would be slackened. It would have to be, because the one to whom she would next have to repay a debt of pain was Sascha Vykos, the Tzimisce mastermind who had probably had a great deal to do with orchestrating that whole night of hell at the High Museum. Not to mention the scar she… it… whatever, had left her.

But Vykos was rumored to be an impressive adversary, and the Toreador wasn’t certain that the need for revenge stretched so far as to make her blind to common sense. But it stretched far enough to bring her to this nearly—hopefully completely—abandoned train yard only hours after a very blatant attempt on her life.

However, there were really three facts that convinced her to follow through on this plan: First, the Sabbat must be poorly organized if its daytime operatives had been so careless as to tip their hand by murdering Harold; second, she’d heard rumors that Elford had not perished as she’d expected he would after Setite poison had laced his flesh; and third, Harold had experienced erectile dysfunction.

She only really needed that last reason, because she had to hold to the choices her randomized tests generated. If not, if she could be tempted away from them, then they were not serving their purpose.

Sometimes, though, she needed to remind herself of this. That was why she’d sat so long here contemplating the recent past. She certainly wasn’t comfortable. August nights in Georgia were terribly humid, and the train yard seemed a ghost town to her. The only noise was the distant rattling of tracks, but it sounded for all the world like the clanging of metallic instruments of torture like the ones that she seen during those nights with Elford.

Victoria applied a little pressure to the gas pedal of the car and smoothly accelerated down the bridge. The car neatly crossed two more sets of train tracks, and then the Toreador allowed the vehicle to coast to a stop. This direct approach was all she could conceive tonight. She possessed little ability in the skills of reconnaissance or stealth; in fact, her powers were grossly diminished if she was not seen.

She pushed open the car door and stepped out. Despite appearances, Victoria was not unprepared. She reached into the narrow backseat and retrieved her hat and a small, black handbag which she hung from her shoulder by its long narrow strap.

She struck a model’s pose and examined herself briefly in the car’s side mirror. She was absolutely gorgeous, if she did say so herself. The Toreador wore a stretch velvet jumpsuit with a sewn-in, high-heel bootleg. It was black, and the sleek sheen glistened in the dark night as Victoria balanced herself on a single heel atop an iron track and spun around to get the full view. The mock-turtleneck silhouette was nice, but the teardrop cutout from her throat above her breasts was clearly the standout attraction of the suit.

She stopped and balanced her hat—a top hat of faux leopard skin to match the bands of the same at the end of the suit’s sleeves and mid-calf where the top of the boots might be.

Victoria felt good, even though she knew she was overcompensating. As much as she wanted to ignore the fact, she still was not herself and would never be until this devil was laid to rest. Although the simple opportunity to be on her own, scavenging for survival— if her pick of the bank accounts of one of the city’s wealthiest men could truly be called scavenging—helped clear her mind a bit. New ways to achieve the top would present themselves, and whether that was through Jan or another person, time would tell.

Positively dripping with a sex appeal that would instantly have anyone on his knees before her, Victoria was almost ready.

He beauty and seductive skills had not moved Elford before, and she was not about to rely upon them completely this time either, despite the fact that she was now in full health and able to put much greater strength of will behind her efforts. She stepped to the rear of the car and unlatched the trunk. A couple of Harold’s other possessions were here too.

She reached into the trunk and withdrew an automatic machine gun she’d fired the night before. It was lightweight, powerful, and easy to use. Plus, she knew how to reload it and how to unlock the safety. It seemed very little other knowledge was required.

There were a handful of other items as well. These Victoria tucked into her carrying bag, then trod slowly and patiently across the gravel that separated her automobile from the silent, monolithic boxcars.

Piedmont Park Atlanta, Georgia

Those ancient Gangrel would be ashamed of him for utilizing the powers they had taught him in a wilderness such as the one that surrounded him now. One completely bounded by manmade lakes and pathways and playing fields.

They had understood him and his needs a millennium ago: a madman in need of forgetting for a time the troubled state of his human mind and looking for freedom not only in animal form but animal thought as well. Under the Gangrel’s tutelage, the General had learned far more than even he had thought possible. They were amazed at how he soaked up their knowledge, how he readily gained mastery of some of their most arduous and secret practices. It was perhaps that astonishment as much as any degree of friendship that had led them to reveal so much.

These days, perhaps knowledge like that he had gained would come more cheaply; but then, when the great powers he’d uncovered were only being developed, they were jealously guarded. They’d called him a mongrel because he combined the ways of his own Malkavian clan with theirs, but now the world was full of such half-beasts as the General.

The thought did not serve to make the General feel more at ease. The disgust at his sick fascination with death persisted, and the General recalled that this was what had sent him to the Gangrel in the first place. He did not want death to be made a perverted joy, but he had not yet fully come to grips with the fact that that was his dementia and he would never escape it. Even to this day, what he considered to be a full realization of the nature of his ailment still halted neither the unwholesome joy he took in death nor his later disgust with himself.

He had originally gone to the Gangrel to demystify death. To turn it back into a matter between predator and prey, the top or the bottom of the food chain. There should be nothing fascinating about a process that so methodically charted the life of almost every living being on earth. But the General found that this fascination was true for all beasts and men, including the beasts that were variations of men, like vampires and lupine.

So he sought to silence himself in the earth itself. It was the only way of living that made him feel at all balanced. The only way that helped him recall the healthy feelings he’d had toward death as a Greek soldier so many centuries ago. A sense of nobility and sacrifice that was rudely taken from him first by countless slaughters and then by his sire.

And now here he was, returned from the earth yet again. But this time he was not greeted by the passing of decades or a century or more. It was a mere two months later, and when he first emerged he was confused because of the brevity of his rest and because the emotions of that night—rather those moments—he’d spent luxuriating in death and carnage were so fresh. Normally, all his remorse and self-pity was spent, washed away by an erosion that worked on his mind, if not his body too.

But someone had called out to him, and did it through a connection to something larger that the General was not certain he’d possessed in the past. A century of sleep sometimes caused his powers to magnify, but two months?

He would have ignored the call had it not spoken to him, not as he was, but as he would be, as the totemic animal the Gangrel ascribed to him after he’d completed and survived a dangerous ritual of staring into the sun. When he’d awoken from his torpor eight years later, they’d called him the badger, after that powerful old creature that liked nothing better than picking fights and digging deep into the earth.

It had been so long that the General had nearly forgotten this aspect of himself for which he’d sacrificed so much so long ago, but someone else knew. Whoever it was also knew that he could not refuse a calling so directed.

As if he needed more impetus: The call for aid was for a task the General might not have refused regardless. Victoria Ash had returned to Atlanta. He hadn’t realized that immediately, but, in his simple dream, he was a badger wallowing in a bed of flowers with a peculiarly unflowery scent. It was the scent of a person, a Kindred, but one that mattered little to his dream self. It was only upon awakening that the identity of the person concerned him. Then he faced the difficult task of recalling a scent from a dream, but he succeeded.

To his surprise he realized it was the Toreador primogen in whom he’d taken an interest that wild night two months before.

All he knew was that she might be trouble, and if he had received this call from one who knew so much of his own past, then the General assumed there would be trouble. He began the difficult task of sorting her scent out of the billions that wafted through a city.

As he sat in a grassy field in the city park, the General smiled. Fortunately, this was another trick the Gangrel—a Gangrel—had taught him.

Victoria’s memories of the night of her escape were very foggy. So much so that, as she stepped from her car toward the graveyard of trains, she realized she had little idea which car was the site of the grisly and traumatic experiments she’d endured.

The train cars themselves were lost in fog now too, surrounded by low-lying mist that rolled from a body of water Victoria spied nearby. Some were cracked and decaying, but on the whole they stood solidly against the night, amply concealing untold horrors within. If she could just recall the scene that night and decide which one bore the psychic marks of her own pain, rage and fear… The wheels of all the cars were rusted to the bent and sometimes broken tracks, so it was doubtful that the car she thought of as “hers” was anywhere other than where it had stood that night.

She cast the keenness of her eyes and ears and nose into the darkness, trying to sense if others were about. She detected the odor of animal feces and the movement of a scuttling rat, but nothing more. Regardless, she leveled her machine gun at the rat. You never knew what manner of Kindred or other beast could be lurking in such a form.

But the rat paid her no mind. A Kindred in that form might have scurried for cover. And it did smell like rat. There were no scents upon it that Victoria could associate with anything suspicious, like perfume or fresh food. A true master of the protean powers might cloak that as well, but Victoria was satisfied with reasonable caution.

Victoria wanted to be careful. She had no desire to gaze upon the terrible scenes that doubtlessly existed within many of the cars. She wanted to face her own demons only.

She realized then that that was her true need. Yes, she wanted to be certain Elford was dead, and she hoped to find his poisoned and broken body where she had left it. But even if the search for the Tzimisce surgeon took her elsewhere, or even if someone could tell her at this moment that he was dead, Victoria still needed to face the memory of that night.

She pretended to be whole, and with the exception of the mark Vykos had left upon her, she was physically whole. She could even engage her environment emotionally and intellectually and not always play the submissive, introverted role of a victim. But at heart she still didn’t feel she was herself. The machinations of the Kindred seemed so much less important to her now, and mere survival so preeminent, that she knew something vital was still missing from her spirit.

She methodically chose her steps as she walked, the tall heels of her boots grinding the gravel as she approached a faded blue train car. There had once been lettering on the outside, but the black of it was scratched and faded. Even so, something about its placement among the other cars… something about how it felt, made Victoria certain that it was the one she sought.

She paused again to listen. Her senses could be quite acute when she wished, and she still heard nothing that seemed threatening.

Slowly, the Toreador neared the door of the train car. It was pushed shut. Victoria couldn’t remember whether it had been left that way the night she was here or not. But even if Elford was dead, it seemed likely that his corpse had been found and perhaps removed. Or maybe, hopefully, the Sabbat who had remained in Atlanta rather than move on with the war-horde simply had others matters to attend. The foul Tzimisce had never been accompanied by an assistant when he’d operated on Victoria. It was her hope that there was no one to discover his corpse.

Of course, Victoria realized, if this was the case, if Elford was dead and not discovered, then any prisoners in the other cars were likely dead as well. And she was by extension the cause of those deaths.

But that troubled her little.

She could not begrudge herself her own existence.

As Victoria prepared to pull herself up onto the first of the suspended metal steps riveted to the boxcar, she checked herself. The door was completely closed, but time and forceful use had worn it so it no longer closed properly. And from within she detected a very subtle scent. One that was almost imperceptible. Almost completely masked. And she might have overlooked it, had it not surrounded her for the two most terrible nights of her existence.

A tremor of fear ran through her body. Not just because Elford was within the boxcar, but because he was in her boxcar and waiting silently. Clearly waiting for her. She had imagined many scenarios, but this frankly had not been among them. He could be alive, she’d thought, but not alive and waiting.

She glanced nervously around, certain that others must be here as well. Nothing. Even so, she felt suddenly exposed among the looming boxcars.

She fortified herself and decided she would make Elford regret the ego that bade him face her alone. If she wanted vengeance and release from the demons that haunted her, then this was the means to achieve it.

Even so, she would take advantage of any edge she might gain.

Quietly, quickly, Victoria grasped her handbag and pulled a small roll of tightly wound wire from it. Holding the metal lightly in her left hand, Victoria slipped her right into the handbag again and retrieved a glove with padded fingertips. Once this was on, she pinched the end of the roll and unwound what appeared to be metallic string. Victoria watched her movements carefully. Even casually brushing this razor- wire would slice her hand dearly.

Then she withdrew special clips from her bag and attached one to the railing on each side of the hanging steps. Then she slipped an end of the razor-wire into one clip and unwound the roll to the proper length, held it gently, and clipped it with a small pair of snips. She dropped the razor-wire ball into her bag and clipped the loose end in place.

The wire was a fraction of a human hair thick, and the slightest pressure against it would cause an object to be sliced through. Harold had demonstrated with the barrel of an old gun. Now she could enter, and if perchance she needed to flee, she might gain a needed advantage.

Victoria Ash then gripped the handrails and, paying no special heed to remaining quiet any longer, hefted herself up and over the wire and down onto the step. One more step up, and then she gripped the handle of the door and slid it open.

From under cover of a darkness so thick that no light, nor sound, nor odor could escape it, the vampire watched as Victoria Ash crept toward a particular train car. He couldn’t imagine a desire to do anything but possess that body. Why the degenerate Tzimisce would want to mutate it or alter it was beyond him. Why his master so earnestly sought its destruction was mystifying to him as well.

She was like a goddess, and all Sebastian could imagine at that moment, or even contemplate ever desiring, was to have her. If she would just drink of his blood three times, then she would be his forever.

At least the lapdogs he’d brought with him were finally quiet. Until the Toreador’s appearance they had done their best to make a ruckus and render useless the veil the Lasombra had dropped over them all. But then they were yet partly of mortal flesh, so there was little wondering why they finally obeyed his order for silence.

A pang of jealousy shot through Sebastian.

And that’s what woke him up. At least a little. Enough to question his desire for this woman.

In the back of his mind at least, he now understood that she was amplifying her beauty with powers of the blood that the Toreador practiced. But still, his animal brain— his reptile brain as well—was under the sway of the seductive spell and Victoria’s alluring beauty. And if he was, then the ghouls nearby were probably drooling blood.

That meant his position was severely compromised. He thought he might perhaps clear his head long enough to act as was required, although he didn’t really want to do that. However, his thugs would be useless. As useless as they had been trying to capture the Toreador this morning at the Buckhead mansion. He’d decided to let them live long enough to try to redeem themselves tonight. As it was going now, they would all be dead before dawn.

He watched, still awestruck, as Victoria strung a virtually invisible wire across the steps, and then marveled at her grace when she bounded over it to the door.

He wanted to cry out and warn her that a monster was inside. The damned Tzimisce surgeon was inside. But he resisted. She had not asked him to warn her.

Besides, he thought, maybe my faculties will be my own when she steps from view.

But they weren’t. When Victoria disappeared into the train car, Sebastian was left mourning her absence. He couldn’t imagine acting against her.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 9:53 PM CSX freight yard

Atlanta, Georgia

“Pardon me,” Elford said, “but I must go now.” Sitting on a short stool, the Tzimisce was speaking into one fragment of a shattered cell phone, the phone he’d broken when Victoria first became his prisoner. His voice was icy and sharp, like a grated chalkboard.

Victoria shuddered at it, and at his visage. He was the same as she remembered. Matchstick thin, but with an enormous, distended belly that seemed impossible to balance. His flesh stretched tight across this grotesque frame, and everywhere but the stomach was so lacking that the underlying bones seemed to protrude. His head was a small, inverted triangle with a diminutive mouth and hairless head. His arms and legs were folded accordion-style, and Victoria was struck as before by the similarity to an insect such as a praying mantis—the multitudinous joints were impossible to decipher because they folded in bizarre angles and at unexpected places.

Elford tossed the phone aside, and rose to his feet. As his legs unfolded, each joint snapped, creating a chorus of grating bones. The light within the boxcar was a small pile of coals burning bright red. Nevertheless, Elford’s emaciated frame cast a splintered shadow across the floor.

Despite herself, Victoria stutter-stepped backwards. Elford spat. “Come to finish me off, Toreador bitch?”

She smiled at him, trying not to forget she had an illusion to maintain. Not only the one powered by her blood, but one internal as well, the result of her confidence. If she faltered, then she would be his prisoner again.

If she wanted vengeance and release from the demons that haunted her, then this was the means to achieve it.

That’s what she’d told herself moments before, and here she was given the opportunity to exorcise her demons.

So her smile faded, and she shot back, “I see you replaced your tongue.”

Elford took a step forward, apparently heedless of the golden aura that seemed to glisten around Victoria.

“That I did. But you see, I had to. I’ve been busy here.” At that he moved aside and made a half-heartedly formal gesture at an apparatus behind his vacated stool. It was the stirrups in which Victoria had been bound when she first awoke here.

She shivered, swallowed hard, but held her ground.

Elford’s shrill voice became more melodious and entirely mocking. “I’ve been thinking fondly of you, and desiring your return, my sweet princess.”

He bent near the device and extended his new tongue—a long, narrow one, like [a] snake’s—and let it delicately alight on the metal cuff that had held Victoria’s left hand in place. It lapped at a streak of dried blood. He turned to Victoria, but the tongue kept at the disgusting work as if possessed of its own mind.

Elford continued, eyes boring into Victoria’s, “Here the blood of your wrist… here, the blood of your cheek…” As Elford spoke, his tongue stretched even further from the ridiculously small mouth and danced across the table of straps and manacles.

Victoria had not dared meet his gaze last time, but she did so now, and it was perhaps telling that he did not attempt to gain control of her mind. Or maybe it was because he did not possess such ability in the first place. Victoria did not attempt to use her mental powers, as she had on the Setites who’d rescued her here. She wanted Elford to know what hit him, when she decided to hit him.

Elford was sweetly chanting, “Here the blood of your stomach… ah… and here, so sweet, the blood of your breast!” The singsong cadence of his speech dropped as he spat the last word at Victoria.

Then he growled, “Do you think your beauty means anything to me, bitch? You seek to keep me at bay with such tricks?”

He stepped closer.

But Victoria knew better. She knew the extent of her powers. She knew that every curse Elford muttered, every inch he idled nearer, cost him dearly, and he was only hoping she might release him from her influence. Yes, her power accentuated her beauty so that she might appear more a divine goddess than an earthbound one, but it also gave others the impression that she possessed unassailable might, and they would not dare act against her for that reason either. It did not instill fear so much as respect.

Victoria raised her arm toward Elford and leveled the gun at his belly. She figured there was no way she could miss so enormous a target as that.

“Monster, I came only to finish what I was foolish to leave undone before.”

Then she pulled the trigger and the weapon sprang to life. Dozens of rounds flew from the barrel and punctured Elford’s body. One or two or five or six buried themselves deep into the tight flesh of that round and gangrenous belly, until finally the belly exploded with a concussive blast that hurtled Victoria out of the open boxcar door.

She lay stunned for a moment, and when she did come to, her thoughts were foggy and it took another moment to recover her senses. Her hat was gone, but the body- hugging velvet jumpsuit was intact despite rips in the back where the gravel had shredded it and dug into the flesh of her back. She spat as she sat up, using her sleeve to wipe a foul and ichorous slime from her mouth and face. She stood and swatted it from her breasts and stomach as well. It clung in globules and looked like rat shit on the ground. Victoria stepped away from it.

Then she looked into the faded blue train car. The metal around the frame of the doorway had twisted outward from the force of the blow, but nothing else seemed different. There was no noise or hint of motion from within.

“How lovely,” a voice behind her said. Victoria turned quickly.

The man spoke again, “Why, you are lovely too, my dear, but this! Two birds with one stone. How delicious.”

The man was pale, as pale as any Kindred Victoria had recently encountered, and he was tastefully dressed in an evening suit marvelously cut to heighten his slender, handsome frame. He carried a cane in his left hand, and this he tapped repeatedly against the ground as he spoke. His other hand was pressed palm outward on his waist, and despite herself and the man’s dark good looks, oiled hair, and black brows, she found him disturbingly creepy. For whatever reason, the word “pedophile” leapt to her mind, and that described his sinister, disarming congeniality well enough, she supposed.

The three men standing behind the vampire were just two-bit thugs. Two held guns pointed at Victoria and another, a handful of steps away from the others, where he might wield his weapon properly, leaned forward on a thick staff that at six feet or so was slightly shorter than the man himself.

Victoria stood and arranged herself, flicking a final greasy glob from her bare arm. “I take it the Tzimisce was no friend of yours?”

The man said, “Oh, dear goodness, no. He was quite a problem too, you see. Refused to craft anything of actual use out here, when what we actually need are more Tzimisce monsters to root out the last few of your kind in my city.”

“Your city?” asked Victoria.

“Ah, yes, how rude of me,” said the man. “I am Sebastian, bishop of Atlanta.” Victoria laughed. “So it’s already been deeded away.”

Sebastian’s expression darkened a little, and he glanced away and said somewhat huffily, “Yes, it has been.” Then his eyes flashed back to Victoria. “No, no, Ms. Ash, I wouldn’t try that again.”

An appealing glow in the Toreador’s cheeks and the slight swagger in her stance seemed to fade away.

Sebastian continued, “I think your spell has been broken. My ghouls were worshipping you a few moments ago, but I think if I left them to it now, their only interest would be to rape you.” He winced. “Please pardon the crude language, but I want to get my meaning across clearly.”

Victoria’s face lost all emotion. “And sometimes just giving in to the mannerless pig at your core is the best way to do that, eh?”

Sebastian didn’t appear flustered or insulted. “Why, yes! I’m so glad you understand me so entirely well so soon. We will get along even more splendidly than I’d hoped.”

Then Victoria heard a wracking cough behind her, and a strident voice said, “Away from her, Lasombra. The bitch is mine. Perhaps I will make a gift of her to you someday, if you manage to maintain control over Atlanta for so long. Every inch of her, inside and out, is mine for the exploring… and perfecting.”

Elford stood in the wrecked doorway of the boxcar. He now seemed truly a skeleton. His enormous belly was gone, only ragged strips of fungalized flesh weeping that greasy black substance hung from his body.

Victoria was caught between the two foes. She was able to fend off a sense of doom only because she hoped she might play the two enemies against one another long enough to orchestrate her escape. If she could put the Kindred at one another’s throats, she felt she could dispatch or discourage the three ghouls quickly enough to find cover.

And strangely, though Elford wasn’t dead and her vengeance technically was not exacted, her confidence had rebounded. Perhaps the sight of the beast in such a humbled condition was enough, or perhaps it was just the flush of the impending battle. In any event, if she survived, if she escaped, then she felt she was ready to tackle her future with the same single-minded devotion that had carried her this far.

“Damn.” Sebastian muttered it behind her.

Without looking at him, Victoria stepped backward toward the Lasombra. And she said to all while looking at Elford, “Too late, Elford. I bind myself to my bishop’s care now.”

Then she turned, straightened herself so the lush figure sheathed within her velvet jumpsuit was plainly visible, and then dropped to her knees about four paces from Sebastian. She didn’t want to be too close.

The Tzimisce growled, and nearby, Sebastian added a flourish to his earlier curse: “Damnation.”

Elford quickly descended the steps of the boxcar, and as he prepared to clear the final one, he tripped.

He managed to catch himself on his brittle-looking arms, but he howled in pain. Still dangling and rocking back and forth on the razor-wire by virtue of the thick blood that oozed from its top was Elford’s right foot. The moment passed and the foot dripped off the wire and bounced to the ground.

Sebastian and the ghouls were transfixed by the raging Tzimisce, but Victoria felt the heat of evaporating blood rush to her legs. She stood and dashed hell-bent toward her parked car.

Behind her, Elford screamed, “Smash her!”

Then, despite her lead and her speed, Victoria’s hopes were dashed when she managed to make out what Sebastian said: “I regret it, but I’m afraid he’s right. She’s too dangerous. Get her. Now!”

The gravel clicked under her heels as she ran, and though several yards away from the passenger’s side of her BMW, Victoria leapt into the air and crashed somewhat awkwardly into the driver’s seat.

She flipped a switch to close the roof and then flicked the keys to rev the engine to life. The wheels sprayed rocks until they found purchase on the packed earth beneath and catapulted the car forward.

The sound of gunfire rang out and Victoria cursed but ducked low in her seat. She heard the complaints of the car as several bullets hit it, but she kept the gas pedal full to the floor while she clutched and shifted to second gear.

One of the tires was shot out then and the car spun a bit in the gravel, but Victoria doggedly kept pushing the machine. She was nearing the bridge over the tracks when an abyss opened immediately in front of the car. She tried to screech to a halt, but too late. The car sailed over the yawning darkness… but Victoria did not fall into it.

She pushed the gearstick back into first and tried to accelerate again. However, tendrils of darkness snaked up the sides of the car, and clinching every possible point of leverage, keeping the car from budging.

Victoria flattened herself on the seats and quickly crawled to the passenger side, the side now facing away from her pursuers. She tried the door, but it wouldn’t open, so she scrambled through the open window, tearing the convertible top with one of her heels. Then she turned to face the stick-wielding ghoul who was nearly upon her.

Monday, 30 August 1999, 9:54 PM CSX freight yard

Atlanta, Georgia

Though he adapted well, the General was not a man of science. His roots were in the ancient past. So he could not know that he pursued a scent that science said should be impossible to detect. One particle in a trillion was the needle-in-a-haystack named Victoria Ash. But his powers predated science, and certainly went far beyond it.

And now he ran as a wolf because the badger would be too slow. The General ran with his eyes closed. The scent was so faint, so ephemeral, that he needed all his concentration simply to track it. Because he ran blindly, he did not hear the tires that screeched as he ran into the paths of night drivers on the streets and highways of Atlanta. Nor did he register the impact when a family sedan cruising along a residential avenue plowed into him. He doggedly regained his feet and began to move again. Such was his speed that he was up and gone before the mortal driver braked to a stop to discover whose pet he’d killed. The man was left fumbling for a flashlight to see if the dog was caught up in the underside of his car. But there wasn’t even any blood.

Eventually the trail took the General beyond the streets and highways to a wooded stretch, and then finally to the freight yard. The scent was overwhelming now, for it carried on winds science could describe. It was a delicious aroma of fear, sexuality, and courage.

The General liked this woman ever more. Too bad his dream had not told him whether he would save her or not.

The prospect currently looked grim, which gave rise to a wave of mad excitement and giddiness in the General. At the top of a rise that allowed him to survey the battlefield of railroad ties, continuous steel beams and gravel, the Malkavian paused for a moment and opened his eyes.

Victoria Ash rolled out of an automobile as a stick-wielding ghoul closed on her. Behind that ghoul were two others, both busy reloading their firearms. Beyond them were the primary foes: a Cainite of mortal appearance, and a ravaged figure made of bones and scraps of flesh. The latter seemed injured, so perhaps the odds were not so long after all. It was standing on a single leg, grasping what appeared to be an amputated foot that it seemed to be grafting back onto the end of its leg.

What was the woman doing so far out here? And why was her scent so strong on the emaciated horror?

He watched for a moment as the ghoul near Victoria struck with his long staff. The Toreador rolled to one side of the blow and then somersaulted to her feet. The General noted approvingly that she was wily enough to keep the ghoul between herself and the other two with firearms.

Even so, one of them either spied an opening or was not battle-trained enough to hold his fire. The General flicked his eyes along the path of the bullet, keeping it constantly and instantly in focus. He might protect himself from it, but there was nothing he could do for the Toreador other than charge.

Still in the form of a wolf, the General began his bolt down the slope as the bullet fulfilled its trajectory and struck Victoria in the leg. She winced, but did little more than stagger. The General snarled a smile.

“Just fire, damn you,” shouted the dark clad man at his ghouls. “If Stick goes down with her, we’ll see what Elford can do to put him back together.”

Six more shots were fired before the General cleared the end of a rusted boxcar. There he briefly met the gaze of the man, who had now spotted him.

The man shouted, “Shilo! Felon! To your left!”

The ghouls turned to face the General, but he was already airborne. One shot rang out, but not from the square-jawed man upon whom the Malkavian pounced. The General went right for the throat, and when the man’s flailing arms failed to push the wolf’s muzzle away, the General felt soft and stringy flesh fill his mouth. Then he shook his head hard to right, then left, and back again. The ghoul became a rag doll and on the third or fourth shake, the General heard its neck snap. The ghoul, though still alive, was incapable of moving anything but his eyes, and even these were slow to focus on the General.

“Damn your interference, Sebastian!” the skeletal monster shrieked. “How dare you fuck up my ambush like this? Who followed you here anyway?”

Bullets screeched past the General and two found their mark as he charged the other ghoul. One bullet merely scathed him, but the other pounded fully into his chest, and the Malkavian felt it rattle through his rib cage.

The General leaped again, but he was snatched from the air by a tendril of darkness. It looped around his back and belly and knotted onto itself. The jerk was sudden and unexpected, stunning the General for a second. But only for a second. The ghoul stepped away from him but was still at essentially point-blank range as he emptied his clip into the prone vampire. The General wanted to save some surprise for later in the battle, but the situation had turned ugly too quickly. Therefore, an instant after the first bullet smashed near his spine, the General called upon his blood. The wolf caught in a manifested darkness quickly melted into fluid that, instead of draining into the ground, continued to disintegrate until a patch of fog swirled upward and around and through the tentacle that bound it.

Bullets from the ghoul’s gun flashed into the dirt and ricocheted into the air. Some even struck the tenebrous arm, which writhed in discomfort before the Lasombra Sebastian banished it with a wave of his hand The cloud continued to rise and the General’s consciousness drifted with it. In such a form he could essentially view the entire battlefield at once, and he did so in an instant. The ghoul below tracked him with his gun, but did not fire. Sebastian was watching Victoria again, and the Toreador seemed to have her situation under control. The ghoul Stick was standing slack-muscled before her, and Victoria stared intently into his eyes.

The Tzimisce named Elford was a different matter. His dread gaze bore upon the rising mist as well. The man-beast shouted, “This one is dangerous. Beware the Gangrel!” Elford cackled. “Care to fight claw to claw, animal?” The Tzimisce then spat into the air and hissed, “If you do not stand in the way, then I will shred the woman! You obviously care what happens to her, as you struck first against her attackers.”

The hideous man-thing was right about that much at least; for while the General could avoid physical harm while in this form—one which his Gangrel tutor had explained was the greatest of the powers of transformation the Malkavian would ever learn—he was also incapable of harming others physically. And the General did not possess any mental powers that would be effective in this situation.

Spinning quickly, the General formed a funnel cloud that elongated toward the ground, and touched down like a dancing tornado. Within the center of the vortex, the shape of a man could be seen appearing, until at last the final wisps of haze evaporated and the Malkavian was left standing before his Tzimisce opponent.

The General grimaced at Elford and repeated the thing’s words, “Claw to claw?” Then the Malkavian’s eyes glowed ruby red and razor-sharp claws sliced through the flesh of his fingertips and nails. He crouched, a feral air suspended around him.

The General could only hope that Victoria could hold out against the Lasombra long enough for him to aid her.

“Oh yes, Gangrel,” Elford cackled. “Oh yes.”

There was gunfire behind the General, but it was not directed at him. Even so, he risked a glance backwards and saw that the ghoul was firing, not at Victoria, but at Stick, who was charging hell-bent toward him. Whatever charm Victoria had used did not dispel when Stick was struck once, twice, three times with bullets. The third one dropped Stick to a knee, but with his extraordinary vision, the General saw red-black blood well up into the wounds and seal them. Then it charged again, and the other ghoul panicked. He tried to flee, but Stick closed the distance and the great wooden staff smashed into the back of his head.

The General wanted to watch, wanted to see enough to know that Victoria would hold her own, but a sizzling noise drew his attention back to Elford. The Tzimisce’s flesh was rapidly heating, suddenly coming to a boil as large bubbles burst along his stringy arms.

The Tzimisce’s own transformation was underway, and the General, even in his long years on this earth, had seen the likes of it but once before. Blood welled up in gouts from Elford’s mouth, and he vomited it upon himself. Instead of running down to the ground, though, the blood formed into thick rivulets that spread like vines in time-lapse photography over his entire frame. His body began to stretch; but paradoxically, as the Tzimisce grew taller, he also became thicker. His arms muscled with sinewy cords until they hung apelike from his massive shoulders.

The skin of the beast—for he could only be called a beast now—crackled as if over a fiery-hot flame, and the skin became hardened and glossy, like a black chitinous armor shell. He was at least eight feet tall, with ichor-tipped spikes jutting from the vertebrae along his spine. The ridges of bone that had topped his naked pate also grew into wicked spikes, though they seemed hollow on the end, exuding a putrid sebaceous substance.

Elford’s gigantic body began to shake with a laugh that slowly grew in volume until his head was thrown full back and his voice split the night. Then he became preternaturally calm.

The Tzimisce said, “Do you still wish to play, little wolf?”

The General flashed his claws back and forth in front of his face and replied, “I think, monster, I have seen your best trick, but you have no idea what I might yet reveal to you.”

With a roar more Velociraptor than mammal, the Tzimisce charged the General. The beast’s hands bore sickly-green claws that were cracked and jagged, but the General had no doubt they could severely injure him. The Malkavian did note, however, that Elford limped slightly on the foot that it had reattached moments before. He faked a dodge to the other direction before rolling back to his own left. Elford reacted quickly, but his ankle gave way slightly and the advantage of the monster’s enormous reach was negated.

The General completed his maneuver and struck at the rear of Elford’s already hampered leg. The Malkavian tried to hamstring the beast, but his claws did not cut deeply enough. Blood oozed from the wound, but it was little to show for a tactic that might not work again.

The General was again facing the direction of the other melee, and the glimpse that he could afford as Elford closed again related Stick’s victory over the other ghoul. Now that wounded Stick was marching upon his former master. Sebastian was shaking his head and locked his own dark gaze with Stick’s blank eyes.

Then the Tzimisce was upon him, and the General decided he’d best judge the quality of foe he faced. If he could score a quick victory in the heated exchange, then that would be best not only for him, but for Victoria as well.

A cloud of dust rose from beneath the kicked-up gravel as the two combatants alternately maneuvered and dodged and struck. Elford was the first to score a hit—a mere glancing blow that did not even draw blood. Then the General struck soundly twice in a row and Elford reeled backwards. The Tzimisce’s eyes flashed red—with anger, the General assumed, but then he thought better of that. The fiend had activated some other foul power, but he could not immediately discern its nature.

He knew soon enough, however, because Elford began fighting a slow retreat, concentrating on defense while the thick paste that covered his body reformed into chitin in the places where the General had chipped it away.

Then the Malkavian heard the pattering of footsteps behind him. Dozens, perhaps scores of footsteps. He allowed Elford’s retreat to carry the Tzimisce beyond the range even of his great arms. While keeping his eyes on Elford, the General sniffed. Rats!

He whirled around, ignoring his enemy for the moment, but the flood of rodents was nearly upon him. Not scores, but hundreds of them. The General leapt away to be clear of them, but they acted as if with a single mind. Rats on the fringes of the group swarmed in a new direction and were quickly upon the Malkavian again. Their bites were not severe, but they came in multitudes and they came quickly.

The General spun forcefully so that centrifugal force whipped them from his body. But then an explosion of pain ripped into his left side, and he felt himself lifted high into the air. He was on the head of the Tzimisce, impaled by a trio of the weeping horns on the beast’s massive head. The stench of the greasy poison at this close range was noxious enough, but the fire inside his body as the poison swept through tissues and organs was excruciating.

The Tzimisce followed through on his charge and threw his head into the air. The General slipped from the spines and hurtled through the night sky. He crashed into the side of a boxcar with such force that the rusted wheels cracked from the steel rails and the car threatened to topple onto the Malkavian.

The General’s head lolled to the side, and from his perspective at ground level he watched the rats scatter. Some began to fight with one another.

The Malkavian’s body tossed as in a seizure as his precious blood battled the potent poison for supremacy. His blood was winning, but the pain was still intense when the horrid monster cast its shadow over the General’s prone body.

A tongue, tiny in so huge a beast, rolled from the creature’s mouth and danced in the air as the Tzimisce gloated. “If this blow does not kill, then prepare for a thousand nights of hell in my flesh factory.”

Elford raised one taloned hand high into the air and— The General vanished.

The Tzimisce was stunned. His arm woodenly lowered and he tentatively extended his neck and sniffed. Nothing.

On the ground, right where he was a moment before he’d cloaked himself to Elford’s eyes, the General struggled with the poison. His blood was nearly spent, but the poison was finally eradicated.

The Tzimisce was anxiously looking around, but the General forced himself to delay a moment longer. He focused his keen senses on the beast’s chitinous shell, searching for a weak point he might exploit. Every chain had its weak link, and the General was adept at pinpointing such.

Then he struck. His sudden motion revealed the General to Elford’s addled senses, but the Malkavian was already inside the monster’s guard. He slapped hard at the Tzimisce’s armor with one hand, and cracks instantly spread from the point of impact. The follow- up came immediately. The General’s other hand crashed through the fractured shell and, with a spray of blood and gore, splashed into the flesh beneath.

The Tzimisce bucked like a raging stallion and howled a high, piercing squeal that shattered one of the General’s eardrums. But the Malkavian held on. As Elford clawed at his opponent, the General again formed into a cloud of mist and quickly squirted into the creature’s body through the hole he had stove in the chitin. The Tzimisce scratched fruitlessly at his own body, shattering off plates of the chitin and rending slabs of his own flesh from his body.

With the barest amount of strength remaining in his body, the General he forced himself to transform again—while still within the hideous creature. It was a tactic never possible before—natural flesh was too dense and would not allow the mist to reform into the shape the General required. But inside the armored shell, Elford’s flesh was fibrous and loosely connected.

So a terrific explosion of protoplasmic tissue followed, and when the General dragged himself from the foulness spread thick upon the ground, the dead Tzimisce resembled less a man than the remains of a monstrous egg.

Before all the blood could leak away into the ground, the Malkavian seized handfuls of rent organs and squeezed them dry for every foul-tasting drop of sustenance they might provide.

Though not in the form of a wolf, the General was bent over the remains of his foe like an animal. But his eyes sparkled with intelligence as he gauged the state of the other conflict.

Victoria’s velvet suit was shredded in many places, and her skin bore the marks of burns from the tentacles that lashed her, but she was effectively wielding the fallen ghoul’s staff in an effort to parry the thrusts of the living darkness. The tentacles stretched from the shadows beneath one of the train cars, and, yet another tendril began to blossom forth. It wriggled through the air and joined the assault against the outgunned Toreador.

The General’s face spilt with a grin of admiration, for Victoria’s movements were breathtakingly fast. Four tenebrous arms sought to smite her now, but the staff in her hands was an even faster blur that knocked aside virtually every lunge or strike against her. Some few glancing blows penetrated her wall of defense, but even these she fended off before they could grip her.

Sebastian was yelling loudly. Cursing her. “Damn you, Ash! You can only maintain this defense for a little longer. Give up!”

The Malkavian knew that Sebastian was correct. Fortunately, he had a little more blood now, and still more tricks up his sleeves. Tactics that would never be expected from a “Gangrel.”

In the moment that had passed while the General devoured blood from the ruptured organs, the Lasombra did not once look his way.

He still did not have much strength, but if he could just get close…

Monday, 30 August 1999, 10:07 PM CSX freight yard

Atlanta, Georgia

Victoria thanked Caine or whomever might be listening for this bizarre benefactor in her time of need. The last time she’d seen the General, the Malkavian had been climbing naked on one of the statues at her Solstice Party, an event that seemed to have taken place ages and ages ago. However he came to be here, however he had come to have an interest in Victoria or a hatred for these Sabbat, she did not care to know the details at the moment. She was more than happy to leave her Tzimisce tormentor to him.

Stick had been an easy convert. After striking down his fellow ghoul, Stick then took his rampage to his Lasombra master. In the moment while Sebastian attempted to regain his mental hold on his own ghoul, Victoria considered running for safety. She decided against it. She wasn’t certain she would make it, for one thing, and for another, if both the Sabbat turned their attention to fighting the General, the Malkavian would surely fall. Then they would both be on her heels.

She had to hope that the General could defeat Elford. And that she could hold off Sebastian long enough.

Fortunately, the foolish Lasombra had made an error only too typical of those Victoria found herself battling. Men especially liked to toy with her, taunt her. It was an odd by- product of her extraordinary looks. Even women were often slow to strike her down for good, wishing to enjoy the feminine helplessness of the lovely Toreador whom they were poised to rend or mangle.

Victoria could count at least three previous times when this tendency had meant her life and her opponent’s defeat. She hoped this would be the fourth. And while she was unable to watch the progress of the General’s epic battle against Elford, she assumed that the Malkavian would not enter such a fray unless he thought his own chances of survival were at least reasonable.

So Victoria Ash was crestfallen when, through the blur of her quarterstaff and the red of her bloodshot eyes, she saw a limping Elford hobble his way toward Sebastian.

She battled for a moment more, but in the instant that Sebastian saw the approaching Tzimisce, his dark tendrils faded away. Darkness vaporized into the suddenly still night. Exhausted, Victoria let her arms fall to her sides. She still clutched the staff, but loosely, and in hands sore from her efforts.

The Lasombra was saying something, perhaps in response to the Tzimisce: “I am more prone to grant that wish now, Elford.”

Victoria’s shoulders sagged. She was back where she had been in the moments before the General appeared, except now there was no hope of playing the Sabbat against one another this time. A twist of fate had brought four Kindred together tonight where Victoria had hoped for only one.

But then Victoria realized something. As he walked, Elford was favoring his left foot. Surely it was his right foot that had been severed by her razorwire? She gasped and tightened her jaw. That wasn’t Elford at all….

Victoria was a master of the unspoken. She could read epics from the body language of others, and in a flash she also realized that Sebastian had come to the same conclusion.

Sebastian sighed theatrically and said, “You finish her off then, fleshcrafter. I am weary.”

With that, the Lasombra stepped toward one of the boxcars as if to lean against it.

Victoria shouted, “He knows! Strike now!” She clenched her fists so hard that she nearly cracked her staff in two.

But the General paused a moment too long at her cry. As the skeletal image of Elford melted to reveal the Malkavian’s muscular form, Sebastian reached to his feet and in an awesome display of pure strength, pulled a twenty-foot length of steel rail from the ground. This he swung with as little apparent effort as Victoria had wielded Stick’s staff. The Toreador’s jaw dropped slightly and she winced when the rail smashed into the General and sent him spilling to the side.

