Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  All thoughts of the Setite vanished from Rolph’s mind when the shouting started.

  “Do you see the bastard up there?” Prince Benison was yelling at a startled, cowering Toreador neonate.

  Conflicting tides of Kindred swirled in and out of the main gallery, some rushing to see what was happening, others, deciding they didn’t care to be so close to the enraged prince, hastily retreating. Benison’s demands and curses rose above the commotion every few seconds. Then, as if by magic, the throng melted away and there, standing practically alone amidst the statuary and opaque glass dividers, were Benison and Julius.

  “Behind you, Prince,” Julius said perfectly calmly. He wore two sabers strapped to his back. Benison whirled to face the archon.

  As the two traded threats, Rolph briefly wondered if perhaps Julius had cut some sort of deal with the Anarchs—get rid of Benison and everything goes back to law and order; no more threat to the Masquerade. Julius would certainly favor Thelonious, his clansman, over Benison as prince. But Thelonious was too active in the revolt. There would have to be a compromise candidate—perhaps Benjamin the Ventrue, or someone else of stature, someone like…Victoria.

  Rolph craned his neck about in his perch behind the vent covering. He tried to spy Victoria amongst the crowd, and Thelonious. Rolph wanted to see what their reactions were to the rapidly escalating conflict.

  “Elysium be damned, I will punish your insufferable attitude!” Benison snarled with determination and twisted pleasure. Julius drew one of his twin blades—

  And darkness covered the gallery.

  Not a natural darkness. Not a darkness that penetrated the shadows of Rolph’s hiding place. The inky blackness started a few feet below the ceiling and seemed to cover most of the gallery down to the floor.

  “Lasombra!” someone below wailed in alarm.

  That was no leap of intellect for anyone who had experienced the smothering shadow magic of that clan before, but even Rolph was amazed by the sheer scope of the blackness that descended upon the gallery. He could imagine the oppressive terror that must be crushing the Kindred unfortunate enough to be trapped within. Instinctively, he pressed himself farther back into the duct work.

  Then a disturbing thought struck him: He should help.

  But that would involve going down there, among the suffocating shadows. And now, he saw with growing alarm, there were Sabbat war ghouls wading into the fragmenting sea of darkness. As a result, not only were the shadows breaking apart, but Kindred as well, limb from limb, as if the war-ghoul monstrosities were ransacking a poultry plant and enjoying a giant game of ‘make a wish’.

  War ghouls? What kind of raid is this? Much more of one than he’d anticipated, apparently. And much more of one than he was going to be caught in the middle of. Go down there? He slapped himself on the face to banish the suicidal thought. Not bloody likely! Getting himself ripped apart, he reasoned, wasn’t going to do anybody any good, least of all himself.

  As if he needed more convincing, as the sea of darkness split into eddies that consumed individual Kindred, the gallery’s windows shattered. Fist-sized orbs of flesh landed around the room, then exploded. Blood and pulpy body matter sprayed everywhere. The effect was very much like fishermen chumming the water. Several Kindred who had been holding their own lost it, went berserk, frenzied. Covered in blood and no longer able to control terror augmented by insatiable hunger, they pounced on whomever was closest, friend or foe.

  The war ghouls took full advantage of the additional havoc to claim more victims. Many of Atlanta’s Kindred were already down, although a few scattered melees lingered on. Benison and Julius, back to back instead of at each other’s throats, seemed to be making a stand among the writhing and whip-like tentacles of shadow. Some other fool got himself launched through one of the few remaining intact windows—a four-story plunge to the street below; that was going to hurt.

  Slowly, as if he could possibly draw someone’s attention from the slaughter below, Rolph inched back down the ventilation duct. He’d seen enough. More than enough.

  Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 7:21 PM

  A subterranean grotto

  New York City, New York

  Calebros sat quietly at his desk. With his tongue he prodded and probed a canker sore that had formed on the inside of his lip where his sharp, misaligned teeth rubbed. Not even the constant, jarring pain distracted him from the report he read over and over again.

