Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  But Leopold paused. He sighed and set the now single, irregular block of fused marble and granite on the table before him.

  “It is done,” he said weakly.

  Nickolai touched the stone. It was cold and solid. He rotated it on the table, noting the interwoven channels of stone toward the center. Top and bottom were still separate, unmarred marble and granite, so that the entirety formed a sort of “x”.

  “This is not a flower,” Nickolai pointed out.

  “It is done,” said Leopold, not looking at the stone.

  “You must concentrate, Leopold. She will be very displeased with this.”

  “It is done,” Leopold repeated. “Will she come?”

  “Not if this is the best you can do. Finish the flower.”

  “Will she come?” Leopold asked again, as if Nickolai had not answered him. There was, perhaps, a trace of desperation in Leopold’s right eye. The Eye looked on dispassionately.

  “Are you tired?” Nickolai asked, but Leopold did not respond. He was watching, with his right eye, some faraway scene. “Yes, she will come, Leopold. Soon.”

  The boy’s attention slowly returned to the here and now, his pupil contracting and struggling to focus. “Good,” he said. “I am tired, I think?”

  Are you? Nickolai wondered. Or did my suggestion make it so?

  “Rest, then,” Nickolai said. “I have other matters to attend to.”

  Almost before the words were completely spoken, Leopold had retreated to that faraway place. His eye and the Eye both remained open. A dollop of ichor dripped onto the stone and sizzled away to nothing, but Leopold took no notice.

  Nickolai returned the stare of the Eye. And what will I do with you once our Leopold is gone, I wonder? he thought. There was the rub. Leopold had outlasted his usefulness—the moment the foul Nosferatu had seized Benito, Leopold could no longer serve any purpose for Nickolai. But now, with the Eye that Leopold had somehow come upon, the boy was handy, if only as a glorified pot holder. What would Nickolai do with the Eye if Leopold continued to deteriorate? I certainly won’t use it myself.

  He thought for a moment that he saw a gleam in the Eye, almost like laughter, or a dare. His imagination, surely.

  Nickolai lifted from the table the x-stone. It was dense and heavy. Leopold offered no response, gave no indication that he was any longer cognizant of Nickolai’s presence or anything else. Nickolai lugged the stone into the next room and placed it on a table beside four other sculptures.

  The first sculpture, the oldest, was a perfect orchid. The stem was flawlessly woven strands of white and mottled gray-black, and each petal alternately one of those colors, marble and granite. The leaves curved gracefully, each so thin that it seemed it should fall of its own weight. But the orchid stood, the composition balanced precisely.

  The second sculpture was an orchid as well. Although where the first was a perfect flower that happenstance had seen rendered in stone, the second was a crude facsimile. The stem was a bit thick and too rigidly straight. Seams were readily visible where marble and granite met. One of the leaves was proportioned poorly and cracked. The petals, rather than distinctly separated, were a single structure with little detail.

  The third sculpture lay on its side, too top-heavy to stand. It might have been a daffodil, or a rose, with thick awkward leaves. The fourth was a vaguely pyramid-shaped clump. The half-fused x-stone was the fifth.

  Nickolai stared at the strange collection, each piece commissioned, as it were, within the past two months. Had Leopold merely lost interest? Did an orchid no longer hold the slightest wonder for him? Nickolai thought that was not the case. The deterioration of Leopold’s skills mirrored quite closely the deterioration of his grip on reality. Not that he had ever, since the night Nickolai had found him wandering north of Central Park, been the model of lucidity, but Leopold was spending increasing time in that faraway place of his mind.

  More disturbing to Nickolai, however, was Leopold’s decreasing potency in utilizing the powers the Eye seemed to confer upon him. Nickolai remembered the great sculpture in the cave. The warlock, upon learning that Benito had gone missing, had immediately begun to seek out Leopold. The bond between them assured him that he would find the boy, and Nickolai, reaching out with his mind and spirit, had indeed found Leopold. He’d found him at the cave, waist deep in living rock and mangled Gangrel. Nickolai was not the one to critique the boy’s artistic vision, but the warlock had marveled at his power—at how the very earth had responded to Leopold’s merest whim. And when Nickolai had brought him to the city, Leopold had, without possessing the Eye, laid waste to several blocks’ worth of city streets and much of the gardens at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

  Since then, however, he’d been fading fast. Nickolai feared that the row of orchid sculptures illustrated, not a wandering of interest, but a dwindling of vigor. It confirmed his thoughts about the candle: too bright and too hot. And now time was running out.