Sebastian closed several paces and hefted the rail into the air. With wicked speed he bashed it downward at the General, who, still stunned from the prior blow, took this one full on his back.

The Lasombra shouted, “We do not need to hide in our shadows or behind such guises, fool. Behold the strength of the Lasombra!” At that, Sebastian raised the rail high again.

Victoria cried out, “For God’s sake, move!”

As the rail slashed downward again, the General disappeared, swallowed by the earth. Sebastian cackled. “Ah, the last resort of a badly beaten Gangrel!” He pounded the ground with the length of steel. Then he dropped the rail and turned to Victoria. His angry eyes seethed with fire and danced with shadows.

“Now then, Victoria. Let’s put this to an end. I have yet to lose anything of value tonight, so I am of a mind to make you my prisoner as before. However, I think Elford— the real Elford—made that same mistake already. Pardon me for not being a gentleman about it this time.”

Shadows all around the periphery of Victoria’s vision began to sway, and Sebastian began to shake. His pale skin mottled and his flesh bloated as what Victoria could only describe as a froth of darkness rose from within him.

The Lasombra’s entire chest seemed to empty into an infinite void, as if a gateway to another world had been punched through him. From this hole extended four tentacles similar to the sort Victoria had faced moments before, but these seemed more prehensile, more dangerous.

Surrounded by bands of shadow, the now-demonic Sebastian cackled, “Gentleman or not, I am due one lover’s embrace.” The Lasombra strode toward her.

The instincts of Victoria’s animal brain, the Beast within her, shuddered toward the surface. She had not dealt with this monster within her for decades, and the nauseating feeling of its rising caused her to drop to her knees. Gravel bit into her legs where her clothing was already torn. Bowed, she seemed an offering to this mongrel of shadow and man.

Immense willpower kept her from breaking in her final moments. Victoria raised her chin to face her doom. In so doing, she also saw the General improbably rising from the earth a score of paces from where he’d sunk within it—something she’d thought impossible, until now.

What she saw went unnoticed by Sebastian, if the beast before her could still use that name.

Sebastian grinned, almost grimaced, and said, “Become part of me.”

The General pulled himself from the earth as if clambering from a pool of water. He charged Sebastian, leapt, and tackled the Lasombra from behind.

Sebastian’s eyes widened in momentary surprise, but then that turned to mere displeasure. His arms pinned to his sides, he was face-down upon the earth. The four tendrils from the netherworld within him snaked from his body and began to hammer upon the Malkavian.

“Run,” the General choked. “Run for your life.” Victoria ran.

But not away from the battlefield. In a blinding flash of speed beyond anything a natural animal might display, she hastened to the faded blue boxcar and retrieved her small machine gun. Her bag was there as well, and she inserted another clip before streaking back to the struggle.

Sebastian’s four tentacles had almost pried loose the General’s grip, and the Malkavian appeared to be sustaining even this effort at tremendous cost to himself.

Victoria pressed her gun to Sebastian’s temple, and without a quip to delay her, pulled and held the trigger.

The first several bullets were swallowed by the darkness, but the next dozen and then the dozen after that blew the Lasombra’s head into dust.

The Toreador then dropped bodily to ground, perhaps as utterly depleted of energy and blood as the motionless Malkavian nearby.

Then at once, they both managed to say, “Thanks.”

Monday, 30 August 1999, 10:40 PM Morehead Park, Brooklyn New York City, New York

The hunt. Ramona had found that a good stalk was the best way to keep her mind off things she didn’t want to think about—things, and people. This was the second night running that she had made a point of staying away from the apartment… away from Liz. Ramona couldn’t face her. The manacles had proven too damned tough. Neither woman had been able to pick the locks, and the small file hadn’t been much help against the sturdy metal. Ramona had left promising to find a better, stronger file.

And she hadn’t been back.

Tonight was another hot summer night. Ramona could smell mortal sweat, mortal blood. That was what she was trying to concentrate on—not the memory of Liz’s proud but pleading eyes.

Ramona muttered curses under her breath. She’d had more luck distracting herself last night, but this time she wasn’t actually hungry. She was just going through the motions. And it wasn’t working.

The damnable fact of the matter was that she still might be able to learn something from Khalil. But was that possibility worth Liz’s freedom? Ramona’s dead demanded vengeance, and there was still the chance that her sire Tanner had survived—somehow. But was this the way to go about doing what had to be done?

Ramona cursed again. She cursed herself for indecision. She cursed Tanner for making her a predator. She cursed Khalil for the different type of predator that he was. She cursed Liz for being a victim—for getting in the way.

The hunt. The smell of blood. Ramona forced herself to concentrate. This park, where she had spent the past day submerged within the earth, was not crowded. There was, however, a woman sitting alone on a bench. Stupid. Ramona would have preferred a man, like last night: She had fed on a pimp who would need many days to recover before he abused his girls again. But maybe this woman, so unconcerned with her own self- preservation that she was alone in a park in New York City at night, deserved a scare. Maybe she’d be more careful next time.

Ramona could almost taste the blood as she silently approached the woman from behind. Conscious will began to give way to the instincts of the hunt.

Then the woman stood. She turned toward the Gangrel and looked directly at her. Ramona was crouched to spring—to cut off any scream before it was given voice—but the woman’s mouth was already open, not to scream but to speak:

“Ramona!” the stranger said, less calmly perhaps than she might have liked.

Ramona froze. She’d thought the woman was mortal but now wasn’t sure. The Gangrel frantically tried to look in every direction at once. Sabbat ambush? She’d run into them before, and Khalil had begged for their attention….

“Ramona, we need to talk to you,” the woman said quickly. “My employer wants to talk with you.”

The woman—short, darkly complected, dark hair—was breathing rapidly. Breathing, Ramona realized. Mortal after all. And scared—or at least fighting a rush of adrenaline. Then Ramona noticed something else. Above the excited breathing and the pounding heart, another sound caught her ear—a buzzing… no, a voice, now that she knew what to listen for. A voice, but it didn’t sound right. It was very faint and… electronic.

Ramona looked more closely at the woman, and saw the tiny earphone. Someone else was talking to the woman. Whoever that someone was, he or she had warned the woman of Ramona’s approach. An unaided mortal wouldn’t have heard her.

“Your boss,” Ramona said, looking around again and trying pierce the shadows. “Who’s that?”

“Hesha Ruhadze.”

Ramona kept scanning the darkness, but even her penetrating vision could find no one. “Hesha, huh.” At least it wasn’t the Sabbat—if this woman was telling the truth. But it didn’t have to be Sabbat to be bad. Hesha might have heard that Khalil was spilling his secrets to the Sabbat; Hesha might consider Ramona an accomplice to that spilling. “Is he the little voice in your ear?”

The woman blanched. The buzzing resumed, fast and furious. “Uh, no…. Not exactly.” “Who is it then?”

The buzzing increased. Someone was clearly very concerned about what the woman was going to say next. “Just friends, here to make sure I return safely.”

Ramona hesitated. Despite her best efforts, she still couldn’t pinpoint the “friends.” She supposed that, if they were going to attack her, there would have been no use in the woman talking to her. They could have ambushed her blind. “Tell them to come out where I can see them.”

More very intense buzzing. “No,” the woman said. “I mean, no… they won’t.” The woman put a finger to her earphone and listened with a pained expression. “But they’re willing to guarantee your safe passage if you come speak with Hesha.”

“I don’t accept guarantees from people I don’t know.”

The woman frowned as the buzzing erupted again. She yanked the receiver from her ear and let the device dangle from a wire tucked into her collar. The buzzing sounded very angry.

“My name is Pauline Miles. I work for Hesha. My friends are Nosferatu. They—and Hesha—guarantee your safety.”

Ramona felt that she was out of her league somehow. Nosferatu. Khalil had met with them. Camarilla. The Gangrel were part of the Camarilla. If all this was on the level… “Okay,” Ramona said finally. Judging from the unabated angry buzzing spewing from

the earphone, Pauline had pissed off somebody, and majorly.

Ramona gave her big-time points for that.

Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 12:19 AM An outlying burrow

New York City, New York

Calebros and Hesha sat silently. Waiting.

The Nosferatu was still chagrined, a month after the fact, that he’d had the infamous Setite, the melted man, under his nose, at times quite literally, at the same time the intense worldwide search had been going on. How much time and energy had been wasted, Calebros could only imagine. He’d been wracking his brain trying to find Hesha and the Eye as well, while both were in his backyard, practically over his head, and one the victim of the other. It would have been impossible, Calebros kept telling himself, to have recognized Ruhadze when Mouse had found him in the gardens at St. John’s. It was still difficult. The Setite was a collection of raw scabs and weeping sores. He looked more the part of ragged beggar than influential Cainite. He was far from recovered, but compared to his earlier state, he was wondrously spry. Whether the oversight was avoidable or no, Calebros still had not forgiven himself, and recent events had done little to improve his mood.

Other than the seats he and Hesha occupied, one other empty chair, a few exposed pipes close overhead, and an electric lantern that blazed in the corner, the dank stone- walled chamber they were in was bare. Occasionally Calebros drummed his talons on the yellow legal pad in his lap. He stopped when he realized that, in his agitation, he had punctured the top sheet. He tucked the page under and began scribbling notes on the next.

“No harm was done,” Hesha said softly, his voice still the slightest bit scratchy from the ordeal he’d undergone.

“As you say,” said Calebros, not looking up and continuing to write furiously.

“You concede without agreeing.” Hesha laughed quietly. Calebros’s head whipped up. Angry words were ready on his lips, but the Egyptian’s smile was not mocking. The Setite obviously realized the weakness of his position, physically and strategically, as well as the fragility of their alliance. “Candor is important between friends,” Hesha said. “Otherwise, perceived insults take hold and fester.”

“I am quite accustomed to festering,” Calebros said curtly.

“I fear that I’m growing so as well,” Hesha said, squeezing one of the boils that stood raised about one of his many open wounds until the canker popped, and frothy pus ran down his arm. He laughed quietly again.

Calebros punctuated a written sentence with a particularly violent period. “Your woman willfully disobeyed her instructions.”

“She exercised discretion,” Hesha countered.

“She blatantly disregarded the safety of my people.”

“If anything had gone wrong,” Hesha said, “it would be Pauline lying torn on the ground. Your people would have faded into the night, none the worse for wear.”

Calebros fumed. Probably Hesha was correct—but the Nosferatu was not about to admit as much.

“I will speak with her,” Hesha said reasonably. “She has not encountered those of your clan before. She’s not aware of how strongly your predilection for…”

“Cowardice?” Calebros suggested accusingly.

“Prudence, I was going to say. She’s not aware of how strongly your predilection for prudence runs.”

Good choice of words, Calebros thought. But, then, Hesha always chose his words carefully, always seemed to know just the right thing to say. It was discomforting in a way, how easily the Setite could alleviate tension with just a few words. Go ahead, Eve. Take a bite of the apple. Adam might like some too. But it seemed that they needed one another—and that outweighed their natural and mutual tendencies to distrust one another. Just barely.

It seems we each have our story, Calebros had said a few nights ago. We each also have no way to prove our own or to disprove the other’s. Hesha had agreed. Calebros knew for a fact that he had not acted in bad faith toward the Setite; Hesha claimed that he had not betrayed the confidence of Clan Nosferatu. It would also seem, Calebros had said, that it is in my clan’s best interest for the Eye to pass to less… shall we say, conspicuous ownership than that of the present time. Fewer questions about how it got out and about. You remain interested in possessing it? Hesha was. And thus they had entered into a marriage of convenience, of common cause. It was true that Ruhadze had treated honorably with the Nosferatu in the past, but the past was no guarantee of the future. Especially with a Setite.

Calebros had been left to act on instinct. No amount of scribbling or note-taking or arranging of facts could give him a definitive answer. And so he had acted. To cement the deal, he had gone so far as to entrust to Hesha the secret that Calebros wished he could reclaim from his own clansmen: that he had known an attack of some sort was to fall on Atlanta. Hesha would have pieced as much together on his own, given what he already knew. So there was little real damage, and hopefully the Setite would take the admission as a sign of good faith on the part of the Nosferatu. Although still the disclosure grated.

Just as the indiscreet use of discretion on the part of Hesha’s underling grated. The bargain with Ruhadze had seemed safer somehow when the Setite had had barely enough strength to sit up in his sickbed, when Calebros and Cass had just figured out that the blistered corpse they had in their possession was actually Hesha Ruhadze. Each night, as the patient’s strength had slowly returned, Calebros’s control of the situation ebbed that much more, as did his comfort with his decision. Hesha was still covered with bleeding wounds, injuries caused by the Eye, that would not heal. Can I be certain, Calebros wondered, that, when he is again whole of body, his loyalty will continue?

“I would think your underlings would be more obedient,” Calebros, attempting to maintain his ire, chided Hesha.

“She is new to the family,” Hesha admitted. “Given time, she will grow to learn exactly how I would have her respond in any situation.”

“Given time…” Calebros muttered to himself.

They did not have much longer to wait. Calebros heard the footsteps first. Four sets. Umberto, obviously disgruntled, entered the chamber first. He was followed by Hesha’s underling, the Gangrel, and Cassandra. Both Umberto and Cass wore their best faces, so to speak—normal human visages, neither noticeably handsome nor beautiful, but not hideous either; nothing to attract attention. Neither Pauline nor the other girl, Ramona, had been subjected to the full brunt of facing a Nosferatu. Not until now, that is, when they were brought into Calebros’s presence. He did not hide his true appearance from them. And he could read the dismay, the fear and disgust, on their faces. Of the two, Pauline made the worthier attempt, attempt, to maintain her demeanor of professional detachment—perhaps Ruhadze had taught her well. The Gangrel, unsurprisingly, was not so couth. She gawked, both at Calebros and at Hesha in his current condition, and she hid her revulsion quite poorly, if she tried at all.

“Welcome, Ramona Tanner-childe,” Calebros said. She stared hard at him, eyes narrowed. “Hesha?”

“No,” Hesha said, repressing a chuckle. “I am Hesha Ruhadze.” Ramona looked back and forth between the Nosferatu and the Setite with his ragged, festering wounds. Hesha added to his underling, in a harsher tone, “That is all for now, Ms. Miles.”

The woman’s earphone was dangling at her shoulder, a token of her disobedience at having revealed the identity of her Nosferatu guardians to Ramona. She nodded to her employer and retraced her steps from the chamber.

“Likewise.” Calebros gestured for Umberto to go as well.

“Are you sure?” Umberto asked, but then he, along with Cass, retreated beneath Calebros’s cold stare.

“I would think your underlings would be more obedient,” Hesha said—with a straight face, no less—once the two younger Nosferatu had left. Calebros ignored him.

Ramona, apparently having grown somewhat accustomed to the hideousness of her companions, was glancing uncomfortably at the low ceiling, the pipes, the cold walls all around. She was a pretty girl, Calebros could see. Not beautiful, but pretty beneath the grime. Her hair was wild, like a panicked flock of swallows. She was slightly built, but wiry with muscles, strong, tough, like shoe leather. She scratched at the packed-earth floor with bestial clawed feet.

“We must get you some boots,” Calebros said. “Large, but… you’ll grow accustomed to them. There is the Masquerade to be maintained.”

Ramona glared at him as if he weren’t speaking English, then looked back at Hesha. “Pauline said you wanted to talk to me. I’m here. Talk.”

Hesha bowed slightly. “Allow me to introduce our host, my friend, Calebros. Your friend… if you are wise.” Ramona looked at Calebros again, a more measured look this time, trying to see through the deformities.

Good girl, Calebros thought. Young and brash, but not stupid.

Eventually, she turned back to Hesha. She looked at the third, empty chair, did not sit. “What do you want to talk about.” Still guarded, but less hostile this time.

“As I understand it,” Hesha said, “it is you that has been asking after me.” “Not me,” she said.

“Your companion,” Calebros said.

She was instantly on edge again, but trying not to appear so. “He ain’t my companion.” She spat the last word distastefully.

“He,” said Hesha. “Khalil Ravana.”

She hesitated for a long moment, staring, one after the other, at the two beasts before her. “He said you could find the Eye,” she said at last to Hesha.

“Did he, now?”

“Yeah.” She waited. “So can you?” Her every word was hard, an accusation.

What have you seen that makes you so angry, so bitter, little one? Calebros wondered. Family killed? Have you been betrayed? How many times, I wonder. You’d best get over it, if you hope to survive.

“I do possess the means to find the Eye,” Hesha said.

The gem, Calebros thought. The black and red stone. If Hesha had told him the truth about it.

“Why is it,” Hesha asked Ramona, “that you want to find the Eye so badly?”

Ramona hesitated again. She obviously had many questions of her own, but she was being very guarded about what she said. Quid pro quo, my dear, Calebros thought. Quid pro quo.

“I have my reasons,” she said, kicking at the dirt some more.

Hesha shook his head, disappointed. “That’s not good enough if we’re going to work together, Ramona.”

“I didn’t say nothing ’bout working together,” she said.

“Do you really think Khalil can get you what you want?” the Setite asked. She didn’t have an answer for that, so Hesha continued. “You were with Xaviar… in the mountains. You saw what it could do.”

Calebros and Hesha had speculated as much over the past nights, but if the Setite’s assertion was a gamble, then Ramona’s wide-eyed expression was the payoff—and confirmation of the truth of his words.

“I want to kill it,” she said, finding her tongue after a few seconds. “Leopold, the Eye.” Her words dripped with hatred. She was not one to hide her feelings, this Gangrel whelp.

“I will make sure that it harms no one else,” Hesha said, the casual tone of his conversation gone, his words even and cold. “I will find it with or without your help. But you have seen it; you, like I, have survived it.”

“I’d say she did a better job of surviving it than you did,” Calebros suggested.

“I would like to think,” Hesha went on, ignoring the interruption, “that we could help one another. Are you better off with me, or with Khalil?”

“I’m not with Khalil,” she snapped at him.

“Of course you’re not,” Hesha backtracked, somehow without seeming to, “but he’s the best you’ve done, and I suspect he has told you more lies than truths.” Ramona was obviously not convinced; she regarded the two elders warily.

“We are trying to bring about the same end,” Calebros insisted. “For you to trust Khalil over us is insanity.”

“I didn’t say nothing ’bout trust neither.”

“Perhaps a token of good faith,” Calebros suggested. “We’ve already brought you here safely, and I have guaranteed your safe passage—whether you help us or not. What if Hesha provides you with something that is a marker of his trustworthiness? And you…? Khalil mentioned a way to cure wounds inflicted by the Eye….”

Ramona’s hand moved absently to her cheek—the cheek that Calebros knew had been scarred but now was healed. Cassandra, who had seen the wound, seemed to think that the injury was the same type as those Hesha bore, though less severe.

“I’ll tell you that,” Ramona agreed. The thought of counteracting the harm done by the Eye seemed to sit well with her—either that, or she was excited by the prospect of undercutting Khalil’s bargaining power.

“And in return?” Hesha asked.

This time the Gangrel whelp did not hesitate at all. “I want Liz freed.”

Calebros cocked his head, not fully understanding. For an instant he thought he saw surprise register on the Setite’s scarred and bandaged face—but only for an instant.

“What are you saying?” Hesha asked, sounding slightly suspicious.

“Khalil has been keeping her chained up,” Ramona said. “I want her free of him. I want her free of you, too.” Her hard, accusing stare didn’t waver from Hesha.

She can see his injuries, Calebros thought. She knows she has him. He has no choice.

“You have my word,” Hesha said solemnly.

Ramona crossed her arms. Her scowl, which seemed to be her only expression, deepened. “Your word, huh? Once I tell you how to cure yourself, why should you still help me?”

Calebros sighed. “I am more than willing to vouch for—”

“Do I know you?” Ramona asked pointedly. “I mean… your name, and this is your place, yeah, but… as far as I’m concerned, you’re on his side.” She nodded toward Hesha.

Calebros took no offense, though he was caught off guard by the whelp’s audacity. I shouldn’t be, he reminded himself. Maybe what Emmett said was true, and he didn’t get out enough. When, Calebros tried to remember, was the last time he’d spoken, face to face, with an outlander? Or, before Hesha, with a Kindred of any clan other than his own?

“I give you my word,” Hesha said, “and if that is not enough…” His hand was in one of the pockets of the wrap the Nosferatu had given him to wear. He took something from the robe and tossed the small object to Ramona. She started to flinch, as if the Setite might be attacking her, but then snatched a small key from its lazy arc in the air. She studied the key intently.

“I promise that Elizabeth will be free,” Hesha said. “At the very least, you can free her yourself.”

Calebros, uncharacteristically, found himself a few details short. Elizabeth? Khalil was keeping someone Hesha knew prisoner? The Nosferatu assumed that Ruhadze would fill him in after this meeting. Hesha had proven remarkably forthcoming throughout their discussions. Still, Calebros wondered about the possibilities, about exactly how forthcoming the Setite was being with him, and with Ramona. Hesha promised this Elizabeth person would be free. Immediately? Did that include being alive? He’d tossed Ramona a key—but not specified whether or not the key actually matched Elizabeth’s bonds. Was Hesha making a symbolic gesture that he knew the Gangrel would misinterpret? A great deal of truth could be skirted without lying.

“Turmeric root,” Ramona said. “Light it, press it down in the wounds good.”

“Light it,” Hesha repeated. “On fire?”

“Yeah, but let it burn out. You know, so it’s just smoldering. Hurts like a motherfuck, but it works.”

Hesha thought about that for a long moment. He did not appear to relish the idea, and Calebros couldn’t blame him, not considering the amount of the Setite’s body that was covered by the Eye wounds. The very thought of pressing burning anything… No, Calebros would not think about it.

“You should know this, Ramona Tanner-childe,” Hesha said. “We have arranged a meeting with Khalil tomorrow night. He has agreed to tell us the secret of healing these wounds—agreed to sell us the secret. All he wanted was cash. It seems he’s no longer interested in finding me… or the Eye.”

Ramona glared. She seemed skeptical but not surprised.

“Know this also,” Hesha said. “I believe what you have told me—and, regardless, I will know the truth of it soon enough. I believe just as strongly—no, more strongly—that Khalil will lie tomorrow, that he cares not one whit about this bargain, or about you, or Elizabeth. I ask you to come tomorrow night, to listen secretly, and to make up your own mind. I do not expect you to trust me unquestioningly… but I do know, for a certainty, that you will better achieve your aims with me than with Khalil.”

Ramona considered that. “I’ll be back tomorrow night,” was all she said. “Be here by nine,” Calebros said.

Ramona nodded and left them.

Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 12:26 AM Piedmont Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia

Anatole shifted on his stool, his dreaming gaze fastened on the wall of the basement studio.

In the dream, he sat on his rumpled bed and considered his situation. Everyone seemed to think that he was a key to something urgently important to them. The governor needed him to appear with him and the fireman he’d saved in a photo in order to generate publicity as the election drew near. The owner of the school needed him to be out of sight so she could continue with her plan to close the school and sell the building for a massive profit. The schoolmistress insisted the he stole a paring knife from the kitchen during his clean-up detail the previous week. And the editor of the school paper reminded him every hour that an article concerning the future replacement of the second-floor windows was due.

This all seemed like a great deal of responsibility for a boy who had no idea of the location or identity of his parents. An orphan who, on top of that, was new to this orphanage. And now there was the governor wanting to adopt him, at least as long as talking about it served a purpose. And the school owner wished Anatole would disappear, or never have been there in the first place, or at least never have saved that damned fireman when the house across the street had burned during that big party.

The schoolmistress also wanted something from him, as did the editor, he supposed, but the editor was at least transparent in his desires: he seemed to think a front-page article from the hero of the fire would mean consideration of his dumb paper by the state fair.

He couldn’t care less about any of this. He just wanted to play his guitar. The guitar might lead him back to his parents someday, if the fame from the fireman thing did not plaster his face in enough places to make them take notice and maybe decide to drop in and take him back. Perhaps they could even cut a deal with the governor. He didn’t really care how this reunion happened, but if they didn’t do it now, then maybe someone would someday recognize his guitar.

It was a fine instrument, with what looked like ivory frets, but he figured that was unlikely. If they were, or even if anyone else thought they were, then his guitar would have vanished into a pawnshop somewhere. It seemed as though something of value had already been taken from it. There were four indentations in the front of the black band that formed the guitar’s waist where stones of some sort might once have been.

Another larger stone seemed to have once been set in the top of the guitar, or at least what he called the top because it was what he looked down upon when it rested on his knee.

If the guitar were lost, then everything would be gone. His happiness gone. His link to his past gone forever.

The only thing all this fuss had done for him was land him a private room for a while. That meant all his junk could be strewn across the floor. Clothes in unfolded piles. His bedcovers slipping off one side of his bed and dangling on the floor. He’d even pried up the boards in the closet floor to create a little hiding place where he could keep his few things that mattered. The guitar, of course, did not fit in there, but extra strings for it were among the prized possessions now safe under boards with loose nails.

The private room was also great because he could sing the songs he liked the most. His favorite songs were the corniest ones any of the other kids had ever heard, and even though he thought many of them secretly enjoyed the songs—some of them even cried, he’d noticed—they still made fun of him for singing them or even knowing them at all. All so they could look tough at his expense.

But when he was up here, nobody laughed. So he sang, and sometimes when he did so, he swore that he could remember something of his mother. He remembered being hugged in a special way. He smelled a flowery fragrance that also reminded him of warm skin, though he didn’t know why. So he often cried at his songs too, but only when they summoned these memories.

But these recollections were fading away somehow, breaking his heart. What would happen to him the day he was no longer a concern for the governor or real- estate tycoon or school principal or newspaper editor? And when after that would he forget his past entirely?

Where would he be then?

Tears prickled his eyes, but he could still answer himself. He’d be singing, like now. Hoping to uncover something new. Hoping that someone would see the guitar and tell him of its past.

And then from the midst of the words of the chorus, some rhyme or rhythm that suddenly blossomed into something more, came a fragment of a song from his past. The words hung on the tip of his tongue, and he tried to keep going without pausing, because he knew the memory was a fleeting one and concentration would only make it fade faster. A few words rolled off, and he sang them a full octave higher, like his mother might perhaps have done one time or perhaps many times.

And then the words, the music, were gone, and he carried on through the chorus of his present song before he slowly murmured to a stop. The memory of the words and even the music was completely gone, but their absence left a sort of blank space in his mind that he would not let fill with anything else. He’d keep it for the time when this song returned, a place for it to stay.

And he smiled, for even though he had lost something, he knew in his mind it was a possession he could cherish.

Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

“Precisely how much information about the defenses did your informant on the council give you, Archbishop?” Borges’s voice betrayed an edge of irritability, but that was all. Talley glanced over at him and said a silent prayer that the man’s temper would fray no further, at least not tonight. There was too much work to be done.

Vykos pushed a small sheath of papers across the table with a noncommittal expression on her face. Thankfully, the map of Hartford on the tabletop did not so much as wrinkle. “Everything I was sent is here, Archbishop Borges. We know as much as they do when it comes to their numbers and strength. Most of the city’s Cainites will be evacuated by tomorrow night, leaving only raw childer and suicidal ghouls to serve as a rudimentary defense.”

Borges glanced over at Talley, who nodded once, then reached for the papers. For several minutes, there were no sounds but the rustling of pages, and various noises of approval or disapproval that Borges made, seemingly without knowing he did it.

“Hmm. Twenty newly Embraced vampires, a dozen ghouls, and nothing else?” Borges finally said. “We could sweep the city with a single pack.” He looked smug as he put the papers down on the desk.

“We could,” said Vykos, “and by doing so we’d confirm for them that, again, we knew exactly what we were going to be facing. It’s a short step from that to uncovering my source, and the loss of one of our most important assets.” Her face showed no trace of the disgust that colored her voice ever so slightly.

“Indeed. And that is why we must strike with overwhelming force. We must wash them away in blood, drown them in foes!” Borges was on his feet, face flushed as he imagined a victory not yet won. “No losses, like we had in Buffalo. With strength and with numbers, we shall eradicate them!”

“I couldn’t agree more,” added Polonia. “The attack must be overwhelming, and rather than entrust it to a lesser, an archbishop should take personal command. You,” he said directly to Borges, “are the perfect leader.”

Borges, his thought processes apparently having caught up to his bravado, took pause at the suggestion. He retook his seat. “Personal command, in the field?”

“That is not a good idea,” said Talley at once. He’d been expecting the suggestion from Vykos, but from Polonia as well…?

“There is no glory without risk,” Polonia pointed out. “And with you at his side, Don Talley, I’m sure Archbishop Borges will have nothing to fear. In any case, I must attend to matters in New York—I’ve been away far too long—and Vykos is busy with the Tremere here in Washington.”

Talley scowled. Borges, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, seemed caught between conflicting thoughts of Lucita on one hand and crushing his enemies on the other.

“Vallejo can oversee the Tremere siege as well as I can,” Vykos spoke up suddenly. “If it will ease everyone’s minds, I will accompany Archbishop Borges, merely as an observer to his command, of course. With two archbishops, who by their very presence define the word ‘overkill,’ and a sizeable force, we should allay the suspicion that the fix is in, especially if we delay the attack this time.” Vykos’s voice was mild, but amused.

Borges turned to glare at his peer, then glanced at Talley’s dispassionate face. “Even so,” said Borges, “we shall bring numbers, and we shall make sure that you and I, Your Excellency, are prominently visible. I don’t expect the evening to be much of an exercise for either of us, but even so, as you say, it will do your informer good to have us seen on the field.” Borges inclined his head, bird-like, at his bodyguard. “And I trust that Don Talley will keep us safe as we do so.”

Talley gave a quick frown. “I can if you don’t expose yourself too much, Your Excellency. I say that now so I am not forced to remind you of it later.”

Borges nodded and fanned away the objection. “Yes, yes. I understand. Rest assured that I will take no unnecessary risks, and I trust Archbishop Vykos to do the same.”

“Very well.” Talley sounded resigned, and not at all convinced. Borges ignored him. “Archbishop Vykos,” Borges continued, “would you like to involve any of your people in the operation? Perhaps the Little Tailor has some pets he wishes to field-test? Or surely some of your adherents are growing restless and would enjoy a night’s exercise in the field. I was thinking that perhaps three packs, plus our own presence, would be sufficient? Perhaps we could use the university, the capital building, and that intersection there,” he pointed at the civic center on the map, “as good places to start.”

“We don’t know where the enemy will be deployed, Archbishop. Why don’t we wait until my contact tells us that?” Vykos’s voice was weary; she clearly regretted agreeing to be part of this.

“The foe is Camarilla. All we need to do is set a few fires and endanger their precious Masquerade, and they will come running to us.” Borges tapped his finger on the map, twice. “I like the notion, now that I think about it. If we make them assault our positions, they lose whatever benefit preparing defenses might have given them. It works well. Now, on to the timing of the affair….”

Talley simply tuned Borges out, and considered ways in which he could hustle him or Vykos out of danger when things began to degenerate. The plan was passable but clumsy, failing to take into account any number of possibilities. The worries were endless: Lucita’s presence was studiously avoided in discussion—Talley tried to bring the point up several times, and Vykos and Borges had taken turns changing the subject; Lucius might have decided to teach Vykos another lesson by sending false information and letting the Sabbat offensive run straight into a Theo Bell-shaped buzz saw; Vykos’s involvement in affairs, as well as Polonia’s convenient absence, was still troubling. And so it went.

But the archbishops, deafened by their own arrogance and sense of superiority, did not seem inclined to listen to Talley. No, the best thing to do, he decided, would be to wait until things looked dangerous and then remove the target from the scene if Lucita showed up—when Lucita showed up. The rest of the attack could succeed or fail on its own merits, but his job was what concerned Talley.

“Don’t you agree, Don Talley?” The templar emerged from his reverie to find both archbishops looking at him quizzically, though perhaps for different reasons.

“Of course, Don Borges. It is, in this case, as you say.” Vykos looked mildly surprised. Borges looked smug.

And Talley just wished that the fighting would start already so he wouldn’t have to listen to this any longer.

Part Four:

Thicker than Water

From Tuesday, 31 August 1999

to Friday, 24 September 1999

Piedmont Avenue Atlanta, Georgia

Leopold’s house was nondescript. The paint was cracking, the sidewalk along the street and the walk leading from there to the house’s shallow steps were already cracked, and one of the side windows was more than cracked—it was shattered completely.

Victoria circumnavigated the house, and paid even closer attention when she discovered the break-in. This was not an especially hospitable neighborhood, and there was no telling who might be within a house that had stood idle for as much as two and a half months.

Not that a hoodlum or a vagrant seeking some respite from the muggy August nights would pose her any problem, but Victoria was exhausted from the battle earlier—at least mentally, if not physically. She’d already replenished herself some blocks from here—and she had no desire to face off against a coterie of drug thugs. In any event, gunfire could be deadly, and while such moronic mortal men would surely have other desires for her at first, they could be trigger-happy.

And the Toreador’s goal now was to get into this haven, secure what information she could, and get out of this damned city.

The house was two stories high. Three, if she counted the basement, which was a half floor above ground. The windows were inconvenient for spying, but that suited a Kindred’s haven. The basement windows were blacked over and barred as well. The first-floor windows were just a bit too high for Victoria to peek through easily. She could see the ceilings of the rooms by looking up through the windows, but nothing of note.

All her walk around the house really discovered was that the front door was unlocked, the rear door locked solidly, and no windows were open except the broken one, and one with a humming wall-unit air conditioner. Victoria imagined she could work open the window that held the air conditioner, but there seemed no reason to go to the trouble when the front door was so inviting.

Finally satisfied that there was no evidence of serious danger, Victoria returned to the front of the house and stepped onto the decaying porch. This close, she could see the fading paint must have once been dark green with perhaps blue trim. Generally, though, it now appeared to be gray on gray.

The front door was a latch-type handle, with a small paddle Victoria depressed to unlatch it. She pushed the door inward, and it opened smoothly. The tarnished brass hinges grated a slight protest. She stepped inside, and a well-traveled spot just inside the door in the foyer creaked more loudly than the door at the Toreador’s intrusion. Victoria carefully closed the door behind her. She considered locking the bolt, but decided it was more useful to her as a means of rapid egress than it posed a danger as ingress for an enemy.

The room was dark, but this was no great hindrance to the Toreador. Her eyes lit with a soft red halo around her ebony pupils, and the immediate interior was revealed to her as if in daylight. The foyer opened to the right into what one might call a drawing room, and there was also a staircase rising along the right-hand side of the room, its base near the doorway to the other room, as well as a half-closed door that seemed to partly conceal a hallway that struck toward the center of the house.

Victoria listened carefully. She thought there might have been movement in the basement below her, but the old floor was so thick she couldn’t be certain. She then glanced into the drawing room and found it shabbily furnished with an old sofa, an end table of pitted wood, and a mismatched reading chair. There was a small pile of newspaper beside the chair, and Victoria moved to examine it.

It was the thick, ad-choked Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city’s major newspaper. Victoria picked up a random section and looked at the date. Sunday, June 20, 1999. The day before the evening of her Solstice Party. She patted herself on the back for that bit of detective work, but it didn’t really reveal anything of substance to her.

Victoria replaced the paper and made to return to the foyer, but then paused a moment. She returned to the garish armchair and sat down, feeling a sudden need to relax and get her bearings. Since her narrow escape hours earlier, Victoria had barely paused. She’d taken a circuitous route back into town, and made damn sure she wasn’t being followed before she made any definite move for this destination.

In fact, the shock of her survival was only now really hitting her. Lying there on the ground in the train yard, Victoria had been overwhelmed more with her pain and confusion than by feelings of good fortune. She’d thanked the Malkavian General for his help and then, before she’d had even the barest moment to feel safe again, the Malkavian had sunk again into the ground.

Victoria felt again the flush of fear she’d experienced when, after a moment, she’d realized he was not returning this time. Perhaps the ancient Kindred had sunk into torpor again. He’d muttered something once long ago about being prone to the condition, and Victoria no longer wondered why. If he threw himself headlong into such battles as hers that did not really involve him, then he was risking a lot and paying for it. Paying for it in years upon years missed recovering from the dire wounds he received.

So she had hopped quickly back into her BMW, and despite the blown out tires, driven it several miles away. At a tiny body shop, she’d had her way with the helpful mortal couple who lived over the garage. Without questioning the nature of the damage, the man replaced her tires outside while inside, Victoria took the woman to bed. The pathetic creature was easily seduced, and she expected the brief pleasure she gave the woman was more than the man had ever done for her. But then, her husband had probably never drained a quarter of her blood after sex. The world was a fucking tradeoff.

The man smelled of grease and dirt when he returned, and Victoria decided that was okay. She quickly took a good portion of his blood as well, leaving him limp on the bed beside his wife.

And to complete the job, as well as refresh herself, Victoria did the same to the two sleeping children.

It was careless and foolish, but Atlanta was a Sabbat city now—for now—so it mattered little to the Toreador. She drove away in her BMW, and fretted briefly as to whether she should lay low for a night or two, or whether she should strike while the proverbial iron was hot. When the first traffic light she’d reached—by approaching at a steady sixty m.p.h.—was green, Victoria’s mind was made up. She raced through the intersection and continued on into downtown Atlanta, where she began a slow circuit of the city until she had deemed it safe enough to come here, to the one haven of Leopold’s she knew.

Victoria, recalled to herself, reclined in the armchair for a moment longer. Then she stood and returned to the foyer.

She looked up and saw that the stairs reached a landing that bridged the remaining door on the first floor. A hallway that probably mirrored the one in front of the Toreador led from the landing. There was also a single door—closed—at the end of the landing, to Victoria’s left. She decided to look upstairs after she’d exhausted the possibilities of the first floor and basement. It was unlikely that Leopold’s primary bunker would be in such an exposed position within the house.

Victoria moved toward the half-opened door across the entrance of the foyer. Her red-lit eyes flashed and her nose wrinkled. She caught the scent of blood and, more feral than her shapely figure suggested possible, the Toreador pushed her nose toward the open space. Definitely blood, she thought. Then, tentatively, she pushed the door open.

A slight flow of air brought a better sense of the odor to her. Victoria knew immediately that it was human blood. The suggestion of alcohol was too heavy to have survived the transfer to a Kindred’s system, and it would be a very rare Kindred who was capable of drinking so much alcohol him- or herself.

There were three doorways in the hallway. All three were open, though the two on the left-hand side were thrown wide and the one on the right was only slightly ajar. From the right, Victoria heard the rumble of the air conditioner she’d seen outside. The air conditioner was also the reason for the flow of air stirring along the hallway.

The scent of blood wafted from the room on the right.

A fourth doorway loomed at the end of the hallway. There was no door at all, and Victoria could plainly see that this was a kitchen.

Victoria could still not detect any movement, but even if the human was waiting in ambush, she did not fear it. She moved on. She eyed the first door on the left warily as she passed it, then pointedly turned her attention from it, to give a potential attacker the idea that she was now unprepared. Nothing. She glanced back once, then moved on.

Victoria could now see more of the kitchen at the end of the hallway. It looked large and mainly clean, though the stench of rotten food wafted lazily from it as well.

She pressed her back against the wall near the partly opened door on the right. Then, with a deft backward kick, she knocked the door fully open with her heel. She held her position and waited. Again, nothing.

Slowly, she turned to look into the room. It was a pigsty. A large, unkempt bed pressed against the center of one wall. Articles of clothing, men’s and women’s, and of varying sizes, littered the floor. There was an open closet with heaps of clothing around it, and a gutted dresser, the drawers of which were piled haphazardly against the wall beneath the churning air conditioner. Stacked in the top drawer was a pile of mail. Utility bills and advertisement flyers were both evident, and some appeared to have been opened.

Spread-eagled on the bed was a large man.

He was dressed in an odd assortment of clothes, and though his skin seemed clean, he carried a deep-down stench, a body odor not quite washed away, let alone camouflaged.

There was also a slight stain of blood on the blanket near the man’s neck. Victoria wrinkled her nose in distaste as she closed in for an inspection. He was alive, but clearly unconscious. Judging by how pale he was, that state was likely to last for some time.

There was no wound on the man’s neck near the blood spot on the blankets, but Kindred tongues could easily close such wounds. Perhaps it was hasty to decide this human had been a recent vessel for a Kindred, but she knew she was right.

Victoria stepped back to stand in the doorway. Then she surveyed the room, looking at it closely now. Long years of depending on her powers of observation had trained Victoria in such sleuthing. Only a few things stood out. A couple of nose straws on the dresser and a slight discoloring of white in a deep gouge in the dark wood—some cocaine the most determined nose could not quite recover.

Another notable thing was the safe on the floor in the closet. Victoria pushed some of the mounds of clothing aside to get a closer view of the dial. Her red eyes glowed, but she couldn’t make out anything that might help her determine the combination.

So she picked a somewhat clean shirt from the pile of the clothes and gloved her hand with it. Then she gave the dial a few trials turns, listening carefully. Still nothing. The Toreador tossed the shirt back into the pile and decided to return to it later.

Finally, Victoria investigated a couple of the opened utility bills and discovered that Leopold was perhaps more adept at survival than she had given him credit for— assuming his whole role in Atlanta had not been a charade from the very beginning. His humble and unassuming guise was awfully overstated, Victoria realized as she thought on the matter.

In any event, both of the bills she examined, those for both the electricity and phone in July, had been paid somewhat in advance. Not by a great amount—it appeared neither had more than a few hundred dollars remaining—but the advance was enough to keep those companies from looking too closely at the house. If they did so, of course, they might find it abandoned, and then the sanctity of the haven would be compromised.

She dropped the bills back into the pile and turned her back on the room.

