Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  Johnston supposed he should let the matter of his chambers drop. After all, his appointment at the chantry was not inconsequential. It was the turmoil that had necessitated him being here. Never mind that he would be leading any other chantry to which he might be assigned. Five Boroughs was one of the few chantries that sustained two regents: himself as the junior regent and his superior, Aisling Sturbridge. It was not normal clan policy, but with the immediate Sabbat presence, this was no normal chantry. After all, Sturbridge had been a junior regent before her superior had been caught unawares by Sabbat beyond the chantry defenses. Aisling had inherited the chantry leadership. That the same fortune, and a greatly deserved promotion, might fall into Johnston’s lap was not beyond the realm of possibility.

  So he tried, with some if not complete success, to tuck his resentment into its appropriate niche in the back of his mind. Probably Sturbridge’s quarters were no more spacious than his own, though he had never been invited within her chambers. Another aspect of the square footage problem was population pressure. Because of the Sabbat danger outside the chantry, and beyond the boundaries of Manhattan especially, more apprentices resided on the premises than was normally the case. That led to working and existing at closer quarters than Johnston appreciated with neophytes like Jacqueline, Aaron, and the others.

  The chantry, tucked beneath the Camarilla fraction of the city as it was, made up in strategic value what it lacked in acreage. “There’s only so much space between Barnard College and the Harlem River,” Sturbridge had told him the one time he’d ventured to mention his cramped quarters to her. Her summary dismissal of his comment had dissuaded him from asking why the chantry didn’t expand in other directions.

  In his laboratory, Johnston turned to the modest wooden chest—no larger than a jewelry box—which held the subject of the ritual for which he’d assigned preparations to Jacqueline. The only adornment on the chest, a mother-of-pearl, fleur-de-lis inlay on the lid’s exterior, glowed faintly. Johnston held his hand over the ornamentation and felt the slight warmth that it emitted.

  Good, he thought. It’s still active.

  With a practiced, steady hand, he opened the lid of the chest and looked upon the contents, which had kept him so busy of late. Nestled in the box’s felt-lined interior was a semi-precious stone no larger than a marble. It was finely polished quartz, a deep, cloudy red except for two black circles on opposite sides. Johnston thought of the black spots as poles, as on a globe. The black surface on top, the north pole as he saw it, was smooth and flawless. The red all around and down the sides was grooved in a perfectly descending spiral. The black south pole, unlike the rest of the stone, was slightly jagged, the raised areas making no special pattern that Johnston could discern. He had never expected the gem to prove so intriguing.

  Sturbridge had presented the gem to Johnston several years earlier with the expectation that he would perform experiments on it, but the stone had not been deemed a high or even medium priority. It radiated a magical aura of some type, but then again so did an amazing number of trinkets and faux-artifacts that found their way into the possession of Clan Tremere. Johnston had done some preliminary experimentation, but to little effect, and with Sturbridge’s blessing he’d set aside the gem. He’d thought of it seldom since, and then mostly in derogatory terms—a semi-precious stone taking up precious shelf-space.

  All that had changed three weeks ago.

  After disciplining one of the apprentices, Johnston had entered his laboratory and found not only the seal, which he’d placed on the chest as a precautionary measure, broken but the lid cast open as well. The gem was practically seething with preternatural energies— amazing energies! Johnston had never imagined that such potential lay within the gem. And when he’d gotten over his surprise and set about examining the stone…it had grown dormant again. There were trace amounts of residual energies, of course, but nothing as compared to what he’d perceived moments before.

  So he’d been forced into a pattern of watchful waiting. He’d checked the gem several times nightly, resealing it in the chest following each inspection. For weeks, nothing changed, except the residual energies grew weaker. Then last night, the gem had suddenly come to life again and tonight, as indicated by the glowing mother of pearl, it still burned with power. To the naked eye there was no such indication, but Johnston fancied that he could fairly smell the churning energies.