  Damn him! How dare he? Especially when he was to be Nickolai’s defense against the foul sewer dwellers! They would be coming for him. The only question was when.

  Strangely enough, despite Leopold’s slide, the Eye itself appeared completely undiminished. It seemed vigorous, almost—and Nickolai suspected this was but his imagination—cheerful. It was quite possible, the warlock surmised, that Leopold had passed some threshold, that the Eye had taken him to a certain point and the boy was capable of going no further. But neither could he maintain that existence, and so he’d begun this long descent into madness—or not that long, perhaps.

  Yes, that was possible. But remembering Leopold’s great masterwork at the cave, Nickolai considered other possibilities as well. He did not sense within the Eye power of the magnitude that had created that living statue and tomb of the Gangrel, nor in the scope of destruction surrounding the cathedral gardens. Perhaps it was merely the wiles of the orb—it wished to be underestimated, so that a potential user might believe himself capable of controlling it.

  Or there was something else. Something greater than the Eye, something augmenting it, or something that had seized upon it as a focus for its own power—something that had seized Leopold. The boy had exhibited considerable acumen for the mystical arts, even when he was without the Eye. He had performed at a level that should never have been possible for him, even were he some night to discover his true heritage.

  Nickolai studied the five sculptures before him, from the sublime to the mundane, and shook his head. He could not be sure of the forces at work…not without the proper experimentation. Almost immediately, new plans began to take shape in his mind. It might work…it could work. He might yet bend Leopold to his designs once again. If he was allowed the time.

  Leopold dipped his cupped hands into the river. The landscape was not so bleak now, not so foreign. The river wound among edifices of rock, headstones the size of buildings. The water flowed red here in the dragon’s graveyard. There had been strange splotches of white and mottled gray-black, but those were long gone, carried downstream by the ever-flowing current. Leopold could not see his hands beneath the water. His arms ended at the wrists. The blood of the river was his own lifeblood, flowing out of him and drifting away. For a moment he panicked—his hands, his precious hands, the most perfect artist’s tools, as his Muse had shown him.

  He withdrew his hands from the blood river and went giddy with relief. His precious fingers were unharmed. Dark water seeped out between them. Leopold lifted his hands to his lips and drank. She was here. He could smell and taste her. The dragon’s graveyard was her playground. And the teacher said that she would be back. Soon.

  Friday, 15 October 1999, 11:45 PM

  Foothills of the Adirondack Mountains

  Upstate New York

  None of the joy or honor remained to Jeremiah. Even in the darkness of the cave, he felt the shadow of the monstrous sculpture. The eyes of the Gangrel stared, but they did not see him. The creatures moaned in agony, but went una
nswered by the Prophet.

  Anatole’s mind had floated somewhere that Jeremiah could not follow, away from this place of darkness, away from the sculpture of madness and torture. The Prophet lay unmoving. He did not wander about, he did not rub his sandals together this way and that. Jeremiah was alone with the bitter taste of his memories. His bemusement at how Anatole had figuratively stricken Victoria had been subsumed by horror at the literal strike against Prince Benison. Anatole had destroyed his clansman after Benison had retrieved for him the Robe of Nessus, after the prince had seemed, for a brief instant, to be aware of Jeremiah’s presence.

  Could he have been? Jeremiah wondered. If that were indeed the case, the Nosferatu should be thankful that Anatole, so seldom violent, had struck down the prince, and by doing so inadvertently preserved the watcher’s charade. But Jeremiah could feel none of that. He felt remorse, as if the slaying had been his deed, his responsibility, his fault.