As Victoria returned to the hallway, she realized something else as well. This room was much cooler than the remainder of the house, even the hallway. That was not unusual, of course, because the air conditioner was in here, but the door, while not open very wide, was open enough to spread some of that cooler air further into the house. She thought the door must have been closed until very recently, and that meant the vampire who drank from this vagrant human might still be in the house.

When she stepped out of the room, she was careful again. She retraced her steps toward the entrance and carefully entered the first doorway on the left. A bathroom. The shower curtain was pushed to the side. There was a closet, but it only held shelves stocked with surprisingly few toiletries. The Toreador quickly decided that no one was hiding within the room.

She listened intently before stepping into the hallway, paying careful attention to listening down. She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was in the basement. Maybe the Kindred who’d recently fed? She laughed at herself, but she feared it was Leopold himself. Victoria still could not fathom that the tentative artist she knew could be in any way connected with the massacre of a large number of Gangrel, but even though he must have been badly hurt, Leopold could have survived the Sabbat ambush at the High Museum. Or perhaps he as well as Victoria had fallen into the hands of the Sabbat. Maybe even Elford.

Victoria shuddered at the thought of what Elford might have done to him, what kind of disturbing rituals of magic and fleshcrafting the Tzimisce could have used to turn the willowy youth into a killing machine. Surely if the Sabbat, if Elford, was capable of creating such a monster, then they would be unstoppable. But then, discovery of just such a possibility, no matter how damning it might be for the future of the Camarilla, was why Victoria was here.

Or perhaps it was an experiment gone awry. Elford might be able to create a killer of such power, but controlling such an animal would be another matter entirely.

Maybe that’s what Elford had intended for her as well. Victoria shuddered at the thought.

Stepping carefully down the hall—for if someone was in the house, then each empty room gave a higher chance the next one would not be—Victoria approached the second door on the left. She pushed it open fully and then wheeled suddenly past the threshold. The room was completely barren of furniture, though the presence of a low-hanging lamp in the center of the room made the Toreador suppose it was intended to be the dining room.

It was a few degrees warmer in here because of the broken window, the one she’d spied from the outside, but nothing else was of note. The Toreador moved on to the kitchen.

She cautiously investigated a small walk-in pantry, but soon discovered the kitchen empty as well. She noted again that it seemed reasonably clean, with the exception of some rotting vegetable matter that lined the bottom of the sink. Victoria presumed Leopold had kept it tidy, but the vagrant in the other room was the new tenant of the place and did not keep the place quite as clean. It was a hypothesis that relieved the Toreador, for it suggested that Leopold was unlikely to be present.

Thus far, Victoria had studiously avoided the large, heavy-looking door that she guessed led downstairs to the basement. She’d not taken her attention from it for even a second, of course, but she had left it until now for closer inspection.

Despite appearances, or rather despite the potential, the door was not locked. It was closed, but at the slightest touch, the balance of the door was disturbed and it began to slowly swing open. Victoria took a few steps backwards and prepared herself.

The door agonizingly slowed and finally stopped just shy of completely revealing the thick wooden steps that led down into the basement. Slowly, with painstaking motion, Victoria inched close to the threshold. She no longer had the need to breathe, of course, but in times like this, the Toreador nonetheless felt as though she were holding her breath.

Gingerly, Victoria placed her right foot on the top step. She tried to shift her weight gradually to the foot, but the step creaked noisily despite her best efforts. She cursed inaudibly and quickly retreated into the kitchen, again preparing herself for an attack, but this time looking not just down the steps but down the first-floor hallway as well. She knew something or someone was nearby.

As she approached the door again, Victoria jumped when a voice called out to her. It said, “Come, Queen of Apples. We await you.”

It rose up the steps from the basement. Queen of Apples?

Victoria had been compared by artists as diverse as they were famous to many luscious fruits, but never, she thought, an apple.

Emboldened, Victoria shouted, “Who summons me?” There was a slight chuckle.

Then the voice said, “It is I, Anatole, Prophet of Gehenna, and I have something to say regarding your… regarding our future.”

Leopold, slayer of Gangrel. And now the Malkavian Anatole?

Victoria wished that traffic light had been red. At least she might have missed Anatole. She had to believe that, or all her games were for naught.

Jeremiah put his pen down. First there was surprise, then annoyance, and finally baffled amazement.

First, the door to the basement opened. This startled Jeremiah, who would have sworn he’d locked it behind them when he followed Anatole down the steps. Anatole had wandered briefly to the foot of the steps some time ago and looked up at the door, but he had not gone near it or even set foot on the steps themselves. The observer flipped back a page in his notebook and checked the time this had occurred. 2:21 AM.

He was also surprised that he had not heard an individual moving around on the floor above. To be certain, Jeremiah was far better at hiding than he was at detecting others when they hid, but his prowess in this regard was certainly enough to make him aware of all but the best stalkers.

He reasoned that one who could hide from him might also possess the ability to open a lock, as the one on the door to the kitchen had been picked. Therefore, his mood shifted to annoyance.

He was upset with the interruption precisely because it was an interruption. After Anatole had finally accepted his incessant suggestions to move on from Chicago, and the ultimate arrival here at the Toreador’s present or perhaps former haven, Anatole had gone on a rampage of verbosity.

Jeremiah did not want this garrulous period to end, and he feared this arrival might just do that. So many interesting tidbits to report, including the fact that he was now virtually certain that when Anatole spoke of the young wizard, he must mean Leopold. But what skewed vision of the sculptor did the Malkavian possess that prompted him to think of the artist in such a way? Yes, similarities between artists and alchemists could be drawn, but Jeremiah felt certain there must be something more to it than that. Either something deeper, or something so simple that it was being overlooked.

Then Anatole said, “Come, Queen of Apples. We await you.”

And Jeremiah was dismayed. This was the first instance he’d witnessed when Anatole had actually addressed someone who was obviously present. Yes, he sometimes addressed Jeremiah himself, but Anatole surely did not regard him as actually within his physical proximity. At least he hoped not, and Anatole had given no such signs, certainly nothing as overt as this announcement.

In addition to the surprise at speech at all, Jeremiah was startled for the words themselves. He noted that Anatole’s address made it seem as though he was aware of the identity of the person at the top of the steps as well as the fact that he…

A female voice asked, “Who summons me?”

The observer squeezed in an “s” so it now read “the fact that she.” Anatole responded even to that, and replied, “It is I, Anatole, Prophet of Gehenna, and I have something to say regarding your… regarding our future.”

And Jeremiah wondered if something connected to Anatole’s future also meant that this Queen of Apples, whoever she might be, was connected to his own future, to Clan Nosferatu’s, or even to the mystery they sought to unravel.

He sank deeper into the shadows in a corner of the room when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Jeremiah doubted he could be seen with or without this extra effort, but he reckoned on this being very interesting, and he did not wish to have to pay even an iota of attention to his camouflage once things were underway.

Victoria paused for a moment at the top of the stairs. She wanted to give herself a chance to avoid a confrontation with the Prophet of Gehenna by preparing a test of the kind to which she subjected herself. But the decision to come here and look for answers had already been made, and she would not serve herself or her fears by attempting to avert the unpleasant by creating tests until the path she preferred was chosen. That was tantamount to not looking for randomness in the first place, and she did not care to ponder the permutations that course might create.

So she strode down the steps to meet Anatole, or at least someone who claimed to be him. Someone who called her, perhaps mistakenly, certainly obscurely, “Queen of Apples.” The basement opened on Victoria’s left-hand side. The wall of the foundation of the house was on her right. First her feet, then waist, and, when she bent low, finally her head cleared the plane at the level of the ground floor of the house. She was still dressed in the high-heeled boots of her train-yard battle, so her toe then heel tapped at every step.

When the Toreador reached the step at a level that allowed her to survey the room without stooping, she stopped for a moment to take in the scene. The basement was one large room filled with a number of large tables and a great deal of debris, most of which appeared to be broken or half-completed sculptures, or perhaps both. The tables themselves formed two T-shapes. The top of each T lined the walls on the right and left sides of the basement as Victoria viewed it with her back to the foundation wall. At staggered points, the leg of each T stretched toward the center of the room, but this left a reasonably large and open workspace between the legs. A pedestal currently stood in that space, and a bust—one of a woman, Victoria supposed from the fine lines of the neck and shoulders— was set atop the pedestal, although it faced away from the Toreador. Somehow it seemed to have escaped the general destruction in the rest of the room.

A not-unattractive man stood on the far crook of the T to Victoria’s right. His dirty blonde hair was cut short, but Victoria could see that it was once—probably recently— longer and braided. She noted such things. She also classified his features as French, with that slender nose and those drawn cheeks.

He was looking away from her during the first instant of her inspection, and she found this man—whom she did believe to be Anatole, or at least an accomplished impostor, for she had seen photographs of the man—to be rather unexceptional. She’d held the same opinion after seeing the photo, and had made her thoughts public, to the dismay of a younger Toreador who claimed to have met the Kindred and begged to disagree with Victoria. This younger one claimed you needed to see the Malkavian in person to appreciate his appearance, but now that he stood before Victoria, the elder Toreador held to her first impression.

But then he turned to look at her, and a bolt shot through Victoria’s body. She was a live wire for a moment, and in the way she knew she must inspire in men and some women as well who beheld her for the first time—or second or third or…. His physical characteristics remained pleasant, if uninspiring, but the eyes that turned to regard her were laced with a raging fire that completely transformed him. In that instant, there was no doubt in Victoria’s mind that not only was this Kindred powerful and blessed with abilities beyond the ken of others even twice his age, but also that he did indeed have visions, and the visions were of the future, and what he beheld did come to pass. This impression of his power and the terrible secrets he must carry lent him an animalistic sexuality only the mad could possess.

Victoria numbly strode down the six remaining steps before she recovered her senses enough to be merely impressed by the Prophet of Gehenna.

Anatole smiled a cracked and knowing grin at her. “Welcome to your parlor.”

When Victoria responded only with a quizzical expression, the Malkavian broadly gestured toward the pedestal in the center of the room. Anatole then returned his attention to an empty spot on the table before him. He slowly rubbed his finger in a pattern Victoria could not assemble into anything recognizable. He was intent upon the matter, though, and Victoria used the moment of freedom from his gaze to approach the bust on the pedestal.

As she neared it, Victoria found herself approving of a dress line that displayed just enough of the smooth skin of the shoulder and neck, and a hair style that was composed enough to look natural. And when Victoria rounded the pedestal to view the woman face to face, she paused and then laughed aloud.

There could be no doubt that it was herself. The bust was one of Victoria Ash, former Toreador primogen of Atlanta.

It was an absolutely marvelous image of herself, if Victoria could be so bold as to judge, a task she felt qualified for as both subject and as professional. The details were impressive, the single curl of hair on the forehead, the playful grin, the slight slant of the head. It was really a masterful work, and certainly the best she’d seen of Leopold’s. The only mar was something about the mouth. Victoria knelt to look closely and she saw that the clay was very slightly misshapen, as if something had been thrust into her mouth, or, rather, the mouth of the sculpted Victoria. An accident, she reckoned, and one the artist had not had the opportunity to correct.

Boldly, Victoria turned to Anatole. She asked, “You knew this was me?”

“Yes,” came the immediate response, although the Malkavian did not turn from the table he faced, so his back was to her.

Victoria stepped away from the sculpture for a moment. She thought of approaching Anatole to see if she could decipher the lines he’d made in the dust, but she decided instead to inspect some boxes set out on another table.

“Everything is as it was,” said Anatole flatly, still not turning to face Victoria.

The Toreador asked, “You mean as when you arrived?” She glanced at Anatole but then returned her attention to the boxes. From one she withdrew a nearly matched pair of bozzettos, the early drafts of the sculptor’s subject.

Anatole nodded, and then said, “And as before that too.”

Victoria set the two pieces down and withdrew a few more before glancing back at Anatole again. She thought for a moment and then decided to press the conversation a little. She suspected she would never gather anything of importance from the Malkavian unless she did so.

Victoria asked, “You mean the same since the artist died?”

Anatole stopped his finger tracing and turned quickly. Then he slowed and looked at Victoria blankly. At last the barest whisper of a grin came to his fine-featured face, and he said, “Ah, do not play games, Queen of Apples.”

But Victoria stood her ground. “What do you mean, ‘Don’t play games’? I have heard that is all you do, Prophet. Like too many of your clansmen, you speak only in riddles and circles.”

Anatole’s slender grin did not fade, and he said, “But like too few of them, my riddles do not hide a lie but attempt to reveal the truth.”

Victoria sighed. “I think my point is proven.”

Anatole turned back to the table and his finger again began to trace something, this time in the air. Victoria watched for a moment but could not determine the nature of this phantom object. So she turned to her boxes again.

“Keep looking,” said Anatole, “to find what we need.”

Victoria decided not to look at the Malkavian either, but she said, “We? You mean me?”

“Not, not ‘me’ but ‘you,’” said Anatole.

The Toreador sighed again. This time she did turn to Anatole and even took a step nearer, a step also closer to the fine clay image of herself. “‘You’ as in more than me?”

“Yes,” said Anatole.

“But to be clear,” Victoria said, refusing to back down before this apparent illogic, “you mean ‘you’ as in ‘we’ as well.”

The Malkavian nodded.

Victoria turned again and quickly went through the bozzettos. There was nothing of interest, just crude figures of men and women she did not recognize, although she did think a few might be attempts at crafting the composition of the final work on the pedestal behind her.

Jeremiah scoffed silently as Victoria pressed Anatole for meaning. Predictably, her attempts were not fruitful. Jeremiah had long since given himself over to observing Anatole rather than understanding him. The Nosferatu, unlike Victoria, recognized greatness. Calebros might not have seen fit to allow Jeremiah to seek Anatole’s insights regarding the malevolence beneath the earth, but Jeremiah could not ignore the great honor accorded him by way of this assignment. He had taken Anatole to Chicago, to the studio of Gary Pennington, and now here to Atlanta and Leopold’s studio. Soon they would travel far to the north, to the mountains and a scene of a great atrocity. But for now, there was this room, and Victoria. Even the Prophet’s seemingly inconsequential mutterings with this woman, Jeremiah thought, must have some greater significance.

Jeremiah looked up from his notes to see Victoria reaching for one of the bozzettos on the table next to the box. The model was darker than the rest, so dark it was almost black compared to the smooth gray surfaces of the others, like midnight against the pale white of Victoria’s skin. It was more the color of the clay models he’d seen in the Chicago studio. It was also, Jeremiah suddenly realized, a likeness he recognized.

He was on Victoria in a instant—not touching her, not giving away his presence. Jeremiah was far too skilled for that. But he slapped at the bozzetto, striking the hardened clay model a glancing blow precisely as her hand came to it. It was enough. The model toppled and fell, smashing to pieces on the floor.

Jeremiah recoiled from Victoria and retreated to his position in the corner.

Piedmont Avenue Atlanta, Georgia

Victoria thought she was being careful, but one of the small, crude works fell from the table and shattered on the stone floor. She looked down at it for a moment, but it was no great loss—merely the image of a man, one with an oddly large nose.

Anatole began to pace around the room, and Victoria paid him some attention, though she returned to sorting through the boxes of small works when it became obvious that he was wandering aimlessly.

After about fifteen minutes, Victoria was done with the boxes, and the combination of the Malkavian’s pacing and her failure to find anything useful made her shiver in frustration. This she took out, perhaps unwisely, on Anatole.

“So why do you call me the Queen of Apples?” she demanded in a none-too- pleasant tone.

When there was no response but more shuffling, she persisted, “I can only assume that you know my true identity.”

Anatole stopped. He looked at her again. But this time, his eyes flashed brilliantly, and they seemed to light his face in an eerie, even demonic, glow. “That I do, my dove. You fly from here possibly to bear fruit, so hence your new name.”

“You are not making anything clearer,” Victoria grumbled, not sure whether she should give in to her rising anger or hold it in check. She did not want Anatole’s wrath to fall upon her, but she also thought she might bully something out of him. She knew without even trying that her usual techniques would not work with this one.

“All will be clear in time,” said Anatole.

“All right,” Victoria spat, “then let’s at least add to the puzzles.”

She stepped to stand besides the clay image of her shoulders and head and motioned to the piece. “Why is this piece here? Why was Leopold sculpting me? Is this what ‘we,’ ‘me’ and/or ‘you’ are seeking here?”

Anatole shook his head slowly. It verged on the edge of deprecation, and Victoria felt her frustration rise up to overwhelm her.

He said, “You have already found what you need. At least we did. And as for the sculpture, it is indeed important, for the young wizard’s sire is within the clay.”

Anatole smiled, and for a moment he looked perfectly ordinary. And for a moment that might last for a long, long time, Victoria felt perfectly sick.

Jeremiah quickly scanned over his notes. Amatole’s words had meaning for him, if not for Victoria. The smashed bozzetto, the grotesque figure—You have already found what you need.

And the prophet’s last words—if first eye-contact with Anatole had staggered Victoria, then these words struck her like a stake to the heart.

Glancing up at her horror, Jeremiah scribbled furiously. If the “young wizard” Anatole often referred to was indeed meant to be Leopold… Victoria was moving away from the Prophet. She reached out to the air to steady herself, then sat heavily on one of the lower steps. She was shocked that her secret was revealed.

If only she knew how revealed, Jeremiah mused, and to whom. But of course she did not.

Red Hook, Brooklyn New York City, New York

Ramona opened the door. Her eyes met Liz’s and saw relief. “Khalil?” Ramona called.

Liz shook her head. “He’s out. I don’t know where.”

Ramona nodded. She locked the door behind her and moved quickly to the couch, where Liz was still chained. Liz immediately reached between the cushions and pulled out one of the picks and began working at her manacles again.

“I’m afraid I’ll never make much of a burglar,” Liz said. “An old lock on a door is one thing, but these—these≠ were purely made not to be picked. Did you get another file?”

“I got better.” Ramona held aloft a key.

Liz’s jaw dropped. “Where in the world…?” But her wide-eyed amazement turned instantly to suspicion. “Hesha. The chains were his. You found him. He gave you the key.” Ramona offered the key, but Liz refused to take it. She wouldn’t touch it, or even look at it. “Whatever he told you was a lie.”

“Look. I don’t know about any of that,” Ramona said. “But I do know…” she grabbed Liz’s wrist and fit the key into the slot on the manacle. The key turned. Click.

Liz stared at her free hand but didn’t seem to see it. She spoke very rapidly: “You can’t trust him, Ramona. If he helps you, it’s only because he gets something out of it. He wants me back—for what I know, for my expertise… and the dreams… not because he cares. Because he doesn’t. He doesn’t care about anyone. He just uses… people, things….” Ramona clicked open the manacle around Liz’s left ankle. The Gangrel tried all the locks to make sure the key worked for each. “Hey, baby. Earth to Liz. Don’t matter what Hesha wants. You’re free.”

Liz stared desperately back and forth from the open manacles to her rescuer. Red tears began to form in her eyes. “He put me here. Now he lets me loose. He always gets what he wants,” she said softly.

Ramona grabbed Liz by the arm. “Hey. What’d you tell me about your friend that Hesha wanted, that he wanted to make like us? And you didn’t let it happen. You remember that?”

Liz blinked and nodded. A single tear of blood ran down her cheek. “That wasn’t Hesha getting what he wanted,” Ramona said.

“No,” Liz said, her voice gaining confidence. “Thompson got what he wanted. Not Hesha.”

“It was you.” Ramona shook Liz a little. “You got what you wanted. Hesha might be The Man, but you’re The Woman. Right? Right?”

Liz nodded. For the first time in many nights, she smiled and even laughed a little. Ramona smiled too. This woman was going to make it. Somehow, she was going to make it. Maybe Ramona could never bring back Zhavon, but Liz was going to make it.

But the worry was not completely gone from Liz’s face. “Don’t let him control you,” she said through more tears and dying laughter.

“Hey, the only way Hesha gets what he wants is I get what I want.” But Ramona knew it wouldn’t be quite that simple, and she wondered about the bargain to which she’d agreed.

But there was no more time for that. Footsteps. The stairs.

“Khalil,” Ramona said. She took the key, pressed it into Liz’s hand— “Hide this. Now.”—and then began fastening the manacles again. “He’s got a meeting tomorrow night,” she explained. “That’s the time to go. Okay?”

The words took a moment to sink in. Liz was clearly despondent at seeing the chains locked back in place. But then she nodded. She wiped the tears as Ramona moved to the other side of the room, and they prepared to face Khalil.

A subterranean grotto New York City, New York

“Cut away as much of it as you can,” Hesha instructed.

“Yes, sir.” Pauline stood behind her seated employer. Even so, he had to lean his head back for her to reach the wide, seeping rend in his forehead. She was not a tall woman, but she wielded her butterfly knife with a degree of expertise. She was not comfortable with being ordered to cut her master, but neither were her hands trembling. She proceeded with grim determination.

Calebros watched, fascinated. Other than a telltale clenched jaw, Ruhadze did not seem to feel the blade slicing away his flesh. Granted, much of that flesh was blackened and rotting, and the nerves undoubtedly destroyed, but still…

The three were in the small room that Calebros had moved Hesha to once the Setite was well enough. It was damp, and the rough brick walls were bare except for a few fungus-covered 1950s pin-ups. Even so, it was more private than the communal shelter that Hesha had initially shared with any number of hard-luck cases and restrained lunatics.

Hesha raised a mirror to inspect Pauline’s work. “More,” he said. “More, sir?”

“As much as possible,” Hesha explained with forced patience. “I would rather feel the knife than the fire…. And yes, Calebros, I would think my underlings would be more obedient.”

Pauline took that as a rebuke, but Calebros grinned. The woman cut more deeply, and though this was largely healthy meat that she carved away, still Hesha betrayed no signs of the pain he must certainly have felt. He raised the mirror again. “That should do, I think.”

Pauline set down the knife and took up the turmeric root that Calebros had sent Umberto for, and a lighter.

“Wouldn’t that be the height of irony,” Calebros said, “if a Gangrel whelp tricked a Setite elder into taking a torch to himself?”

“Irony is not the first word that comes to mind,” Hesha said dryly. Pauline looked nervously back and forth between the two Kindred. “Proceed.” Hesha closed his eyes.

Reluctantly, Pauline lit the lighter and raised the flame to the turmeric. The root sputtered, and what the flame did catch quickly gave way to glowing embers.

“Do it,” Hesha said, sensing Pauline’s reluctance. “Make sure to get it all.”

With a steady hand, she lowered the smoldering root to his forehead. Undead flesh crackled and burned away. Hesha’s fists tightened on the arms of his chair. As she moved the turmeric to cleanse all of the wound, Pauline peered through the acrid smoke that billowed forth from her point of contact on Hesha’s brow. His skin crisped and curled before the embers. Finally, she pulled the root away.

Hesha neither opened his eyes nor relaxed his grip on the chair. Pauline, horrified, stared at him as if she’d sent him to his Final Death. Then, one at a time, Hesha did begin to unclench his fingers. He drew in a deep breath—full of the smell and taste of his own burning flesh—and opened his eyes. He raised the mirror and nodded, satisfied. Before their eyes, the gap in his forehead began to heal over. The skin was pink and tender against his dark complexion, but there was no sign of rot and corruption. The fiery root seemed to have done its job.

“One down,” said Calebros. “What… a few hundred to go?” “I will require blood,” Hesha said. “Much blood.”

“I’ll see to it,” Calebros said. “I think I’ve seen enough here.” He left them and headed for the kennels. He was glad to leave the scent of burning flesh, as it gave way to the familiar, comforting smells of the sewers.

Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 8:43 PM A townhouse

Avondale Estates, Georgia

The redneck contractor must have thought his client a loon to fashion an interior room in a townhouse so small. But Benison had insisted, and when money spoke, the confused Southerner set to work. Of course, the carpenter was probably further perplexed by the explanation for the room: a library set where the light of the sun could not fade the covers or pages of the books.

In the end, the contractor spoke too much about the matter, and shortly after the work was done, someone else broke into the townhouse, believing anything protected this much must be valuable. No books were found, of course, and that same night the intruder and the contractor were both slain. The police, of course, did not investigate the matter.

But tonight, when Benison awoke and heard movement in the rooms below, he wondered if enough people with knowledge of the place had been destroyed. And because of the hour, the visitor could be Kindred. Despite having been active now for several days, Benison still found that his time awake at night was dramatically shortened from what he had expected in the past. He was a man of robust constitution, and these long days were beginning to irritate him, especially as he went about planning his revenge and the overthrow of the new local establishment.

The former prince was disquieted by an additional realization: Hannah’s robe was no longer on his bed. Ever since retrieving it, the Malkavian had kept it close to him, and even at night he rolled it and used it as a pillow. He had grown accustomed to it now, and its loss was extremely upsetting, especially since it had been taken from beneath his resting head within the sanctum of his latest haven. But perversely, he felt danger must not be imminent because, even though the robe was gone, he was still alive.

He had dreamed of odd Hannah while his sleeping head was supported by that robe, and he’d gained an inkling as to why Anatole might desire it. There was some sort of power within it, but it was something Benison did not know how to tap. Perhaps enough nights and enough dreams would tell him, but Anatole either knew already or knew that he would discover the means. Either way, Benison reasoned, his Malkavian clanmate was the best owner for the thing, even though it was Benison who had actually recovered it.

Then Benison realized that it must be Anatole who was downstairs. Who else would enter this room and remove only the robe? True, there was nothing else of worth; but by all appearances, the robe was of no worth either, unless others beyond Anatole comprehended its mysteries.

That possibility worried Benison for another instant, but then he returned to his original hypothesis. So, relatively unguarded or concerned, Benison rose, dressed himself, and exited the dark room. The hallway beyond was dark as well, but Benison’s eyesight pierced the blackness. The hallway was also narrow owing to the large room now built in the center of the floor, and studded with windows everywhere except within five feet of the entrance to the so-called library. The hallway was also undecorated, but that was at least equally a matter of space as it was lack of concern.

Benison reached the top of the straight stairs that descended directly into the shallow foyer of the townhouse. He listened and tried to match what he heard with the floor plan of the ground level. From the front door of the townhouse, the foyer essentially turned into a hallway moving into the house, and opened into a living room or den to the right. The fireplace within that living room had been disconnected from its gas supply, although the grate and fake logs remained within it.

The hallway from the foyer was short, with a door to a bathroom, and opened into a tiny dining room, which in turn led to a small kitchen to the right. With a few closets, that was the extent of the first floor, just as the “library” was essentially the extent of the top. This was not a fancy hole in which to hide, but until now, and through a couple months of torpor, it had performed quite adequately.

He heard only one voice, a man who seemed to be having a conversation, although Benison could not hear anyone responding to the man. Could be evidence of weakened senses, or perhaps further evidence that his “guest” was the Prophet of Gehenna. The man, whoever he was, seemed to be in the dining room.

Benison descended the stairs without haste, but also without secrecy. As he reached the bottom step and began to set his foot down on the foyer floor, the conversation— which the Malkavian could now determine definitely arose from the dining room— suddenly stopped, apparently in mid-sentence. Regardless, seeing that the living room was empty, Benison continued. He placed his hand on the bottom banister and spun himself 180 degrees to face down the hallway.

He saw Anatole sitting at the cheap glass dining-room table underneath a dime- store light fixture. This juxtaposition, one of the most renowned Kindred in the world sitting among such mundane trappings, sent jolts through Benison’s long- dead nerves.

For his part, Anatole regarded the former prince with a direct stare, but one without so much as a twinkle of the fire in his eyes that absolutely convinced those who saw him that he was mad. Or perhaps because Benison was mad as well, or maybe because he at least somewhat understood the madness amongst which Anatole dwelt, the twinkle of otherworldly light was not apparent to him.

The elder Malkavian seated at the table was dressed in new clothing. It was outdoor or travel dress of the variety seen on rock climbers or mountain-bike riders: lightweight, earth-colored, damage-resistant material that repelled water and wind. The pants looked baggy on Anatole and the shirt a size too large as well, and contrary to what Benison had heard elsewhere of his clanmate, the prophet seemed clean and in good order.

Then Benison detected the hint of heat and steam still wafting from within the downstairs bathroom, and he guessed that Anatole had made use of the shower during his wait.

Also, on the seat of a chair to Anatole’s left, the one with its back to Benison, the former prince could see Hannah’s robe. It was still rolled up and seemed undisturbed but for the change of location. Because of Anatole’s serene composure, the somewhat tacky décor and the bloody robe, the scene looked like a still of a murderer set in contemplation of his deeds.

For Anatole did have a satisfied look on his face, and the reason was immediately evident.

“I thank you, Prince, for the favor you have done me,” said Anatole. “My time is short and you have saved me much trouble.”

Benison said, “My pleasure to help you, Prophet; but if your time is short, then why have you remained here? I appreciate the commending words, but I would have thought no less of you if I had woken to find you and the robe gone. Just so I knew it was your hands that held the robe.”

Anatole’s eyes suddenly widened. They seemed to look past and look through Benison all at once, and the former prince knew why this Kindred frightened so many and why his own clan was so misunderstood. Anatole was the supreme emblem of his clan, and the kind of vision and carriage he possessed was surely beyond the ken of almost all others. Except, perhaps, the Antediluvians, or Caine himself if the most extreme legends were to be believed.

In a dead, flat tone, Anatole said, “Because I sense your Final Death is drawing close to you, Prince, and I wish to warn you from your present errands.”

Benison accepted this news without fear or dread. But also without relief. Yes, his sleep was deeper and longer and more seductive than ever before, and yes, he’d needed Anatole’s call for aid to motivate him back to life again, even though he carried an important agenda even closer to his heart. He did not fear the inevitable, and even for a Kindred, death—Final Death—was indeed inevitable. There existed those who had escaped it for time beyond his reckoning, and some of those would persist for ages and ages more if the world did not end in the sort of conflagration Anatole attempted to uncover and decipher. Many of them would die, too.

But he did not wish to die. Benison only said, “I see.”

The two Malkavians regarded one another for a moment, and then Benison said, “I intend to seek revenge for the death of my wife, and your warning will not sway me from this goal. But because of your warning, I will enter the task knowing my end is near. This makes it even more solemn and important a duty to me. If I am to die, then I will not shrink from the most impossible odds or perilous missions.”

Anatole nodded his head. Then he stood, gathering the bloodied robe into his arms. Benison asked, “Is that really the Robe of Ness—”

But before he could complete his question, his acute peripheral vision caught a movement—someone who stood in the far corner, prepared either to follow or ambush Anatole. In an instant, Benison’s eyes flashed to Anatole, and in the same instant, the image of the befuddled and meandering traveler seemed to shred away, and Benison knew that Anatole knew what Benison was about to do and say. Even so, Benison’s mouth was already forming the cry of alarm and would have exhaled it, but in a flash still part of the same over-examined and impossibly elongated moment, Anatole was upon the other Malkavian.

Claws sprouted from Anatole’s hand, and with the practiced precision of a trained soldier, Anatole engaged his enemy and ripped Benison’s neck nearly in half. The blood that shot from his falling body was swallowed by the mouthful by Anatole, who descended with Benison.

Such a telling blow would not have been possible without some complicity on Benison’s part. The dying Malkavian had seen something in Anatole in that split-second that he never expected to see in such a man hardened over the centuries by failure and resentment: dread. Something in the revelation Benison could not have stopped himself from sharing would have caused material harm to Anatole, and the former prince humbly met his death rather than threaten his clansman’s future. Perhaps everyone’s future.

Even so, his body shook ferociously. The large frame and powerful limbs threatened to shake the smaller Anatole from him and reclaim the life dedicated to avenging his wife. Benison idly contemplated his spasming body as Anatole devoured him heart and soul, and the former prince wondered if through Anatole he might still see his revenge. Perhaps Benison was keeping something in motion that would yet strike a blow the Sabbat would not forget.

And as his thoughts slowly dissolved into the fiber of Anatole’s being, Benison gained an inkling of something huge and frightening.

With the last firing neuron in a blood-deprived body, or perhaps the last ghost of consciousness in a spirit subsumed by Anatole, Benison realized he had indeed empowered, if not truly witnessed, his vengeance.

Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 9:45 PM Times Square

New York City, New York

Khalil stood facing one of the many tacky window displays along the western side of Times Square. The raucous and seedy sex shops and porn theatres were of some interest, as were a handful of items in the window displays themselves, but what really interested the Ravnos was the glittering bauble of his own future.

He was sure his Nosferatu contact was already here somewhere too, but Khalil had come early, both to scout the terrain before he met his contact, and also to let the Nosferatu know how cool and in control he was. It would make them think twice before trying to double-cross him.

So in the eerie neon red of a scripted sign that said merely “Condoms,” the shilmulo smoothed his inky black eyebrows so they stood at crisp points. He continued to groom himself casually until his beard and moustache and curled hair were all in proper order. Then he began to pat down his new black clothing—so ultra-hip, so ooh-la-la—but he pulled up short for the briefest second before nonchalantly continuing his task.

Inside, though, he began to sweat a river. Reflected in the window that served as Khalil’s mirror was the Sabbat vampire, Jean-Paul. The tight smile the man flashed spoke volumes as he strode a few final steps to stand behind Khalil.

Khalil knew this was trouble.

“Well, well, who have we here?” Jean-Paul leered at him in the glass.

Perhaps the crowd here would make violence impossible. Khalil dashed that hope. First, it was Times Square. Second, Times Square was in New York, a city where the bystanders might turn a rape into a gangbang.

Not that his Calcutta was the most savory place either, but….

Khalil tried to sound relaxed, insouciant. “Jean-Paul. Good feeding in this area? Or do you have other business here?”

Jean-Paul merely smiled again, glacially, and said, “Other business, to be sure, Ravnos.” Khalil continued to focus his gaze on the Sabbat. Without moving his eyes, he was able to gather some movement in the periphery of his vision. The news was not good. The menagerie Khalil had labeled that night in the club revealed itself. The shark, swimming slowly but clearly smelling blood. The cat, stepping softly, and with a predatory gleam in its eye. The monkey now quiet, studying of its victim. Even the little dog was there, although its tail was no longer between its legs. Not a good sign, at all.

Jean-Paul’s cold smirk became even more pronounced. “We’ve come to… spectate. Seems like it’s been open season on you Ravnos lately.”

Uh, oh, thought Khalil. He was in trouble. He continued tidying his clothes, straightening the beaded onyx and silver necklace to display it against the black of his shirt. “What exactly do you mean?”

Jean-Paul assumed a faux-concerned expression and said, “That’s exactly what I mean. Here the only other two Ravnos we can even find in the city have both gone missing—

the Camarilla unfortunately beat us to the gypsy fortune-teller—and nothing has happened. Rien. No reprisals. Isn’t that strange?”

Khalil finally turned around. “Not really, you piece of filth,” he said, squinting directly into Jean-Paul’s eyes, though only for a second. It was dangerous to let such gazes linger among the Kindred.

Jean-Paul’s expression darkened, but Khalil continued. “No, we’re just waiting to see who thinks they can take advantage of us, and then we’ll have words with every single one of you assholes, one at time and completely at our leisure. So persist at your own risk, Jean-Paul. And that’s the only warning you get. Which is one more than usual, but you did point me toward that yummy Ventrue chick, so I have a soft spot for you and your mangy crew here.”

And Khalil made a dash for it. The animals had fairly well encircled him, but the Ravnos crafted a brief illusion of himself standing where he had in fact been standing, so that when he moved, he also seemed to remain standing. The visual trick lasted but a split-second, but it was enough to confuse the beasts, and Khalil managed to tumble and roll through the legs of the shark.

Khalil was on his feet again and running when he heard the cat’s voice. “There he goes.”

“Why weren’t you watching him? After him, fools!” demanded Jean-Paul, who also took up pursuit.

Khalil was wiry and quick, and crowd-wise from mortal and immortal years among the throngs of Calcutta, but those were his only advantages. He had not yet scouted the area very carefully, and he was fearful of making a wrong turn. He didn’t have much time to think, though, because the cat and the squirty little dog were both quite fast. They immediately began to narrow the gap.

After making a few twists and turns, Khalil suddenly broke into the street and ran across six lanes of traffic, immediately after a red light changed to green. He wove through the as-yet-unmoving traffic on his side of the street and dashed across the other side before those cars cleared the intersection and overtook him. He timed it just right. Several cars blared horns at him as he skirted them. He didn’t look back to see how the Sabbat fared. He just kept running, zigging and zagging through every side street or alley that he could find.

But this giddy rush led him directly into trouble: He found himself at a dead-end. Of sorts, at least. He faced a chain link fence—twenty feet high and topped with barbed wire. The alleyway continued on the other side and rejoined a busy street, where more headlights and turn signals flashed.

Khalil started to scale the fence but realized that he wouldn’t have time—his lead wasn’t enough; he would be clawed down from behind. Just then, he thought he heard a number of footfalls echoing behind him. There was no time to dither.

He pressed himself against a wall and dropped the veil of illusion over himself. Crouched low, he now appeared to be a pile of rotting refuse. For the sake of verisimilitude, he added a conjured stench to the illusion as well.

And then the Sabbat were upon the scene.

“Damn,” hissed the cat as she slid to a stop at the fence. Shark growled, “Did he go over?”

Cat was already partway up the fence. “What does it look like?” Then Jean-Paul arrived. “Everyone over. Now! I want his blood!”

The others scrambled to comply. The cat slithered through the barbed wire, hopped down, and was off in pursuit. The others followed more cautiously, though both the shark and the dog cut themselves on the wire. The dog whined in pain, but the shark stoically accepted the wounds.

“Check all the grates and sewers,” Jean-Paul called after his underlings as they rushed down the other side of the alley. Then he eased toward the fence as well, muttering a curse under his breath.

Glancing to make certain the other Sabbat were gone, Khalil rose from his deception and fell upon Jean-Paul from behind. The Ravnos flicked his left wrist and a slender blade dropped into his palm. With his other hand, he grabbed Jean-Paul by the throat. Khalil slammed the stiletto into his victim’s back—stabbing and then digging to the side—over and over again.

Jean-Paul’s eyes were wide with pain, fright, and fury. He strained against Khalil, but the Ravnos’s grip was unbreakable. Khalil scraped his victim’s face across the metal fence. Where the fence met the wall, he began slamming Jean-Paul’s head against the bricks. The dull thuds filled the alleyway. Finally the skull gave way and the Sabbat crumpled to the ground.

The inert body had barely touched the pavement before Khalil pounced again. “Not so tough without your little army, are you?” He opened wide and sank his fangs into Jean- Paul’s neck. A sweet rush of blood followed. His captive struggled reflexively, trying to break his grip. Khalil paused to hammer Jean-Paul’s head into the pavement some more, until the writhing stopped.

Then Khalil drank… until there was nothing left.

Tuesday, 31 August 1999, 11:21 PM Sewers beneath Times Square

New York City, New York

Khalil was still feeling rosy-cheeked and aglow with energy as he sat across the table from the Nosferatu. His second diablerie. It was something he really could develop a taste for.

Was he perhaps looking too hungrily upon the sewer rats who sat around him now?

He was in the midst of reciting his personal recipe for the means to cure the wounds of the Eye of Hazimel. Somehow, none of his companions smelled quite right. Mike, typing away on his laptop, smelled like Mike and… something else. Another who looked like a walking corpse riddled with wounds and dangling bits of raw, seemingly half-healed flesh, smelled vaguely, weirdly familiar. The other two stank, period, but they were Nosferatu and the meeting was in a sewer tunnel, so this was no surprise.

But Khalil was feeling cocky, basking in the warmth of the blood, and the odors caused nothing more than a faint tremor of unease.

He continued, “So, apply a liberal dash of human spit to a poultice made of the mustard seed and sweet basil. The mustard will drive out the poisonous humors, and the basil will purify the flesh of the Eye’s ill-intent. Bind that to the injury and leave it through the next full moon. Abracadabra—no more wound.”

Mike asked, “The next full moon? Does it matter if that’s the same night as the poultice is applied? Or should it be an entire lunar cycle later?”

Khalil considered a moment. “Better safe than sorry. I’d say the whole month. You don’t want to play around with damage done by the Eye—it’ll eat you up if you don’t get it all.”

Mike nodded and made another note. “Is that it?”

Khalil sat back from the table with a sly smile and spread his hands wide. “Unless you have other questions?”

Mike placed a briefcase on the table, opened it, and pushed it toward the Ravnos. Khalil flipped through the bills. He didn’t want to linger long enough to count it exactly, but he figured there was enough here to satisfy a host of needs for some time to come. He closed the suitcase again with an approving nod, and stood up.

“Need a guide to find your way back out?” Mike asked. Khalil said, “I know the way. See you around town.”

He jauntily bowed to the monster and left the catacombs. Walking down the dripping tunnels, Khalil chuckled to himself. Surely his deception had worked. He was going to get out of here without giving them a damn thing, and with $250,000 in his hands. The Ravnos imagined the rats industriously conferring over the bogus information he had told them.

The fact was, Khalil had no intention of staying in New York a moment longer for them to figure out the scam. Well, maybe a few moments longer. Two more little visits, he’d promised himself, then he was out of town far richer, much stronger, and vastly more independent than when he’d entered.

Visit number one was back to the apartment and all that lovely Setite blood, just waiting for him.

Wednesday, 1 September 1999, 12:37 AM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Liz stared at the key. It rested beside her on the couch, torturing her—just as it had since that frozen moment when Ramona had held it aloft. Everything had seemed so unreal. Ramona had the key… Hesha’s key… the manacles were open… the manacles that Hesha had placed on her the last time she’d seen him….