  The Prophet of Gehenna. In New York.

  Calebros could not quite put his finger on what bothered him so much about Anatole’s presence. Perhaps what pressed down upon the unraveler of secrets was merely the weight of history. And of the future.

  Saturday, 28 June 1997, 1:40 AM

  Harmony Highrise

  Chicago, Illinois

  Benito watched from the shadows as ‘art happened’. He didn’t want to distract the artist, oh-so-talented Pennington. But neither could the Giovanni intermediary stay away. Thought of the favors that the artist’s subject would owe made Benito practically giddy. What was the worth of bilking some viscount, or expediting the shipment of stolen art to aging Nazi refugees in Argentina, when compared to the indebtedness of a justicar? Amidst the dust of dark clay and marble, something sweet was in the air, like the smell of money, or of blood.

  The apartment studio was sparsely furnished, completely utilitarian, every possible space given over to the calling of the artist. How very bohemian, Benito thought.

  The justicar, in all his splendorous bulk and foulness, sat perfectly content. The work was progressing more smoothly now that Benito had given the photograph to Pennington. The first few attempts had been maddening. Each time, the sculptor had worked for several nights—until Petrodon had balked at some detail that was not to his liking: the nose was too big, the eyes were uneven…. Never mind that, if anything, Pennington was doing the Nosferatu a kindness. But Petrodon would not be placated, and they were forced to begin the work anew. Time after time after time.

  Then Benito’s mysterious partner had quietly stepped in. Nickolai. The name was all Benito knew for sure. He suspected the man to be a warlock, but it made little difference; he’d suggested this scheme to Benito and charged a steep finder’s fee, but not beyond reason. Several nights ago, Nickolai had provided the photograph—a picture of Petrodon before his change. It depicted a handsome and vainglorious man. One of those two qualities had accompanied him into unlife.

  And suddenly Justicar Petrodon had been completely satisfied, heaping effusive praise upon Pennington. Never mind that the evolving bust bore a more striking resemblance to the photograph propped by the sculptor’s table than to the hulking monstrosity a dozen feet away. Petrodon could not have been more pleased. And the customer is always right, Benito thought. Let the justicar believe whatever he wanted to believe, as long as he paid up when the price came due.

  “It seems to be going well,” came the quiet voice behind Benito’s shoulder. He started, and was relieved to see it was Nickolai, come unexpectedly. “I’m glad you are here tonight, Benito,” Nickolai murmured. The words were innocent enough, but Benito did not care for the mocking, slightly ominous tone.

  And then horror and chaos erupted. Within just a few minutes, the smell of blood truly was in the air.

  Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 10:15 PM

  The Sunken Cathedral

  Cranberry Bogs, Massachusetts

  Benito Giovanni lay still on the hard wooden pallet that was the only furnishing in his cell. His shirt was open at the collar, tie loosened, his shoes placed tidily together on the bare stone floor. His eyes were closed.

  Emmett peered through the spy hole. He had learned much about his captive and his mannerisms over a week of observation. He wished he’d kept count of how many times Benito had tried to glance at the watch that had been removed from his wrist. That was exactly the obsessive sort of detail, Emmett thought, that Calebros would have noted. He would have charted the exact routes of Benito’s pacing du
ring his waking hours. Then Calebros would have discerned some pattern, real or imaginary, and spent weeks—or months—pouring through some musty tome, convinced that the prisoner’s wanderings were part of an elaborate necromantic ritual, and searching for a way to counteract the infernal spell.

  Not Emmett. For all of Calebros’s strengths, the elder of the two broodmates lacked a sense of perspective, of relevance. Benito’s reflexive habit of glancing at his wristwatch was merely a curiosity. Other facts were more telling. The Giovanni had been snatched from his Boston office nine nights ago and kept in isolation since. Even over that short period, Emmett had noticed Benito beginning to rise later in the evening. The difference was gradual, only a matter of minutes at this point. It was a physiological response, an attempt on the part of Benito’s body, rather than a conscious decision on his part, to conserve energy—or blood. Benito had not been seriously injured during his capture, but he had not been allowed to feed since, and even the most minimal activity, over time, would exhaust whatever blood resided within his undead body.

