Clan Novel Giovanni: Book 10 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Justin Achilli

  “Okay, come here, then.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Come here. Lean close so I can whisper it to you.”

  “You’re out of your fucking gourd if you think I’m going to lean down there and let you bite my fucking ear off.”

  “I’m not going to bite your ear. Then you’d beat the shit out of me even after you killed me.” You’re right, Chas thought privately. “Bend down here so I can tell you.”

  “Milo, I swear to God, if you fucking bite me…”

  “I’m not going to bite you. No, closer.”

  Chas put his ear up to Milo’s mouth, almost hoping that the fool would dare to nip him so he could pummel the Rothstein into sticky paste. This close, Milo wasn’t a Kindred anymore but a reeking, sumptuous, humid cloud of pulpy blood. Tell me quick, motherfucker, before I bite you.

  “The secret is…”

  “Yeah, spit it out.”

  “The secret is…go fuck yourself.”

  Motherfucker! Milo had him—took him for a ride. “All right, shitbag, you just cashed your fucking check. Goddammit! Fuck! Victor, you keep an eye on this son of a bitch!” As if he was going to get up and go somewhere. “Keep him right fucking where he is.” Chas stormed about the room, pacing angrily and shaking his head violently with every turn for a few seconds. He turned on the TV. Same Bruce Willis movie, still going strong. Gunshots and exploding helicopters or something. The cockroach people love that shit. He turned up the volume so that it was maybe twice as loud as a conversation would have been. After that, Chas stalked into the bathroom and purposefully washed his hands and forehead, looked down the front of him to make sure he didn’t have blood fountained all over his shirt.

  “You fucking wait here, Milo,” and Chas stormed out the door.

  Milo looked at Victor. Victor looked at Milo and shrugged, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. They heard a heavy, staccato scraping sound. And then another. Then a quick bang. And then the sound of something immense being dragged over carpeted floor.

  “Mr. Sforza, what is your companion do—” Chas kicked open the door, a sheen of blood-sweat across his forehead, something large blocking the light from the hallway from entering the room. “Yeah, that’s right, Milo Tough-Guy. You’re so fucking…so fucking tough, I’m going to show you what this is all about. Now you’re in the big leagues.”

  As Chas ranted, he pushed the Coca-Cola vending machine into the room from the hall. It didn’t quite fit, catching on the hollow metal doorjamb— so Chas pushed until the jamb pulled away from the sheetrock, sprinkling him and the machine with a veil of white dust.

  Victor sniffed.

  “You can’t be serious,” Milo stammered, his ruined eyes wide and his mouth agape.

  “You fucking bet I can, cocksucker. I’m the most serious motherfucker you know right now.” The doorjamb twisted away and Chas managed to force the big machine entirely into the room. He kept pushing, stopping only briefly to shove the bed to one side with his thigh before continuing to shoulder the machine over toward the window.

  “Earl, this is patently absurd.”

  “Goddammit, would you shut the fuck up? I’m trying to work here. The sooner I can get this where it—needs—to—be—There!—the sooner we can wrap this up. Victor, get the tape.”

  Victor rummaged through the bag while Chas singlehandedly lifted Milo and the chair and slung them unceremoniously in front of the machine’s dimmed façade.

  Finding a virgin roll of duct tape—still in the plastic wrapping—Victor tossed it to Chas. “Is this a good idea, Chas?”

  “Shut up, Victor. I’m Earl. I know what I’m doing. Earl’s your own little angel of death, Milo.” Milo had nothing to say about the situation, instead goggling around in incredulity. Seven big loops of tape later, Milo found himself attached to the machine, inseparably, it seemed.

  “Okay. Milo. One last time. Montrose. Benito. Gone. Make it make sense to me, eh? For fuck’s sake, at least give me Montrose’s phone number.”

  “Look, Earl, I’ve already told you—”

  “All right. You’re done. Victor, set this prick on fire.”

  Victor fumbled through his own pockets and turned up a silver lighter. He went to the wet bar as Chas ran quickly from the room to grab a fire extinguisher from the wall. As he pulled off the plastic sheath, a mild beep beep beep went off and a tiny red light blinked.