Not until Ramona snapped the metal bonds closed again had reality reasserted itself. Reality—imprisonment. Then Khalil had been back and the key hidden. Liz had been positive that he would find the key, that he would know about it somehow. All the rest of that morning, and tonight until he’d left, she’d lain there paralyzed by terror, unresponsive to her captor’s snide comments and abusive questions. She’d grown expert over the weeks at ignoring him. He could still extort information from her when he wanted—he would threaten to harm Amy, or to let Liz herself starve—but there was nothing else he needed.

There was only his cold glare… his gaze of evil hunger.

Liz had forced herself to wait a full half-hour after he left before she pulled the key from its hiding place among the cushions. She’d placed it there beside her, gazing upon it like a holy relic. But like any gift of the divine, it laid bare her own deficiencies and fears.

Where would she go? She’d spent her every night of living death here… in her apartment… chained. She would have to find another haven against the sun. But Khalil had taken her money.

“Think, Liz. Think.” Her own voice seemed strange at first, but it brought her back to herself, to her wits. Khalil had not found the key to her safety-deposit box. She kept two thousand dollars there—it was money she’d saved, telling herself that it was for a romantic getaway, for some planned spontaneity when that perfect man—if that perfect man— walked into her life.

Elizabeth laughed aloud, painfully. There would be no fairy-tale romance now, no passion-swept journey to Greece or Egypt.

“Dear God, not Egypt.” She laughed again—could not stop, in fact. And then she was sobbing. She stopped that at once, angry with herself, wiping her tears and licking the blood from her hands before she realized what she was doing.

“Think,” she said again, forcing calmness. She took a deep breath and tried not to notice how strange the sensation of air entering her lungs felt. She glanced at the clock— she’d wasted too much time already. Too much time tonight, dithering… too much time over the past weeks, being helpless.

She took the key and unlocked her left wrist, and the right. Then her ankles. As she rose from the couch, she was gripped by the fear—the near certainty—that Khalil would return any second. Liz hurried over to her desk—her war-horse, mighty, eight-hooved Sleipnir, had carried out one last heroic trust—and opened one of the side drawers. Khalil had not discovered the shallow false bottom. Only two flat items occupied that space: a letter containing the only kind words her father had ever seen fit to write to her, and the key to her safety-deposit box. Liz took them both and stuffed them into her pocket.

She paused to glance around the apartment, and her heart ached. Despite Khalil’s ravages, there was still so much of her here—her books, her notes, her tools. How could she just leave it all? But there was no choice. Perhaps her imprisonment here had been useful in that one way: If she’d not been terrorized and abused, she might never have brought herself to leave all that was her old life.

Resolutely, Elizabeth strode to the door.

But as she reached for the first lock, it began to turn, seemingly of its own accord— a key used from the outside.

Liz faltered back a step in horror as the locks clicked open, one after another, and the door opened.

Wednesday, 1 September, 12:59 AM Red Hook, Brooklyn

New York City, New York

“Well, fuck you!” Khalil shouted at Liz, though she could not hear him. He swung the heavy chains he clutched into the side of the monstrous and monstrously ugly desk that crowded the room. Anger practically steamed from his eyes, and he hoarsely whispered, “Fine, just fine. I’ll drink her bald black daddy’s blood, and then she’ll be mine to control. Snake bitch!”

He smashed the desk again with the chains.

Then he walked a bit and sat down on the couch, the chains and manacles that had once held Elizabeth A. Dimitros prisoner dangling at his feet. He tried to calm down, but he was defying a deep-seated urgency, a monster in his belly that raged at being denied the old blood Khalil had come to claim.

So Hesha’s blood—as the pinnacle of achievement in the emancipation of Khalil Ravana—would have to do after all. And Khalil swore by the balls of the Rakshasa King that that time would not be too far off.

He’d returned moments before to find Liz gone. No Ramona either. The Gangrel hadn’t been there when he could have used her, when the Sabbat was after him. Turned out he hadn’t needed her anyway.

“Fuck her too! She’s on her own from now on.”

He should have devoured the snake bitch nights or weeks ago, but he’d thought there might have been time to gain power and go after Hesha. Now Khalil was out of time. Hesha would have to wait for another night, and once he had that old snake’s blood, Liz would frigging well do anything he demanded. Maybe it was even better this way. He could really take his time with her later.

As he sat and fumed, Khalil slowly began to notice something… something odd, something not quite right. He sat still and tried to determine what exactly had attracted his attention. There was nothing… but then there was something again.

Something in the shadows. Someone in the shadows—hiding. Or not hiding, as it turned out. Gradually, as Khalil concentrated on the matter, he could see the small, pitiful figure crouched in the darkness in the corner near the front door. The creature looked more mangy rat than human, with wrinkled rolls of flesh forming its body and a longish snout that apparently only contained two bucktoothed fangs.

“Your ugly friends decide they want their money back?” Khalil asked menacingly. The Nosferatu—it was too grotesque to be anything else—started violently when Khalil spoke to it. It began to tremble, and suddenly Khalil could see it quite clearly. He began to understand. There had been times—before he’d grown so old and wise—that he’d been too distracted, or frightened, to perform the tricks like those that had saved his ass tonight. The little sewer rat, watching his savage fury, was having a similar problem, an attack of nerves, and not hiding too well.

“Bad timing,” said Khalil.

The creature, frozen to the spot until now, took that as its cue to flee. Khalil was on his feet just as quickly. He grabbed the chain and, blocking the way to the door, lashed at the Nosferatu. The heavy manacle on the end bashed the creature and drew blood from the sagging folds of skin. Khalil savored its squeal of pain. All the frustrated rage that he’d saved for Liz, he now turned loose on the discovered intruder.

“Did you let my snake loose?” Khalil snarled as his fury rose once again. He swung the chain. This time the manacle crushed one of the Kindred’s wrists and tore a shielding hand away from its face as it cowered, squeaking. He swung the chain again. Probably this animal had nothing to do with Liz, Khalil knew in the back of his mind, but that made little difference really. Liz was gone. Ramona was gone. Hesha wasn’t here. So the Nosferatu would bear the full brunt of Khalil’s displeasure. Beyond all rational control at last, the Ravnos whipped it again and again, until the beast lay writhing in a pool of its own blood. The big eyes were largely swollen shut, but through slits it regarded Khalil.

Khalil stepped closer. “The wrong place and the wrong time,” he said, shaking his head. Then Khalil stepped closer still.

Wednesday, 1 September 1999, 1:08 AM In a car, somewhere in Brooklyn

New York City, New York

Elizabeth sat low enough in the passenger seat that the shoulder strap of the seatbelt dug into her chin. She couldn’t help feeling that true escape was impossible. Any moment, Khalil would bound from the side of the road and reclaim her, or Hesha…. No, she told herself. Hesha had never returned for her. He’d sacrificed her to Ra.

The driver wouldn’t look at her. He concentrated entirely on the road—much more so than driving required. Even when he spoke, he kept his eyes directed forward.

“Your friend, Amy, wants very much to see you,” Jordan Kettridge said. Liz shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t see her. Not after… everything.”

Amy had honored Liz’s request after the robbery and called, not the police, but Professor Kettridge. She’d told him what little she knew and given him Rutherford House’s set of keys to the apartment when he’d arrived from California. Good old Amy. But Liz couldn’t face her. Liz didn’t know if she’d ever be able to face Amy again. Not for a long time. Liz knew that much.

“I understand,” Kettridge said. His fingers were tight around the steering wheel.

Liz watched him. She could tell he knew she was looking at him, but still he peered forward as if straining to see the road… only the road.

“I’ve… changed,” Liz said at last. “I’m… one of them. Like Hesha.” It was true… yet it wasn’t true. She might need blood to survive, but she was not like Hesha.

“I know,” Kettridge said, still watching the road. “I’ve changed too.” He didn’t sound as confident as Liz remembered. “I… see things. Things I only suspected before.”

Liz believed him. She had seen it in his eyes when he’d opened the apartment door— relief at recognizing her, then sudden shock at somehow seeing what she was. He’d looked away, and he’d not met her eyes since those first moments.

“Why did you bring me, then?” Liz asked.

Finally Kettridge did look at her. He held her gaze for a long moment. When he looked back to the road, it was no longer in avoidance of her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I trust you. I did trust you. I don’t think that’s changed. Maybe it will.”

Elizabeth felt the tears coming then. She couldn’t stop them this time. Kettridge handed her a handkerchief that soon was dabbed from white to red. Several miles passed.

“What do I tell Amy?” Kettridge asked eventually.

“Nothing. Don’t tell her that you found me. I’m dead to her.” Liz buried her face in her hands. “Or tell her everything. I don’t care. I don’t want to think about any of this right now. I just want… I just want…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t know. She wanted to be with Hesha; she wanted never to see him again. She wanted her old life back. She wanted her life back.

“Just keep driving,” Liz said quietly.

Kettridge nodded. And kept driving. Away from everything that Liz had ever known.

Before long, the mange-ridden rat of a Nosferatu was no more than a pile of dust and memory. Khalil, sprawled on the floor, savored the pleasantly bloated sensation that had settled over him. He had feasted on three Kindred in the past two weeks—two that very night. Each had underestimated him—the Ventrue childe of privilege, Jean-Monsieur- Asshole-Paul, and the rat. It softened slightly the injury of Liz’s escape.

“Ungrateful bitch,” Khalil muttered, stretching out on a throw rug and rubbing his belly. “After everything I did for her…”

The best part, however, was yet to come. Maybe not right away. Khalil had seen enough of New York; he was ready to head for greener, quieter pastures. Pastures where not everyone wanted his hide. But some night, he would catch up with Hesha Ruhadze and then… then Khalil would taste Setite blood at last.

The old bastard in his head interrupted Khalil’s pleasant reverie: Do you plan to lie there until every other Nosferatu in the city realizes what you did to that pathetic creature?

Khalil slowly propped himself up on his elbows. He smiled, almost drunkenly, and wagged his finger at the air. “You don’t tell me what to do anymore.” His smile faded, however, and he stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “But you do have a point.” He climbed to his feet. “No point in overstaying my welcome.”

The briefcase—and all of that money—was safe, but Khalil still couldn’t help scooping up the occasional stray ring or gem that he had scattered several nights ago in a fit of temper. While stuffing these tiny treasures into his pockets, he grew concerned about the sizeable, roughly body-shaped pile of dust still on the floor. If he was going to strategically withdraw from the city, sweeping ratboy’s remnants under the rug might buy him a few more hours.

After a few minutes of casting about for a broom, Khalil had to settle for a Dust Buster, and he set to work. He’d barely sucked up one dusty leg when he realized that the door to the apartment was open—and that someone was standing in the doorway. A very tall someone.

Khalil whipped around, wielding the Dust Buster as he would his knife. The newcomer was wrapped from head to toe in rags and torn, disintegrating clothing. He—if it was a he—smelled of raw sewage. Despite that tiny reminder of Calcutta, Khalil was not pleased to see anyone—especially a Nosferatu.

“Let me guess,” said the shilmulo, with a grin equally disarming and disingenuous. “I missed a spot.” He carefully set down the Dust Buster.

The newcomer, just as carefully, began to unwrap the rags that all but covered his head and face. A few wraps was enough to reveal that this was no Nosferatu.

“Hesha.”

The Setite’s glare moved from the incriminating dust to the empty shackles by the couch, and then back to Khalil. “If you have harmed her…”

Hesha didn’t need to finish the sentence. Khalil could read the intent of his accuser’s expression easily enough. A dozen lies flashed through Khalil’s mind in seconds. Ironically, the truth seemed to be his best gambit this time.

“This?” Khalil gestured toward the remains at his feet. “This has nothing to do with your girlfriend. Nothing at all. Don’t you worry yourself about a thing.” As he spoke, Khalil nonchalantly sidled closer to the mammoth old desk that occupied much of the nearest wall. He distractedly noticed Liz’s fading scent, but at the moment, he was less concerned about the missing Setite than he was about the one standing in front of him.

“Me and Lizzie, we were tight… are tight.” Khalil held up two crossed fingers. “You know, like garam masala.”

Hesha did not seem particularly soothed by the banter. Khalil had a knife tucked away in his jacket, of course, but he had serious doubts about attempting physical violence now that Hesha was readily available. Never mind the color in Khalil’s cheeks, the flush of vigor from Kindred vitae. The Setite, in person, was so very—imposing.

A moment later, however, Khalil’s spirits rose immeasurably. Behind Hesha, Ramona stepped through the open doorway. Khalil let the fawning manner drop away. He sneered and stood straight and tall.

“Ramona…” the shilmulo said triumphantly. He motioned with a finger across his throat.

Ramona leaned against the door frame and stared back at him.

Khalil’s sneer froze in place. “Ramona, which part of—” he drew his finger across his throat again “—do you not understand?”

“She understands a great deal,” Hesha said, moving forward ominously. That was all Khalil needed to see.

With a defiant roar, the Ravnos turned and took hold of the large desk. He bodily lifted it off the floor and flung it at the nearest expanse of black glass. The painted picture window shattered. Khalil shot for the opening.

Hesha stepped to intervene, but his movements were hindered by his wrappings. Khalil was past him too quickly.

Ramona did not have that problem. In motion before the desk was fully through the window, she sprang across the room and landed squarely on Khalil… and passed completely through him. The lack of resistance cost her her balance, and she landed in a heap. Back on her feet in a second, she was ready to spring again… but at what? The tall window was intact. The desk still rested by the wall.

And Khalil was gone.

“This is not her,” Hesha said, poking at the dust on the floor. “Calebros’s boy. Mouse. I told them not to worry about the money.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Ramona said.

This Hesha seemed very subdued, she thought. Maybe that was just because of the pain from moving about. He had pulled off more of the rags. Below his shoulders, he was still bandaged. Some of the gauze was dark with whatever was oozing from his body. Ramona hadn’t watched as Pauline had pressed the burning turmeric root against some of Hesha’s wounds. The Gangrel felt that she’d done enough by telling them how to cure the injuries from the Eye. Her own encounter with the turmeric had been horrible enough. She didn’t even want to think about the same treatment being applied to all of Hesha’s face, to his head, to most of the rest of his body. Ramona cringed.

Hesha made his way to a chair and sat heavily. What treatment he had undergone had left him weakened. Mild tremors gripped his body every few minutes.

“Where is she?” Hesha asked. For a second or two, Ramona thought his pained expression might be from something deeper than physical pain, but then his cool façade was back in place.

“Don’t know.” That was true as far as it went. Ramona didn’t know, didn’t want to know. The deal had been that Hesha would make sure Liz was freed. He’d given Ramona the key as a sign of good faith.

At the very least, he had said, you can free her yourself. Apparently he hadn’t expected Ramona to take him up on that. But Liz had been clear that she didn’t want anything else to do with Hesha—even if she’d said it somewhat wistfully. Ramona didn’t trust Hesha enough to take a chance on what he might do to Liz. That poor girl had been through enough—too much—already. But Ramona did trust Hesha, even on first meeting, more than she had come to trust Khalil. So she’d gone back and settled on the second part of the bargain with the Setite.

“You agree, now,” Hesha said, not yet quite able to erase the hint of remorse in his voice, “that Khalil is not a reliable ally?”

Ramona shrugged. “Not a real big surprise there.” She had watched from nearby as Khalil had lied to the Nosferatu about how to heal wounds from the Eye. Even though they’d given him the money—Hesha’s money—he’d lied.

“It is a valuable lesson,” Hesha said.

“Two hundred fifty thousand bucks worth of valuable?”

For the first time that Ramona had seen, a smile crept across Hesha’s face. “If you’re able to help me find the Eye, it will be many times more valuable.”

Ramona shrugged again. “It’s your money.”

Wednesday, 1 September 1999, 9:00 PM

Interstate 85 North of Atlanta, Georgia

Nine o’clock exactly, Victoria noted as she drove north out of Atlanta. She wasn’t certain exactly what she was leaving with, other than fears greater than those with which she had arrived in Atlanta just a handful of nights before. Of course, she’d won a very concrete victory, that over Elford, and to a great extent that freed Victoria for the future. But now her past was doggedly pursuing her.

Yes, there were other avenues of investigation she might have pursued. The safe in Leopold’s home. The Tremere chantry. The train yard where she—and maybe Leopold too?—had been made a subject for the aforementioned Tzimisce fleshcrafter. Perhaps by not seeking more information in such places she had failed in the mission assigned her by the Camarilla council.

She had nothing.

Except the one incredible bit of information Anatole had divulged.

But could Victoria really tell Jan, Theo and the others that she was the sire of the monster that had ravaged dozens of Gangrel? Surely they distrusted her enough already after the antics that had led to this trip in the first place. Coupled with the possibility that Leopold had been nothing before Elford turned him into a being possessed of some incredible but uncontrollable power… and the fact that Victoria too had been the Tzimisce’s prisoner….

She knew there were already whispers that she might be a spy. Nothing overt, nothing said to her directly, but she could sense the wariness. As she thought about it, she even wondered what kind of misinformation the council or perhaps Jan acting on his own might have fed her prior to her departure. Some tidbit she might relay to her theoretical Sabbat masters once she was let loose again in Atlanta….

Were the others on the council really surprised when she agreed to return to her overrun city, or had she misstepped yet again and confirmed some wild theory they had constructed?

And those were just the ramifications to her immediate future.

Victoria pushed these thoughts, this thought, from her mind for a moment, and concentrated on her progress from the city. Her BMW was flashing down the road at a clip only believable to those who had actually driven in Atlanta traffic. She welcomed the easy motion, the humming throb of the car. She shifted back down to fourth gear so the engine ran a little harder to maintain this speed. She wanted to go fast, but also to feel fast, and cars sometimes crafted too complete an illusion of motionlessness.

But the rumbling engine and the weaving motion through the slower cars and even a brief race with a young man strutting the power of his Dodge Viper could not erase Victoria’s fears. Only a catastrophic crash that induced amnesia would force from the Toreador’s mind the feeling of desperation she felt when she imagined herself to be indeed Leopold’s sire.

Because she certainly had no recollection of Embracing the young artist. In fact, she’d not Embraced a mortal for several generations now. She’d been weaker, more easily tempted in her youth, perhaps swayed by the vestiges of emotions she now openly preyed upon in male Kindred. But in recent years, she’d become too ambitious to be tied down by a childe. If there was no one that tempted her enough to put her ambition aside, then there was no one who she should Embrace. It truly was as simple as that.

And Leopold, though possessed of great and probably even greater unrealized talent, was not one for whom she would ever divert her course.

Yet it all seemed to fit, strangely. Could it be that she had suffered memory loss because of her time with Elford? That she’d known this before? That she was Leopold’s sire?

His sire is in the stone, Anatole had said, all the while clutching the sculpted bust of Victoria. It had been a fine recreation of herself too, she recollected. Perhaps what could be called a loving rendition, one a childe might fashion of a beloved sire.

The ramifications of this, if it was true, were shattering. Most of all, it meant that, despite her efforts, she’d lost control of her life.

And so what would she do? Should she inform the others of this information or not? As ever, some sort of random test would decide the matter. Maybe this method protected her and maybe it did not, but in this moment of crisis, Victoria felt it was all she had.

But then a weaving light in the rearview mirror grabbed her attention. Victoria watched closely as the reflection of the headlights grew in the mirror. Just as she was beginning to make out the vehicle, the driver switched on his high beams, and Victoria was forced to squint.

This maneuver also drew her attention away from the road in front of her, and just in the nick of time did she glimpse a slow-moving patch of orange: a large construction vehicle of some sort rolling onto the highway from the grassy median where it had been parked.

The vehicle behind Victoria had already shifted right into the other lane, but Victoria only managed to do this by a reflexive twist of the steering wheel. Her tires squealed and she felt them slip, slip, and then slide, losing their grip upon the contours of the pavement.

What might be a blur of motion to a mortal was for the Toreador instead a second and a half to recompose herself and make consideration of her surroundings. And since the car whirled in a 540-degree spin, Victoria had a perspective of the entire area around her. Most notable was the identity of the driver who’d flashed his lights at her. It was the young man in the Viper, and when she caught brief sight of his grinning face, Victoria noted that it sported vampiric fangs.

When the BMW came to a stop, Victoria realized it had stalled out. The Kindred in the Viper was merely gunning his engine, but the driver of the orange steamroller was making no such drama. It was all business—the business of killing Victoria Ash. The enormous construction vehicle moved faster than Victoria would have guessed possible, and it quickly turned and closed upon her. The large drum on the front loomed well over the height of her small sports car, and the Toreador knew there would be no second chance for her if that wheel crushed her in this car.

She revved her engine to life and quickly threw the car into reverse. Straight ahead would have taken her off the road and into a field where she might have become stuck and perhaps still made into a pancake. But she was forced to screech to a halt, as a half- asleep father driving a minivan cruised at high speed through the slower vehicles involved in the life and death maneuvers. The man startled fully awake and turned hard on the wheel to avoid an impact with the tail of Victoria’s car, but she managed to stop short of him.

Regardless, the minivan skidded and then toppled, rolling over the top one, two times before skating to a stop on the passenger-side doors. But Victoria barely saw that, for once the minivan was clear of her path, she floored the accelerator again, and just in time. The monolithic drum wheel of the paver had just begun to crunch the front of her car when she slipped out of its reach.

Victoria drove a wide circle in reverse until she had gone past her starting point and was about to crash the rear of her car into the back of the paver. Then she braked hard and threw the BMW into first gear and blasted off down road. The man who had just crawled from the minivan was forced to leap aside as Victoria tore past.

Victoria zipped down the road, but headlights grew again in her mirrors. Was this Sabbat, she wondered? Whoever the man in the Viper was, Victoria imagined it was just her bad luck that he was not only a vampire, but also one who recognized her. Had it been an accidental encounter, or were they watching for her? Were all the highways out of Atlanta being watched like this?

It hardly mattered. Whatever the case, instead of giving up the race of thirty minutes before, the Viper’s driver had actually pulled aside to arrange a trap. An ambush she had avoided. Now all that remained was to see what this lone driver intended.

Would he try to force her off the road, or would he follow her, hoping she would succumb to the lethargy brought by dawn’s approach before the same happened to him? Then he might report her position and she would be doomed. There were no Harolds with protective vaults anywhere in the Carolinas.

Or—a new fear struck Victoria—what if the man was a ghoul? A mortal who drank Kindred blood every day for many long years could grow the fangs with practice. And despite this ingestion of Kindred blood, the ghoul remained mortal and unaffected by the sun.

Maybe she would have to force the action with him. Only a ghoul with the thickest, oldest blood might resist her charms, and even then, perhaps not for long.

But it was the other driver who decided matters. The Viper quickly closed on Victoria’s BMW. Though fast, her car did not possess the raw horsepower of the other. The Toreador was surprised by how quickly this took place, though, and was left with few good options when the nose of the Viper pushed into the rear of her car.

In her rearview mirror, Victoria could see the man grinning broadly. She decided he would be a dangerous foe when she saw he wasn’t gloating and showboating to impress her, but was instead fully concentrating on the task of destroying her. A cool, determined foe was the most dangerous kind.

Unfortunately he was a fine driver, and, with his car pressed into the Toreador’s, he added a touch more throttle and turned the wheel in order to force the BMW to skid. Victoria felt herself lose control of the car for a moment again. She bounced perilously close to an embankment on the left side of the interstate. The great danger rested in the fact of the great speed they traveled.

The steering wheel failed to respond for precious seconds more, but then her car broke away from the Viper for an instant, and suddenly the wheels responded to her imploring efforts.

As the Viper settled back and prepared for another approach, Victoria observed a state-patrol police car pass on the other side of the highway. Its blue lights immediately jumped to life, and it cut a path across the grassy median. It was quickly left behind, but where one such car was, more would follow.

The Toreador was thinking quickly, trying to determine the best means of escape. She could slow down, but would then risk the man simply plowing into her, and from a trajectory of his choice, and it would surely be one that put her at much greater risk than himself.

When the Viper pushed against her again, Victoria decided that her best chance might be simply to take a gamble. She would have to risk an accident, but make certain that they were both equally wounded. Afterwards, she could utilize her powers of persuasion to dispense with the threat, or at least calm it.

And if she was successful, the pursuing police officer would provide a temporary escape vehicle.

So Victoria feigned an effort to escape the steel embrace of the cars. She also forced every last ounce of speed from the BMW. Then, when she felt the Viper locked neatly with her own car, the Toreador applied the brakes with as much strength as she could muster, and that effort, when fueled by the blood of those upon whom she’d fed, was considerable.

The Viper seemed almost to skip into the air for moment, and it bounced a couple of times before it settled onto the pavement again. But the car did not land smoothly, but like a kite caught in winds low to the ground as it tries to take purchase and gain flight. The Viper spun and slid.

For the BMW’s part, the car’s tail wagged back and forth as her tires shrieked. Then, the force of the speeding Viper pushed the car’s rear violently, and Victoria began to spin too. And spin. And spin, until she was jolted to a stop. The seatbelt over her shoulder snapped, and so did the collarbone over which it had been strapped. Victoria winced in pain but was then smothered in the BMW’s airbag.

She did not lose consciousness even for an instant. She looked around, although doing so sent shockwaves of pain down her left arm. The Toreador saw the Viper. Or at least the rear of it. It was off the other side of the road, and seemed to be planted nose first, nearly elevating the tail off the ground entirely.

Her own driver’s door was too crumpled from the impact to open, so Victoria slid over the stick shift and into the passenger’s seat. The door on that side opened with only a mild protest, and Victoria pulled herself out, trailing a left arm that hung limply at her side.

As she stood, the Toreador immediately knitted the damaged limb and bones back together by means of the blood she carried. Standing still for this moment, Victoria could hear nothing but the rapidly approaching siren.

That wailing must have drowned out any noise on the other side of the road, because Victoria saw the man before she heard him. He pulled himself out of the ditch and then slowly rose to his feet. His face was bloodied and he staggered, perhaps from the shock of the impact, but he knew his mission well enough, and none of his limbs seemed to have suffered the kind of harm the Toreador’s had.

Victoria momentarily forgot her arm, though, and simply lowered her gaze at the man. She let him come to her.

As he stepped onto the highway, Victoria determined that he was not aware of anything but her. She used her powers to cloud his thoughts even further, so that the man did not even bother to glance back up the highway before crossing. He did not see the patrol car hurtling ever closer.

Victoria saw the collision coming. The BMW and Viper were both off the road and mostly out of sight, and the officer wasn’t looking for the figure of a man crossing the highway, but probably scanning hundreds of yards further ahead for red taillights.

Whatever the officer saw, he didn’t see the dazed Kindred. Not in time at least. And the driver of the Viper saw nothing but Victoria. When he reached the center of the patrol car’s lane, Victoria raised her palm toward him and bade her assailant stop. He did.

At the last instant, the patrol car’s brakes screamed to life. Victoria just stared silently at her attacker, as with a thud the car impacted him and vaulted his ragdoll corpse into the air. When it finally skittered to a stop, it was further down the interstate than the patrol car.

Victoria worked the skin of her arm back into place and the final bits of cartilage reconnected. Then she brushed back her hair with practiced strokes of her fingertips, and walked toward the officer.

A replenishing meal and a getaway car. How useful.

Thursday, 2 September 1999, 2:37 AM

Interstate 85 Northbound Greensboro, North Carolina

The young wizard’s sire is in the clay.

The words still haunted Victoria as she put miles and miles of road—and several states—between herself and Atlanta. Anatole must be mad… well, of course he was. But he must be wrong, as well as mad.

The young wizard’s sire is in the clay.

She could not be his sire. It was not possible. She would know, she would feel the bond. I would remember, damn it! she thought. Embracing a childe was not the sort of thing a Kindred ever forgot. It was not the sort of memory that could be obscured… was it? Some Kindred could reach into the minds of others—Victoria could do it herself in certain situations. It was simple with the kine. But she was no kine, nor a neonate, to be toyed with so. To have wiped such a consequential fact from her mind—that she had sired a childe—would have taken… would have taken…

Victoria squeezed the steering wheel more tightly. She would not go down that road. She could not allow herself to do so. She would drive. She would not think. Not about that.

She had fled Atlanta again. The journey south had not been a complete loss: She had seen her Tzimisce former jailer destroyed, as well as the Lasombra usurper of the city—the city that was so damn nearly mine. But she had gone back to Atlanta to find out what she could about Leopold, and the one thing she’d found out, she could not share with anyone else. She would not. At least she had been alone when the Prophet had cast his aspersions like stones.

The young wizard’s sire is in the clay.

She was now on her third vehicle since the police cruiser which she had appropriated after her very literal run-in with the Sabbat. Finding a kind person to lend her a car was no trouble. Any rest area or truck stop would do. There was no need for struggle. The kine in question invariably, of his or her own free will, handed over the keys, was pleased to do so, in fact. It was enough to renew Victoria’s belief in the generosity of the human spirit. The only problem was that she could not always travel in a style that suited her. The shiny Saturn she was in now, for instance, was a tad below her standards. But beggars and choosers, and all that…

She had been speeding north for several hours now, concentrating more fiercely on the route her thoughts followed than the road beneath her. She was not enthused about returning to Baltimore, to the suspicious stares of those who thought she might have turned to the Sabbat. How patently absurd! The Sabbat had ruined her chance for power in Atlanta. They had ransacked the museum, destroyed her art collection… and a few Kindred as well, she supposed. The Sabbat had tortured her, done horrible things…. For her own Camarilla allies to believe that she would serve the fiends—ridiculous.

But her memories of Baltimore, if less perverse, were no more comforting than those of her time among the wolves. Instead of the Sabbat, Jan Pieterzoon and Alexander Garlotte had stepped in to persecute her. Theo Bell probably had something to do with it as well, she’d decided. The Brujah archon was too closed-mouthed, too seemingly indifferent to her. He must have been up to something untoward.

Why should I return? Victoria wondered. As so many people had pointed out, the Camarilla was not a governing body per se. She was not under orders—as if there was someone in Baltimore with that authority. She had come south out of the goodness of her heart. For the cause. There was that little Leopold matter also… but regardless, she had suffered for the Camarilla. She had done her part. Let those arrogant bastards who had persecuted her do the rest. They could survive, or not, on their own. Victoria would go wherever she wanted.

Which left the question of where she wanted to go.

Ahead was a sign for I-40 West. Her first impulse was to take that exit… but instead her foot was easing off the accelerator, she was slowing and pulling to the side of the interstate. The shoulder was narrow. Her car stopped mere inches from the guardrail. Victoria was frozen by indecision. She felt the hand of Fate upon her shoulder—not in the form of an impersonal deity, but an old and powerful creature, one of her own kind that would have her do its bidding. She absently raised a hand to her jaw, to the tiny blemish. Damn you! she wanted to scream. Damn all my elders!

Like Jan and the others, she wasn’t able to trust her own thoughts and decisions. She blamed them, all the same. Demons without, demons within. The scent of corruption and manipulation was almost palpable. Something was trying to use her. How else could she not remember that Leopold was her childe?

“No!” she screamed. She dug her fingers into the dashboard. “He is not!”

Regardless, she would not follow a predetermined course. She required the reassurance of randomness lest she go mad. Mad like Anatole. That is what comes of toadying to the gods!

Her car was on the side of the road. Two lanes curved past on her left. The next car that passed—if it was in the near lane, she would follow her present course and return to Baltimore. If it was in the far lane…

At that instant, a huge semi, all lights and rushing wind, rounded the curve and rumbled past—in the near lane. The Saturn lurched and swayed at the passing of the giant only feet away. Victoria had her answer. She was anxious to be away—not to be somewhere in particular, but simply away, anxious for everything to be different. She peeled from the shoulder and gunned the protesting engine to eighty.

She gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands, imagining for an instant that the black road was a snake—a serpent, a dragon—stretched out behind her, chasing her. But it lay before her also.

Suddenly Victoria wrenched the wheel to the side. The Saturn shot across the road and barely made the rapidly approaching exit ramp. Interstate 40 West. “Ha!” Victoria cried. Let the gods attempt to fix her path. Let them! She would outwit them. She’d not return to Baltimore. She’d drive west, perhaps Chicago, but regardless, she was done with this damnable war

Damn Fate, damn the gods, damn the hidden ones! They will not have me. I will not let them.

Saturday, 4 September 1999, 11:37 PM Hartsfield International Airport Atlanta, Georgia

He could only beat himself up about it for so many nights and drive himself to only so much more distraction, but the gross failure, the incredible negligence Jeremiah had committed a few nights ago continued to haunt him. He’d missed something. The something that had suddenly caused Anatole to kill and diablerize Benison.

The destruction of the former prince of Atlanta had been a gruesome event to witness, and it was made even more horrible by Jeremiah’s acute sense of confusion and delinquency. Anatole had seemed ready to depart, not just the homely townhouse where Benison had been hiding, but Atlanta altogether. The flight was booked and even Benison’s late slumbering did not risk their missing it.

But then a switch had suddenly flipped in Anatole’s head, or Benison had made a gesture or expression that Jeremiah had missed, or Anatole had simply lulled him into complacency in order to surprise him as well as Benison with his brutal attack. Whatever the cause, Jeremiah felt he should know far more about it. But whatever the cause, Jeremiah’s diligence had been heightened tenfold since that night. He knew again the fear and respect for the powerful Anatole that he’d forgotten he should possess. So much time spent in the company of the old Malkavian had lulled Jeremiah into complacency.

But now they were finally headed north again, to Syracuse and then from there into the mountains to the site of the massacre and the last known location of Leopold prior to his sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance in New York City a month ago. Perhaps Anatole should have been taken directly to the Adirondacks, but there was too much information needed from these other sites as well. After all, the rampages of Leopold and the Eye of Hazimel were not what caused his master such distraction. At least not directly, though they clearly seemed to be involved.

After destroying Benison, Anatole had shrunk within himself. He did not utter a peep for several days and would not even leave the townhouse. The empty rooms and silence threatened to drive Jeremiah mad, especially as the only noise or activity was in his own mind, where he ran through the instant he’d missed again and again, searching for clues as to what might have happened.

He was no closer to an answer.

A young man, airport personnel, appeared and gave a blankly staring Anatole the news that his plane was prepped and ready. The pilot was aboard and the plane was cleared for takeoff anytime in the next fifteen minutes. The man seemed unnerved by Anatole’s lack of response and he repeated the message, although he updated “fifteen minutes” to “fourteen minutes,” apparently hoping a countdown would snap his customer to attention.

Anatole gave one nod. The young man waited for further confirmation, but he received none, and sidled away.

Jeremiah hastily completed a very brief cover sheet and then waited for Anatole to rise. When the Malkavian did so, Jeremiah lingered for a mere twelve seconds— all the while keeping Anatole in sight—and inserted the cover and a few other sheets of notes into a attaché case which he locked and then handcuffed to the metal support pole of the row of chairs near him. Someone would be along the moment the plane pulled from the gate to collect the case.

Sunday, 5 September 1999, 10:18 PM Traveling on Interstate 87

Near Albany, New York

The companion wondered where on earth Anatole was being led now. Or rather, where Anatole was allowing himself to be taken. He should have known better, and he had at least reserved a little judgment because he’d presumed Anatole must have known what he was doing. After that moment that had passed between Anatole and Benison, the companion’s doubts were now erased. Benison’s death was a pity, and he knew Anatole regretted it, but his road had ever been fraught with peril and disappointment and treachery.

Who was playing whom for a fool?

The companion supposed they would see.

Whoever this intruder was in their midst, though, he clearly had good connections. Ones that Anatole had used masterfully to gain clothes, air travel, and more. The companion guessed they were scratching each others’ backs, but since Anatole was the pampered guest, he imagined the final arrangements were up to the prophet.

But the companion also sensed that his friend was nervous, and that was something he’d seldom associated with Anatole. For once the prophet was not certain of his course, but then his certainty in the past had always had at its foundation the presumption of failure. The companion sensed that Anatole now suspected there was a possibility of success, and that that made him nervous—an eternal pessimist on the verge of victory!

The companion cautioned against these hopes, of course, but all Anatole said in response was that they traveled to no place on the Earth. They were traveling to Hell and if they were lucky, then they would all be damned.

The companion would not deny that this made him nervous as well. The Final Nights were at hand, it seemed.

Monday, 6 September 1999, 3:38 AM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

He was the new famous traveler in Hell, but few realized this hell was on Earth and fewer realized Anatole was even there, although his Virgil was with him still.

Perhaps more than Anatole knew, and if all or even anything went according to his plans, to his hopes, to his dream of nearly a millennium, then perhaps before this coming millennium arrived, he might have the knowledge to warn others.

Or, beyond his sincerest, least-clouded, most mortal thought, he might avert a disaster. He might avert Gehenna.

But was there even one to turn aside? As ever, knowledge had to come first.

With his companions, immaterial and not, he strode across a ruined landscape. He saw the hands of all those prominent in his dreams. The young wizard had clearly been here. This had been his training ground. The mongoose had been here, or had at least envisioned this locale. But he was blinded now, as Anatole was, for the young wizard was in hiding. And of course, the dragon too was here. The mighty pillars of stone, the gaping chasms still filled with steaming lava, and the blackened bones of a Gangrel army were all testament to its power.

What remains would Anatole leave here? Or would he leave anything at all? Perhaps just another scar upon the land?

A phantom, forever wandering the ravaged landscape and searching for answers without even the means to attain them?

Fleshless and burned skulls marked his route. They smiled approvingly, for they were subject to the same folly as he was. He too was mere flesh. By dint of years and training and discovery his flesh could preserve him against all manners of mundane harm, but Hell unleashed was not a casual opponent.

Anatole now showed Virgil the way into Hell… and the paradise within.

He mounted a rise. Even in Hell the lord wished to be above all others, although he was beneath the multitudes as well. Anatole sensed the tracks of the wolves who’d run here last. In a flash, he saw the entire battle and he learned something of the psyche and the power of the ones he would face. It was nothing definable, but anything defined would surely lose its truth, for it would become unmalleable and unworkable. Truth was universal, and changed as what it described changed.

Anatole saw the handful of wolves enter through the bronze gates. They entered the monster’s lair, and the beast scattered them as it would have so many flies. But it knew that flies bite, so it pursued them, swatting them down. It issued from this mouth and surveyed a pristine landscape that it then perverted and twisted. Using the land these wolves loved best to swallow them whole into the earth where they had so often sought refuge. Perhaps one or two of them had survived. Perhaps they had found some earth in which to hide that remained an ally and not a traitor.

Anatole was standing close to the young wizard, his great wasted and wasting eye bloating grotesquely from his face. Anatole saw the lack of passion, the pure dismissal inherent in the young wizard’s actions now. These beasts kept the wizard from his true purpose—

Well, his own purpose at least. Anatole saw that now.

This creation was the wizard’s alone. It might still serve Anatole’s purpose, but he saw it had grown wholly from the young wizard. His purpose was incidental to the needs of others. They planned and practiced in their own way, perhaps, but without the conscious effort most reserved for their needs.

Even Anatole, for all his apparent madness and despair and confusion, had pursued his goals incrementally for hundreds of years. Success might still come in time, so what was lost?

He stepped within the great citadel of stone and death. The walls were polished to a sheen and molded such that light could not, would not disturb the sleep of those within. Nor would it disturb their work. The shadow of the dragon fell upon Anatole to keep him from harm, and the work of the dragon had secured a place here as well.

He progressed. He was nervous. The sanctuary was near. His time was at hand. But imminent death was an oxymoron; at least he intended to make it such for himself. Perhaps others passed on forever, but his journey might find conception here.

But perhaps he would pass on forever. Or perhaps he would remain a prisoner to his flesh like some others here who yet lived. Heart of flesh, lungs of stone, they still pumped blood and breathed air, or would if they were human. These Kindred required neither, but they existed in the same sort of half-state between mundane and magical.

It would take a great deal of time to find his way. A great deal of time.

Fortunately, he had a guide, another guide. Anatole always needed a guide and when he didn’t have them he had to create them.

She was among the ones trapped here. But she was different, because she had planned to be here. Not to be like this, but to be here, for here was a life better than the one terminated months ago. The young wizard had carried her with him, and she released herself into his creation.

This creation. He beheld it. He—

He—

He… was humbled. It vanished, and then he was within it.

Usually, in fact always, his visions granted more power to an object than the object itself possessed. But for once, his visions were humiliated. It was like comparing the rendering of beauty with beauty itself. It was like comparing the idea of violence with the evidence of its handiwork. It was like expressing love in poetry instead of knowing its mad power.

Before him stood one of the truly great creations of all time. But seldom before had such great power been concentrated in the hands of one so young. And perhaps never before had one so young proven so capable.

This was a delicate work executed on the grandest scale. It was a skyscraper made, not of beams and sheets and panes, but of infinitesimal bits sculpted in intricate patterns. One such piece could be the result of a grandmaster’s hand, but so many thousands or millions of them? Then to see them combined into an astonishing, unified whole?

He drooped to the ground. His nervousness was gone. The fear of possible success about which his companion worried was all but eradicated. There was still no hope. Not when confronted by an intelligence or power capable of so great a thing. As far beyond a mortal’s was Anatole’s comprehension and capacity, so was this thing beyond his.

“You need but find your place, Prophet,” said a voice.

It continued. It was a woman. It was his guide. Not Virgil. But Anatole could not hear her words, only the sound of her voice.

He rose, and from his pack he withdrew her robe. Her blood was upon it. Since Caine, the blood had cried out to them all.

He stepped carefully through the labyrinth of the colossal creation and found her. She was beautiful. Crafted with exquisite care in every detail of her body. The shape of that slender form did not remain, but it was evident, and Anatole caressed her to give her pleasure. Her wet stones sucked at his fingers.

He slowly pulled away. He did not wish to deny her anything, but he could not give her all she craved.

“But I do bring your robe, Tremere,” he said to her.

He could not hear her reply until he put the robe around her shoulders. Then her voice sang to him.