  He took the list he’d shown to Jacqueline, placed it in a brazier on his work table, and struck a match to the paper. Its edges curled and blackened. Johnston needed the list no longer; he’d taken it back from Jacqueline merely on principle. Before the paper was completely consumed, he took a long purple candle from a nearby shelf and held the wick to the fire. Once the candle caught, Johnston turned back to the chest and began the proper incantation. Slowly, he passed the fingers of his left hand through the candle’s flame. It did not burn him, and he felt not the slightest discomfort.

  Having prepared the candle, he began slowly and steadily to move it toward the chest. While the candle was still a foot away from the gem, the flame flickered and went out, as if snuffed by a sudden gust of wind. But there was no wind, nor even the slightest breeze.

  Johnston repeated the minor ritual, and again an unseen force extinguished the candle at the same distance from the chest. He nodded with bewildered satisfaction.

  An inch and three quarters farther away than last night, he thought. It’s growing even stronger! If it continued to increase potency at such a rate, he’d have to move his ritual up by several nights—and wouldn’t that drive Jacqueline to distraction?

  But that was the type of decision he shouldn’t make until Sturbridge returned to the chantry. She’d been called away to attend a council meeting in Baltimore—something to do with the recent Sabbat unpleasantness to the south. As if the Chantry of the Five Boroughs didn’t have enough of its own difficulties without the rest of the Camarilla coming begging for help. Besides, the other clans would only turn on the Tremere again after the trouble was past.

  Johnston laid the candle back in its place, then closed the chest. He would continue to monitor the gem. This was the type of breakthrough that could lead his superiors in the clan to grant him a chantry of his own. One where he’d have sufficient working space.

  Thursday, 15 July 1999, 11:44 PM

  A subterranean grotto

  The constant flickering of the desk lamp’s bulb cast a strobe effect over the tiny oasis of light. The seated figure drummed his taloned fingers, then finally raised a hand to strike the recalcitrant lamp. Steady, if not bright, illumination replaced the flickering just before the blow fell. The hand lowered slowly.

  The figure turned back to the aged, manual typewriter that it was hunched over and impatiently ripped the paper from the machine. Before the gritty whirring of the typewriter wheel had fallen completely silent, a red pen scratched quickly and unhesitatingly across the page.

  Friday, 16 July 1999, 11:03 PM

  Piedmont Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “Hold still, my dearest.” Damn you, bitch!

  Even with the benefit of his newfound vision, the muse flitted in and then out of Leopold’s line of sight. He held his right eye closed with his hand and with great trepidation cast his glance after her.

  At first he had swung around trying to follow her, but he’d quickly discovered that the world, once set in motion, did not soon willingly stop. His studio listed like a drunken sot. Up and down, left and right, other and self—such distinctions blurred with the Sight. Too much so in the beginning. Dull blackness had taken him, and he had cracked his head on the concrete slab floor.

  Now he moved more carefully, but still the ripples of motion, of Sight and unSight, blurred at the edges, ran together. Or was that the muse teasing him again?

  “Come where I can see you, dearest.” But she ignored his kindest entreaties. Bitch! Whore!

  She taunted him. Capture me, Leopold.

&nbs
p; The studio shifted. Leopold stumbled and fell against—a table, an easel? It gave way beneath him and he crashed to the floor. Her foot passed within inches of his face. Her slender, naked ankle flashed before him as an epiphany. In the back of his mind, something else demanded attention—a finger bent and doubled back in the fall, bone stressed and cracked. He shunted aside the distant pain as images of the muse blossomed—the sharp angle of her ankle, the inviting curve of her calf.

  She was gone again, but her seductive laughter echoed throughout the studio, grew from the tinkling of tiny bells to the crashing of timpani and cymbals. The world shuddered. It rolled Leopold along the floor—or was it ceiling now? Yet onward he crawled with the vision ever before him. His artist’s mind locked onto the detail that he would render. Though the muse proved elusive, the Sight would not be denied.

