Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  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. She gave no indication of seeing him, or of attributing the accident to anything but her own carelessness. Jeremiah watched Anatole as well. The Prophet was pacing, wandering aimlessly about the room. He seemed to take no notice of Jeremiah. The Nosferatu was still nothing more than one voice among many, both a guide and a follower.

  Victoria continued her rummaging, though her mind was not focused upon the clay at her fingertips—nor the shattered bozzetto at her feet. She was perturbed, obviously unused to the wisdom of the Prophet, he who spoke in his own time and his own way. The Toreador was accustomed to having her suitors cater to her every whim, yet this time she was the suitor, who would have truth as her bride. The prospective bride, however, was shy and elusive.

  After sixteen and one-half minutes of this forced silence—Jeremiah, when not recording dialogue, which itself was rare when Anatole was alone, had taken to timing such apparent minutiae as the Prophet’s sandal rubbings and periods of silence—Victoria resumed her hectoring of Anatole. “You are not making anything clearer,” she grumbled at one point.

  Anatole merely shook his head, almost mockingly, and then he confounded her. “You have already found what you need. At least we did.”

  Jeremiah cocked his head. The words had meaning for him, if not for Victoria. The smashed bozzetto, the grotesque figure… You have already found what you need.

  The Prophet was not done. “And as for the sculpture, it is indeed important, for the young wizard’s sire is within the clay.” 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.

  Thursday, 2 September 1999, 2:37 AM

  Interstate 85 Northbound

  Greensboro, North Carolina

  The young wizard’s sire is in the stone. The words had been haunting Victoria for hours, for two nights. 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 stone.

  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 gaoler 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 stone.

  She was on her third vehicle now 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 appro
aching 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.

  Monday, 6 September 1999, 9:50 PM

  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.

  Friday, 24 September 1999, 10:00 PM

  The underground lake

  New York City, New York

  The taste of salt. Water puffing up his atrophied lungs. The quiet whispering of the earth.

  Calebros floated several feet below the surface. He let words float in and out of his mind like gentle swells in a tidal pool: One in a minute, and one in an hour. Walk a mile in but seconds to deliver my letter. Tell me, oh wise one, which way do I go?

  He hoped the earth would whisper an answer to him, but it was not to be. Calebros allowed the words to wash from him again. Surely the Prophet of Gehenna could have been more dignified than to have left them a silly children’s riddle. Or perhaps the Nosferatu was merely irritated because he had not solved a silly children’s riddle.

  The taste of salt. Water puffing up his atrophied lungs. The quiet whispering of the earth.

  He must relax. The riddle, if it was part of the puzzle, would fall into place. Eventually. Or it would not. Even if it did not, as those surrounding it did so, the truth of what the missing piece contained would become evident. So many of the pieces had already come together, yet still there were many holes.

  Emmett had provided many of the pieces and helped Calebros to place them. The younger broodmate would be back soon. He was nearly done with his work in the West, nearly finished with Benito. Although Emmett was not the most patient of Kindred, his presence would ease Calebros’s mind.

  Other matters, more concrete and immediate than a riddle, remained up in the air. The Sabbat were growing restive to the south. They grew increasingly aggressive toward Baltimore each and every night. Soon they would pounce, which was why Pieterzoon and Bell had set in motion a desperate plan. They had reached an uneasy alliance with Prince Michaela of New York—prince of Wall Street, perhaps, Calebros had scoffed, but not of the rest of the city, God knows—and would attempt to shift the Camarilla forces north when opportunity presented itself. Calebros estimated their chances for success at fifty percent, and that because he was feeling charitable.

  On other fronts, there was no word from Jeremiah since Syracuse. Had he come to harm? After confronting Victoria in Atlanta, Anatole had fallen upon his clansman. Prince Benison, and slain him. Had he done the same to Jeremiah once the Nosferatu had led the Prophet to the cave that both Ramona and Hesha had described? There was no way to know. At what point, Calebros debated, should he send someone to find out? The uncertainty gnawed at him like rats after the last sliver of flesh upon a bone.