“You need but find your place, Prophet,” she said again. He waited, and she continued.

“There was no place planned for me, but I made him include me, for there would otherwise be no life for me. But look, the result is still perfection.”

He agreed.

She said, “And you can graft to perfection, so long as the integrity of the creation is maintained.”

And he laughed bitterly. After so many years, the only thing that stood between him and his next important test was the ability to create perfection!

How could it be done? He sat before her.

“Forty nights and forty days,” he said. “That is the time I allow.”

And on the first night, Anatole felt his body resist this task. It sat supporting itself, not yielding to the challenge, not ready to face it, and so long as it refused to yield, his mind could not either, for he became of two minds. One scrutinized the details of the sculpture, searching, searching, while the other anxiously scrutinized his self. His stiff back, his rigid shoulders.

And that first night he felt the pain of the sunrise and the morning. He was shielded from the light, and so did not burn—and he would have, for even though the dragon loomed around him, he was without its shadow now, for the connection was not active.

Piedmont Avenue Atlanta, Georgia

Rolph carefully made his way down the steps. The rest of the house was empty, and he did not expect to find anyone in the basement. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing to lead him to believe that anyone had set foot inside since Jeremiah left. Even were there someone waiting in the basement, Rolph had taken precautions so he would not be seen.

His concerns proved unfounded, but caution was never wasted.

All was as the reports suggested it would be: work tables, broken statuary, fine dust, one intact bust, boxes of clutter… and one mostly shattered, hardened clay model on the floor exactly where Jeremiah said it would be. Rolph stood over the bozzetto and studied it. Even with part of the face broken away, the likeness was clear enough: the large curved proboscis; one of the two eyes, practically vertical in its orientation; the gaping maw with walrus-like fangs. Leopold did possess a certain amount of talent, Rolph had to admit. But the young Toreador should never have laid eyes on that particular subject.

Rolph took a Ziploc bag from the folds of his cloak and began gently placing the clay fragments inside. When he was done, he poked a bit at the other models on the table and in the box. Doing so, he noticed something beneath the inward-tucked flaps of cardboard. He shoved the models to one side and pulled the flaps open. A photograph was wedged against the side of the box. Rolph opened the Ziploc and placed the picture with the broken bozzetto.

That done, he took another look around the room. The surviving bust attracted his attention. Another fine likeness. Rolph wondered how many artists had made how many representations of Victoria Ash over the centuries. She was not one to discourage imitation and, by extension, flattery. Surely one could fill a huge museum with renderings of her visage in stone, on canvas. And let’s not forget the sonnets, he thought. There must be thousands.

His hand was drawn to the sculpture; he ran his fingers across the cool marble, so similar in hue to the subject’s actual skin. His fingertips lingered at the lips, where the piece was slightly marred. Rolph leaned over and examined the disfigurement. The flaw, to his thinking, brought Victoria closer to perfection. But what had happened—another pair of lips, perhaps? Had someone felt compelled to kiss her unchanging face?

Rolph chuckled. Good thing Colchester wasn’t here, he thought, or the indentation in her mouth would be shaped differently.

Monday, 6 September 1999, 10:11 PM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

On his second night in the cave, Anatole’s mouth gave in to the task. It lolled open and his exposed tongue soon dried in the cold of the cave.

Chamber of Gathering, Chantry of the Five Boroughs New York City, New York

Talbott glided across the threshold, advancing precisely three footlengths into the room. He stopped, pivoted smoothly to the east. His body inclined forward at the waist, bowing in the direction of Vienna. His every gesture was an exact movement in an ancient and intricately choreographed ritual. He pivoted again upon the balls of his feet and flowed forward with aching patience and grace toward the room’s focal point.

Sturbridge was seated upon the floor at the far side of the gathering. She alone, of all the assembly, faced the open doorway. She had certainly noted the opening movements of Talbott’s approach. She made no motion, however, to rise, or even to acknowledge the newcomer.

The other members of the chantry were carefully arrayed about their regent. Each sat upon the floor in exactly the same pose of relaxed alertness—sitting back upon the right heel, with the left knee upright and folded closely against the chest.

The assembled radiated outward from Sturbridge in sweeping semi-circles, each member’s place strictly dictated by rank and tradition. The innermost arch, seated at the very feet of their regent, now consisted solely of Helena and Johanus—the two adepts assigned to the chantry.

Sturbridge was painfully aware of the novel asymmetry that had been introduced into the carefully ordered assembly. Once there had been three arrayed directly before her. This was the first formal gathering of the chantry since Foley’s entombment.

In three, there was strength, completeness. God manifested himself in a Trinity— Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Similarly man, fashioned in His image, was triune—mind, body, soul. The Graces, Fates and Furies were all three in number.

By comparison, two was an ugly number. A divisive number. Good and evil. Truth and falsehood. Us and them. Sturbridge studied the faces of her two adepts, searching for the telltale stirrings of envy, avarice, ambition. Neither would meet her gaze.

Sturbridge could not help noting how the adepts had closed ranks, filling the empty place left by their recently deceased comrade. She was instinctively distrustful of this apparent solidarity. How quickly they had closed ranks. Nature had rushed to fill the vacuum left by the absence of their fallen comrade. Sturbridge suspected that it was their base nature. To an outsider, there would be no sign that there had ever been another among them. Sturbridge checked herself and forced down her rising, and perhaps unjust, resentment.

Sturbridge knew each of her adepts was a force to be reckoned with. Each had progressed through all seven circles of mastery prescribed by the Rule. They had traveled widely before accepting this prestigious and dangerous posting. Each had further honed her talents in the crucible of constant conflict with the Sabbat that was the special legacy (and curse) of this chantry. Each of them was being tried, and tried severely.

Sturbridge knew that conflict between the two might well rend the already war-torn chantry apart.

Without exception, the adepts assigned to C5B were the best of the best. Foley, she could not help thinking (with some bitterness), could have led his own chantry, and done a far better job than some existing regents that she could name. She could have very much used his support, somewhere nearby—Jersey, Connecticut…. But what was the point of such conjecture now? Instead of growing a sister-chantry to bolster the Tremere line against the rising Sabbat tide, Foley was dead.

Foley was killed, she corrected herself.

Sturbridge looked hard into the faces of her two adepts. Each of them might, in time, aspire to her own regency. Each of them was now precisely one step closer to fulfilling that aspiration.

This was foolishness. Sturbridge knew full well that the adepts were innocent of Foley’s blood. It was the duty of adepts to prepare against the day when they might be called upon to assume the mantle of regency. Just as it was, in turn, Sturbridge’s job to make sure these two survived long enough to get that chance. She had failed Foley. She was not accustomed to the company of failure.

Her gaze grew hard. It drank in the whole of the assembly. Beyond the inner circle of adepts were arrayed those who, through centuries of toil and intrigue, had achieved the coveted rank of master. Within each of the seven circles of mastery, the members were carefully arranged according to their status, seniority and precedence.

Beyond the closed ranks of the masters sat the seven circles of the novitiate. Beyond the novices lay only the door to the outside world and the battering of the Sabbat upon the portal.

Judging by the muted whispers among the assembly, it was clear that Sturbridge was not alone in being acutely aware of the secundus’s absence. The worried murmurings were only further fueled by Talbott gliding into view of the rearmost rows of novices. He proceeded straight toward the regent, oblivious to the waves of seated figures through which he soundlessly cut. All eyes were upon him by the time he pierced the innermost circle of adepts. Talbott stopped, pivoted again toward Vienna, bowed. He then bowed to Sturbridge and settled gently to the floor. Despite his advanced years, Talbott effortlessly assumed the pose of the rest of the gathering. He waited with head still bowed.

“Yes, Brother Porter,” Sturbridge acknowledged.

“Your pardon, Regentia. There is a guest without. He says he would speak with you without delay.”

“Who is this guest, Brother Porter? Is he of the blood? If so, you may bring him before us presently. If he is not, you may escort him to our sitting room where he may await us.” Talbot seemed to hesitate. “Yes, Regentia. He is of the blood. There is no denying his credentials. But perhaps it would please you to speak to him privately. He is from… he has come a great distance,” he finished awkwardly.

“If our guest wishes to rest and refresh himself, you will see to his needs. If he would come before us directly, you may bring him here.”

“But, Regentia, he is from…” Talbot began, obviously agitated. Then he recollected himself. “As you wish, Regentia.”

Talbot rose in a single motion without apparent effort. He bowed to Sturbridge, turned east, and bowed nearly double. Still facing toward Vienna, he glided backward from the hall.

He was barely out of the room when the sound of a disturbance from the corridor broke in upon the uneasy silence. Two distinct voices could be heard—one raised in challenge, the other pitched soft and conciliatory. A number of novices were already craning around to get a better view of the doorway. When the door at last cracked open, all that could be seen was the broad expanse of Talbott’s back. He was still deep in discussion with the figure just beyond him—apparently trying to interpose not only his words, but his bulk between the other and the door.

Having won some momentary advantage, Talbott seized upon the opportunity to slip deftly through the opening. He turned to face the gathering, blocking the still-opened doorway with the breadth of his back.

He took only a moment to collect himself. Clearing his throat audibly, he announced in a broken voice, “Your pardon, Regentia. We have guests. Please allow me to present, from Vienna, the Lord…”

Talbott’s voice choked off abruptly and he wheeled as if struck from behind. Only the head of the newcomer could be seen peeking around the crack in the doorway. He held one crooked finger to his lips. The withered hand trembled slightly as with great age or palsy. Talbott tried to speak but all that escaped his throat was a harsh animal squawk and a fine spray of blood.

The newcomer held Talbott’s startled gaze for only the briefest of moments. Satisfied, he lowered the admonitory finger and leaned heavily into the door. It swung open fully, spilling him a few shuffling steps into the room. Almost as an afterthought, he turned back toward Talbott, muttering to himself.

“No that is quite all right. You are dismissed, Brother Porter.”

Talbott staggered backwards as the newcomer shuffled past him into the midst of the assembly.

He critically surveyed the entire gathering—their carefully orchestrated ranks, their precise and identical pose, their military precision honed by many lifetimes of service.

He muttered aloud in a voice dripping with age and vitriol. “Discipline, lax… security, lax…” He continued his damning litany the entire length of the hall. He did not pause until he had penetrated the inner circle of adepts. He then turned upon the gathering. His entire form shook with the intensity of his emotion and effort to speak.

“Children! I have crossed oceans to come here and all I find within this house are children. Unkempt, undisciplined, unmannered children. Where is the regent of this house?”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the hall. The stranger had positioned himself so that he stood between Sturbridge and her subjects. Not only had he purposefully turned his back upon her, but she was the only person in the room so slighted. Furthermore, he had interposed himself squarely between her and her people—as if attempting to eclipse her from view.

A calm and clear voice broke the silence.

“Be welcome among us. I am Aisling Sturbridge; you may address me as Regentia. You have come a great distance and are no doubt fatigued. Sit. Rest.” She gestured to a place beside her own. Her voice dropped into a reverential tone as if reciting words of some ancient scripture. “The shadow of the Pyramid is long; there is room enough for one more to shelter beneath it.”

Her words were calm, precise, unruffled. Behind this barrier of outward composure, however, Sturbridge’s thoughts were racing. A representative from Vienna.

Never in all her time of stewardship over the Chantry of the Five Boroughs had the “home office” in Vienna seen fit to pay a visit. An unannounced visit. No, this certainly did not bode well.

She had heard the stories of course. Everyone had. Of how certain undesirables within the hierarchy were suddenly “recalled to Vienna”—disappearing entirely from Tremere society. Dropping off the face of the Pyramid.

But that kind of thing always took place somewhere else. Somewhere very far from here. Please, not here.

It was the assassination. That had to be it. The assassinations.

First Atlanta, then Baltimore, and now here. Of course it wouldn’t do the higher-ups much good to drop in on the Atlanta chantry to throw a little weight around. Surely the ashes had cooled enough by now to allow safe passage, to gaze upon the blackened remains, to search for some clue as to what had gone wrong (gone so horribly wrong). But to what end? There was no one left in Atlanta to hold accountable. None to render back to Vienna what was Vienna’s.

And what of Washington? Sturbridge wasn’t even sure who the new regent in D.C. was now that Chin was dead, and Dorfman… unavailable. Something unpleasant nagged at the back of her mind, but she pushed it down. Was the besieged D.C. chantry even now suffering under the unwanted and unannounced attentions of their own legate from Vienna?

Her guest turned upon her very slowly. Freed from the spell of the stranger’s attention, the adepts quickly regrouped and rose up as one. Sturbridge took little comfort from this display of unity.

She wondered what they might do, her ambitious adepts, if they did perceive a direct threat to her well being. Would they leap to defend their regent, or would their loyalties fall along more established party lines? Sturbridge sat calmly as if unaware of the silent conflict of interests that must be playing itself out inside the private thoughts of each of her adepts.

“Sit? We do not,” the visitor pronounced each word separately, “sit on the same level as novices. It is unbecoming and erodes proper discipline.” He scowled over the seated Sturbridge. “We shall stand.”

Sturbridge ignored this rebuke and spoke past her accuser. “Talbott, please bring our guest a chair. It is uncharitable to keep him standing so long.”

Although Talbott was at the far end of the chamber, the room’s acoustics were such that the regent never raised her voice. Talbott seemed grateful for the opportunity to slip from the room and recover himself.

Sturbridge had been steadfastly refusing even to consider the alternative—that the representative from Vienna was here for some other reason, for some very personal reason. That was cause to fear.

She had taken great pains, of course, to be circumspect in her inquiries into the Tremere role in resisting the Sabbat offensive. Of course she was puzzled, confused, frustrated by the Tremere’s almost systematic refusal to take any hand in the resistance.

But what if word had gotten back to Vienna about her private doubts about this matter? Of her covert conversations with leaders of the Camarilla council in Baltimore? Of her interview with Jan Pieterzoon, leader of the council? Of the “bargain” struck during that interview?

In hindsight, that rendezvous was, perhaps, a miscalculation. Not a mistake, per se. But perhaps not as subtle an approach as she might have taken. The home office was most comfortable when their carefully selected regents stayed where they were very carefully put. Yes, they would certainly inquire further into her trip to Baltimore.

Bracing herself, she smiled up at her guest and posed the question she most wanted to have answered and that she least wanted to ask.

“We are flattered by this unmerited attention. To what do we owe the honor of this visit, Lord… excuse me, Talbott did not have opportunity to finish your introduction.”

These words provoked exactly the opposite of the disarming effect that Sturbridge had intended.

Raising himself up to his full height, the emissary choked out, “We are the Word of Etrius. We are grieved to learn of recent misfortunes at the Chantry of the Five Boroughs. We have heard the cries of our brethren and we have come.

“We are deeply concerned lest external influences jeopardize the harmonious operation of the chantry. In particular, our brethren have a solemn right to expect that within these walls, they shall be safe from all harm. Until such a time as this security has been demonstrably restored, we shall remain among you. Effective immediately, the Regent of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs will report to us directly, rather than through the normal geographic chain of command. We are the Word of Etrius.”

Sturbridge sat stunned. She was not, as she had most feared, recalled to Vienna. She was not under sentence of death. They had not wrested control of her chantry from her. So why did she feel as if a great chasm had just opened up beneath her feet?

In silence, she tumbled headlong down the well.

Tuesday, 7 September 1999, 12:30 AM Regent’s Sanctum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

The bolts of the outer door had barely hissed shut when Sturbridge wheeled upon her guest.

“Do you want to explain just what the hell that was all about?”

“I would remind you that you are addressing your direct superior, Miss Sturbridge. I will brook no insubordination. Is this what passes for proper decorum in this colonial backwater? Familiarity? Vulgarities? I will not have it.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Archduke of Austria. While you’re in this house, you are my guest and I will expect you to behave accordingly. Am I making myself quite clear?” “Perhaps you do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. I am the Word of Etrius.

I have been charged to set this house in order. I will employ whatever means necessary to achieve this end. I will not be thwarted, and I will not scruple to remove any who resist the will of the council in this matter.”

An overt threat. Sturbridge did not react well to threats. “What you believe your mission here to be, or not to be, is of little concern to me. I have seen your credentials. What you are is an ambassador. And I would remind you, Mr. Ambassador, that historically, diplomats who do not comport themselves with dignity are summarily expelled and returned home in disgrace.”

“I assure you, Miss Sturbridge, that you have no such authority in this matter.” He smiled past cracked lips and leaned forward confidingly. “What will you do, have your porter show me the door?”

If he hoped to goad her into a more open display of anger, he was disappointed. “If you like,” she replied with a honeyed edge to her words. “Will a noon wakeup call suit you?”

“I have taken certain precautions. To spare you the humiliation of having any harm befall me while I am in your care. I would not like for there to be any ambiguity in your mind on this particular point.”

He picked up a thick volume from atop the nearest teetering stack of books. By the number of yellow sticky notes peeking from its pages, Sturbridge could tell it was one of the works confiscated from Foley’s chambers. As Sturbridge watched, the notes began to brown along their exposed edges. A thin tendril of black smoke curled upwards. Before Sturbridge could react, or even protest, the book burst into flames.

She heard the telltale sound of the room’s autonomic defenses clicking in. “Override!” she barked.

“Override confirmed,” a disembodied voice responded. “Sturbridge, Aisling, Regent. Response team dispatched. Defensive systems lock: Fire. Defensive systems lock: Arcanum. Defensive systems lock: Intruder.

“Fire systems warning: override status. You have 180 seconds to manually extinguish fire. Depressurization commencing.

“Arcanum systems warning: override status. Unauthorized thaumaturgic effect. Overt. Pyromantic. Retaliation: approved and armed. Triggers: delta proximity, delta temperature. “Intruder systems warning: override status. Please immediately identify unknown persons to maintain override status.”

“Etrius, Logos, Ambassador.” Sturbridge glared at her guest. “Address as Mr. Ambassador. Authorizations: guest quarters, owner-level clearance. Common areas, resident-level clearance. All other areas, restricted—access only when accompanied by Sturbridge, Aisling, Regent or Fitzgerald, Eva, Novice. Chantry ingress/egress, prohibited.” “Confirmed. Visitor record added. Please supply voice ident to complete record and cancel Intruder systems warning.”

Sturbridge’s voice dropped to a whisper. It was unnervingly calm and measured. “Mr. Ambassador, you have been acquired as a target by three separate autonomic defense systems. Please listen carefully.

“It is imperative that you refrain from any sudden movements that might be interpreted as hostile. I would also recommend that you immediately extinguish the burning book. The blaze will go out of its own account, of course, in just about two and one half minutes—when the remaining oxygen is forcibly ejected from the room. I assure you that this depressurization produces a singularly unpleasant sensation, even in those such as ourselves who would not dream of wasting air on anything so mundane as breathing.

“Also, if you could spare a few inspirational words for the voice recognition system— three or four sentences should suffice to register your vocal pattern—the alarm system will stop referring to you as an intruder. There are certain advantages to this arrangement. I highly recommend it.”

“You must teach your guardian spirits better manners,” he replied. “Such presumption! And I will advise you in turn, Miss Sturbridge, to call off your dogs. As I was explaining before we were so impertinently interrupted, this little demonstration was arranged solely for your edification. If any harm should befall me while I am under your protection…”

He allowed the arm that clutched the burning book to drop a few degrees toward the floor. The flames nipped eagerly at the billowing sleeve of his robes, caught and chased each other around his forearm. Sturbridge had a momentary glimpse of exposed skin blistering, cracking, blackening. She managed to take a half step toward him before the pain slammed into her. She doubled up, fire racing through her veins like molten metal.

“Enough!” Trained to their master’s voice, the flames shrank back, withdrew and flickered out.

“Voice ident confirmed,” the mechano-musical voice was unruffled. “Etrius, Logos, Ambassador. Welcome. Defensive systems alert: Intruder—canceled. Defensive systems alert: Fire—canceled. Defensive systems alert: Arcanum—canceled. Response team en route and attempting contact.”

“Cancel response team.” Sturbridge’s voice was harsh, hollow. She repeated herself, conscious of the effort to draw enough air to form the words properly.

The ambassador was still talking, as if unaware of the mechanical interruption. “Fire and sunlight are such clumsy, imprecise tools. It is always difficult to say if they will strike true, or fell some innocent bystander. Like you, perhaps. We are bound together, you and I. You know that now. I have been promised safe conduct to and from this house. You are the surety of that pledge.”

Sturbridge steadied herself with one hand and straightened. She took a single cautious step forward, testing her balance.

“I don’t know how the hell you did that, but you can be absolutely sure that it’s not going to happen again. Security systems programming,” she called. “Proximity alert, individual. Subject: Etrius, Logos, Ambassador. Subject suffers extreme vulnerability to light, heat. If subject approaches within twenty feet of open flame or sunlight, immediately incapacitate and extinguish. End.”

“I am touched by your concern for my safety. Still, this guardian spirit of yours is nothing if not fickle and perverse. I will have its true name within the fortnight; you may rely upon it. Then we shall teach it some manners.”

When Sturbridge did not rise to his barb, he continued. “I had been considering commandeering these chambers for the duration of my stay, but the company does not at all agree with me. I think the secundus’s rooms will suit our purpose. The longer they lie untenanted, after all, the more the rumors and superstitions will fester among the novices.”

“Of course, Mr. Ambassador. I will have the wards removed and the room made ready for you this evening. In the meanwhile, I imagine you will want to review all of the evidence relating to the secundus’s death as soon as possible. Shall I have it carted down to the edificium for you? I would have it taken to Foley’s quarters, but I’m not certain we would be able to get it all back in again. “

“You are quite mistaken, I assure you.” “I beg your pardon?”

“I said that you are mistaken. I have no desire whatsoever to reopen this case. I have read your preliminary report on this unfortunate chapter in the history of this chantry and it is my considered opinion that the sooner we close that particular book, the better.”

“But there have been new developments since that report was written. Another death for starters, and…”

“Another assassination?! This is intolerable. It is gross negligence. What is being done to protect the chantry from outside threats? And I don’t mean this farcical Intruder Defensive System nonsense I’ve been subjected to here tonight. I believe I have seen enough of that. Why aren’t your guardian spirits securing the perimeter instead of accosting the guests of the chantry?”

“Mr. Ambassador,” Sturbridge’s patience was beginning to wear. “There is strong evidence to suggest that Foley’s assassin did not breach chantry security unaided.”

“What precisely is it that you are trying to say, Miss Sturbridge? If you are merely trying to deflect attention from your own failings…”

“Our investigation turned up certain papers on Aaron’s body—the novice that was killed just inside the Exeunt Tertius on the night of Foley’s death. Papers that were removed from the scene of the crime. Surely you cannot fail to grasp the significance of…”

“Aaron was a hero.” He spoke slowly and precisely. “He died protecting this chantry— a duty which I remind you, Miss Sturbridge, properly falls to you. I will not stand here and listen to you speak ill of the dead.”

“But surely you realize,” she began, but broke off midsentence. Realization had been slow in coming, but had gathered force with the waiting. It broke over her like a wave. Aaron, a hero, despite all evidence to the contrary? Why was the representative from Vienna so firm on this point, unless…

“Oh, I see.”

“What is it that you see, Miss Sturbridge?”

“It was not his treachery after all, was it? It was his loyalty. His loyalty to the clan, to Vienna. Yes, I had things quite backwards. Thank you for pointing out my error. This puts things in a very different light.”

“Let the dead rest, Miss Sturbridge. You would do well to look to the safety of your novices.”

“Yes, I see that now. Thank you.”

Tuesday, 7 September 1999, 6:23AM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

On the second day in the cave, the sun hurt Anatole again. Not physical pain, but the trauma of pressing himself through unendurable fatigue wracked his body. His companions could not withstand this, and they shrank to the cover they required.

Tuesday, 7 September 1999, 7:20 PM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

When the meager distraction of his stiff back finally pulled his thoughts from the spiral lines around the reposed form of an entombed wolf, Anatole knew his third night in the cave had begun.

By the time that night passed, he was hunched over.

Thursday, 9 September 1999, 7:16 PM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

By the passing of his fourth day in the cave, the fatigue Anatole felt was no different than that he felt from the mere dissipation of time.

New York Avenue Washington, D.C.

Futile. Futile but unavoidable. That was what Parmenides considered the strategy that necessitated his current duties—keeping watch on the Tremere chantry, sole remaining bastion of Camarilla power in the American capital. Or at least the sole remaining bastion that the Sabbat knew about. Surely there were mortals in the city who remained under the sway of Ventrue masters—senators and congressmen calling in favors, ghouled bureaucrats who, as circumstances dictated, either greased or clogged the wheels of the governmental machinery.

Take, for example, last month’s city-wide curfew, which had forced the Sabbat to tread more carefully in removing hidden cells of Camarilla resistance. How else could that be explained? And the fact that the crackdown had been enforced not by federal troops, as should have been the case, but by Maryland National Guard units?

A mere courtesy, the powers-that-be assured their citizens. With the armed forces spread thin with peacekeeping assignments in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere, it seemed perfectly reasonable to utilize a force at the ready and in such close proximity to the recent civil unrest. Besides, the arrangement was not expressly unconstitutional… and so forth and so on. The assurances of propriety droned on from various quarters.

Of course, Parmenides and his type had the advantage of certain insights to which the general (that would be mortal) public was not privy. Few citizens would believe, for instance, that the unrest in question, like the disturbances that preceded it along the East Coast, was primarily the result of a mighty struggle between warring sects of creatures of the night. Factor in, also, that the munafiqun Prince Vitel of Washington had fled north and taken refuge with Prince Garlotte of Baltimore, and the calling in of favors that had resulted in the capital’s curfew seemed readily apparent.

And that was but one example. The Sabbat may have won control of the streets in Washington, but the halls of power were not so easily breached, and therein lay the essence of Ventrue influence.

If that proud and devious clan was the backbone of the Camarilla, and the upstart Brujah the muscle, then the cursed Tremere would be the teeth and fangs; and it was that clan that currently occupied Parmenides’s attention.

He lay secreted among hedges across the street from the Octagon House, a quaint “historical” relic in this nation too young to truly understand or have history. The historical significance of the location paled considerably compared to its strategic value to the warring sects, for beneath the structure lay the lair of the Tremere.

So Parmenides waited and watched.

The warlocks themselves might come and go by sorcerous means—who was to tell?— but already the Sabbat vigil had been rewarded. In the ten weeks since the sect’s forces had rolled into the city, several human and ghoul lackeys to the Tremere had been captured and eliminated. There were also two formerly secret entrances to the chantry that had been discovered in the blocks surrounding the Octagon House and sealed. The warlocks would not be defeated by such paltry losses, but the constant pressure might eventually bring about more significant opportunities.

Destruction of the Tremere. That was a prospect Parmenides could warm to, though he would have preferred a more proactive strategy, or at least a more direct role for himself. After spending several weeks in close contact with Lady Sascha Vykos, he was now seemingly banished to the hinterlands of sentry duty, although there was no lack of Sabbat ruffians who could man this portion of the perimeter. Surely Vykos must have something more in keeping with his particular skills, but she’d given him few added responsibilities since the successful Chin assignment in Baltimore. Perhaps she was reluctant to have too practiced a killer in her employ, Parmenides mused. Even as the thought crossed his mind, however, he grudgingly recognized it for the false bravado that fled so quickly when he was in Vykos’s presence. Damn her.

Breaking the monotony of the evening, a vibration within one of the many pockets of Parmenides’s loose-fitting jacket caught his attention—and reminded him of another duty Vykos had relegated to him. Silently, Parmenides crawled backward out of the hedges—there were other sentries keeping watch; he would not be missed—and moved quickly out of earshot of the Octagon House. Only then did he remove the cellular phone from his pocket, flip the device open, and press the “talk” button.

He waited another moment for the scrambling technology to kick in, then: “Hello?”

University of Hartford campus West Hartford, Connecticut

Lucita stood on a corner in West Hartford, looking across at the entrance to the University of Hartford campus. The lawn was brown, the sign was ugly, and beyond it stretched what could only be described as acres’ worth of parking lots. This meant that there was no cover anywhere in the vicinity, which was how Lucita liked it. She pulled out her phone and dialed a pager number that had been given to her, long ago when this escapade began. No doubt she’d need to abandon yet another cell-phone number when this call was complete, but Schreck seemed to be perfectly happy to supply her with all she needed to avoid being traced.

Besides, Schreck’s lackey had told Lucita to stick around Hartford. That had been over a week ago, and there was no sign of her target yet. Maybe her other employer would have better information.

The call connected and there was a series of clicks. After the requisite number of beeps and whirring sounds, a guarded “Hello?” came over the line.

“Good evening.”

“Ah. Doña Lucita. It is pleasant to hear from you.” The voice of the vampire on the other end of the line was smoothly polite. “May I be of assistance?”

“A trifling matter, really. I am wondering if you might be able to spare me the barest hint as to where my target might be roaming in the upcoming nights?”

There was a pause. “How would I know that, Doña Lucita?”

“Because whoever pulls your strings knows, yes? I’m not too blind to see what is in front of me. Who is it? Polonia? Vykos? One of the fat fools down in Mexico City?”

Another pause. “I am afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, Doña. I am truly sorry.”

“You are a truly sorry liar, and that is all. So tell me: Where will he be?”

“Within two weeks, you may find Hartford a profitable place to hunt. I trust that is sufficient information?”

“I will not lie to you: No, it is not, but it will have to do. Very well. I thank you for all of your courtesies.”

“The pleasure is mine.” There was a click, and the line went dead.

Lucita folded up the phone and put it away, then jogged across the street onto the campus. It was always good to know the ground one might fight on, and besides, she was hungry.

Thursday, 9 September 1999, 10:20 PM New York Avenue Washington, D.C.

“The pleasure is mine,” Parmenides lied again and clicked off the phone. “And may your target eat your heart for breakfast.”

Parmenides was less taken aback by Lucita’s usual bluntness during the call than than by her willingness to reveal to him how much she did and did not know. He’d expected more discretion from a Lasombra. Perhaps her questions about her employer were a screen, an attempt to make Parmenides think she knew less than she actually did. Perhaps she had somehow discovered full and well the Archbishop Vykos was her employer. But if that were the case, why not deflect suspicion by ignoring the issue all together? He’d thought it might all be a double feint, but upon reflection it seemed she was just that brash. Brash, and haughty enough to think that her insults would mean anything to him.

Parmenides had more information that he could have given her, but he didn’t feel compelled to make her job any easier. Therein lay one of the perils of antagonizing a contact without reason; it was a simple lesson that any assassin should know, that any Assamite would know.

Sunday, 12 September 1999, 7:11 PM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

By the coming of Anatole’s eighth night in the cave, he was prostrate before his guide, suckling her wisdom and her stone.

Saturday, 18 September 1999, 6:36 AM Adirondack State Park

Clinton County, New York

By his thirteenth day in the cave, Anatole could no longer distinguish between day and night.

Tuesday, 21 September, 1999, 12:27 AM University of Connecticut Law School Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford was dying in bits and pieces, but the symptoms were mostly well-disguised. There was a fire at the Civic Center, and another outside the CBS station downtown. The city library’s exquisitely carved wooden doors had been smashed by a moving truck whose driver had lost control of his vehicle, but there didn’t seem to be any injuries. Police who could be spared from the other crises overwhelming the city were on the lookout for the driver, who had apparently fled the scene on foot. There was gunfire in the Mt. Zion Cemetery, and a four-car pileup that blocked the Charter Oaks Bridge eastbound. A hit-and-run accident with fatalities tied up I-91 just north of the I-84 interchange. The ritzy mall at Corbin’s Corners, just west of the city, had a rash of looting and vandalism, perpetrated by a gang of teenage boys that security claimed they’d never seen before. A party on the University of Hartford campus degenerated into a riot, and a bus broke down in front of the Asylum Avenue station so that no one could get in or out.

Somewhere, in the middle of this carefully contrived chaos, Talley had been allowed to become the Hound again.

The initial plan had called for the commanders of the operation—Borges, Vykos and Talley himself—to hang well back from the action, directing troops and staying out of the line of fire. Furthermore, by insisting that Vykos and Borges remain in close proximity, Talley had both reduced each’s ability to act against the other (if that was what was planned), and increased his own chances of protecting either. In theory, Talley’s presence would be enough to make both archbishops behave, though it was hardly an ironclad guarantee.

The problems began with a lucky shot. Some Camarilla partisan left to screen the retreat somehow sussed out the location of the Sabbat’s command center and started sniping at the trio of behemoth war ghouls Vykos had brought with her as a precaution. One’s head exploded with the second shot.

Her two remaining ghouls in tow, Vykos started off to sweep around and flank their assailant. When Talley objected in no uncertain terms, archbishop and templar nearly came to blows over the matter, their argument punctuated by the rat-tat-tat of the sniper’s rifle. Over Talley’s strong protests, Vykos insisted on going.

“Fine!” Talley spat after the Tzimisce archbishop. “If you want to get yourself killed, I’ll watch over Borges.” Talley turned to caution Borges to stay exactly where he was, or else.

Borges was gone.

Perhaps the freshly spilled blood from the ghouls had combined with the excitement of battle to drive him into frenzy, or maybe he was just in a mood to glory-hound it. It didn’t matter. Either way, the man was gone.

Talley cursed, briefly but with heartfelt passion. He had two choices: Go after Vykos, who had spurned his advice and was accompanied by two war ghouls; or try to find and protect Borges, who had also ignored Talley’s warnings, but who was alone and had been thrust into command, all too conveniently, by Polonia and Vykos. The Tzimisce had demonstrated an ability for centuries to take care of herself; Borges, to be charitable, had not done quite so well.

In the end, it was no choice at all.

And so, Talley plunged off into the fire-lit night to find Borges. Killing everything that got in his way would simply be a bonus.

Tuesday, 21 September 1999, 12:29 AM Observation Deck, Albert Myor Building Hartford, Connecticut

Fatima climbed over the railing and onto the glorified ledge that served as a lunch- time patio for the office building she’d just scaled. The retractable awning was rolled tightly against the outer wall; the glass partitions that would protect the absent diners from the most inclement weather were not yet in place for winter. Chairs and round, metal tables awaited their next occupants.

Her eye was fully healed, regrown within a few nights, and with new sight and calm heart, she looked out over the city.

For a brief moment, the lofty height and the pull of the wind reminded Fatima of the walls of Alamut, but only for a moment. It was difficult to ignore the chaos that dominated the panorama. Not far away, flames danced heavenward from a building in the heart of the city; several blocks west a larger building, the civic center, burned as well. Acrid smoke hung low and drifted down toward the river. Flashing lights and sirens seemed to be everywhere as emergency vehicles rushed about like multi-hued fireflies in some manic, frenzied dance. Their comings and goings on streets that should have been virtually deserted at this time of night were hindered at every turn: A stalled bus clogged a main artery through downtown; a smoking pile of metal that had been several cars blocked a heavily used bridge; just to the north, interstate traffic was beginning to pile up behind an accident. The small pop of gunfire erupted intermittently on the streets and in the parks.

She struck the pose of a bored tourist, leaning against the railing and watching almost disinterestedly as the action unfolded beneath her. No, this was quite unlike Alamut after all; only a trick of altitude, the sensation of the world falling away before her, was similar. Instead of a vista of unforgiving yet strangely serene mountain gorges, Fatima looked over a scene of mounting carnage. The Sabbat was in town, and although this night, with its fires, looting, and riots, might horrify the mortal population of the city, it appeared that the Camarilla vampires of Hartford would fare much worse.

Which undead faction controlled the city was of minimal concern to Fatima. She could pursue her missions whether Camarilla schemers remained sequestered in their plush drawing rooms or Sabbat packs terrorized mortals on the street. It was the conjunction of the two missions assigned her by the amr that brought her to this city under siege tonight.

“Parmenides may need to be destroyed,” al-Ashrad had said. “It was the caliph’s decision to place him in the care of the fiend, Vykos. A difficult position. We now have reason to believe that Vykos has… abused Parmenides. In ways he could not have prepared for. He may be damaged beyond salvage. That is for you to decide. At any rate, the caliph’s agreement with Vykos is null and void. There may be opportunity for the Greek to exact hadd.”

Hadd. Vengeance. If possible, Parmenides was to destroy Vykos, thus securing justice for the ignominy shown the children of Haqim. If such seemed unlikely, Fatima was to order his return to Alamut. If the Greek was, in her judgment, “damaged beyond salvage,” Fatima was to reclaim his blood for the clan.

The mission itself, compared to many of Fatima’s exploits over the centuries, was fairly straightforward. Although there was no joy in dispatching a member of the brotherhood, she had no qualms in doing so when circumstances necessitated. What most pricked her curiosity was not the situation itself or its soon-to-be resolution, but matters tangential to Parmenides’s plight.

It was the caliph’s decision, al-Ashrad had said, and it was the caliph, Fatima’s direct superior, who was not present when normally he would have been.

So she had picked at the question, respectfully but persistently. “The caliph is prepared then to see Vykos destroyed, despite the fiend’s fervent hatred of the warlocks?”

Al-Ashrad regarded her evenly, his blue-white gaze wavering not at all. By tradition, she could have been flogged for questioning a superior so, but there were few among the children of Haqim who had achieved the prominence that Fatima had, and allowances were sometimes made.

“Certain policies of the caliph,” al-Ashrad replied, “have been… reconsidered.”

There was a certain ponderous neutrality in al-Ashrad’s words, the same sense of permanence as before, that led Fatima to accept his response without further question. Allowances, even for one of her stature, went only so far.

And so it was that Fatima took up her missions. The journey to this continent had not been short. The Eagle’s Nest was remote, but the children of Haqim were experienced travelers, used to roaming the world in pursuit of prey. Over the course of the journey, Fatima felt as if she had accelerated forward through time; from the unchanging, ascetic cliffs and rugged footpaths of Alamut, to rutted tracks and rickety diesel trucks, to rail, and finally to an airplane that brought her to the modern land of Sodom, where the old ways were forgotten and modern contrivances ruled. It was no coincidence that so few initiates to the brotherhood were ever chosen from North America. Where modern secularism held sway, discipline and loyalty were generally absent.

It was not the modern world, however, but Parmenides that Fatima had been sent to judge; and it was not the judgment of Parmenides that had brought her to Hartford this night. He was not in the city. He’d sent her information, via the Nosferatu middlemen, regarding the Sabbat attack—information that might help her with her second mission. Armed with that knowledge and with a bird’s-eye perspective of the city, she began to climb back over the railing of the observation deck and to descend into the madness below.

Madness, however, had come looking for her.

Shattering glass. Fatima froze straddling the top rail as two figures stepped through what had been a locked, plate-glass door to the observation deck. One wore tattered fatigues, the other a flannel shirt, ripped jeans, and an obviously purloined security guard’s hat; both rather awkwardly carried MAC 10 submachine guns. With their inhuman, warped sneers, Fatima would have placed them for Sabbat even had the city not been under attack.

“Don’t do it, lady,” the first called out to Fatima, as if she were a mortal about to throw herself from the building and take her own life. “It can’t be that bad… yet.”

They both laughed at the little joke—were still laughing, in fact, when Fatima’s jambia, drawn and thrown with blurring speed, sliced through the wrist of the jokester and pinned his arm to the wall behind him. His laughter twisted into a howl of pain. His finger mashed down the trigger and .45 caliber slugs fired wildly into the air.

The second Sabbat’s fire was not so random. As soon as he saw what was happening, he let off several bursts—aimed where Fatima had been perched on the top rail just an instant earlier.

She was airborne, hurtling above the bullets toward her assailant. She cuffed him sharply on the temple. As he tumbled to the floor, she sailed past, landed and rolled, and immediately upended two of the metal patio tables. The security guard’s hat caught in gust of wind and scurried away into the chasm that was the city.

The unskewered Sabbat struggled to his feet, his movements an awkward dance accompanied by the raw-throated wails of his partner and the last of that unfortunate’s rounds fired into the air.

“Shut the fuck up, man!” Sabbat number two turned toward the overturned tables, each resting on its side like a large, round shield. “Okay, bitch.” He sprayed several bursts into one of the tables. The bullets ripped through the thin metal and the table skittered across the patio, revealing only empty space.

“Nowhere else to hide, baby.” He fired into the second table, whipping it around until it tipped over and landed on its top. The metal table spun thunderously on its outer edges, picking up speed as it lost altitude and sank lower and lower. No one hid behind the second table either. At last, its momentum spent, the table landed flat with a whump of finality.

“I believe that was thirty,” said Fatima in perfect English behind Sabbat number two. He spun and pressed the trigger, but the Mac 10 was silent. His partner seemed engrossed by the pain of his pinned arm. His scream had died away to a low moan as he stared dumbfounded at his useless hand and weapon. Sabbat number two kept pulling the trigger to no effect.

“Thirty shots,” said Fatima. She hadn’t counted the casings, but she was fairly certain. “Should have been enough.”

Number two reached for a pocket, for another clip, but Fatima raised a hand and he came up short. She had touched him once, and now she called his blood. She felt it respond to her command. Number two felt it as well. The hand that had been reaching for a pocket clutched at his chest instead. He pulled at his shirt, as if it were tightening around him.

Slowly, Fatima closed her open hand into a fist. Number two’s eyes grew wide in fear and pain. His weapon clattered to the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. Blood began to seep from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes. He fell to his knees and then, with arms wrapped around his sides, to the concrete.

Fatima opened her hand slowly and, in sequence, stretched her fingers. “Enough, I think.” Number two was not destroyed—not yet—but it was close enough. He lay and writhed in a delirium of pain. Fatima turned again to number one, who still whimpered and clutched his right forearm below the protruding blade. She approached him with disgust. His vitae had begun to heal the wound around her jambia. Though granted the gift of potent blood, he lacked the moral strength to pull the knife from his arm and continue the fight. Not that doing so would have changed the outcome, but he could have met Final Death more honorably.