  In the room, Victor had sprinkled Milo liberally with high-proof rum.

  “You’re going to set me on fire and put me out?” asked Milo, not knowing what to believe or even what to guess.

  “No, you fucking stiff!” Chas yelled at him and hurled the fire extinguisher through the wide glass window. Glass showered downward, accompanied by the extinguisher, which surely made a clash and tinkle as it hit the ground twenty-nine floors below. “You’re going out the fucking window.”

  Victor struck the lighter and Chas heaved upward from the base of the vending machine. Milo’s eyes bugged amazingly as the duct tape held him to the machine, and his clothes and blood-damped hair went up in a fiery rush.

  With an assertive, final heave, Chas pushed the machine up and out the window, sending Milo Rothstein tumbling toward the ground in a flaming, spiraling death-dive.

  Chas and Victor bolted from the room, the latter grabbing the bag and hurling his flaming lighter to the floor to bum away the blood-evidence, and sprinted down the hallway toward the stairs. They took three flights in as many bounds, and Victor kept going, intending to call an elevator a few floors below. Chas yanked the fire alarm on floor twenty-six and then dashed down the stairs to join Victor at the elevator. Chas counted himself lucky that he didn’t have to breathe or he’d be panting hugely—and suspiciously.

  And then nonchalantly, amid the confusion and the fire department trucks and the ambulances and screaming vacationers, they made their way across the street to catch a cab back to their hotel. With any luck at all, Milo was old enough to be dust by now, and this would look like some rock-star publicity stunt or the work of hooligans. No one had any reason to suspect murder at all. No one except Montrose and the Las Vegas Rothsteins, of course, but that could be dealt with later.

  Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 10:57 PM

  Caesar’s Palace, Room 2604

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  When Chas had risen for the night, he found Victor still in bed.

  Dead.

  The television was on, running through a collection of previews that would soon show and on which channels they would appear. An overturned mug of coffee sat on the nightstand. The Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Wall Street Journal lay open on the bed and stained by coffee on the floor, respectively. The smell of almonds permeated the room.

  Someone had infused the coffee with cyanide.

  “I told you I hate this city,” Chas said to Victor’s still-stiff corpse. By the time anyone found him, Victor would be turning green-red and purple as the blood pooled downward.

  But that wasn’t Chas’s problem. He had a cargo-class flight to catch back to Boston. A quick call to Frankie Gee from the dispatch office at the airport should have whoever was in charge of such things make sure no one matching Chas’s description came up in any of the police reports.

  “Goodbye, cockroaches.”

  Poor, stupid Victor. A victim of ambition, both his own and others’.

  It never even occurred to Chas to question why they’d thought to poison Victor’s coffee but not to stake the Kindred sleeping in the bathroom. And even if he had thought about it, he’d just guess he had a charmed unlife.

  part two:

  dig your own hole

  Night unknown

  Mycerinus’s courtyard

  Memphis, Egypt

  The cowled figure stepped forth from the shadows, seeming to pour out of them like wine from a pitcher. It surveyed the surroundings, sniffing a bit in the humid air.

  What a curious scent, the figure thought to itself. Like blood, only…
everywhere. Pervasive. As if the air itself…

  A peal of thunder rent the night, shaking the Egyptian sands and even the pillars of the palace itself. The pharaoh no doubt slept poorly this evening, probably rousing his concubines with his nervous stirrings. For nights now, an ill spirit had fouled his temper, and no amount of pliant flesh or tender foods could calm him. Ever since the disgraced son had spoken his fateful words, the king’s manner was one of discomfiture.

  What was that curse again? That blood shall fall like rain? That rain shall follow blood? Something perhaps about a bloody reign? The figure trod silently across the sands from the temple to one of the lesser buildings. In this time of miracles, almost any oath may carry literal truth. Men and gods—impossible to understand! Where one land swears by the existence of one all-powerful, its neighbors spill blood in the name of numerous divine lords. And even this simple Egypt, with its notions of the king who walks among them—how strange! That a god should stink and rut and befoul the water among his very people! Yes, how does this Egypt stretch as far as any of the nations of man? Here, far from the Father’s Garden?