  The taste of salt. Water puffing up his atrophied lungs. The quiet whispering of the earth.

  At least Hesha was doing well. The turmeric root was working its magic, though the going was slow and painful. Each night, Pauline burned Hesha, cleansed with fire and root the corruption of the Eye, allowing the blood to do its work. And Ruhadze needed much blood. He was growing stronger, and that, too, was a cause of concern for Calebros. Would the Setite, once he was no longer dependent, remain loyal?

  Ramona was proving a pleasant surprise. She seemed to sense, finally, that Hesha and the Nosferatu meant her no harm. She was not such an unpleasantly feral creature as she had first appeared. Once it had become undeniably clear that Khalil was a rake and a cad, she had seemed almost relieved to have the company of the Setite and his underling, and even several of the brethren.

  Khalil was another loose end to be knotted some night. He’d proven as good as his word—which was not at all. Poor Mouse, Calebros thought. For a childe of the kennels, existence could be short and cruel. The Ravnos had fled, but it would do him no good. He had stopped in Chicago for the time being, and Calebros had his sources there. There would be a reckoning. The Nosferatu did not forget.

  But those were harsh thoughts, and Calebros wished to relax his mind.

  The taste of salt. Water puffing up his atrophied lungs. The quiet whispering of the earth.

  One in a minute, and one in an hour…

  Saturday, 2 October 1999, 2:20 AM

  Crown Plaza Hotel, Midtown Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  “Try again, Leopold. And concentrate this time.”

  “She was here? Before?” Leopold was so crestfallen that Nickolai thought the boy might break into tears. That in itself, of course, was potentially quite interesting.

  “Yes, she was here,” Nickolai lied. “We tried to rouse you, but you would not wake.”

  Leopold dug his fingernails into his scalp and muttered to the floor. His right eye was squeezed tightly shut in consternation, yet his other Eye stared ahead. It was almost always open these nights. Watching. Secreting its pungent discharge.

  Surely it knows I’m lying, Nickolai thought. It must know that the Muse had not been present, that, in the weeks they’d been secluded in the hotel, no one other than Nickolai had set foot in the suite of rooms. Nickolai had seen to their isolation. No employees of the hotel were allowed on this floor, and the warlock had set powerful wards to keep him and his charge hidden from sorcerous eyes. It must know. Nickolai could sense a brooding sentience about the Eye. He had no way to be sure, no empirical evidence, yet somehow he knew.

  Whatever the Eye might or might not be able to discern, none of the information in q
uestion had dawned on Leopold. The neonate did as he was told, if grudgingly, as if his will had been eroded away. At times, gazing at the unblinking Eye, Nickolai fancied that he and it were, in a sense, co-conspirators, the truth known to them but unseen by Leopold. Nickolai believed that the Eye must have come to the same conclusion that he had: namely, that Leopold’s time was running out.

  The boy was a candle that had burned too bright and too hot. The Eye had pushed him far beyond what he was capable of, and now he was little more than a clump of wax awaiting the last dying flicker of its wick. Many nights he did not achieve consciousness, or he did so for merely a handful of hours. Perchance he would soon slip completely into torpor, never to return. Nickolai detected no sense of loss or regret from the Eye. At times he decided that he was only imagining signs of higher sentience from the orb, but other times…

  For Nickolai, Leopold’s demise would prove troublesome. It was a cruel Fate that had brought Leopold back to him for the end, so that the circle might be complete.

  “Try again,” Nickolai said. Leopold, beyond solace, reluctantly turned to the blocks of stone that Nickolai had provided. “She said that if you do well with these, she will return. Soon.”

  “What shall I do with them?” Leopold asked, his hesitancy and despair draining away, down the deep well that had already claimed his resolve. He held the blocks, one of granite and one of marble, in his hands.

  “Perhaps a nice flower.”

  Leopold nodded glumly. He lifted the two blocks, neither larger than half a loaf of bread. Almost instantly, his fingers began to dig into both marble and granite as if they were no harder than wet clay. The rectangular blocks elongated in his grasp, and, when he pressed them together, the light and dark stones flowed one into the other.