“You were a poor choice,” said Fatima, shaking her head. She moved toward him to remedy that mistake.

Park Terrace Hartford, Connecticut

Quietly, effortlessly, Lucita slipped from shadow to shadow, observing. She watched, dispassionate, as a roaring war ghoul smashed a more human ghoul wearing a policeman’s uniform into a bloody pulp, then overturned the man’s car for good measure. Flames licked the underside of the vehicle, lighting the entire scene in lurid yellow and red. She watched, wordlessly, as a pack of howling antitribu ran amuck in Pope Park, shooting at everything that moved and, almost coincidentally, annihilating the squad of freshly created Brujah who leapt out of the trees at them. She watched, frowning, as Vykos took a man who got in her way to pieces, simply for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither of her sources had said anything about Vykos being here.

Nowhere, however, did she see Borges. She knew he was there; she heard his name called often enough. Not once, though, did the archbishop present himself. Evidence of his handiwork was everywhere—torn corpses, mostly, mixed with Talley’s neater handiwork—but the archbishop himself was as elusive as smoke.

Fortunately, Talley wasn’t. For lack of anything better to do—the defense of the city was not her problem, after all, at least not above and beyond the removal of the Cainite leading the assault—she began following the Hound as he moved from scene of carnage to scene of carnage. Occasionally he’d stop and examine what Borges had left behind, but generally he was on the move, swift and angry and deadly. Every so often Lucita caught him causing surprising amounts of peripheral damage as he loped along, and slowly she realized that she wasn’t the only one looking for Borges. He’d slipped his leash and was on the loose in the city, God alone knew where.

She would have laughed if she dared, but that would have revealed her presence to Talley. Lucita knew she was lucky the Hound was preoccupied, otherwise he might well have noticed her. She had no doubts that Talley would consider stopping her infinitely preferable to rounding up the errant archbishop before he got hurt. After all, if she were occupied, who else in the city could so much as harm Borges, let alone kill him?

She knew the answer to that question, of course, but didn’t waste time speculating on whether it was a valid concern.

In the meantime, however, it was increasingly clear that Talley himself was looking for Borges in the flame and the chaos. Lucita, as she saw it, had three choices. She could follow Talley back to Borges and hope she could strike down the archbishop before Talley could interfere; she could strike out on her own and hope she found Borges before Talley did; or she could abandon the entire exercise and wait for another window of opportunity.

It took a split second for her to decide that following Talley was her best course of action. She was sated and well rested. Talley occasionally had to deal with the various messes Borges had not quite finished off in his haste or his frenzy, and he was moving too fast on the archbishop’s trail to stop and feed in order to replenish himself. Borges himself was leaving an impressive path of gore behind him, meaning that no doubt he was drawing heavily on the blood within him. Judging from the amount of vitae leaking into the gutters and splashed on the walls, the Archbishop of Miami wasn’t stopping to feed, either. When Talley finally caught up to his charge, and Lucita caught up to both of them, the two men would be weak. Hungry. Unable to fend off a sustained assault. With luck, she might be able to deal with Talley permanently. Her dear sire would be unhappy if she broke one of his favorite toys, but Talley was too much the wild card to be allowed to wander around freely. If the chance for her to eliminate him presented itself, she would take it, and send Monçada a condolence card later.

A few blocks away, someone bellowed with rage. A scream of terror matched it, spiraling up with it through the night. Talley didn’t even bother to stop and look up. Instead, he simply sprinted in the direction of the noise with an inhuman burst of speed. Lucita grinned wolfishly and, without a sound, followed.

University of Connecticut Law School Hartford, Connecticut

As Fatima moved through the city, the night was a surreal painting, darkness and smoke with flashes of harsh, violent color—orange-yellow flames, blue and red lights, all flickering in stop-motion. The fresh blood in her veins rendered all the backdrop but a still-life, with Fatima the only movement across the canvas. Each crack of a gunshot, each siren’s wail, seemed an interrupted flash of reality, a frozen moment, that could not keep up with her.

She passed unseen among the mortals who attempted to control the fires, among the roving packs of Sabbat—she’d already fed her fill; they were of no use to her. Still, she felt a gnawing inside, a craving if not actual hunger. So many years had passed with all her clan unable to feed upon the get of Khayyin, powerless to reclaim the blood wasted on that obscene, self-indulgent brood. But she held down the urge to reach out and swat the pathetic beasts created like countless insects by the Sabbat. She moved forward, gave release to the blood within her.

Fatima quickly reached the location on the law-school campus that Parmenides had informed her would serve as the Sabbat command center. The Sabbat leadership was formidable indeed: Borges, Lasombra Archbishop of Miami commanding; Vykos, newly crowned Archbishop of Washington acting as advisor; Talley, the Hound, assassin turned bodyguard, there supposedly to protect both Borges and Vykos.

None of the Sabbat worthies were where they should have been. The lawn between buildings was empty except for a noxious pile of unidentifiable decaying matter—the remains of a Tzimisce war ghoul, perhaps. There seemed to be little of humanity in those mammoth creatures to bind their remains to the mortal world once will had fled, although the decomposition was not quite so dramatic as with an aged Cainite or Child of Haqim, whose body would crumble away to dust upon Final Death.

The reality of the absent Sabbat command was not so surprising—plans changed, especially in times of war—nor was it too great a setback for Fatima. The archbishops and their protector were, for her, a means, not an end. She sought them out only because of the one who would also be seeking them out.

Lucita.

Fatima scoured the area for signs of what had transpired there. The wear on the well-manicured lawn suggested the predominant direction of flight. A brief, blood- enhanced listen confirmed that considerable conflict raged that way—gunfire, screams, breaking of bones—and if Lucita were to turn up anywhere, it would be in the midst of conflict. Whether the beautiful Lasombra killer caused or followed strife, it was her constant companion.

Park Terrace Hartford, Connecticut

Talley had been cursing under his breath for nearly an hour non-stop, ever since that idiot Borges had gone bounding off into the fray. Under normal circumstances he would have caught the fool in a matter of minutes, but these were not normal circumstances. Borges was a one-vampire wrecking crew all right, but that wasn’t what the situation needed. Behind him, his troops floundered, lacking direction. Each time a pack overwhelmed the slightest opposition, they felt the need to celebrate, noisily, and set whatever was at hand on fire. This served no good purpose except obscuring Borges’s trail and cutting off major traffic arteries, not to mention crisping a few Sabbat vampires who got too close or too wildly enthused. The resultant detours and roadblocks cost Talley precious seconds that stretched into minutes as he navigated chaotic city streets in an effort to relocate Borges’s trail. Only the scent of blood on the air served to guide him, but fortunately, where the Hound was concerned, that was enough.

The other complication was the fact that not everyone whom Borges ripped through was quite dead. Some demonstrated a surprising amount of fight as Talley pounded past them in an effort to follow the itinerant archbishop. One played dead until Talley was nearly upon him, then put two bullets into the templar’s left arm. Talley rolled to cover and sent a shadow tentacle out from under a mailbox to crush the man (Talley didn’t have time to see if the victim was Cainite, ghoul, or gun- toting innocent bystander) to an unrecognizable pulp. Other victims simply moaned, and Talley took a second to dispatch each with a single blow. One never could tell who was faking, after all, and after that first surprise Talley wanted to make sure that there were no more. The last thing he needed was some would-be hero coming up behind him at a sensitive moment. Even the feeblest ghoul could distract him at precisely the wrong moment with a bullet or bull rush, and distractions were precisely what he didn’t need if he were going up against Lucita.

More screaming and hoarse shouts of rage came from up ahead. Talley concentrated for a moment to knit the wounds the bullets had torn in his shoulder, then redoubled his speed in hopes catching up with Borges and hauling him bodily out of the fray. Hopefully the archbishop would resist, and that would give Talley an excuse to beat him senseless.

Talley considered bending Borges’s will to summon the archbishop, but if Borges were caught in a serious fight, say if Lucita had found him, the psychic itch of a summons could be the difference between avoiding a blow and almost avoiding it. Talley didn’t dare distract the man until he was safely in hand again. Even if Borges were not Lucita’s target—still a possibility—the man had jeopardized the entire operation by flying off half-cocked, and might yet managed to get himself killed. Talley was certain that the Camarilla would gladly trade Hartford for an archbishop.

Even as he sprinted forward, the Hound made a little promise to himself. Once Borges was safely off the field of battle, Talley was going to beat the unliving shit out of that idiot. Borges was going to survive this battle, at least if Talley had anything to say about it, but he was going to wish he hadn’t.

The shouting in the near distance died down, and Talley put his head down for a final sprint. With any luck, that was the sound of Borges coming down off his blood- inspired frenzy. If not, it meant that Lucita had just found him. Either way, Talley wanted to be there. Like a madman, he ran.

Putnam Street Hartford, Connecticut

Archbishop Borges looked around with a satisfied smile on his face. There were at least three dead vampires sprawled out before him. All three were in various states of disrepair, and one was entirely without limbs. They’d fought well, with a desperate, unreasoning ferocity, but they had never had a chance. One might as well ask toddlers to fight a grizzly bear as to ask untrained, unskilled vampires fresh from the Embrace to tackle an archbishop at the height of his power.

The intersection was nondescript, and he had no idea why these three vampires had died to defend it. Perhaps it held some emotional significance, or maybe they’d just gotten lost. Either way, they’d had the bad luck to have Archbishop Borges in his full madness come upon them. One had actually managed to rake the archbishop’s face with rudimentary claws, but Borges had caught the boy’s arm mid-stroke and snapped it like kindling.

As the first attacker had fallen, Borges moved on to the second one with inhuman speed. Even as his opponent made a clumsy swing, Borges dropped to a knee and punched straight forward with all his strength. There was a muffled crack and the vampire screamed in pain as he folded in a way that the human torso had no business folding. As the man went down, Borges came up with a sledgehammer blow that connected with the underside of his chin and nearly tore his head from his shoulders.

Behind the archbishop, the first one came forward, clutching the ruin of his arm and howling. Borges turned and caught the boy’s head between his hands. As the vampire scrabbled impotently at his eyes, Borges turned the boy’s head hard to the left and was rewarded with the sound of splintering vertebrae. He twisted to the right, got more of the same, and dropped the spasmodic, twitching corpse at his feet.

The third vampire chose that moment to attack, forewarning Borges by screaming as he did so. The archbishop almost laughed as he saw his assailant, a middle-aged man in a hideous brown suit, his face twisted by hatred and frenzy into a monstrous mask. The vampire sprang for Borges, who ducked, turned, and caught the man’s ankle as he went past. The momentum of the neonate’s leap was such that Borges was able to take it and use it to his own ends, swinging the man by his foot into the unforgiving concrete. Without stopping, Borges flipped his opponent over by his ankle, and continued turning. The crunch that followed was not entirely dissimilar in tone from the one his friend’s neck had made, but it did allow the victim to give a thin scream. Borges roared in triumph and moved up to the man’s knee. That snapped, too, and then everything had been lost in a red haze of remembrance….

Borges blinked. Talley slapped him again, hard enough to shatter the jaw of a weaker man.

“You utter, worthless, pointless moron,” the templar said. “Why the hell did you run off like that—no, don’t tell me. You’ve already painted a bull’s eye on your back for Lucita, and I don’t want you out here any longer than necessary. We are leaving, Archbishop. We are leaving right now.” He grabbed Borges’s hand and pulled him as one would pull a poorly behaved child out of a store. “And when I get you out of this, I want you on your knees and thanking God for a solid hour that I found you before Lucita did. Come on.”

Borges broke his grasp, and Talley turned to face him in disgust. “You go too far, Templar,” the archbishop said thickly. “I have won this battle, and you are trying to steal my glory for Vykos by removing me from the field! I will not stand for it!”

Talley could take no more. “Fine,” he said. “You’re exactly right. I’ve got two bullets in my shoulder because I give a rat’s arse about which of you idiots gets credit for reducing a city that even the Camarilla didn’t care enough about to defend. Brilliant, Archbishop, absolutely brilliant. Now say precisely nothing. You’re coming with me.” Bands of shadow burst from every corner to bundle Borges tightly; before the man could even shout in protest he was tightly bound, and silently he toppled to the sidewalk. Swiftly, Talley stooped to where Borges lay and tucked him under one arm. It was time to get off the field, and the only way the archbishop was going to move quickly would be as luggage.

Talley was suddenly, virulently sick of the whole business. The last few minutes, Borges’s rant in particular, had strengthened a certain suspicion that the templar had harbored for some time now. He decided that he would safeguard Borges for the rest of the battle, find Vykos and wrap the affair up, then catch the next night flight back to Madrid. There he would tell Monçada himself what he’d learned, and that the cardinal should find another lapdog for this sort of assignment. Talley could go off into the Schwarzwald and hunt lupines for a month as a vacation, perhaps. Anything would be better than staying entangled in this poisonous web of jealousy and willful stupidity.

He continued on toward the pre-established rendezvous point, toting Borges as easily as a man might carry a folded-up newspaper. Lucita had not yet made her presence known, and Talley wondered, for the first time, if he’d been wrong and Polonia was the real target after all. Frowning, the Hound picked up his pace. Soon enough, none of this would matter. He could see the meeting point up ahead and moved toward it. Soon enough, it would all be over.

And then a great wall of blackness came down around Talley like a century’s worth of midnights all at once.

Intersection, West and Park Streets Hartford, Connecticut

Lucita watched the brief debate between Talley and Borges and nearly laughed with joy. If this were no trick, she could not have asked for a better chance. Borges was bundled up like an infant and Talley seemed intent on leaving town as quickly as possible. All she had to do was wait for the right moment, and Borges would be hers, easily.

It was a matter of seconds until it would all be over.

Suddenly, Lucita hesitated. A thin scream, barely on the edge of hearing, skittered through the air. Lucita knew that sound; it was one of Vykos’s favorite war ghouls, hunting, and it was nearby. Lucita offered a silent curse on her sire and the persistence of his tools, then unleashed the shadows. She could no longer afford to wait. A globe of blackness rose up from the sewer grates and enveloped Talley. The templar didn’t even have time to shout before he was overwhelmed.

Borges fell to the ground, his prison unraveling in seconds. He stumbled to his feet and looked around. To his credit, he took the entire situation in at a glance. “Me cago en su madre,” he breathed, and took a step back.

Lucita didn’t waste time. She leapt down from her awning perch, pillars of darkness behind her billowing out and reaching out for her prey.

Borges did the sensible thing. He ran. Channeling what little vitae he had left in him, the Archbishop of Miami took to his heels. Wordlessly, Lucita abandoned the shadows and sprinted after him.

Fear lent Borges wings. Lucita was more agile, a better runner and better fed than he, but sheer terror gave speed to his flight. He ducked into an alley, out the other side, up a block past some construction and then left. All the while, Lucita followed as surely and as swiftly as a lioness running down her prey. Block by block, she closed the gap, until she was a bare pace behind Borges.

The man looked behind him, nearly stumbled, and put on a final burst of speed. Lucita swiped for him, missed, and then reached out for a small tendril of shadow. One came to her, and she sent it to tangle Borges’s feet as he ran.

The man stumbled and fell, skidding fifteen feet down the sidewalk as he did so. He tried to climb to his feet, but Lucita was upon him in an instant.

“My apologies, Archbishop,” she said. “If it helps ease the pain, you will no doubt be remembered posthumously for having won a great victory.” She drew back her hand for the killing blow, and felt something clamp on her wrist. Startled, Lucita turned and saw a band of shadow wrapped around her forearm, tugging her backward toward…

…Talley.

Tuesday, 21 September 1999, 2:11AM Washington Street

Hartford, Connecticut

Fatima, observing from above, caught herself preparing to jump down to the street. For the last twenty minutes or more, Fatima had crisscrossed numerous blocks of the city, all the while moving generally southward. No one was aware of her passing. She was less than a shadow in the carnage of that night. She had been constantly in motion until, finally, she had paused to listen more carefully to a sound she thought she recognized.

Could it be…? Yes. There, to the left. Maybe a few blocks still. Far enough to be faint, but it was the vibrant female voice she knew well:

“…No doubt be remembered… having won a great…”

The buildings were lower here than in the heart of downtown, so she’d deftly climbed to the top of a small restaurant and continued quickly along the rooftops toward the voice and the struggle that (of course) accompanied it. There was no point risking whoever or whatever might be on street level, but the same thought could have occurred to others. She still had kept close watch on her surroundings.

She had had to go a bit farther than she’d expected—either she’d misjudged the voice, or more likely the combatants were fighting on the run. If they had been, they weren’t anymore: Fatima now looked down upon Lucita, who stood not far from a battered Archbishop Borges. Tendrils of shadow snaked after the archbishop to rip or crush the unlife from his body, but another tentacle of darkness had pulled Lucita to the ground when she began to close on Borges.

The tendril was pulling Lucita was pulling her toward Talley, Fatima knew. Both the Lasombra killers appeared fatigued as well as scraped and bruised. Talley also sported a bloody shoulder wound. Neither could spare blood for healing, not while constantly bending the night to his or her will.

Fatima fought down the stirrings of emotion and suppressed, again, the urge to deal Talley a fatal blow from above. It was not her place to interfere. Lucita would not receive help kindly, even if it were to save her from Final Death. And if Talley managed to destroy Lucita…

Well, the tasks awaiting Fatima would be greatly simplified.

Washington Street Hartford, Connecticut

“Your fat father said that you weren’t to be harmed, Lucita. I’m going to have to apologize to him after I kill you then, aren’t I?” He jerked the tendril back, and Lucita was yanked willy-nilly from her position atop the recumbent archbishop to land on her back in the street. A fresh bloodstain spread on the templar’s shoulder, but he ignored it.

Borges half staggered, half crawled away. “Run, Borges,” said Talley. “Run very far and very fast, and pray you never see me again.” He made another motion, and the band of darkness on Lucita’s wrist tightened with bone-crushing strength.

Lucita did her best to ignore it. With her other hand, she reached down to her right ankle, where she kept a spare throwing knife at all times. Crying out with pain, she launched the shiv at Talley. The throw was off-line, but Talley took a split second to judge the knife’s trajectory. During that split second, he wasn’t paying attention to Lucita herself, and that was all the time she needed.

A shadow of her own tore Talley’s to shreds, and she rolled left even as Talley unleashed another on her. Her hand caught a piece of debris and she flung it at him. The shadow tendril knocked it out of the air, but it bought her another precious second, as he came to her feet and prepared to counterattack.

A half-dozen shadows reached out from sewer grates and beneath cars to wrap themselves around the templar. He snarled and dissolved into a pool of darkness himself to escape, but even as he did, Lucita turned and ran after Borges.

Luck was with her. He’d managed to stumble off, but not to get far. One of his ankles was shattered from the shadowtrap that had brought him down; it would be a poor end for one of his station. He saw Lucita coming and hobbled faster, fear plain on his face. Shadows half-formed around him and faded to nothingness. Fear and pain rendered him unable to control them.

Lucita didn’t try to catch him. Instead, she summoned darkness, paying no heed to the growing hunger that gnawed at her. A pair of tendrils arrowed after the wounded archbishop, only to be batted aside by others that had to be controlled by Talley. Not even pausing to watch, Lucita sprinted forward after Borges. Something wrapped itself around her ankle and she fell, hard. Bloodied, she managed to flip herself over and see that a staggering Talley had managed to snag her with a lone strand of darkness.

Lucita’s face flushed with anger. Talley was clearly spent; he had nothing left. She was tiring, but she still had enough to deal with him and then pursue Borges. If nothing else, she could probably take the archbishop apart with her bare hands. Closing her eyes, she stopped resisting. The tendril dragged her, foot by foot, closer to Talley, wrapping up more and more of her leg as it did so. Talley was deadly, she knew. Even Fatima had spoken of him with respect, and Fatima had little respect for any Franj. Lucita knew his skill, knew his determination. But now he was angry as well. He might be weary, empty of blood and wounded. But he was still the Hound.

Lucita clenched her fist. A shadow slithered out from under a car and came to her. She fed it strength, then told it to smite Talley. In its own way, it understood and went to obey. Black as night and as terrible, it reared back to strike.

Intersection, Hudson and Park Streets Hartford, Connecticut

A full-throated roar erupted from behind Talley. He resisted the temptation to look, instead dodging the shadow tendril as it arrowed toward his heart. Lucita cursed as he flattened himself on the pavement and the shadow passed overhead. There was another scream, then, and one of Vykos’s remaining war ghouls crashed to the ground a yard from where Talley lay. Its face was smashed into an unrecognizable ruin by the force of the shadow’s impact but still, somehow, it moved. Another war ghoul thundered past, bellowing defiance at Lucita as it did so.

“Stop her!” Vykos shrieked at her gruesome pet from somewhere in the distance. Talley sprang to his feet, looking around for the Tzimisce archbishop, but to no avail.

Up ahead, the ghoul hurled its misshapen bulk on Lucita even as Borges scrambled away.

There was a sickening crunch, and for a moment Talley thought that the monstrosity had achieved the impossible. Then Lucita’s fist emerged from the creature’s back with a wet sound, and the ghoul whimpered in agony.

Talley could pay no more attention to anything but his mission. He leapt for Lucita, but moved a fraction of a second too late as she shoved the limp bulk of the ghoul at him. Its weight toppled over onto him, and he was forced to take a precious instant to hurl it aside. In that moment, Lucita turned and pounced onto Borges, who raised a feeble hand to defend himself. With animalistic savagery, Lucita tore at him, eschewing anything more complicated than her talons and fangs as she shredded the archbishop’s arm, chest and throat. A thin, high-pitched wail emerged, impossibly, from him as he frantically tried to push Lucita away. Then there was terrible silence.

Talley dropped his shoulder and plowed into Lucita’s back with bone-crushing force, a moment too late. She went over and sprawled on the asphalt, but Borges’s features were already rotting away. The Archbishop of Miami was finally, irrevocably dead.

Park Street Hartford, Connecticut

Lucita scrambled to her feet, but not before Talley was on her again. He caught her face in his left hand and tore across, leaving a trail of bloody furrows before she wrenched out of his grip. Talley howled rage and frustration then, a sound to chill the blood as she came to her feet. He lashed out with a fist, which she parried, but the man’s second blow caught her in the knee and nearly buckled it. Talley smiled wolfishly and circled to the left, looking to exploit the weak knee. Hobbling, Lucita turned to face him.

With a grim countenance, Lucita assessed the situation even as Talley feinted a kick at her injured leg. She dodged, painfully, and then had to duck a vicious swing that would have taken her head off had it connected. Borges was dead. She was far weaker than she wanted to be; too many shadows had been required to kill Borges and distract Talley. And the Hound was about to earn his reputation all over again. It was time to go.

With strength born of desperation, she launched a spinning kick at Talley. He dodged it, but she used the seconds to force healing blood to her knee. Talley lashed out with another combination of blows, but she weaved out of the way of each and then turned her last dodge into a full-fledged sprint. Talley gave a bellow of inchoate rage and started after her. If she remembered the city properly, the river was not far away. She just had another row of buildings to pass, then the highway to cross, and she’d be safe. Behind her, the templar came charging after, his weakness masked by bloodlust and anger.

Lucita made for an alley between two warehouses. Talley bellowed and reached for a shadow to stretch across her path, but his strength was fading, and the barrier disintegrated as she reached it. As she ran, Lucita threw trash cans, boxes, anything she could find behind her to slow Talley down. He waded through the obstacles as if they were nothing.

Beyond the alley was the highway, elevated on this side. Southbound traffic was light, but northbound was still snarled from the earlier accidents. Lucita whispered a prayer of thanks, climbed the embankment, and leapt over the guard rail. She dodged a black Bonneville that was half on the right shoulder, stumbled and sprinted onward. Calling on almost the last bit of blood she had in her, she moved out and across the first four lanes of traffic. Behind her, Talley reached the roadside and continued forward, machine-like in his persistence. Traffic veered around him, horns honking. One car clipped him with a bumper. He spun, but kept moving relentlessly.

Lucita didn’t look back. Instead, she leapt onto a car trunk and picked her way across the stalled traffic as fast as she could. Within seconds she was across the road and into the tall grass by the riverside. Talley, exhausted or no, was hot on her heels.

Lucita risked a last glance at her pursuer. The Hound’s visage, clearly visible just a few steps behind her, was the essence of implacable hatred. There was only one way out.

She blew Talley a kiss, then, and dove into the muddy waters of the Connecticut River. Almost instantly, even the ripples of her passage had vanished. She was gone.

Park Street Hartford, Connecticut

As he took off after Lucita, Fatima again fought the temptation to pounce on Talley. Worn down by the fight and low on blood, he would be a quick and simple mark.

After Lucita and Talley had sent deadly ribbons of shadow, each to eviscerate the other, Fatima had noted the convenient appearance of the two hulking war ghouls. Lucita had ripped them to pieces and used their interference to evade Talley for just a few seconds. It was all the time the Dark Rose had needed to catch up with Borges and slice him open, to extract his piteous death wail.

With this charge destroyed, all the Hound had left to fight for was pride. Perhaps that was actually a stronger motivator for Talley, however, because he had torn into Lucita with a fury that he had lacked in Borges’s defense. They struggled, claw to claw, with Talley striking the truer blows until Lucita, apparently deciding her job was complete without a drawn-out contest against the Hound, found an opening and made good her escape.

Fatima could strike now and secure Lucita’s escape, she knew, but that was not her place. Instead, she turned away from the two Lasombra and headed back through the city to the vehicle she’d left parked in a secure garage.

Connecticut River Shoreline Hartford, Connecticut

Arriving at the shore bare seconds too late, Talley stared into the Connecticut River after Lucita. He could pursue, but trying to find her in the sludge that passed for river water would be nigh-impossible. Besides, he reflected bitterly, he had what he had really come for. Monçada had been right; Borges had been, in the end, expendable so long as the truth of his death was known. And Vykos? Vykos had shown remarkably good timing this evening, knowing just when to disappear and then when to show up. It was a fascinating coincidence, or it would have been, if coincidence was in fact what it was. Somehow, he didn’t think so.

Talley suspected that he knew enough to end this miserable assignment. Disgusted, he sagged down onto the riverbank and waited for company. It didn’t take long to arrive.

Vykos looked suitably concerned when she joined him. The Hound turned and stared at the Tzimisce with weary hatred. “So what exactly were you thinking back there?”

Vykos stared back. “I was thinking to change the odds for you, Templar. I assumed that you would not object to assistance.”

“I object to nearly being trampled without warning, and I object to hindrances being foisted upon me. Come now, you’ve been in the field long enough to know better than what you showed tonight. You’ve gotten clumsy.” Talley’s tone was bleak, though deceptively mild. “There was no time to do otherwise, Talley. Don’t forget your place and presume to lecture me.” There was an edge to Vykos’s voice. Talley ignored it.

“I forget nothing, Archbishop. Nothing at all.” Both were silent for a moment. In the city proper, sirens whined and fires shot up into the soot-filled air. Borges’s men were building him quite a funeral pyre, even if they didn’t yet know he was destroyed.

“She got away?” asked Vykos softly.

Talley nodded. “She got away, as if that surprises you. Into the river and no doubt down to the sea. I won’t be surprised if she swims all the way to Florida and goes to steal Borges’s cigars.”

There was another pause. “We have won the city,” said Vykos at last.

“You won the city. I wish you joy of it. I now get to return to our patron and explain to him everything that happened here.” He smiled, then, and not pleasantly. “Everything. Including how Lucita knew precisely where to be in order to find her prey.”

Vykos smiled back, as empty and plastic as a Halloween mask. “I’m sure the cardinal will be understanding, considering the impossible nature of what you were asked to do.” The templar hoisted himself to his feet and stared deliberately at the Tzimisce, still seated. “I am leaving, Archbishop,” he finally said. “And I’m sure you’re right. I have no doubt that the cardinal will understand.” With infinite care and dignity, he turned and made his way back toward the city.

In the distance, the sound of a car exploding split the night—and it was almost loud enough to drown out Vykos’s single, soft peal of laughter.

Onramp for Interstate 91 Hartford, Connecticut

Fatima’s American contacts had provided the vehicle—a gray SUV of the type so popular in the states: dark tinted windows, the body dirty enough not to look new but not so dirty as to attract attention. Fatima pulled onto Interstate 91 South—only the northbound lanes were blocked by the Sabbat-contrived accidents at this point— and drove along the west bank of the Connecticut River. She imagined Lucita swimming south with the current. Fatima found it hard to believe that Lucita wouldn’t have made it to the river before thin, blond Talley and escaped. Still, there was a chance that he’d caught Lucita, destroyed her, and that the millstone was removed from round Fatima’s neck.

She continued along the interstate, then pulled off at the small village of Rocky Hill. That’s what the road signs said, at any rate. Fatima didn’t see much of village or town. She parked across the street from a deserted ice-cream drive-in. The only car at the back edge of the ice-cream place’s lot was Lucita’s BMW convertible.

Fatima had found the car earlier that night—the Nosferatu were so helpful in that way; apparently Lucita had destroyed one of their own—before heading into Hartford. Now she raised a tiny pair of binoculars and waited.

Intersection of Route 99 and Interstate 91 Rocky Hill, Connecticut

Lucita fished herself out of the river two miles downstream. She’d planned on such as a potential escape route earlier for a worst-case scenario, and was profoundly thankful she’d done so. She stripped herself of her wet clothes and threw them back in the river. They floated for a moment, then sank and presumably began their journey to Long Island Sound. Nothing she abandoned had been with her long enough to be useful to an enemy who might use thaumaturgic arts against her; she had made sure of that.

Briskly, she walked to where she’d cached a new set of clothes, as well as everything else she needed. The black bag was where she’d left it, duct-taped to a high bole of one of the many trees planted alongside the river. Agile as a cat, she climbed the trunk and rescued her wares. She dropped the bag to the ground and jumped down lightly after it. Quickly she unzipped it and pulled out a fresh change of clothes. Shrugging into them, she didn’t notice the cold from the breeze off the river. Truth be told, changing was unnecessary, but wet clothes were uncomfortable and Lucita detested discomfort. Besides, water would do unpleasant things to the leather seats of her car.

Fully dressed, she reached into the bag again. With minimal fuss she pulled forth keys, a wallet, a handful of knives, and various other sundries she’d stowed the night before against just such an eventuality. Everything had gone, and was continuing to go, according to plan.

The bag emptied, she looped the carrying strap over her shoulder and headed for the road. She’d parked the BMW a few blocks off 91, which still ran parallel to the river here. Traffic was lighter and easier to dodge here, so she strolled across the highway, up the ramp and to a soft-serve ice-cream place set well back from the road and moated by more parking than it would ever need. It was here that Lucita had stashed her car. She’d had a rental ready to move in Hartford as well, but something had told her that she’d be wanting the fast car here. As the night’s exertions began manifesting as aches and pains, she found herself glad she’d listened to her hunch; she would have hated to abandon the BMW in Hartford.

As she approached the convertible, Lucita noticed something tucked under the windshield wiper. It was bright orange, and at first she thought it was a parking ticket. Another few steps brought the object into sharper focus, and the laughter she’d been suppressing suddenly died in her throat.

It was not a ticket. It was not a piece of paper at all. It was an orange scarf, neatly knotted around the windshield wiper blade as a reminder.

Fatima had been here. Lucita had thought of the other woman earlier; now it didn’t seem like such a coincidence. Lucita stood, motionless. How long had Fatima been watching her? How much had she seen?

Had she been there tonight? And if so, was she waiting for Lucita now?

One of the parking-lot lights chose that exact moment to flicker and die, and that made up Lucita’s mind. She reached down for a knife she’d taken from her cache, pulled it out, and walked over to the car. Without a sound she sawed the scarf off the wiper blade and let it fall to the ground. She then gave the vehicle a quick inspection for bombs and traps, not really fearing any—Fatima would never kill her that artlessly—and, her curiosity satisfied, she opened the door and got in. The motor purred quickly to life and, with almost unseemly haste, Lucita peeled out of the parking lot. Interstate 91 southbound beckoned a few blocks away; behind her, Hartford sent thin straggles of smoke into the darkened sky.

Mr. Schreck is going to get a phone call very soon, Lucita decided. So was her mysterious other client. She was going to take their money and everything else they’d offered, tell both of them that they could go to hell, and leave this miserable country.

Perhaps it is time to take confession again, whispered something that might once have been Lucita’s conscience. Time to go see your sire.

Lucita frowned and tapped the accelerator, even as the notion resonated. The car leaped forward eagerly, as eagerly as Talley had leapt for her not so long ago. But all of that was over. She was done.

And she might even be going home to give her sire a piece of her mind.

Interstate 91

Near East Berlin, Connecticut

About ten miles down the interstate, Lucita realized that someone was following her. The BMW jumped from ninety to one-thirty-five and sped on ahead. Fatima slowed the SUV to eighty-five. She’d trained herself well in the use of modern automobiles, but she didn’t feel the need for a high-speed chase.

Just a few miles farther, she pulled off a lonely exit and eased into the parking lot of a boarded-up gas station. The BMW was there, Lucita leaning against the passenger’s side with her arms crossed.

Fatima came to a stop a dozen yards away and pulled the parking brake even though the lot was level. She opened the door and stepped out. Gravel grated beneath her boots. She and Lucita faced one another as the occasional car passed on the interstate.

“I thought it might be you,” said Lucita. Her hair, dry now after the ride in the convertible, was hopelessly knotted and tangled.

Let her talk, Fatima decided. Lucita had always been a talker. The Lasombra’s frown cracked the scab where Talley had scratched her face.

“I mean, shit,” Lucita said. “Somebody’s following me. Probably have the car bugged. Not that long till morning. I can’t just stop for the day and not know who’s going to come ignore my ‘do not disturb’ sign, can I? If it’s a lick, I’m okay, because he has to stop too. But a ghoul, or some mortal flunky looking to make it big…?”

Lucita opened her hand and held up a small electronic bug for Fatima to see. “This yours?” Lucita asked. “Or does it belong to Schreck?”

“That one’s mine,” said Fatima impassively. “Schreck has the car bugged too. Somewhere in the body. You’d never find it without tearing the whole thing apart.”

Lucita grimaced as she ground the bug to metal dust between her thumb and finger. “So, you’re working for the Nossies? They that upset about their bumbling messenger back in Hartford? Or do they just want their car back? Never figured you for repo work.” “Not working for them,” said Fatima. She wouldn’t allow herself joy or anger or pain.

She couldn’t, lest they all flood out. “Just happen to cross paths every so often.”

“Just like us, huh?” Lucita smiled sarcastically. She made a show of glancing at her watch and then at the lightening eastern sky. “I guess you’ve got a comfy little compartment in the back of the Land Cruiser, but I don’t fancy spending all day balled up in my trunk. So why are you here?”

Fatima took a moment in answering. There was no simple response, not that would make sense. And there was so little time. It was better that way. “I wanted to see you.”

“Why? You supposed to kill me… again?” “Not you. Yet. Your sire.”

Lucita’s jaw clenched slightly. She didn’t have a witty comeback for that right away. She wrapped her arms a little more tightly around her body as if she were cold, which she wasn’t. She shifted her weight against the car. Then she started around to the driver’s side. “Listen, I just cacked Borges… but you know that, don’t you. And you probably know Talley’s around too, and that Hartford is crawling with Sabbat. So I wouldn’t stick too close.” She lowered herself into the driver’s seat and the engine roared to life.

“I’m going to destroy your sire,” Fatima said.

Lucita’s face went blank for a second before she could manage a sneer. “I heard you the first time. Just don’t let me beat you to it.”

The BMW spewed gravel as it sped away and left Fatima standing in a cloud of dust. Fair warning, Fatima thought as she climbed back into the SUV to find a secluded spot to park and spend the day.

Wednesday, 22 September 1999, 4:11 AM Spanish Harlem

New York City, New York

Anwar had not expected to be called back to New York, especially to the same safe house, so soon after a strike against the Tremere. Passing within just a few miles of the warlock chantry made him wary—from prudence, not fear, of course. Perhaps this wariness was for the best. It kept him on his toes, as the Americans would say. In this, as in all things, Anwar trusted the elders.

In the intervening months since his last activities in this city, he had traveled to Chicago and fulfilled a contract there. Nothing so spectacular as the Foley affair, but respectable work, and Anwar had drunk his fill. Then, several nights ago, had come the summons back to New York. He had arrived tonight and parked his automobile across the river near Fort Lee by an abandoned garage, its bay doors ripped from their tracks. He’d be less likely to be noticed approaching the safe house on foot.

He reached the particular block of West 119th Street unmolested and again approached the basement entrance. He pressed the button five times, holding it down only briefly each time, as per his latest instructions. This time when the fire door and iron gate opened, he was ushered inside by “Walter James” himself. There was no sign of the dowdy woman who’d jabbed him with the hypodermic last time.

“May the Eldest smile upon you,” James said, once the doors were closed and secured. He clasped Anwar by the shoulders and then shook his hand in that rough, overly enthusiastic American way.

“And may your back be strong.”

“This way,” James said with a hearty smile. “We don’t often have repeat visitors. How have you been these last four months?” He led Anwar past the interior fire door and down a narrow hallway to another heavy, locked door.

“Closer to two months,” Anwar corrected him, knowing that his host erred intentionally, just as an added precaution. “I’ve been well.”

“Good, good.”

They climbed a cramped, brick-walled stairway—it would be impossible for a group of intruders to come this way except single file. The door at the top of the stairs was opened by a sensor against which James pressed his right palm.

Beyond that door, the decor of a perfectly neutral business office replaced the spartan furnishings of the lower level. Anyone entering through the street entrance would have no reason to suspect he had entered anything other than a modest yet respectable legal or financial concern of the type that tended to spring up in disaffected minority enclaves.

James led Anwar along a tastefully wallpapered corridor and stopped at an unremarkable door. With a slight nod, the American turned the knob and held the door open. Anwar stepped into the room and found himself speechless. Sitting on the far side of a dark cherry conference table was Fatima al-Faqadi. He bowed and then remained standing until Fatima indicated that he should sit. Perhaps it was a fault of the chair. The padding was old and flattened, or the springs had grown weak. Whatever the cause, Anwar felt that he sank very low in the seat, that he was suddenly diminished. Fatima watched him impassively. In the solemnity of meeting such a notable of the clan, he did not even notice the click of the door as James pulled it closed.

“I trust your business in Chicago is completed,” Fatima said.

“It is.” Anwar had reported as much, and Fatima certainly knew that already. Anwar watched her closely. To avoid facing her would be a sign of weakness, and he was no fida’i to stare demurely at her feet—or in this case, at the table. Fatima’s large, dark eyes, rather than being windows to her soul, were screens that betrayed nothing. Perhaps a soul lurked somewhere beneath the smooth skin, darkened from its original Moroccan hues, and the thin, rounded features that did little to soften her brusque manner. Her seemingly delicate hands rested flat on the table on either side of an unlabeled dossier.

“You are familiar with Madrid,” she said.

“I have been in the city five times, only once a stay of significant duration. I know my way around.”

“You know the Iglesia de San Nicolás de las Servitas.” The Spanish words flowed from her tongue like honey.

“I do.”

Fatima pushed the dossier toward him. The motion of her arm was smooth, effortless, yet the folder slid easily and stopped exactly before Anwar. He did not need to straighten the folder to open it and begin reading. Not a single sheet of paper was misaligned.

“Beneath the church,” Fatima said, “are the ruins of a mosque. Beneath the ruins of the mosque is the lair of Ambrosio Luis Monçada.”

Anwar nodded. “Archbishop of the Sabbat.” “Elevated to cardinal within the past year.”

Anwar cocked his head. He had not known that, but then the politics of the Sabbat were as unpredictable and tumultuous as a woman’s heart, and he’d had no need to keep abreast of the inner workings of that sect’s highest echelons. Until now. “I see.”

“Monçada’s lair has numerous entrances and exits,” Fatima continued. “The information before you is details about those we are aware of: locations, triggering mechanisms, defenses for some. There is also information about servants and associates.”

Anwar scanned the pages, making sure to listen closely to Fatima’s every word. Surely the fact that she was conferring with him personally in this matter meant that he had earned the notice of the elders, that his years of study and discipline, his impressive portfolio of kills and service to the clan, had not gone unnoticed. As he flipped through the pages detailing various of Monçada’s retainers, Anwar couldn’t help wondering against whom he was being sent. There were a few long-serving ghouls, but the assignment of such a paltry target would be tantamount to a sign of displeasure from the elders, which would seem to contradict Fatima’s personal attention. More likely he was being sent to destroy one of Monçada’s trusted defenders, Vallejo or his second-in-command, Alfonzo. Perhaps one of the lesser legionnaires.

Then Anwar turned the page and came to the picture of the cardinal’s childe, Lucita. The Lasombra assassin had survived long despite her flamboyance. The obvious conclusion to be drawn: She was very good at what she did. Unfortunately, she had been chosen by the manipulative keepers of Clan Lasombra, and thus despite her impressive list of credentials as an assassin, she was no better than a pretender. She was kafir, of the lesser blood that must be reclaimed. Anwar had heard stories that she had actually defeated Fatima once long ago, but surely those were just… stories.

“This one will need dealing with at some point,” Anwar said, tapping the picture of Lucita with his finger. He tried to temper his expectation that she might be the target, that he was being given such an important task.

“Your assignment,” Fatima said curtly, “is one of observation only.”

The words were more painful than a katar to the stomach. Observation only.