  Everything had changed for Leopold the night of Victoria’s party. Had it only been three and a half weeks? Sometimes it seemed as if a lifetime had passed with every minute, so much progress had he made. So much had been revealed to him. Never again would Victoria or any of the other high-society Toreador, so smug in their shallow little appreciations, laugh at Leopold, for a great truth had been revealed to him, was still being revealed to him.

  From the moment he had seen that vision of beauty, the human form stripped of the preconceived limitations of self-awareness—and staring up from the midst of it, the Eye—Leopold had known that he must reproduce the effect. The inherent truth of his discovery would be apparent to all. None would deny his skill, the immensity of his vision. So he had reached down and taken the orb, for it was the heart of his vision.

  And the moment of clarity had faded.

  Gone was the long-awaited vista of lustrous beauty. With the Eye resting in his open palm, Leopold had stood above a heap of torn flesh and broken bone, the mangled body of Vegel.

  Panicked, he’d returned the Eye to its perch, but the orb outshone its surroundings as if the sun appeared in the night sky. The image that had captivated him was no more.

  But no matter.

  Leopold possessed the soul of an artist, and there it was that he carried the vision. Once it had touched him, he was incapable of forgetting. He snatched up the Eye again and left behind the transient mass that ever so briefly had been a part of ephemeral beauty.

  Almost immediately, Leopold had taken stock of the ways that the vision had changed him. Returning to his studio, he found himself surrounded by the flotsam of his previous, unenlightened, artistic endeavors. Just to be in the same room with the pieces that had once engendered in him such great pride was painful. He saw clearly each work’s failure.

  No wonder Victoria and the others had scoffed at his pretensions.

  Victoria. Her name tugged at his memory. He had wanted to find out something…had visited the Tremere witch. But that was a concern from before. Just as the pitiful attempts at sculpture arrayed for his review were from before—and they he could not tolerate.

  Plaster molds he smashed to bits. Models he swept into a box that was then hidden away beneath a work bench. And thus the period of Leopold’s enlightenment began with the destruction of what had gone before.

  A table brushed free of its clutter became the wooden pedestal for the Eye. He placed it there lovingly, reverently. Even after setting it down, he could still feel its moist touch where it had filled his palm. Resting on the table, the heavily veined eyelid slowly opened and then receded from around nearly the entire pulsating sphere, until the protective flesh was nothing more than a tiny base beneath the Eye. Leopold marveled at it.

  For weeks, he worked before its unblinking gaze. For weeks the beauty that he had beheld, that he expected to be evident, did not reveal itself in the fruits of his labor. The Eye watched impassively Leopold’s embarrassment at his unsatisfactory first model. The Eye watched as he set aside the second attempt halfway through, as he smashed in frustration the third, and the fourth, and the fifth….

  Nights passed. More and more often he flew into a rage as desperation took hold of him. With his eyes, within his soul, he had seen the vision. Truth and beauty had been revealed to him. But over and again, his hands failed him. Did he lack the skill to render that which he’d beheld? Had he merely imagined that talent resided within the sinews of his fingers?

  Only once during that time did Leopold falter in his quest. Victoria. Her name came to him unbidden on that second night after his wondrous discovery. He moved toward the stairs of his basement studio. He would go to her. She might need him. But then his gaze, as it inevitably did these nights, fell upon the orb of his passion, and merely the sight of the Eye, waiting patiently amidst its burbling and fizzing secretion, returned him to his senses. Victoria was no more than any other of the unenlightened. Why would he interrupt his labors for the likes of her?

  And then the muse had spoken to him. Trust, she said, her sensual voice massaging the muscles and tendons that failed him. Trust.

  All thoughts save those of his art were banished from Leopold’s mind.

  Trust.

  He set aside his precision tools and modeling clay. Stripped of process and regimen, he stepped as a naked child to the marble block. He set chisel to stone and reached within his soul for the angle and pressure that would set free the perfection he had witnessed, which he knew resided as well within the stone. Each tap of the hammer chipped away marble from the veil that concealed truth. He would find it and show it to the world.