  Beneath the obscuration of the twisted shadow, he felt the darkness that he had felt before, in the tunnel, before the rats, the infernal creatures whose thoughts had, as if of single mind, called out, Flesh. And now Jeremiah tried not to look upon a giant sculpture of flesh and stone. He watched Anatole every second. Although the Prophet had lain apparently comatose for weeks now, who was to say when he might leap up—leap up and strike, like he had at Prince Benison.

  I have been with the Prophet for months! Jeremiah bemoaned his fate. But he will not tell me the answers I know he has! What darkness is it that eats away at the heart of the earth? I have felt it. Tell me, damn you! But he will not speak. He will only strike me down.

  But the Prophet did speak. Without warning he opened his eyes and sat upright. “Forty nights and forty days,” he said.

  And then he looked at Jeremiah. And saw. Jeremiah felt it. He felt the Prophet’s gaze. Dear God. No! It could not be so. “How…?”

  “Begone,” Anatole said, no more concerned than if he were brushing a fly from the ceremonial loaf.

  Jeremiah staggered backward, away from the Prophet. “Not now! Not now when I know you have the answers! Tell me, I beg you, tell me before I am gone!” the watcher cried.

  Anatole simply shook his head, dolefully. “No. I must save all our lives.”

  And then Jeremiah was fleeing. Away from the Prophet. Away from the sculpture of darkness and the hole into the heart of the earth. Through what he thought was but could not be a graveyard of monoliths and desolation. Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. His screams from hell on earth echoed into the darkened heavens.

  Sunday, 17 October 1999, 10:43 PM

  Nosferatu warren

  New York City, New York

  The tunnels didn’t always seem to be closing in on her now. Ramona supposed she should be thankful for that. But she wasn’t. Not really. Why the hell can’t these guys just rent an apartment building or something? she wondered. I mean, they can put on a normal face when they want. Wouldn’t nobody know. They could all just have their own building and keep out of sight and be ugly together.

  But Ramona also remembered how she and her friends had hidden in out-of-the-way places and abandoned buildings: the garage uptown, that old elementary school upstate. Hell, she’d slept in the trunk of a car in a junkyard. There was something about the kine that made it hard to blend in so closely—at least for her. And she looked mostly normal. She looked like most of the meat, but she knew she didn’t belong in that world anymore. It was like sneaking into the boys’ bathroom—she could do it, but she’d be waiting to get caught the whole time, and anybody that got a close look… She could imagine how much worse it would be for the Nosferatu, who so obviously didn’t belong out there with the kine. It couldn’t be that easy for the Nossies to keep up their disguises all the time, so they had a safe place where they didn’t have to pretend.

  It just so happened that safe place was underground, in tunnels and sewers and crawl spaces. Don’t get too sentimental about it, Ramona told herself. She sniffed at the air—that seemed to have become a habit down here. “I’ll have to get them a nice needlepoint,” she mocked herself. “Home is where the shit is.”

  She made her way along the uncomfortably cramped tunnel. She’d finally learned her way to Hesha’s room. Pauline had helped her figure it out. The woman was a bit too much Steppin Fetchit for Ramona’s taste, but Hesha’s retainer—that’s what he called Pauline, his ‘retainer’—had just enough of a fuck-you attitude that she and Ramona got along okay. The rest of the warren was a loss to Ramona. Down here, she couldn’t have found her way to water if her ass was on fire. Then again, she didn’t have any inclination to figure out what was where. If it hadn’t been for Hesha having been so laid up for so long, she would have made him meet her somewhere upstairs—out on the street. But his recovery from the ass-kickin’ that Leopold had given him had been a slow process. Finally, he seemed to be near the end of that road.

  His room had a door on it now. Probably the Nosferatu had gotten sick of the stink of his burning flesh. Smoldering turmeric root wasn’t exactly Chanel No. Five either. Then again, the Nossies didn’t have a whole helluva lot of room to complain. But it was a funny thought.

  Ramona knocked. Pauline opened the door. “Ramona, come on in.”

  Hesha was dressing. He had on crisp gray slacks and was buttoning his starched white shirt. There was some kind of incense burning in the room. Ramona didn’t like that smell either, but she guessed it was better than burning skin and Nosferatu stink, if just barely.