“There are undoubtedly other points of access to Monçada’s haven,” Fatima continued, “and the information we have needs to be confirmed. If you can determine defensive capabilities, that is acceptable, but above all you are not to let your presence be known.” Anwar quickly swallowed his pride. He stared more intently at the pages before him.

He would gather intelligence for whomever was awarded the honor of the kill, whoever the target might be. He would not make contact with any of Monçada’s retainers. He would do nothing that would reveal to them that they were being watched. In any case, he saw from the dossier that Lucita did not frequent Madrid. In fact, she stayed away from her sire the cardinal. Anwar would not likely come across her.

“Mr. James has an automobile and a private airplane waiting,” Fatima said. “In Madrid you will be delivered to a secure location in which to base your operations.”

Anwar closed the folder. His assignment was clear. The only details he didn’t have were those he did not need. He stood and nodded formally to Fatima. “Then I am on my way,” he said. “Unless there is anything else?”

“There is not,” Fatima said, her face showing neither approval nor reproach.

Walter James, ready to escort Anwar to the waiting car, stood just beyond the conference-room door. The assignment was not what Anwar had hoped, but he would serve Haqim however directed. He had been instructed personally by Fatima. That was a badge of honor he should not ignore. Loyalty and diligence had served him well thus far. Certainly they would continue to do so.

Wednesday, 22 September 1999, 5:17 AM Spanish Harlem

New York City, New York

Cinder blocks, gray and pock-marked. Mortar, brittle, chipped, ground to dust on the cool cement floor. Dank smell and taste of moisture. Dampness, clinging to hair, clothes, skin. The gentle swish of cobwebs swaying beneath the weight of their creator reached Fatima’s ears. Through the darkness, she could make out the smooth curve of the naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A chain, sixteen individual metal beads strung together, hung down from the light. Her bag lay on the floor near the rough wooden pallet upon which she rested yet did not rest.

Fatima lay staring. Numb. Master of her own heart and mind.

She had faced Lucita, and even then she had maintained steadfastness of purpose. All the questions were beyond Fatima. She could not dwell on them and serve. There was only her purpose. Destroy Monçada, the sire. And then…

Then was not now. She wouldn’t have to deal with then until Monçada was destroyed. But she could not help thinking of Lucita, just as she hadn’t been able to resist seeing the Lasombra. Fatima had needed to see her enemy, her rival, her future target. The childe of Haqim had needed to make sure that, even without the knowing presence of the amr to harden her

heart, her resolve would remain firm and not crumble like the mortar between cinderblocks.

Destroy Monçada, the sire. And then…

Perhaps Lucita would heed the warning. Perhaps she would go away to where Fatima could not reach her—wherever that might be. But Fatima knew better. Lucita would not bend; she could only be broken. None would contain the fire that burned within her.

Fatima shied away again from memories of the two of them together, yet thoughts of Lucita inexorably led to chaos. The very earth was not what it had always been. Fatima reached for numbness but could not find it.

Cinderblocks, gray and pock-marked. Mortar falling away to dust on the cool cement floor. The floor listed; wall and ceiling crashed down onto her. If only it were so simple. Moisture. Dampness, clinging to hair, clothes, skin. Not sweat; blood. Rising through her pores. Pooling above her lip. Rivulets running down her side, her back. Cobwebs torn by lashing winds. Desert storm peeling flesh from bone. Spider come to feed on the flies and maggots of the dead. No small, metal chain but a tower leading to the sun that burned overhead. Creatures of earth envious of heaven.

Fatima reached for her jambia, laid the blade at her breast. It was enough. Master of her own mind, of her heart. She did not yet see what wise al-Ashrad saw, but she would keep her eyes focused straight ahead.

This one will need dealing with at some point, Anwar had said of Lucita, and he was right. Fatima had admonished him against jeopardizing the mission, yet she had already jeopardized it by seeing Lucita. A calculated risk, Fatima decided. It had been necessary.

She closed her eyes, felt the weight of her blade on her chest, and tried to slip away from it all.

Wednesday, 22 September 1999, 7:45 PM (1:45 PM, Eastern Daylight Time) Iglesia de San Nicolás de los Servitas

Madrid, Spain

It was very dark in the confessional. Rumor had it that Cardinal Monçada had crushed any number of Cainites to death in the booth with his fearsome mastery of shadows, but Talley discounted the stories. Monçada was strong enough to have no need for trickery. He heard the cardinal’s huge bulk sliding into the booth on the far side of the partition. There was a click as the shutter between the two chambers went up, and the cardinal said, “Yes?”

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he murmured. “It has been four hundred twelve years, three months and six days since my last confession.”

Monçada clucked disapproval. “That is a very long time, my son. You had time for a great many sins. Still, it is good you have come back to the Church. Speak to me, then. Tell me with what sins four centuries have stained you.”

“I have killed, Father. I have lied, I have coveted, I have stolen. And I have failed my cardinal.” Talley bowed his head. The shadows somehow seemed to press in more closely, though the templar told himself that was just a trick of the imagination.

There was a rustling of cloth. “Tell me more.” “Archbishop Borges is dead. At the hand of your childe.”

“Tsk. That is grievous news indeed, my son. How did such a thing come to pass?” Around Talley, the shadows pressed in more closely.

Talley sketched out the details of the past nights. It took a surprisingly long time, and he found himself silently hoping he wasn’t boring Monçada.

When the templar finally wound down, the cardinal’s voice rumbled from the confessional. “Fascinating. And most understandable, perhaps, considering the circumstances. Much about this is odd, especially the end game.” The shadows pulled away from Talley, and he let out a breath he did not know he’d taken. “Still, murder, theft, the others—these are serious sins. Waiting four centuries to confess them has given them time to stain the soul deeply, my son. Your penance will not be light, I think, nor will it end soon.”

Talley bowed his head. “Whatever you prescribe, Father.”

Monçada chuckled. “I shall have to think on it. In the meantime, do five novenas each morning, five Hail Marys every night, for the next fifty years. Do them without fail. You have many sins to wash away, Talley. In nomine Patri, et Filii, et Spiritu Sancti, ego te absolvo. You may go.”

“Thank you, Father,” Talley said, and made to duck out of the booth. He paused, though, and returned. “Your Eminence?”

“Yes?” The cardinal’s voice was a barely audible rasp.

“I believe I know why Borges died, and who was responsible.”

“Of course you do. I was startled that you did not include it in your confession.”

Talley shrugged silently. “The sin was not mine, save perhaps one of pride.” Monçada chuckled. “You sound like a Jesuit, all trickery and sophism. Speak.” “Polonia should have been the one to die, but he is too strong. Even the Courts of Blood would fear to move against him. Borges, on the other hand, was not strong alone.

Standing at Polonia’s side, however, bound by shared lineage or hatred of others, promised glory and power and blood, he could have been formidable indeed. Polonia did not seem inclined to take Borges as an ally, but still, the possibility was there.”

“Fascinating.”

Talley nodded. “Wisdom would have dictated having him killed in battle, or maneuvered into being destroyed for some infraction or other, but wisdom is in short supply. Vykos wanted suspicion as far from her as possible, to sow discord and cover her role. Who would dare assume that she, your servant in these matters, would tempt your wrath by hurling your childe against your other servitors? It is a madman’s plan, or a genius’s—but there is no wisdom in it.”

“Vykos? A pity.”

“Vykos. It was she who created the diversion that drove Borges into frenzy and forced me to pursue him. Had I stayed longer in that miserable excuse for a city, no doubt I would have found evidence that the shooter who assaulted our command post was in Vykos’s service in some fashion. It was Vykos who distracted me at the critical moment. Polonia’s opportunism didn’t help matters; but as for the traitor, all roads lead to your Tzimisce, Your Eminence.”

Monçada let loose a heavy sigh. “I feared as much. You have done well, my faithful Hound. Well indeed.”

“Not that well. Borges destroyed under my watch, and Lucita escaped. I suspect there was more than just Vykos at work, as well. The other killings did not carry her scent. A bluff, or perhaps something entirely unrelated. I do not know, though I suspect that your childe and I will never share civil conversation again.”

“A pity, that.” Monçada shifted his massive bulk within the confessional and coughed once, softly. “I am very glad you are well, Talley. And I am well pleased with you. Go, now. Hunt what prey you choose. I will not need you for a very long time, I think. Go, and take my thanks with you.”

Talley blinked, once. “Of course, Your Eminence. Thank you.” He stumbled out of the booth. Cristobal Garcia, a ghoul who’d been in Monçada’s service for at least a hundred years, was waiting for him, and with suitable grace and humility conducted Talley to his quarters. In the evening, he’d depart with tangible evidence of the cardinal’s gratitude, but for now, all he wanted was a day of slumber without dreams.

Still within the comfortable walls of the confessional, Cardinal Ambrosio Luis Monçada wrapped a cloak of shadows around himself tightly, and then another one. The darkness, he found, gave him comfort, and he found precious little of that in the world these nights. Crooning a tuneless song to himself, he closed his eyes. Here God and the darkness would preserve him, as they always had.

“Amen,” he murmured, and gave himself to slumber and the embrace of the night.

Thursday, 23 September 1999, 10:49 PM The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

“She knows too much already, my lady. And what she does not know, she suspects.” The ambassador’s hand was knotted in the front of his robes, keeping the hem from dragging through the powdered bone that covered the floor.

“Nonsense. You have nothing to fear from the regent.” Eva considered a moment. “No, that’s not precisely true. I should say that you have nothing more to fear from her. If you give her the opportunity, she will destroy you, of course.”

“She is insufferable. She resists my very presence here and undermines me at every turn.”

“Well, of course she does. She has enjoyed a very free hand to this point and now it is time to shorten the tether. This relative autonomy has been a necessary evil. The councilor is well aware of the price of maintaining a front-line chantry. It is a cost we have been willing to pay in order to hold the Sabbat at bay. But now…”

“Yes, now there are other considerations.” They rounded a bend in the narrow passage. A gust of moist air from some hidden niche carried the scent of moldering bones. His face wrinkled in distaste. “Already the carrion birds begin to gather.”

“A pretty image, that. I can picture them now. A flight of tattered justicars and archons descending upon the city in their flapping black leather trench coats. But we must have a care not to frighten off our Camarilla brethren for the present. The political climate remains volatile.”

He snorted. “I find it all more than slightly ironic. It seems a very short time ago indeed that our Camarilla allies were pouting, stomping their feet, and making all manner of dissatisfied noises—disgruntled over the lack of Tremere involvement in this conflict. Now, when they have at last uncovered evidence of our vigilance…”

“Tread gently. If you are referring to the rumors coming out of the nation’s capital, we can give them no official credence. Still, your point is well taken. The Pyramid has already played a far greater role in reversing the Sabbat gains than any of our friends can yet imagine. Even our most vocal detractors must surely realize at this point that the chantry houses in New York and Washington are the last remaining bastions of defense for the our beleaguered allies. Yes, one must be very careful what one wishes for.”

“I wish for an end to this damnable waiting. I don’t like this little pantomime, never liked it. I’m the one hung out over the edge of the precipice here. If this thing starts to unravel now…”

“Nothing’s going to unravel. You’re not here to take a fall. You’re here to…” She hesitated only an instant. In that moment’s hesitation, however, he clearly heard the reading of his own death sentence. “To keep Sturbridge off balance.”

He walked in silence for a time. “Even you don’t believe that. Look, it’s too dangerous keeping her in power here. She’s already got hold of the frayed end of Aaron’s secret. It won’t be long before she worries it loose. We need to take her out of the picture…”

“Out of the question.”

He raised his voice, talking over the top of the interruption, “…to take her out of the picture, if only for a little while. We could send her to Baltimore again.”

“I can’t encourage more interaction with Pieterzoon’s ad hoc Camarilla council down there in Baltimore. It’s too unpredictable, dangerous. We’ve already sown the necessary seeds among them. We’ve established Sturbridge as their ‘in’—their link to the city, their chink in the pyramid. When they come to New York, they’ll pay their lip service to Prince Michaela, but they’ll come to Sturbridge for help. This chantry will provide them the intelligence, the expertise and the firepower they need to carry the city’s liberation.”

“You make it sound as if it’s all a foregone conclusion. I envy your confidence.” “What you call confidence, I call control. Victory here will boil down to a simple matter of who can control the field of possible outcomes. By culling out the undesirable results now and nurturing the more rewarding ones, it will all seem like a foregone conclusion—after the dust settles.”

He shook his head. “There are still too many uncertainties, too many permutations. I don’t know how you can pretend to pierce the tangle enough even to discern a desirable outcome. You and I, we are far too embroiled in the painting to make out any of its details.”

“The situation is complex, yes. In a sense, we will be fighting the battle on two fronts. It is not enough to win the overt battle against the Sabbat. We must also gain the upper hand in the covert struggle for prominence with our Camarilla brethren. We are fortunate (some might say vigilant) in that the Tremere are already far out ahead of the competition. We are on the ground. Our units are in position. We have been specially trained and equipped to fight this particular foe in this particular place in this particular way. All we have to do for the present is to be patient and to continue to remove the wildcards from the equation.”

“Faster than our allies can introduce them, you mean. You know how I feel about this waiting game. There is so much we could be doing to prepare—and even more we might do with Sturbridge out from underfoot.”

“You are still thinking in terms of logistics. Forces to marshal, supplies to lay in, rituals to enact. You are stockpiling certainties. I am disposing of uncertainties. I know this to be the only method to produce reliable successes in distilling our desired outcomes from the muddied waters of mere possibility. That is why your carrion birds do not concern me. Justicars and archons are monolithic, ponderous, predictable. One cannot commit a battleship with subtlety, nor withdraw it again gracefully once committed. They can be accounted for in the equation, factored out.

“No, it is the Foleys that worry me. Does that startle you? It is the Aarons and the Jacquelines that lie in wait for me when I close my eyes. The children. Their intrigues are more humble and therefore many times more damning. There is no telling how just one of their petty jealousies, their casual cruelties, might nudge the whole calculation in some previously unexplored and disastrous direction.”

“So we eliminate them?”

“Certainly not. We eliminate the uncertainties. The uncertainties. The children, we draw them out, we force them to declare themselves and sometimes, to slip. When they have revealed their fomenting ambitions, their fears, their desires, then we have them.”

“You turn their passions against them. You must admit, my lady, that it amounts to much the same thing. Foley is dead. Aaron, dead. Jacqueline…”

Her gaze grew hard. “Some passions we allow to run their course. The predictable ones. The ones that advance the inevitability of the final calculation. Are you suggesting that we are somehow responsible for Foley’s death? I would be a bit more hesitant to put forth such a ridiculous and perhaps even subversive opinion if I were in your position.”

“Ridiculous? Are you saying that we are blameless of Foley’s death? If true, this would be welcome news indeed. It is one of the things that weighs most heavily upon me. I hope you might further put me at ease on a few other small points. Perhaps you can tell me how Aaron, a cloistered novice, managed even to make contact with that most ancient and dread brotherhood of assassins. Or how he came by the savvy to convince them not to kill a hated warlock on sight? Or how he came by the not inconsiderable financial resources that would be required to contract a murder in what may very well be the single most dangerous building in the Northeast to carry off such a transaction? Do you know what I think?”

Her voice was cold, distant. “I could not imagine, but I feel certain you are about to tell me.”

“I think we are not blameless. At this point, even I feel implicated in this murder, soiled. I have spent the last two weeks sleeping in a dead man’s bed. And now, I am convinced that I have killed him.”

“You are unwell. It is the air down here. There is something unhealthy about it—a bad humor, Sturbridge called it. Come, we must be getting back. You will go first, and I will follow at a ten-minute interval.”

“Yes, something in the air. The entire chantry has fallen under the miasma. Like the thick, stagnant air down a disused mine shaft. Or the moist, pregnant atmosphere down a deep well. I don’t think there is anyone under this roof who is not affected, who is not culpable. Not one soul who is blameless of these three deaths.”

“Listen to me. The Tremere are not in the business of killing our own novices—of eating our young. Do you understand me? Do you understand?”

But already he was lost to her. His eyes glazed over, seeing, not the orderly accumulation of the centuries of bones piled high around him—a monument to monolithic tradition, solidarity, continuity—but another, humbler memorial. Before his eyes, he saw only the endless procession of the young, bright faces, eyes as round as saucers, trapped beneath the weight of black waters.

Thursday, 23 September 1999, 11:50 PM The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

“That will not be necessary. You may leave him where he lies. Please step away.” Sturbridge’s voice was flat and dispassionate in the darkness. The only light came from an opening high above. Another passageway.

They were deep within the catacombs. Down near the vaults that housed the remains of the chantry’s founders. Passages that had, long ago, lost any justification for trafficking with the waking.

“Oh, thank goodness! The ambassador, he is hurt. Quite badly I think. I was afraid to move him. He fell from the gallery.” Eva pointed toward the distant light above. “It took me some time to find my way down.”

Sturbridge circled warily. “It was foolish to come down here alone. Whatever inspired you to…?”

“The ambassador insisted. He wanted to examine the remains. Of Aaron’s body and of Jacqueline’s. I’m afraid we took a wrong turning. Several, actually. I tried to summon help, but I guess the security systems just don’t operate down this far.”

“Clever. Go on.”

“Something came over him. He seemed haunted, hag-ridden. He was raving about some miasma hanging over us. Do you know what he told me? He said he had spent the last two weeks sleeping in a dead man’s bed and that he was now convinced that he had killed him. That’s what he said. I begged him to stop, to let go. I told him he was frightening me. But he…” She was close to tears.

Eva wiped angrily at her face. Her sleeves slid down to reveal battered and bruised forearms.

“You pushed him away,” Sturbridge supplied.

“Yes. No! Not like that. I did not push him over the…” She swallowed hard. “I pushed free of him and ran. I could hear him coming after me in the dark. The hollow sound of the scattered bones underfoot suddenly taking flight and careening wildly off the walls as he came. Somehow I lost him in the dark. I found an alcove. Stumbled into it, actually. It was one of the larger and (thankfully) untenanted niches. I crawled into it and curled in upon myself. Shutting my eyes tightly, hoping it would all just go away.

“I could hear him as he blundered past. I felt the stale air stir at his passing. I smelled the salt tang of his exertion. And then he was gone. It was not long after—certainly before I dared to move, or even hope that I might be safe—that I heard the long dwindling cry and the echo of the reverberating impact.”

“A very convincing performance. I must congratulate you. Yes, it would be quite easy for me to fall back into believing your enchanting stories.”

Confusion and then hurt flickered across the novice’s features. “But I don’t understand. Why would you say such hurtful things? Look at me!” She brandished battered arms, framing her bloodstreaked face.

Sturbridge returned her stare levelly and slowly shook her head.

The novice was close to hysterics. “You don’t believe me. What do you believe? That I lured him here, to the edge of the precipice, and hurled him over? Look at me. I cannot even budge his damned unconscious and unresisting form. Do you seriously think that I could have…”

“It is enough, Eva. It’s over, now. It’s all over.”

“Oh Regentia! Then you do believe me. He’ll confirm what I told you, I know he will. When he is himself again. You will make him tell you, won’t you?”

“The ambassador will not be coming back to us from where you have sent him.”

Sturbridge spoke with certainty. She could feel the shock of icy water coursing through her veins. She knew instinctively the watery depths to which his spirit had been committed. Even if there remained some faint spark of unlife within the broken shell of his body, the one they had known as the Logos Etrius would never again return home to warm himself before it.

“There you are wrong, Regentia. He will be coming back. They will all be coming back. Surely you, of all people, must realize that.”

“He is not coming back,” Sturbridge repeated, then nudged the unmoving corpse with the tip of her shoe. With a sigh, the entire torso crumbled inward in a cascade of gray ash and yellowed bone. “Nor is Jacqueline, nor Aaron, nor Foley.” Sturbridge glared at her protégée as if daring her to debate this point.

“You really do not yet understand.” Eva’s tone was one of wonder, rather than of apology. “I understand well enough. I have been slow in coming to that understanding and it has cost me dearly. You have snatched three of my little ones from my hand. You may well have robbed me of my chantry. You have broken my trust. And you must now attempt to take what little life remains to me.”

Eva shook her head. “There is a morbid humor in the air down here. A fetid reek of melancholy, distrust, self-pity. I can feel its breath through the broken teeth of these neglected crypts. You are quite right to warn others away. But you are mistaken if you really think that I would want you dead. You are my regent, my protector, my benefactress.” “I do not know what you are,” Sturbridge replied coldly. “Once, I thought you were…

someone very special. But I am a foolish old woman. You are as commonplace as death.”

Eva recoiled as if struck and seemed about to retort angrily. Then she visibly calmed. “You do not mean that. I know you don’t. You are not yourself. It’s this place, it is so…” She shivered. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you have explained yourself. Not until I understand why you are doing this.”

“I’m not doing anything. And you must realize that you cannot possibly be in any personal danger at this point, much less from me! If the murderer had wanted you dead, there would have been no need for all this chicanery. Foley would still be at his post. Aaron would have had his promotion and been quietly shuffled out to another chantry. Jacqueline, well, Jacqueline hardly merited the attention of anyone outside this house, now did she? Make no mistake, Regentia, someone has spared no effort to bring you safely to this juncture.”

“You have brought death into my house; you will not lay the responsibility for these murders upon my doorstep. It’s not my fault that they are dead. I know that now, although this was another realization that was too slow in coming. I have felt the weight of their blood upon me. The sleepless days of wondering if there were anything I could have done differently—anything that might have saved them. Rest assured that you will be held accountable for each of those days in the final reckoning.”

“Now you are frightening me. Please, Regentia, let us leave this place at once.”

Sturbridge ignored her. “Their blood slips between my fingers. I cannot hold it and it, in turn, refuses to cling to me. There were nights, of course—nights that I wallowed in their spilled life, trying to drink it down, to claim it as my own. This is my house, damnit, and anything that happens here is ultimately a reflection of me, of who I am. Everything that goes on under this roof happens with my approval— either explicit or implicit. I believed that I was responsible for allowing Foley to be killed and that by failing to find his murderer, I had doomed Aaron and then Jacqueline as well.”

“But that is only more nonsense, delirium.” She took Sturbridge by the hand. “Come on, we will go to Helena, she will know how to help. You’re going to be fine.”

Sturbridge would not be moved. “No, the logic of self-condemnation was undeniable. I am responsible for all that transpires beneath this roof. Foley, Aaron and Jacqueline were murdered beneath this roof. Therefore, I am responsible for their murders. Q.E.D. I could not break free of the damning syllogism. That is, not until your accomplice arrived. That was your first real mistake.”

Eva let Sturbridge’s hand drop. “My accomplice?”

Sturbridge scuffed impatiently at the pile of ash and bone with her toe. “After his own fashion, the ambassador reminded me that, despite my rank and title, I was not mistress of this house. The deed to this chantry was not signed in my blood. There is nothing I have here that Vienna cannot take away in a single night.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you. So you’re saying that since you realized that you were not really responsible for all that transpires here, it was possible that you were not responsible for these three deaths. Is that it?”

“And that started me back to looking around for who might be responsible. The ambassador again came to my rescue. In talking to him, I realized that he—and by extension, Vienna (for he was exactly what he claimed to be: a mouthpiece, nothing more)—they all considered Aaron a hero. Now why would that be?”

Eva opened her mouth to speak, but Sturbridge continued before she could interrupt. “We knew Aaron had escorted an assassin through the chantry defenses. Despite all the wild speculations of infernalism and rampaging demons, the one who struck down the secundus entered the chantry by more mundane means. He was led down from the Exeunt Tertius and made his escape along the same route. Aaron could not have realized, of course, that the assassin would claim the novice’s own blood as well.

“But here is the curious part. Instead of being branded a traitor, Aaron was being hailed as a hero. It didn’t add up. Now, about the only thing that merits that kind of honor around here is giving one’s life in the line of duty. So I began to wonder.

“I could never quite swallow the idea that Aaron had been motivated by treachery. The proposition simply did not bear up under scrutiny. Even the greenest neophyte knows how swiftly and mercilessly the entire pyramid falls upon the first hint of disloyalty. Aaron could not have hoped to escape discovery. Rather, he was relying on something else to spare him from the consequences of his actions.

“It was not until I spoke with the ambassador that I realized the ‘hero’ had died for his clan. He was not motivated by treachery, but rather by loyalty—and perhaps the promise of a rapid promotion and a one-way ticket out of this war-torn house. He was carrying out a rather dangerous (and unknown to him, suicidal) mission for his superiors. He was taking his orders directly from the motherhouse in Vienna.”

Eva finally broke in upon her. “Now you have lost me entirely. Your speculations seem to raise more questions than they answer. Why would Vienna want Foley dead? And even if they did, why not simply ‘recall’ him to the motherhouse where a more private disappearance could be arranged? And why introduce an outside and hence unreliable assassin, instead of ordering Aaron to kill the secundus himself? And how could Aaron be expected to…”

“Your questions are spurious. You already know the answers. But perhaps you would like to discern whether or not I know them. Very well. I suspect you did not so much want Foley dead as you wanted an excuse to take a more direct hand in the affairs of this chantry. With a pair of unsolved murders hanging over the premises, you could rely upon minimal resistance to your coup. By inserting a special legate from the motherhouse in Vienna—and breaking the regional chain of command— you would have secured a very free hand in directing chantry affairs. You would be accountable only to the council itself.

“I’m not entirely sure why Five Boroughs is so important to you, but I would suspect that it must have something to do with the Sabbat war. You are clearly a seasoned intriguer. You are an insider, intimately familiar with how to best play the system to your personal advantage. And you do not scruple at ruthlessly striking down any who oppose you, or get too close to your machinations, or even prove unreliable. At this point, my best guess is that you are an aspiring robber baron, intent on plundering the resources of this chantry. You certainly fit the profile, if not the particulars. Will you redirect our assets to fuel the fight to reclaim Washington? Or will you simply siphon them off until the last pocket of resistance left in New York collapses under the rising Sabbat tide?”

Eva stared at her in open disbelief. She seemed to be caught midway between concern for her mistress and fleeing to get help.

“What are you?” Sturbridge repeated pointedly, her speculations having come round full circle.

Eva was silent a long time. When at last she found the words, her voice sounded soft and far off.

“Come and see.”

Without turning to see that she was followed, Eva led the way into the deeper darkness between the ancient bones.

Friday, 24 September 1999, 12:30 AM Beneath the Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs

New York City, New York

Sturbridge struggled to keep up without falling over the scattered remains and other nameless debris that littered the narrow tunnel. There was a darkness that clung about these deeper passages. A petty, vindictive darkness that had lain undisturbed for many years. It jealously guarded its secrets. It snatched at her ankles. It battered at her hands and arms with unseen turnings.

Sturbridge fumbled along in Eva’s wake. She could no longer see her one-time protégée, but she could make out snatches of her voice, muffled, battering against the pervasive dark.

“A robber baron. Very romantic. But the truth is nothing quite so mercenary, I assure you. Your grasp of the political situation, however, shows great promise. In other circumstances, it would merit future observation.”

Sturbridge was not at all certain she like the implications of that last turn of phrase. She felt she was being drawn inevitably down an ever-narrowing spiral. There was a presence at the bottom of that gyre. A force gathering, rolling storm-like in its depths. Sturbridge leaned into it and struggled onward and down.

“In a sense, I suppose you are correct. It would have been quite impossible to bring in ‘my accomplice’ without a scandal for him to ride in upon. Foley’s murder was that scandal. He died for you, but I have told you that already.”

Sturbridge had heard that line before. Somewhere up ahead a distant flame flickered to life. “I can’t accept that. All right, a quiet disappearance back to Vienna would not suit your purposes. No scandal, no need for such drastic intervention. Therefore, you contracted with the Assamite to kill Foley. But why Foley? And the whole business of going to the ancestral enemy strikes me as a bit too splashy. Gaudy. I take it this added touch was intended to fuel the already colorful controversy?”

“Again, the merely pragmatic escapes you. There was no room for error; we sought out and retained only the most qualified professional available. Do you think that this is the first time that members of our clan have conducted business with the infidels?”

Sturbridge reached the outskirts of the faint light. She had hands once more. Then she could pick out knuckles on those hands. And then the lines of vestigial, disused veins. There was blood in her still, but it no longer flowed along the traditional pathways that God and nature had designed. It was a false image, that network of lines. A still life.

She could not keep the note of bitterness from her voice. “Then Aaron was only the unwitting contact, the prearranged fall guy, victim number two.”

“You were fond of him?”

The question caught her off guard. “Damnit, I was fond of all of them.” Sturbridge stepped out of the low tunnel and rose to her full height. Dark as a battle raven and straight as a pin. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for…”

Then she caught the first real glimpse of her surroundings and her words trailed off into their own dim afterimages, echoing up the empty tunnels—sputtering through the chantry’s own vestigial, disused veins.

“I think I have some passing familiarity with the burdens of command. But come now, you were explaining to me about Foley’s murder. About how Aaron circumvented the chantry’s security system.”

Sturbridge blinked uncomprehendingly at the vast, rough-hewn cavern, doubting the evidence of her eyes. She would never have guessed such an expansive space could exist below the cramped confines of the chantry. The light that Eva held aloft was a small, lost, fragile thing against the immensity of that emptiness. The pinprick of a single star against the entirety of the night sky.

“He circumvented most of the security system,” she replied in a hushed tone. “He could navigate through the chantry defenses. He could disarm any troublesome mechanical systems, but he could not take the human element offline—the security teams, Helena…” “And yourself. Yes, very true. But the watchers failed to note anything out of the ordinary that night. Until it was too late. And you, yourself, were otherwise occupied….”

Sturbridge was acutely aware that she had come to the still point, the very center of the downward spiral. She could feel the weight of mountains looming over her.

“Yes, trading words with that fool storyteller. I have not forgotten that you were the one responsible for drawing me into that little exchange. You were blatantly fishing for information about me, about my past—and you were goading Talbott into a story that he knew better than to relate in so public a forum. And while I was occupied with trying to suppress the worst of Talbott’s tall tales and wild embellishments, Foley was dying.”

“Yes.” The voice was almost a purr of satisfaction. “Not exactly fiddling while Rome burned, but I think you are on the mark.”

Sturbridge forced down the unsettling thought of tons of granite and limestone poised above her and defiantly struck out into the cavern, aimed directly at the source of the accusation. The darkness seemed to resist her every step.

“You had caught me unawares once. I was not about to be so outmaneuvered again. You must have realized this. You waited until I was safely out from underfoot, at the council meeting in Baltimore, before you struck a second time.”

“Your appointment to the council was not simply a fortuitous coincidence. But no, we had no intention of ‘striking again’—I assume you are referring to removing Jacqueline—at least, not until she became a wildcard.”

Eva’s words were coming to Sturbridge only sluggishly now, as if the darkness they struggled through were thicker than mere air. Minutes had passed already as the syllables fought their way across the intervening distance. But Sturbridge could not let that monstrous assertion go unchallenged. She knew she must make some response, else all was lost. In the final reckoning, it was not, however, the need to speak out against the injustice of Jacqueline’s death that drove her. Nor any compulsion to condemn the casual brutality of it. Nor was it the reflex to defend herself, to rationalize her own failure. No, the need that drove Sturbridge to answer was something more humble and less noble. Her response was her only means of clinging to that tenuous lifeline of words that connected the two antagonists. That bond was all that kept each of them from being isolated, swept away, lost amidst the rising dark.

“Damn you. Damn you to hell.” Sturbridge’s voice shook. “A wildcard? A random element? She was a person. A novice of your own order. A sister. A childe. We do not eat our own young. It is one of the few points on which the laws of God, man and the Pyramid all agree. Each of them reserves a special dark hole for monsters like you.

“What did Jacqueline do to you? What could she have done? She came upon you going through Foley’s things. She saw something,” Sturbridge accused.

Eva’s voice was unruffled. “Quite the contrary. It was I who came suddenly upon her. I think she was doing a little investigating of her own—in addition to removing evidence that might later incriminate her, of course. But that was to be expected.”

Her tone became contemplative. “It is perhaps ironic. But I think Jacqueline may have been the only one of the secundus’s would-be murderers who actually harbored any ill will toward him. By all accounts, he was far too unpopular an individual to be done in for such impersonal reasons, don’t you agree?”

Hand over hand, Sturbridge slowly closed the distance between them.

Eva ignored her struggle. “Jacqueline’s own death was another story altogether. In her clumsy efforts, she had stumbled upon certain inconsistencies in the story we had chosen to cover Foley’s murder. She knew too much about the ritual, about its preparations, about Foley’s predilections….”

Sturbridge felt the darkness break over her like a wave. She sagged against the lifeline, nearly losing her grip. Somehow, she managed to find her voice. “It was Jacqueline who realized that the protective wards had been erased, that Foley’s notes were being suppressed, that you knew altogether too much about the secundus’s secrets—his ‘eye’, his treasure box. She realized that she was not the only one falsifying evidence.”

Eva shrugged and continued with her preparations. “I had been waiting for her to make her attempt. She had been obviously anxious and behaving in a suspicious manner since we first questioned her. It was really only a matter of being patient until she had gathered enough courage to put her head into the noose.”

Sturbridge closed her eyes against the callous litany of crimes. She plodded steadily forward, counting off the precise number of paces between her and retribution.

“What I did not expect,” Eva’s voice thrummed along the umbilical, “was for Jacqueline to pull off a full-blown translocation to gain entry to Foley’s sanctum. Such unexpected promise; such wasted potential. So few of the novices nowadays have the necessary prudence to ensure that their gifts have the opportunity to mature and develop. It is one of the signs of the decline of our order. I fear the Final Nights are at hand for us, Aisling.”

Sturbridge recoiled at the sound of her own name—at the familiarity taken by the novice. Even under less threatening circumstances, it would have struck a jarring note. “Jacqueline, at least, was not intent on hastening that decline through sheer force of attrition. You will receive your reward for your part in this, you know. Just as Aaron received his, kinslayer.”

The hissing invective brought Eva up short, chalk poised midstroke. “We are a race of kinslayers, Aisling. Our founder was the first of a long and distinguished line of kinslayers. Oh, not the old wyrm caught in the throes of nightmare beneath motherhouse in Vienna, but our First Father. He was the first murderer and he ushered Death himself across the threshold and into this world. That is a weighty responsibility that we all must bear each and every night.”

Sturbridge had more than a passing familiarity with Death. The mere mention of that name conjured up a wave of unwelcome thoughts—thoughts of her own death and of her daughter, Maeve. She felt rather than heard Eva’s words. A vibration transmitted along the ghost-vein, the trailing strand of life that bound them. Pleased with herself, Eva put the finishing touches on the diagramma hermetica with a flourish.

“Come now, Aisling. What is the fall of one novice compared to such a solemn charge? Do you know that, for all my patient waiting, Jacqueline still nearly managed to escape me. Her adaptation of the translocation ritual (which she stole from Master Ynnis, incidentally) was an unexpected turn. But in the end, I think it actually worked to our advantage. By coming upon her in a clearly compromising position, I was able to pressure her into making a covert appointment with me—alone and in an out-of-the-way place. In effect, I allowed Jacqueline to choose the time and place of her own death. There are many who might envy her that gift.”

Sturbridge strained to pick out the faint light, gauging her distance. It bobbed slightly like a lantern swinging from the bowsprit of a ship far out to sea. It seemed further away now than when she had first begun. In another, this might have been an opening for despair. But, with great deliberation, Sturbridge planted her feet, leaned into the rushing darkness, and loosed her grip upon the lifeline.

The light swung wildly, now overhead, now behind her. Sturbridge tumbled through the darkness. Eva’s voice was still there, an anchor line amidst the maelstrom should Sturbridge only choose to reach out for it. The words streamed past her in a blur, barely registering upon her consciousness.

“It was her wild tales of Master Ynnis and his translocations that led me to the method of dispatching the troublesome novice. I do not think it dawned upon her, even in those last moments. Even when she reached up to close the cabinet above the sink, which had swung open, seemingly of its own accord. Even when she saw the flicker of metal and felt its hot kiss upon her throat. Yes, you should have been there. Her expression remained unworried, even as her head rolled free of its pedestal and splashed into the sink, vanishing beneath the murky waters.”

Sturbridge tumbled end over end, caught in the riptide, buffeted, borne down. Her lungs filled with dark water.

She managed to gasp out (or imagine she had gasped out) “You seem to have acquired a taste for casual atrocities. Tell me, the ambassador, did he lose heart, threaten to betray you?”

Eva waved the question aside distractedly. “He had become unstable. He was teetering on the brink of the abyss and had been staring too long into darkness. His utility no longer justified the uncertainties he introduced into the equation.”

Sturbridge felt the calculated indifference of the silent waters close over her head.

As the light receded, she became gradually aware of the swarm of wriggling shadows surrounding her. The sea was alive with writhing, struggling forms. Hundreds of drowning bodies all frantically clawed towards the surface. The blue and bloated limbs of those who had already succumbed to the struggle snatched at her, clung to her, bore her down.

Sturbridge tried, in vain, not to pick out the familiar faces among the drowned— their features reproachful, distorted, water-gorged. She knew precisely where she would be confronted by the one she could not face. She could feel her presence behind her like the ache of a raw tooth.

Still, Sturbridge could not help twisting to peer through the press of bodies, trying to catch a single glimpse of the receding figure. She caught the barest hint of gawky girlish lines, limbs long and straight as a pin, tresses dark as a battle raven.

Sturbridge writhed in her attempt to free herself from the icy press, to pursue the fleeing figure. A swollen face, its eyes bright and round as saucers, interposed itself and pressed uncomfortably close to her own. It bobbed gently, aimlessly, from side to side, its hair fanning out in the current. It regarded her with a clinical, almost serene detachment. Thick, sausage-like fingers experimentally probed and prodded her. Sturbridge batted at the corpse, trying to dislodge it. Draped languidly in fetters of clinging seaweed, it embraced Sturbridge, entangling her flailing limbs as the pair tumbled over and over.

There was something familiar about the Drowned Man as he pressed uncomfortably close—a lover bent on confiding a dark secret. Its chill lips brushed her ear.

“Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.”

Her thoughts flickered inward for the briefest of moments and then flared out again with renewed fire. Sturbridge turned the warmthless kiss upon the startled Light-bringer and, with a crow of triumph, kicked out toward the surface.

Clinging hands fell away from her on all sides as she realized that they were much like the sea. And the sea was much like the pervasive darkness. And the darkness was much like the weight of mountains. They were not external threats, but merely shadows of the true threats—the internal ones. Eva had laid her snares well. Yes, she was indeed familiar with the burdens of command. She had reached into Sturbridge’s uncertainties and drawn out the weight of the regency—of Sturbridge’s failures to guide her novices safely through danger—and brought it crashing down upon her with the weight of mountains.

She had opened the floodgates of Sturbridge’s ignorance—of her inability to unravel the brutal murders that threatened to tear her chantry apart—and very nearly drowned her in a sea of pervading darkness.

She had turned a hand offered in trust—and perhaps even a genuine affection, as monstrous as that possibility might be among their kind—into the bloated and groping hands of the drowned.

And she had very nearly succeeded.

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.

Sturbridge broke from the dark water like a stone skipped inexplicably out of the well.

She found herself, not in a vast cavern mantled in darkness, but in a small, disused crypt, deep within the bowels of the chantry. Eva was waiting for her there.

She smiled. “I had hoped you would come through. But you were taking such an awful time about it I feared I would have to fall back upon the contingency plan. No matter, I have completed all of the preparations. All that remains is for you to speak the words.”

Sturbridge lowered her head and started forward, toward her young protégée. Vitriol streamed off her like water. Eva held up a hand in warning.

“Careful, please. I cannot advise you to break the line of the diagramma. The ward was not really designed with you in mind, but rather those who must follow. I did not anticipate that you would use such a circuitous route to come to me. It would have been far more efficient merely to pick your way through the tombs like anyone else. Sometimes you can be quite exasperating.

“But since you have come by way of the Well, you are bound by the same prohibitions as those who will come after you. Now, if you would simply recite the words that have been entrusted you…”

Sturbridge ignored this demand, but stopped short of the ritual warding. A seething fury peeked through the cracks in her composure. She glared at Eva, only a few inches and a crude chalk line separating the two antagonists.

“You have the temerity to make demands of me? Make no mistake, little one. Of all the things you have entrusted into my care—your calculated deceits, your feigned compassions, your casual betrayals—there is none that you would care to have returned upon you now.”

Eva spoke slowly and deliberately, as if addressing a particularly slow child. “All the words that have passed between you and me to this point are nothing. The empty exhalations of the grave. The muttering of the wind through two exhumed skulls.

“No, the words that are required were entrusted you long before we ever met. The Words of Fire and of Blood. It is time to loose what has been bound. It is time for the nightmare to end.”

A feeling of vertigo crashed over Sturbridge. Her eyes refused to focus. Ghost images flickered in the periphery. Ancient verses and snatches of song hopelessly intermingled into a uniform muttering, pitched just below the range of her hearing. It was if two competing worlds vied for her attention.

“The Words of Fire and Blood,” Eva prompted again. Sturbridge recoiled from her. Staggering backward, she caught the sudden impression of something vast rising up behind her. She spun upon the Well.

Something dark brooded over the silent waters—an ancient and unappeasable hunger that refused to be contained within the cramped confines of the mausoleum. It rose head and shoulders above the crypts, ignoring the protests of intervening walls and ceilings.

Sturbridge caught a momentary glimpse of an immense rough-hewn idol, the cool black stone of its feet worn to a perfect smoothness by the passage of centuries of blood. “Too much blood already,” she thought aloud, not knowing from whence the words arose, or that they had already been uttered once, long ago. “Blood of the firstborn. I know you, Cromm Cruaich. You were their Moloch, their Kinslayer, a nightmare of an older order.