  And his greatness would be revealed.

  All the while, the Eye watched.

  Night after night, Leopold worked. He rose at sunset and went straight to his art untroubled by thoughts of feeding or any other distraction. The vision was his sustenance; the task before him, his only consideration. As more stone fell away, a form began take shape, but Leopold would not allow himself the luxury of stepping back and viewing the larger picture. He would not allow himself the slightest respite or reward until the representation of his vision was complete. Over the tiniest details, he labored hour upon hour. From top to bottom, head to toe, the piece began to take shape. Leopold relentlessly chipped away at every granule of marble that did not belong until, finally, he was done.

  Leopold laid down his chisel. He had viewed the Eye, tangible memento of the most perfect of forms, and then looked upon his own accomplishment. The hollowness in his stomach took him as if in a deathgrip, for he realized that his work was a crude mockery of the beauty he had envisioned. Not a hint of truth could he find in the curve of its limbs, and not the faintest trace of perfection. His child was stillborn. A deformed, freakish abomination.

  That was when he had first heard the laughter of the muse—cruel, mocking laughter. She did not recognize the expenditure of will, the great effort he had put into the work. She recognized only failure. Her laughter filled Leopold’s heart like acid, for he could not defend the shortcomings of his failed masterpiece. With an anguished cry, he took his largest hammer and set upon his work. Within the hour, the labor of weeks was transformed to rubble, but even the rubble offended Leopold, mocked his pain. He continued with the hammer, smashing each piece of marble, no matter how small, until in the end only fine powder remained. Still his failure was not purged, and the muse’s laughter taunted him. Leopold saw Victoria laughing at him as well. She stood before him in her lavish evening gown, garishly begemmed, and his failure was her entertainment. He had set out to prove his worth to her, and he feared that his failure had done just that. He determined to erase the sneer from her lips. He took his chisel and laid it upon the cleft of her bosom and swung his hammer with a fierce and defiant scream. But she was gone, and he merely fell to the floor sobbing.

  And all the while, the Eye watched from the center of its simmering pool of juices.

  Again, the muse spoke to him. Leopold hung on her every word. He could not begrudge her the rejection of his masterpiece, because she was right. He had failed badly.

  What is the essence of life? Of beauty? she asked.
Her question floated to the highest, most remote corner of the studio.

  The essence of life. The essence of beauty.

  She had told him to trust, and he had trusted.

  But that was not enough.

  The essence of life. The essence of beauty.

  For hours, Leopold lay on the floor in earnest contemplation. A fine dust of pulverized marble settled on him until he could have passed for one of his own creations. As the sun rose and he skulked down to the cellar, the muse’s words rang in his ears.

  The essence of life. The essence of beauty.

  A day and a night and a day he lay pondering. When he rose again, he gently wrapped the Eye in a clean cloth and gathered together the chisels and tools he would need. Thus equipped, he ventured out of the studio.

  Leopold had practically forgotten about the Atlanta skyline, about the bohemian hubbub of Little Five Points toward which he naturally gravitated. He noted the outside world only briefly, however. The grungy clubs and sex shops, the punks and hippies, unwashed vagrants old and young—he had seen them all before, and though in the past this scene had sparked in him impulses of the avant-garde, now he was absorbed by the life of the mind and of the spirit.

  The essence of life. The essence of beauty.

  Leopold ignored the buzz of humanity as he moved along Moreland Avenue. He slipped away from that thoroughfare, past an apartment building, beyond a dilapidated Victorian house, and wound his way through a deep wooded lot. Night after night he returned to the thick oak tree that he found. Night after night he carefully unwrapped the cloth and set the Eye on the ground so that he could watch it, so that it could watch him. Leopold lost track of how many sunsets brought him to the oak—a week’s worth, two weeks’?