  “Good evening, Ramona,” Hesha said. As he finished buttoning his shirt, Ramona couldn’t help but notice how built he was. Expensive clothes covered rippling muscles. Now that he wasn’t all festering sores and dribbling pus, he was a good-looking son of a bitch, like a walking advertisement out of Essence or Esquire. But Ramona wasn’t taken in. She knew that just made him more dangerous. She remembered what Liz had said the night Ramona had given her the key to her chains: Whatever he told you was a lie… He doesn’t care about anyone. He just uses…people, things… He always gets what he wants… Don’t let him control you.

  Harsh words, and probably true. But Ramona had known the type before—guys who wanted what they wanted, no matter what, whether that was drugs or money or to get down her pants. Just because Hesha might be better at it than those others didn’t scare Ramona. She knew what she wanted too. She’d made sure that Liz had gotten away. Hesha hadn’t been too happy about that, but tough shit. Now they were going to find the Eye and make sure nobody else got hurt—like her people had, like Hesha had. As long as they were after the same thing, they were on the same team. That was all Ramona worried about.

  “Pauline,” Hesha said, “See to that list, and that Janet knows to make the necessary arrangements.”

  “Yes, sir.” Pauline headed for the door. “Take it easy,” she said to Ramona with a wink, and then was gone.

  “You look like you’re feelin’ better,” Ramona said to Hesha after the door closed.

  “Yes, I am, thank you. My treatment is almost completed.”

  His treatment. Ramona shuddered. She’d had burning turmeric root stuffed in one hole in her face, and that had been bad enough. All of Hesha’s visible scars were healed, but she couldn’t help wondering about some of his more…sensitive areas. She’d have to remember to ask Pauline about that. Not exactly a turn-on—to burn your man’s privates off with damn flaming produce.

  “So you want to go with me,” Ramona said.

  “Yes,” Hesha said. “To the cave. Back to the cave.”

  “Okay.” Ramona had been planning to go for some time now, but somehow she hadn’t managed to leave the city yet. She had to go back. There was no two ways about that. After the horrible battle against the Eye, she had seen her dead, so many of them—Eddie, Jen, and Darnell, Stalker-in-the-Woods, Brant Edmonson, Ratface, and all the others. But not Tanner. Not her sire. She had to find out why. He’d gone into the cave with the first of the Gangrel and never come out. Sh
e had to go back to the cave. If Hesha wanted to come too, that would just push her to do what she should have done already. “If we drive most of the way,” she said, “we should be able to make it in two nights.”

  “We’ll take a helicopter,” Hesha said. “There and back in a night.”

  “Oh…okay.” For a moment, Ramona had the uncomfortable feeling that Hesha was turning her journey into his own. That was fine—to a point. She wasn’t about to start letting him boss her around like he did Pauline. But if he happened to have a helicopter handy…that was different. “I forgot that you were Senor Dinero Grande. When you be ready to go?”

  “Within a very few nights,” he said. “I still have details to catch up on from my convalescence. Even a good staff cannot run itself perpetually.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ramona said knowingly. “Gotta watch those staffs. Hey,” she added, catching sight of the red and black gem on a table near Hesha’s bed, “maybe you can get your money back for that. Or I bet you could sell it on Fifth Avenue. That and your Rolex would get you a hundred bucks easy. That pay for gas for the chopper?”

  Hesha did not grow angry, but neither did he seem amused. He had told Ramona that he could use that gem to find the Eye, to trace its whereabouts, but she had yet to see any results. She mostly believed him when he told her that, for some inexplicable reason, the gem simply was not functioning as it should. Maybe it needs new batteries, she’d suggested, and been met with an equally stoic response. She didn’t really believe that he’d conned her—she didn’t want to believe that—but she did enjoy getting a rise out of him by questioning his honor or telling him that he was full of shit.

  “You know how to fly a chopper?” she asked.

  “Yes, actually,” Hesha said, “but I have a pilot.”

  “Oh, good. My license isn’t current. I’ll check back tomorrow night.”