  The reduced activity might also be a psychological response, a coping mechanism. Captives, especially those kept in solitary confinement for extended periods, often developed sleeping disorders, losing the ability to rest altogether or, as in Benito’s case, resting for increasingly prolonged amounts of time. The gradual nature of the increase in Benito’s hour of rising, however, suggested that he had not yet suffered severe psychological trauma.

  With time, of course, that would change.

  Emmett had a certain amount of experience with observing prisoners, and with interrogation. He would know when the time was right for Benito to answer questions. With the proper amount of blood deprivation, it was generally not necessary to torture a Kindred extensively, and Benito did not strike Emmett as the type to possess any great loyalty to his conspirators. The Giovanni would talk.

  Silently, Emmett slid the cover back over the spy hole.

  “Are you ready?” Abbot Pierce asked in a near-whisper.

  “What?” Emmett asked in return. He had heard perfectly well, but after a week, he’d grown irritated with the abbot’s soft-spoken yet thinly veiled impatience.

  “Are you ready to question him?”

  Pierce wore a heavy robe, so heavy on his slight frame, in fact, that Emmett constantly expected him to collapse under the weight of the fabric. Judging by the abbot’s few visible features—skeletal wrists and hands protruding from the loose sleeves, gaunt face set deep within the overhanging hood—Emmett imagined his clansmate to be little more than a walking coat-rack beneath the robe.

  “Not yet,” Emmett said, stepping past his host and beginning down the corridor.

  Pierce fell in step behind him. “You must take him away from here. He endangers the cathedral.”

  Emmett gestured dismissively. “Moving him while things are so hot would endanger you more.”

  “Clan Giovanni is the power to be reckoned with this close to Boston—not your Camarilla.”

  “You mean…our Camarilla, of course,” Emmett said meaningfully, then continued, “and the Giovanni would have found us out already if they were going to.”

  “Then you weren’t certain that no one was following you when you brought him here.” Pierce’s insistent whisper struck a peevish tone with Emmett.

  “Nobody was in a hot-rod on our tails shooting at us, if that’s what you mean, but the Giovanni have their ways—I don’t know what they are, but they have them. Did I want to get old Benito a little farther from the city just to be on the safe side? Hell yes. I’m sorry if that inconveniences your little cult—”

  “We are not a cult,” Pierce snapped. “We are a spiritual collective, like-minded individuals gathered together to—

  “Yeah, yeah. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Save it for the promotional video.” Emmett quickened his pace and drew ahead of the abbot. Pierce and the other ‘monks’ grated on Emmett’s nerves. Sure there was a chance that by bringing Benito here someone might find out about the collection of stone-lined tunnels and chambers they’d built beneath the bogs and then pumped out, and which they now somewhat grandiosely referred to as a ‘cathedral’. But sometimes risks were unavoidable. Sometimes, especially in a matter as important as this, one had to be willing to take one for the clan. Besides that, Emmett was put off by the religious posturing that Pierce and his followers affected—like their spiritual whacking-off was all that mattered, and everybody else could—or would—go to hell.

  “You know,” Emmett said over his shoulder, “a real cathedral wouldn’t have an abbot. A cathedral is the seat of a bishopric. You should be a bishop. There. I just gave you a promotion. That should make up for your trouble.”

  “Calebros will hear of your obstreperousness,” Pierce said, actually raising his voice a decibel or two.

  “I bet he will. He hears about everything sooner or later,” Emmett said. “And, oh, he’ll be real surprised too.”

  Sunday, 4 July 1999, 11:24 PM

  Subway tunnel 147, Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  The repairs were still unfinished. They would remain so for the foreseeable future. The union refused to allow any of its laborers to continue the job, although the renovations were only a few weeks from completion.

  Six workers. All that was found were their skeletons, relatively intact, the bones picked clean by rats.