Chidden of God, you were banished to the dark places of the earth, sheltering from the light of

life-giving day. You have had centuries to brood in those shadows, marking time by the spilling of blood into your dark well.”

Somewhere, far beneath them, the Dragon stirred.

Sturbridge tried to fight off the sudden ambush of the mythic, to cling to the literal. She could almost imagine that the Well was only the dry and empty shell of a broken crypt. She could pretend that the blasphemous features of the Stooped One were nothing more than the play of shadows and torchlight upon the rough-hewn walls of the crypt.

She closed her eyes and clung fast to that image. “This is what it is all comes down to, then, isn’t it? It’s all about the Children. All the lies, the betrayals, the murders. It was never about the revenges of abused novices, or the ambitions of would-be journeymen. It’s not about intrigues or infernalism; assassinations or political maneuverings. It’s not even about manipulations from Vienna or the damned Sabbat war. It all comes back to the Children.”

“You only have to say the words,” Eva coaxed. “You can call them forth, they will answer to your voice. My calculations have been exacting, they cannot be mistaken on this point. The Children will hear your call and they will not refuse you. And then all this,” she made a broad gesture intended perhaps to indicate their current predicament, or perhaps the chantry itself, or perhaps the carefully ordered ranks of crypts—the Tremere dead, their history, the sum of all their struggles. “Then all this doesn’t matter anymore. We will finally be free of the nightmare. Say the words, Aisling.”

Sturbridge’s voice began faint and unsteady, but grew in confidence with each syllable. “Logos Etrius,” Sturbridge recited. “Jacqueline. Aaron. Foley…”

“No! You fool, you will ruin…”

“The Children are your accusers, Eva, not your redemption. Can you not hear their voices? They clamor for your blood.” Sturbridge’s own voice rumbled through the crypts. The ancient walls rang with her authority. “As regent of this house, it is my judgment that your blood has been tainted with the unabsolvable stain of kinslaying—and is forfeit. May God have mercy upon the quick and the dead.”

Eva drew back as if struck. Sturbridge instinctively reached out to her, shrugging free of the mantle of judgment as quickly as she had donned it. In her eyes, concern for her young protégée found room enough room to coexist with the determination to see justice served.

“Come, Eva, it is time to go home. The nightmare is over for you now.” Sturbridge’s hand extended awkwardly, hesitating just outside the faint chalk line.

With a mounting cry of fury, Eva snatched the censer that swung lazily above the central altar. Like a dark angel, she scooped up the fire of the altar and swung the censer three times in a wide arc. Loosing her grip, she hurled the blazing comet into the earth, into the very heart of the dark well. The waters roiled in answer with a cry as of many voices. The thunder danced above that cry and the earthquake rumbled beneath it.

Sturbridge could only look on in horror as her carefully-constructed grip on the mundane was shattered. In the turbulent light bubbling up from the well, she could already pick out the familiar features of the Stooped One taking form. The idol’s ebony body writhed in time to the music of the flames. Sturbridge saw that the sculpture was not formed of a single block of polished stone as she had first imagined, but was composed of dozens of lesser beings—their bodies twisted, frozen in time, preserved in attitudes of horror, defeat and despair. Their features were crude and animalistic. Their gaping wounds still oozed blood. The moans of their broken bodies, grinding one against the other, rattled the old bones scattered across the crypt floor.

Sturbridge shrank back from the hundred-handed one, trying to avoid the piercing single-eyed stare. She felt the icy weight of dread clutching at her. She tried to flee, but found that she was caught from behind. Clumsy bloated fingers knotted in the fabric of her robe. Her feet splashed and nearly slipped as she struggled free from the drowned one’s grip. The Well was disgorging its own.

“Say the words, Aisling.”

Sturbridge tried to turn toward the voice but found that the scene had again shifted. She was lost in a limestone landscape—a vast cavern carved out of the mountain’s heart by centuries of trickling water. The cave was a bone yard of scattered stalagmites and stalactites. It gaped like a raw mouthful of broken teeth.

The moaning was stronger here, echoed, redoubled. Sturbridge tried to shrink back from the clamor, to draw inward. The piercing wail ruptured her defenses. It broke in upon her sanctuary and dragged her back out.

She felt herself being drawn bodily toward the center of the cavern and the blasphemous sculpture that squatted there. Leopold’s sculpture, she realized with growing apprehension. His masterwork. His still life.

This is what Foley saw, she thought, just before he…

Her eyes could find no purchase upon the tangled remains of the massacred Gangrel. Her gaze traveled uncomprehendingly along the shifting line of twisted and broken bodies. Her mind could not seem to encompass it all. One victim flowed into the next, all distinctions blurring in that perfect marriage of the flesh. One in body. One in blood.

Sturbridge realized the sculpture was not so much a monument to the dead as an indictment of those, like herself, that still lingering here among the living.

“You can free them, Aisling.” The voice chorused from a dozen shrieking mouths, as if the entire statue was nothing more than some grisly pipe organ for Eva to play upon. “You can undo this atrocity. You can end their nightmare.”

“Stop it! Why are you doing this?”

“Think of the Children, Aisling.” Then the voice took on a more ominous tone. “Think of your own child. Think of Maeve.”

The scene shifted again and she found herself teetering at the very brink of the dark well. She flailed and only narrowly caught herself on the slick stones. The waters that had already overflowed this bitter cup lapped over her feet, soaking the hem of her robes.

It was not Sturbridge’s cry toppling over the brink of the well and down into the darkness, but that of a child. A small, frightened child.

Sturbridge lurched toward the sound, knowing already it was too late. Years too late. She leaned far out over the gulf, clutching desperately at fistfuls of nothingness.

Her face pressed against the damp stones, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She could not bring herself to peer over the edge, to look upon the faces she knew would be awaiting her there. She sagged. Her voice was a broken whisper, lacking all certainty. “No. She is…they are gone, lost. Lost to us, long ago.”

“Call her, Aisling. She will come to you. She wants to come home. They have lost their way, that is all. But they want to come home. They are ready to come home now.

“Maeve?” Sturbridge mouthed the word, but all that escaped her lips was a broken animal sound.

“That’s right. Now louder, so that she will hear you. How can she follow your voice if she cannot hear you? How long has it been since you last saw her, Aisling? How long since that day when she was lost to you?”

“Night.” Sturbridge answered woodenly. She seemed lost in memory and unaware of her surroundings. “It was night. She lost her way, in the dark. I called to her. Told her to come back. Pleaded with her.”

“But she wouldn’t listen,” Eva supplied. “If only there were something. Something you could have said.”

“My beautiful child,” Sturbridge sunk to the ground and curled inward, elbows hugging knees. She ignored the rising waters. “My magical child. Too late. It was already too late. I tried to follow her.”

“Of course you did. You could not have known that she had gone. But there is still time. Call to her, Aisling. Call to her and she will come back to you.”

Sturbridge rocked slowly back and forth, moaning softly. Despite herself, her ears strained to pick out the sound of a distant voice, a lost cry, a familiar need. “Maeve.” It was more a sob than a call. “If I had known. If only I had known. No, she will not come back. Not now. She knows what I have done. What I have become.”

“But how could you have known?” Eva coaxed. “She will understand. She will come back to you. You are her mother. She loves you.”

“I never told her.” Sturbridge pushed herself uncertainly to her feet, struggling against the dead weight of her soaked robes. She turned toward Eva, words and water streaming from her. “But I thought it would be all right. I thought it would all turn out right. Just like in the Bible, with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham never told Isaac either, you know. Never sat the boy down and explained to him what had to be done. How can you explain something like that? That’s all I was reading those last nights. Must have read the story over a dozen times.”

“Then you knew she was going to die?”

“No,” Sturbridge’s voice was sharp, defensive. “I knew I was going to die. It is the price of being initiated into the secrets of this house. A distant echo of the sacrifice of our Founder and the Seven. It is our devil’s bargain, the contract signed in our own blood. To be transformed, to die, to rise again. But I never realized that when I died... I thought that she...” Sturbridge came up short, the words catching in her throat. Eva’s accusation had found its mark. The cruel point bit flesh, twisted, broke off in the wound.

I knew she was going to die.

Dark wings buffeted about Sturbridge’s face, the first familiar caress of Death, her longtime suitor. Wicked talons tore at her carefully constructed rationalizations. She tried to fend them off—the flurry of blows that neither cut nor bruised but rather seemed to smother. Her ears rang with the cry of carrion birds.

No! I did not kill her. I am no kinslayer. We do not eat our own young.

She must have spoken the words aloud. Eva moved towards her, making calming noises. “Quiet now. Easy. It’s all right. But there is only one way to know if she will understand, if she will forgive you. You must say the words. You must open the Well. You must call her back. You cannot possibly turn back now, knowing that she is this close. How will you live with yourself if you do not at least reach out to her, if you do not at least make the attempt?”

Sturbridge curled in upon herself, doubled over the raw wound piercing her side. Slow and low, like a broken rumbling from the deep places of the earth, the name tore free of her. “Maeve… My child. My beautiful little girl.”

Reluctantly, Sturbridge plunged down into that forbidden place at the very core of her being—the dark well in which she had so carefully drowned all those things she could never hope to face in her waking hours. Desperately she called out, floundering in the unfamiliar waters, casting about for some hint of the comforting image of her child’s face. The fickle and vindictive memory eluded her.

She has to be here. She cannot have escaped me. I have gone to such pains to keep her here, to keep her safe.

A face rose toward her, streaming up through the dark waters. A wave of relief and regret washed over Sturbridge as she picked out the first hint of the familiar—the wreath of billowing hair, dark as a battle raven. The gawky girlish form that hove into view a moment later was no blue and bloated corpse; it was vibrant and straight as a pin. The girl met Sturbridge’s imploring stare without flinching. Sturbridge could see that one of the girl’s eyes was milky white with the witchsight.

Sturbridge’s initial rush of elation died away. The girl’s features, they were not quite right. As she drew closer, the lines of the girl’s face resolved themselves into greater clarity. Sturbridge devoured those lines like a palmist, searching for meaning, understanding.

The tangle of lines drew suddenly into sharp focus. With a cry of denial, Sturbridge shrank back from both the realization and the figure before her—the image that was not her daughter’s—was never her daughter’s. But rather her own.

Angrily she kicked away from herself, twisting, calling Maeve’s name over and over again. Already she feared that it was too late. Decades of rationalization and self-deceit unraveled. Sturbridge found herself grasping desperately at the retreating end of her Ariadne’s thread.

Maeve is not here. Was never here.

She plunged deeper into the dark well of madness, seeking the comforting sands of oblivion in its depths. She had lost her child, her only daughter. And now even the memory was being taken from her. Lost. Gone. As if it had never been.

Sturbridge knelt at the very bottom of the well, frantically sifting through fistfuls of the sands of oblivion, seeking to unearth some shard of memory that had escaped the ravages of time. Some proof. Some vindication.

She tried to dredge up the day of Maeve’s birth—a day that had changed Sturbridge’s life irrevocably. The day that she had first awakened to her own magical nature. Nothing.

She tried to conjure up the images of those last tense hours before Maeve’s death, before she herself died and was reborn into the blasphemous society of the damned. Only more unraveling threads. Nothing Sturbridge could get a grip upon.

Already, some sense of the monstrous truth loomed over her, but she would not turn to face it. A birth that was no birth but her own. A death that was no death but her own. A child that was no true child, but the awakened flame of her own magical self, her alter ego, her avatar. That mystic part of herself that was so brutally snuffed out in her transformation. Ground out beneath the heel of the Stooped One, the Kinslayer.

Sturbridge felt the last shred of the pretense fall away. There was no point in resisting further. Her voice sounded small and lost amid the vastness of the tombs.

“Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem.”

Eva was only dimly aware of Sturbridge’s voice, hollowly reciting the words entrusted to her so long ago by the Light-Bringer—the Words of Fire and of Blood. She had already spun, quick and predatory, intent on catching the first hint of scrabbling bluish fingertips emerging from the rim of the Well.

The waters roiled and sloshed violently over the brink. There was a sudden rush of air and a radiant figure, bright and pale as moonlight, erupted from surface of the brooding waters. Eva staggered back. With a piercing cry, the gleaming figure broke free and rose triumphantly above the well, unfurling wings of purest flame.

For a moment, Eva had the distinct and unsettling perception that the figure above her was rendered entirely in the negative. It did not seem to protrude into space in the same way that a normal person or object would. It had no depth to it, no thickness. Rather, it seemed to be a human-shaped rent in the background of the room. An aperture through which a piercing light shone.

Eva felt the searing heat of that light fall upon her, felt the scrutiny of that all- consuming eye. She screamed and clawed at her face.

In those final moments, staring directly into the deepest recesses of that shining well, that brilliant hole between the worlds, Eva had the most peculiar impression. She thought, if only for an instant, that the entire world she knew—a world unambiguously bounded by somber crypts and chantry walls, by pyramids and hierarchies, by ritual formulae and an unbroken line of victims (their watery eyes bright and round as saucers)— that her carefully ordered world was only a sad, tattered sort of pasteboard backdrop. That only the thinnest and most hastily constructed veneer protected the inhabitants of this world from the ravenous scrutiny of the divine.

The last thing she heard before the light consumed her utterly was Sturbridge purring quietly, monstrously to herself, “My child. My beautiful little girl.”

Appendices to

Volume Three

A Glossary of the Undead Prominent Characters About the Authors

About the Compilation

A Glossary

of the Undead

The Kindred have their own dialect of specialized words and phrases. Vampires have a tremendous capacity for double-talk; what they say often means something other than its literal interpretation, or something in addition to its simple meaning. Certain words have evolved new connotations among the Damned, while others are unique to vampires and their society. The Kindred, set in their ways as they are, are loath to adopt new manners of speech or slang, and one can often determine a rough estimation of a vampire’s age by listening to the individual words she chooses.

Alamut: The hidden fortress that is the traditional heart of the Children of Haqim (Clan Assamite). Thought to be in the mountains of Eastern Turkey.

Amis Noirs, Les: Literally “The Black Friends” but usually translated as “The Friends of the Night,” the Amis Noirs are those members of Clan Lasombra who have achieved enough prestige among the clan to sit in judgment over their fellows. This secretive body acts as something between an old boys network and a deliberative body for the clan (and through it, for some key parts of the Sabbat).

amr: Traditional title for the eldest of sorcerers among the Assamites.

anarch: A Kindred rebel who opposes the tyranny of elders. Anarchs wish to redistribute the wealth and resources of a city equitably among the vampires therein. Anarchs generally operate in Camarilla cities as a rough opposition.

Antediluvian: A member of the dreaded Third Generation, one of the eldest Kindred in existence. Antediluvians are said to have sired all thirteen clans, to be the hidden masters behind the Jyhad, and to be in a semi-slumber from which they will rise during Gehenna.

antitribu: Literally “anti-tribe,” the name for those members of a clan who reject the sectarian allegiance of most members of the clan. The Sabbat includes members tied by blood to most of the Camarilla and independent clans and to distinguish them from their “loyal” brethren, they are called antitribu. There are also a few Lasombra and Tzimisce antitribu who actively oppose the Sabbat.

archbishop: The Sabbat vampire who has domain over a large area, usually a city. Equivalent to the Camarilla term prince.

archon: A vampire in the retinue of a justicar. Archons enforce the traditions of the Camarilla.

Assamite: A member of the Children of Haqim, one of the four so-called independent clans of vampires, or that clan as a whole. Assamites have a reputation as assassins, but are also skilled sorcerers and schemers. Their center of authority is Alamut.

Azhi Dahaka: A (possibly mythical) state of perfect metamorphosis sought by the most zealous fleshcrafters of Clan Tzimisce; to them it is akin to nirvana or apotheosis. Sometimes called the “Fiends’ Holy Grail.”

Beast, the: The inchoate drives and urges that threaten to turn a vampire into a mindless, ravening monster.

blood bond: A mystical power over another individual engendered by partaking of a particular vampire’s blood thrice; accepting blood from a vampire is an acknowledgment of her mastery.

Blood Curse, the: A wasting disease of supernatural origin that claimed the unlives of many Kindred in the middle of the 1990s.

blood hunt: An official death sentence pronounced on one Kindred by the prince or archbishop of the city. Traditionally, the convicted vampire is given the chance to flee, and the one who brings him down gains substantial prestige.

Book of Nod, The: A loose collection of Kindred legendry and history. The Book of Nod chronicles the origin of the Kindred, though it has never been published in its entirety. Fragments of the document and its many partial transcriptions circulate among certain strata of Kindred society. A scholar of these texts and the ancient times they purportedly chronicle is generally called a Noddist.

Brujah: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Brujah are feared for their explosive tempers and great physical might.

Caine: The biblical elder child of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel. According to The Book of Nod and assorted Kindred legendry, God’s curse upon him was the origin of vampirism, and all Kindred descend from him through the Embrace.

Cainite: A vampire; a member of the race of Caine. The Sabbat use this term in lieu of Kindred.

Caitiff: A vampire of unknown clan, or of no clan at all. Caitiff are typically of high generation, where Caine’s blood dilutes too greatly to pass any consistent characteristics.

caliph: Traditional title for the eldest of warriors among the Assamites.

Camarilla, the: A sect of vampires devoted primarily to maintaining the Traditions, particularly that of the Masquerade. It opposes the Sabbat and the anarchs. The recent sect warfare has cost the Camarilla its domain over Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and several smaller cities in between. It retains domain over Baltimore, Chicago, Hartford and Buffalo.

cardinal: A powerful elder in the Sabbat, roughly equivalent to a Camarilla justicar.

chantry: The local sanctum and domain of a city’s Tremere blood-sorcerers, home to their library and thaumaturgic resources. The head of a chantry is called the regent.

Chantry of the Five Boroughs: The Tremere chantry in New York City. The city is predominantly under Sabbat influence, so the chantry (aligned with the Camarilla) is something of a stronghold. Aisling Sturbridge serves as regent.

childe (pl. childer): A vampire created through the Embrace—the childe is the progeny of her sire. This term is often used derogatorily, indicating inexperience.

Children of Haqim: Clan Assamite.

clan: A group of vampires who share common characteristics passed on from sire to childe. There are thirteen known clans, all of which were reputedly founded by Antediluvians.

diablerie: The consumption of another Kindred’s blood, to the point of the victim’s Final Death. Vampires can gain significant power in this way, but it is considered a capital crime among the Kindred of the Camarilla.

du’at: The tripartite council that is the governing body of Alamut and the Children of Haqim. Made up of the caliph, amr and vizier.

ductus (pl. ducti): The leader of a Sabbat pack or coven.

Elysium: A place where vampires may gather and discourse without fear of harm. Elysium is commonly established in opera houses, theaters, museums and other locations of culture.

Embrace, the: The act of transforming a mortal into a vampire. The Embrace requires the vampire to drain her victim and then replace that victim’s blood with a bit of her own.

Family, the: Euphemism either for the vampiric species at large or one of the tight- knit clans (e.g. “He’s in the Family now.”). Used primarily among Followers of Set, Ravnos and Giovanni.

fida’i: A neonate of Clan Assamite still undergoing training in the ways of the clan. fire dance: A ritual and rough celebration in which Sabbat vampires prove their loyalty and bravery by jumping through raging fires. Many Sabbat war efforts and other events begin with fire dances.

fleshcrafting: The vampiric ability and art of reshaping living and undead flesh and bone into a wide variety of shapes. Clan Tzimisce produces most fleshcrafters.

Followers of Set: Clan Setite.

Friends of the Night: The secretive elite of Clan Lasombra; usually called Les Amis Noirs.

Gangrel: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Gangrel are said to be masters of the wilds and some can assume animal forms, including those of bats and wolves.

Gehenna: The supposedly imminent Armageddon when the Antediluvians will rise from their torpor and devour the race of Kindred and the world.

generation: The number of “steps” between a vampire and the mythical Caine; how far descended from the first vampire a given vampire is.

ghoul: A minion created by giving a bit of vampiric vitae to a mortal without draining her of blood first (which would create a vampire instead). Ghouls are fanatically loyal.

Giovanni: One of the four so-called independent clans of vampires, the Giovanni draw many of its members from the descendants of a Venetian trading family of the same name. They are reputed to be necromancers, able to commune with ghosts, and to have made themselves vampires in a way similar to the Tremere. Giovanni in North America have domain over the city of Boston.

Goratrix: One of the original fellows of Tremere (the sorcerer who founded the clan of the same name). Goratrix later rebelled and joined the Sabbat, forming the Tremere antitribu, more formally called House Goratrix.

Haqim: Traditional name of the Antediluvian founder of Clan Assamite.

justicar: A vampire appointed by the secretive inner council of the Camarilla to act as enforcer, arbiter and executioner of the sect. There is only one justicar per Camarilla clan (so seven in total) and this select group can act with virtual impunity to defend the sect. Justicars are assisted by their handpicked archons.

Jyhad, the: The secret, self-destructive war waged between the generations. Elder vampires manipulate their lessers, using them as pawns in a terrible game whose rules defy comprehension. The Antediluvians are said to pull the strings of the Jyhad.

Kindred: The race of vampires as a whole, or a single vampire. Sabbat vampires scorn the term.

kine: A term for mortals, largely contemptuous. The phrase “Kindred and kine” refers to the world at large; everything.

koldun: One of the rare (and feared) blood sorcerers of Clan Tzimisce.

Lasombra: One of the two founding clans of the Sabbat. The Lasombra are political schemers extraordinaire and feared for their characteristic powers to summon up darkness— both immaterial and fatally solid—and even to enter a realm of shadow called the Abyss. The Lasombra are said to have killed their Antediluvian as part of the founding of the Sabbat.

Lupine: A werewolf. These savage beasts are said to hate Kindred and to hunt them for sport. Thought to be found only in the deepest wilderness.

Malkavian: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. Malkavians are said to all be mad, but are also known as seers and prophets.

Masquerade, the: The tradition of hiding the existence of vampires from mortals. Designed to protect the Kindred from destruction at the hands of mankind, the Masquerade

was adopted after the Inquisition claimed many Kindred unlives. The Camarilla enforces the Masquerade on penalty of destruction.

Methuselah: A vampire who has existed for a millennium or more; an elder who no longer exists among the greater whole of Kindred society. Methuselahs are rumored to hail from the Fourth and Fifth Generations and are nearly as feared as the Antediluvians. necromancy: The blood sorcery practiced by members of Clan Giovanni, it concerns

itself with binding ghosts and other unhealthy spirits. Properly called nigromancy.

neonate: A young vampire, recently Embraced.

Nod: The mythical land east of Eden into the wilds of which Caine was cast by Adam and God after the murder of Abel, and where he later built Enoch, the First City. A vampiric scholar of those hoary times is termed a Noddist.

nomad: A Sabbat vampire who (along with her pack) travels constantly in her duties to the sect.

Nosferatu: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Nosferatu are cursed with terrible ugliness that manifests immediately after the Embrace. They are known as hoarders of information and for their ability to vanish from sight.

pontifex: A title of high rank among the Tremere, it is usually given to vampires who act on behalf of the clan elders in Vienna rather than for the sake of their own chantry.

primogen: The vampire leaders in a Camarilla city; its ruling body of elders, typically composed of one member from each clan present in a city.

prince: A vampire who has claimed a given expanse of domain as her own, particularly a city, and supports that claim against all others. The term can refer to a Kindred of either sex and is mostly used by the Camarilla. The Sabbat uses the term archbishop.

rafiq: A full-fledged member of Clan Assamite, who has successfully undergone training as a fida’i; literally, “comrade.” Rafiq is most often used to refer to members of the warrior caste of the clan.

Ravnos: One of the four so-called independent clans of vampires, the Ravnos hail from India and often feed from Gypsies and other wanderers. They are thought of as thieves by other Kindred and are said to be able to summon up illusions.

regent: The leader of a chantry of Clan Tremere. The regent is often the most potent thaumaturge in the chantry, but not always. Especially large chantries—like the Chantry of the Five Boroughs, in New York—may have an assistant regent (“regent secundus”) and other ranked officials.

Sabbat, the: A sect of vampires that rejects humanity, embracing their monstrous natures. The Sabbat is often bestial and violent, preferring to lord over mortals rather than hide from them, and is founded on opposing the machinations of the Antediluvians. With the recent warfare, the Sabbat has gained domain over Atlanta and Washington, D.C., as well as holding the cities of Miami, Detroit, Montreal and most of New York City.

SchreckNET: The private computer network certain members of Clan Nosferatu use to communicate with one another.

sect: A group of Kindred arguably united under a common philosophy. The two most widely known sects currently populating the night are the Camarilla and the Sabbat. The anarch movement is not organized enough to form a sect, per se.

Setite: A member of the Followers of Set, one of the four so-called independent clans of vampires, or that clan as a whole. Setites reject the Caine story and claim descent from the Egyptian god whose name they take. They worship him with religious fervor and are mistrusted by most Kindred.

sheriff: In Camarilla cities, a vampire empowered by the prince to enforce the traditions and edicts of the sect—often to the point of destroying offenders.

shilmulo: A term used among vampires of Clan Ravnos to refer to themselves. Used interchangeably with undead, Kindred and vampire.

sire: A vampire’s “parent”; the Kindred who created her.

szlachta: A fleshcrafted ghoul of a Tzimisce vampire. Szlachta appear patently inhuman or animalistic thanks to their patron’s ability to reshape bone, skin and muscle. Szlachta most often serve as guards or soldiers for Tzimisce lords.

templar: A Sabbat vampire assigned to enforce the will of an archbishop or cardinal. Equivalent to a Camarilla archon.

thaumaturgy: Literally, “the making of miracles”; the form of blood sorcery practiced by Clan Tremere. It is widely recognized as the most systematic and effective form of vampiric magic, thus accounting for Clan Tremere’s power among the undead.

Toreador: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Toreador are sophisticated and depraved, often patrons of the arts. They are known for their inhuman beauty and refinement.

Tremere: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Tremere are dreaded as blood sorcerers and organize themselves into chantries, answering to the father house of their clan in Vienna. The Tremere were once mortal sorcerers and became undead through the ritual consumption of vampires of Clan Tzimisce and the now-vanished Clan Salubri. The Tzimisce hate them still.

Tzimisce: One of the two founding clans of the Sabbat. The Tzimisce are perhaps the most feared of all vampires for their utter rejection of humanity and their dreaded ability to mold living and undead flesh like others would clay. Like the Lasombra, the Tzimisce are said to have killed their Antediluvian as part of the founding of the Sabbat.

Vaulderie: The ritual bond between members of a Sabbat pack that makes them immune to the blood bond of elders.

Ventrue: One of the seven clans of the Camarilla. The Ventrue are the traditional rulers of the sect, and are feared for their powers of the mind.

Characters

of Note

The Clan Novel Saga covers a great deal of ground and includes a large cast of characters. Following are some of those who make notable appearances in volume two.

Aaron Light-Bringer: Clan Tremere. A member of the Chantry of Five Boroughs, Aaron guided the Assamite Anwar into the sanctum of Johnston Foley, where the regent was assassinated. Aaron was also destroyed at Anwar’s hands.

al-Ashrad: The current preeminent blood sorcerer (or amr) of Clan Assamite. He is credited with lifting the blood curse the Tremere placed on his clan long ago.

Anatole: Clan Malkavian. Known as the Prophet of Gehenna, Anatole is a feared and respected member of his clan. Almost a thousand years old, he has served as a priest and prophet at different times across the centuries. He is obsessed with uncovering the Antediluvians, and has traveled to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Anwar: Clan Assamite. A warrior and assassin of the clan, seeking to avenge the insult of a blood curse Clan Tremere placed on Clan Assamite during the Renaissance. Currently operating in New York City, Anwar assassinated the Tremere Johnston Foley with the assistance of the Tremere Aaron Light-Bringer, whom he also murdered.

Ash, Victoria: Clan Toreador. A dilettante, socialite, schemer and dabbler in the music scene, Victoria Ash has a reputation as a skilled member of her clan. Until recently a primogen of Atlanta, she has a long history, including a liaison with Prince Alexander Garlotte of Baltimore. She organized a ball for the solstice night in Atlanta, one interrupted by the Sabbat assault on the city. Victoria was captured and tortured by the Tzimisce Elford, but escaped to Baltimore, where she had a brief liaison with Jan Pieterzoon.

Bat Qol: Clan Setite. An agent of Hesha Ruhadze, Bat Qol traveled to Atlanta with his fellow Orthese in order to track down the missing Erich Vegel. Instead they freed Victoria Ash from the torturer Elford.

Bell, Theo: Clan Brujah. An archon working under Justicar Jaroslav Pascek. He has joined the war council in Baltimore.

Benison Hodge, J.: Clan Malkavian. The fallen Camarilla Prince of Atlanta, Benison had imposed a harsh rule on the city in the wake of the Blood Curse, taking desperate measures to repress the anarch movement. He survived solstice night but has not been seen since he took refuge in a secondary haven in suburban Atlanta.

Borges: Clan Lasombra. The Archbishop of Miami, Borges is one of the most preeminent Sabbat in the United States. He is one of the driving forces behind the Sabbat assault on Camarilla assets along the Eastern Seaboard.

Calebros: Clan Nosferatu. A well-respected member of his clan, Calebros sits at the center of a large network of clanmates, informants and allies. He is a careful plotter who— among his other schemes—wishes to extract vengeance on whomever was responsible for the destruction in 1997 of the justicar of his clan, Petrodon. To do so, he engineered the kidnapping of Benito Giovanni.

Chin, Maria: Clan Tremere. Regent of the Washington, D.C. chantry, she made the strategic decision to have her clanmates fall back to their chantry rather than fight the Sabbat invaders. The chantry remains the only Camarilla enclave in Washington, but Chin herself was assassinated by the Assamite Parmenides while attending the Camarilla council in Baltimore.

Colchester, Marston: Clan Nosferatu. The ranking Nosferatu in Baltimore, Colchester is a valuable ally of Prince Garlotte, who has had him spying on Victoria Ash since she arrived in Baltimore. Little does the prince know that Colchester also reports to his clanmate Calebros.

Dimitros, Elizabeth: Clan Setite. A restorer and historian of art, Elizabeth Dimitros was brought into the entourage of Hesha Ruhadze to help him find the Eye of Hazimel. She traveled with him to Maryland, Calcutta and Upstate New York, all the while growing both entranced and repulsed by the Setite. After she rebelled against him, Hesha tracked her to her home in Brooklyn, Embraced her and left her chained to face the sunrise.

Dorfman, Peter: Clan Tremere. Pontifex in that clan and a resident of Washington,

D.C. He was away during the assault.

Elford: Clan Tzimisce. A fiendish torturer and crafter of flesh, he worked his arts on the captured Victoria Ash, twisting her flesh and imposing terrible pain. His depredations only ended when the agents of Hesha Ruhadze (searching for Erich Vegel) ambushed him and freed Victoria.

Emmett: Clan Nosferatu. Based out of New York City, Emmett is an agent of Calebros and participated in the abduction of Benito Giovanni.

Fatima al-Faqadi: Clan Assamite. An elder and feared warrior, Fatima al-Faqadi is among those in her clan who most ardently marry worship of Haqim (the clan founder) and Muslim faith. She has a longstanding (if difficult) friendship with the Lasombra antitribu Lucita. She has recently faced two attacks from maddened members of her own clan.

Fin: Clan Ventrue. Youngest childe of Prince Garlotte of Baltimore.

FitzGerald, Eva: Clan Tremere. A novice at the Chantry of the Five Boroughs in New York City seen as the personal protégée of Regent Aisling Sturbridge.

Foley, Johnston: Clan Tremere. Regent secundus of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs in New York City. A powerful thaumaturge known for his ability to train novices and his skill at language, he was assassinated by the Assamite Anwar while performing a complex ritual having to do with the Eye of Hazimel. He left behind scrawled notes and a ruined ritual space.

Gainesmil, Robert: Clan Toreador. Primogen of that clan in Baltimore, Gainesmil has participated in the defense of the city. He is currently hosting Victoria Ash in his home.

Garlotte, Alexander: Clan Ventrue. Longstanding Prince of Baltimore, Maryland. Garlotte has had a liaison with Victoria Ash of Clan Toreador and still has strong feelings for the undead beauty. With the fall of Atlanta and Washington, his city is the Camarilla’s last bastion in the South.

The General: Clan Malkavian. Hailing from the Antebellum South, the General recently rose from long slumber beneath the earth and had become a de facto member of the primogen of Atlanta. He foresaw the attack on Atlanta.

Giovanni, Benito: Clan Giovanni. A high-ranking member of his clan in the New World, Benito has substantial influence in Boston and has overseen relations with high- ranking Camarilla vampires. In 1997, he was involved in the murder of Nosferatu Justicar Petrodon and has recently been kidnapped by members of that clan.

Giovanni, Francis “Frankie Gee”: Clan Giovanni. A boss in the parts of the New York City Mafia under the influence of the Giovanni and the superior of Chas Giovanni Tello. He has assigned Chas to find Benito Giovanni, who owed Frankie several debts.

Giovanni, Isabel: Clan Giovanni. An elder of the clan, she originated in its traditional Venetian homeland and is a feared necromancer who acts at the behest of her eldest cousins. She has come to the New World to oversee negotiations with Camarilla and Sabbat as to the fate of Giovanni-held Boston in the current sect war and to investigate the disappearance of her clansman Benito Giovanni. She is also pursuing leads about the fate of members of the “old clan”—the ancient race of vampires the Giovanni necromancers usurped during the Renaissance. Evidence is mounting that some of these may be resurfacing and seeking vengeance.

Giovanni Tello, Charles “Chas”: Clan Giovanni. A capo in the parts of the New York City Mafia under the influence of the Giovanni. Hardly a mover and shaker in Kindred affairs on a global scale, Chas is nevertheless known for getting things done. He has been assigned to assist Isabel Giovanni in her activities in the New World and to locate Benito Giovanni.

Goldwin, Isaac : Clan Ventrue. The childe of Prince Garlotte of Baltimore, Isaac serves his sire as sheriff.

Hannah: Clan Tremere. The once-regent of the Atlanta chantry of Clan Tremere and their representative on the city’s council of primogen, she was destroyed by Sascha Vykos during the assault on Atlanta. Before her destruction, she instructed the Toreador Leopold to create a perfect stone replica of her.

Hardestadt: Clan Ventrue. One of the founders of the Camarilla and the sire of Jan Pieterzoon, this elder is said to be one of the most influential vampires in Europe.

Hazimel: Clan Ravnos. One of the ancient Methuselahs of the clan, Hazimel’s existence is more myth than confirmed reality. He is said to have (at some point) lost one of his eyes, which has since become a potent artifact of some sort. The Eye of Hazimel resurfaced in the midst of the assault on Atlanta.

Don Ibrahim: Clan Lasombra. Once a Muslim scholar in Moorish Spain, Ibrahim is now an elder Lasombra and confidant of sorts of Cardinal Monçada.

Jeremiah: Clan Nosferatu. An agent of Calebros.

Kettridge, Jordan: Mortal. An archeologist and adventurer, Kettridge has gained some inkling into the existence of the undead and has crossed swords with Hesha Ruhadze and Erich Vegel. He briefly had hold of the Eye of Hazimel and tried to free Elizabeth Dimitros from Hesha Ruhadze’s grasp.

Leopold: Clan Toreador. A neonate among the Kindred of Atlanta, Leopold survived the assault on the city only by taking the Eye of Hazimel from the dying Erich Vegel. Under its sway he began the creation of a horrific masterwork of flesh and stone in the Adirondack Mountains, and destroyed a Gangrel war band sent again him. Thanks to the interference of Nickolai, Jordan Kettridge and others, however, he has lost the Eye to Hesha Ruhadze.

Lindberg, Janet: Mortal. An agent of Hesha Ruhadze, Lindberg is an information and communications specialist.

Lladislas: Clan Brujah. The prince of Buffalo, New York.

Lucita of Aragon: Lasombra antitribu. The childe of Cardinal Monçada, Lucita has spent a millennium opposing her sire’s machinations. She is a highly trained warrior and often acts as an assassin for hire among the undead. She has a longstanding (if difficult) friendship with the Assamite Fatima al-Faqadi. She has been hired by Jan Pieterzoon and at least one other client to assassinate select Sabbat targets, including an archbishop.

Lucius: Clan Unknown. A mysterious informant of Sascha Vykos’s within the Camarilla, “Lucius” seems to have a love-hate relationship with the Tzimisce fiend.

MacEllen, Roger: Clan Lasombra. A pack ductus among the militant nomads of the Sabbat.

Michaela: Clan Ventrue. Michaela claims the title of Prince of New York but in reality is only the preeminent member of a small band of Camarilla Kindred who have survived in the masses of Manhattan despite the power of the Sabbat.

Miles, Pauline: Mortal. An agent of Hesha Ruhadze, Miles has recently stepped in to replace Ron Thompson as head of security for the Setite.

Monçada, Ambrosio Luis: Clan Lasombra. The Cardinal of Madrid and one of the most prominent Sabbat the world over, the cardinal has sent his ally Sascha Vykos to represent his interests in the campaign against Camarilla assets in the eastern United States. Monçada, who affects the style of a catholic prelate, is the sire of the antitribu Lucita, for whom he is said to have an unhealthy lust.

Nickolai: Tremere antitribu. A thaumaturge and member of the Sabbat, Nickolai is a long-standing schemer, notably using the vampire Benito Giovanni in his plans. The antitribu has recently suffered serious setbacks and Nickolai fears that he is the last of the line, which he calls “House Goratrix.”

Orthese: Clan Setite. An agent of Hesha Ruhadze, Orthese traveled to Atlanta with his fellow Bat Qol in order to track down the missing Erich Vegel. Instead they freed Victoria Ash from the torturer Elford.

Parmenides: Clan Assamite. A loyal Child of Haqim, Parmenides received the unsavory task of serving as a delegate of Alamut to the Sabbat in general and Sascha Vykos in particular. There he fell under Vykos’s cruel sway and has become masochistically enraptured to the Tzimisce. Parmenides’ body has been reshaped to resemble that of Ravenna, a ghoul of Vykos’s.

Pieterzoon, Jan: Clan Ventrue. A respected elder of the Camarilla with holdings in the Netherlands, Pieterzoon is the childe of the vampire Hardestadt, one of the founders of the sect. He has arrived in Baltimore to coordinate the Camarilla efforts to fight back against the Sabbat. There he has had a liaison with Victoria Ash, one that did not end well.

de Polonia, Francisco Domingo: Clan Lasombra. The Archbishop of New York, Polonia is considered the most preeminent Sabbat in the United States. He leads the effort to spread Sabbat domain on the East Coast, along with Archbishop Borges of Miami and Archbishop Sascha Vykos (who represents Cardinal Monçada).

Ramona Tanner-Childe: Clan Gangrel. A young vampire originally from the barrios of greater Los Angeles who has relocated to New York City. As a mortal her name was Pilar Ramona Salvador. She survived the raid on Leopold’s horrific cave in Upstate New York, but those she cared for did not.

Ravana, Khalil: Clan Ravnos. A Bengali vampire considered by most to be of little import. Thought of as thief and guttersnipe among the undead. Years ago, he fell under the sway of an elder of his clan who sleeps under Calcutta. He recently crossed paths with Hesha Ruhadze and is now in the United States.

Rolph: Clan Nosferatu. An agent of Calebros operating in Atlanta.

Ruhadze, Hesha: Clan Setite. A respected Follower of Set, Hesha is a specialist in the acquisition of ancient artifacts and has a substantial network in such circles. He is assisted by a cadre of ghouls and clanmates, whom he treats with a careful mix of pragmatism and care. This summer has seen the death of two valuable aids, Erich Vegel and Ron Thompson.

Rutherford, Amaryllis: Mortal. One of the owners and operators of Rutherford House antiquities, who employ Elizabeth Dimitros and number Hesha Ruhadze among their clientele.

Sturbridge, Aisling: Clan Tremere. The regent of the Chantry of the Five Boroughs in New York City, Sturbridge has the unhappy task of leading a group of vampires aligned with the Camarilla in a city under Sabbat influence.

Talley: Clan Lasombra. Templar in the Sabbat. Called “the Hound” for his tenacity, Talley is a shadow warrior of great skill and perseverance. Cardinal Monçada has tasked him with thwarting Lucita’s assassination attempt on the Sabbat archbishops of North America.

Thompson, Ron: Mortal. A ghoul of Hesha Ruhadze and once the chief of his security detail, Thompson was a retired policeman who looked forward to becoming a full-fledged Setite. Elizabeth Dimitros’s fate changed his mind and he chose death over immortality.

Vegel, Erich: Clan Setite. Formerly the principle second of Hesha Ruhadze, Vegel had contacts among the Nosferatu, including Rolph, who brought him the Eye of Hazimel during the solstice ball. Vegel was seriously injured during the subsequent assault and finally destroyed by a desperate Leopold.

Vitel, Marcus: Clan Ventrue. The former Prince of Washington, D.C., Vitel now shelters in Baltimore and seeks revenge.

Vykos, Sascha: Clan Tzimisce. A feared elder of the Sabbat, and the newly installed Archbishop of Washington, D.C., Vykos has changed appearance (and gender) many times over the course of her (or its) millennial existence. She is thought to be tied to Cardinal Monçada and has served as a Priscus, an advisor to the Regent of the Sabbat herself.

Washington, Cassandra “Cass”: Clan Nosferatu. A New York area Nosferatu affiliated with Calebros.

Xaviar: Clan Gangrel. The justicar of his clan and one of the most feared warriors in the Camarilla. He led the Gangrel assault on Leopold’s cave of horrors, and only survived thanks to Ramona Tanner-Childe.