  Jeremiah made his way along the defunct metal umbilical of this aborted fetus. The third rail was dead. Purely from habit, he listened for trains that were not coming. Although he had fed earlier in the evening, Jeremiah was cold. The cement and unfinished tile seemed to draw the warmth from him. He imagined them leaching the very blood through his pores and drinking deeply of him. Had the tunnel workers felt that? he wondered. Had they felt the first nibbles of the rats? The first hundred bites, the first thousand?

  Subway officials had speculated that the six workers had been overcome by some toxic gas mysteriously released into the tunnel. Jeremiah, noting the growing number of hungry eyes tracking his every move, questioned the accuracy of that hypothesis. But rats, even a large number, would never attack several strong, active, full-grown men. Would they? The victims were not sickly children. The workers must have been incapacitated in some manner. Jeremiah nudged an abandoned wrench with his foot. Had one of the workers tried to ward off the vermin before being overwhelmed? The Nosferatu spied an unused flare in the dust. He picked it up, inspected it, then tucked it into the canvas sack he was never without.

  The six workers were merely a memory, but the rats were still very much in evidence. Municipal exterminators be damned. The rodents had returned like a conquering army after the fumigation. They had feasted on their poisoned brethren, whose tiny bones now littered the ground from which the mortal remains had been removed. Now the scavengers—hunters?—scuttled among the shadows. Watching through red eyes.

  Jeremiah conducted his investigation, but he kept moving. He had the feeling that if he stopped for more than a few seconds at a time, he would be mistaken for carrion—or that he might become it, if he wasn’t already. After all, what was he, if not a walking corpse? Only motion separated him from the more normal fare of the rats.

  Jeremiah quickened his pace ever so slightly. He forced himself to continue looking for clues to what had happened. Was it his imagination, he wondered, or were the red eyes—growing ever more numerous—yielding less and less ground to him? The berth they granted him was not so wide as it had been. He could make out more of their forms—curved backs with bristling fur, distended bellies gorged on flesh. But there had only been six workers, and the attack had occurred almost two weeks ago. What else could these creatures be feasting upon?

  Pausing in his trek, Jeremiah met the eyes of one of the encroaching horde rising like floodwaters. He was struck by the hostility in that gaze as he peered into the psyche of the creature. Their eyes locked, and an image formed behind the red eyes: a craggy expanse of concrete, its surfac
e cracked and rough. More cracks formed—created by a rugged, splotchy vegetation growing at a speed reminiscent of time-lapse photography. The concrete bulged in areas, cracked, broke apart. Rats stormed in, thousands of them, and devoured the stalks. The strange plants…not plants, Jeremiah realized, but pustules of—

  Flesh.

  Jeremiah took a step back, jolted from the image and facing again the gathering swarm of rats. Flesh. Had the word formed in his mind or the rat’s?

  Flesh.

  He heard it again. Or felt it. Like an echoing whisper spreading through the tunnel. Countless red eyes glared at him angrily, hungrily. He could feel the gazes boring into him, attempting to make contact as he just had with one of their number—attempting to gain control.

  Jeremiah turned to continue down the tunnel, but found his way blocked. The circle had closed around him. A few of the snarling rats refused to yield to his advance. They crept closer. More were filling in beyond, filling the tunnel.

  “Away!” Jeremiah barked with a threatening gesture. The throng wavered but did not break. He gestured again, “Away!”, but to less effect. He felt a tremor of fear take hold of his hand. A different, quite distinct tremor rippled through the tunnel and the rats like a wave of chittering laughter.

  Propelled by rising terror, Jeremiah snatched the flare from his canvas sack. In one motion, he ignited the device and flung it at the closest rats. They recoiled from the flash, but, in the next instant, their filth-encrusted fur was ablaze. They were packed so tightly that the panicked gyrations of the burning rodents carried the flames to those all around them. A piercing screech almost knocked Jeremiah to the ground. The sound was a single cry, a collective scream of rage and pain.