  Away from the palace, carved into another rock wall, a portal stood, guarded only by a small boy. The figure stood before the boy, showing him a scepter and a scarab brooch, clasping each in a thin, bony, cadaverous hand. The boy smiled blankly and ran his fingers over a bas-relief of a skull on the rocky face of the wall; the portal opened.

  Dank air crept out, like the exhalation of a sick man. The figure entered, still musing to itself. Every moment is at once an absurdity and a miracle. The spark of life that sustains the boy, that animates my flock— why does God choose to give them such a precious gift? And why does He spite me, who knows of Him and reveres Him and fears Him as he wishes? Why does He force me to walk as the dead among them, while painting them—ignorant savages!—with the colors of vibrant life? Why should He let them watch His glorious sunrise? Or sate their lusty loins beneath the flawless skies? Do You hear me, God? Are You with me in death, or have Your ears grown deaf to the voices of Your disavowed?

  If God was listening, he gave no indication. A single serpent crawled from one of the steps the figure descended, into a crack in the sandstone wall.

  Oh, how very like my angry God. Always punishing the councilor for the sins of the artisan. Or perhaps, always punishing the children for the sins of their father. The figure smirked beneath its hood. I know Your ways, God. You have turned Your back on me, yet it has allowed me to step nearer to You without your knowledge. You do not see me; You force Yourself not to hear me. And it will be Your undoing. One night, You shall feel my fangs—the very affliction with which You cursed me and my sire and my sire’s sire—at Your throat. And then, great God, You will know what fear can breed in a man—even a dead one. My dead heart still beats, but it is not with mercy or love. No, my heart beats with the black blood of anger…an anger that Your wisdom has left as a scar. Better to have struck me down than to permit the kiss of—

  “Master?”

  A child’s voice interrupted the figure from the growing histrionics of its reverie. Taking the last step, the cowled form entered a low, arched room that stank of sweat and youth and the waste of mortal bodies. A single torch guttered against the far wall, bestowing precious little light on the squalid chamber but giving the figure far more luminescence than it needed to see. The cool stone walls bore no marks, other than a few streaks of offal and a haphazard pattern of russet hand-prints. A boy emerged from the far corner, his face obscured by unknown filth, naked as the day he was born.

  “Master?” The wretch repeated his question, unaware that his master indeed stood before him. The figure shook its head. Perhaps the boy would never learn—he peered too purposefully into the darkness.

  “Yes, Nusrat. It is I.” The figure peeled back its hood, its head emerging, baring a rictus of teeth, like a skull plucked from a lifeless body. Which, in truth, it was….

  The boy leapt into the dead man’s cold arms, clambering exuberantly up them to kiss his master’s face. The master turned away, sparing himself the boy’s clumsy affections. He looked about, lifeless eyes leering from pitted sockets, scanning the darkness. “Nusrat, where is your sister? Elisha?” He called out, but received no response.

  “She’s sleeping, master. She’s still sick.”

  “She’s not sick, my dear boy.” A charnel hand emerged from the robe to pat the boy’s shorn head affectionately. “No, she isn’t sick. She’s tired. I’ve taken so much of her precious blood that she hasn’t the power to walk.” As he spoke, the dead man led his ward hand-in-hand to the corner where Elisha lay. “See? Elisha. Elisha…”

  The girl sprawled in a heap on the floor, looking like nothing more than a pile of bones herself. Flies buzzed about her—How did they find their way in?—and crawled across her half-open eyes, in and out of her parted lips. “Elisha? Are you not well?” The dead man’s skeleton-head grinned a particularly vicious smile. “Do you need your rest? She does, doesn’t she, Nusrat? She needs her precious sleep.” The dead man nudged Elisha’s head with his foot as Nusrat stared up at him plaintively. “Oh, yes. She’s very tired.

  “May I ask something of you, my boy?” The dead man stroked the boy’s hand, his bony fingers leaving brief, bright trails on the boy’s bronzed skin. He looked down, his face a mask of deathlike serenity. “Yes, master?”

  “Take this to Djuran, at the top of the stair.” He handed the boy a small scarab with a human skull in place of its head. It was a magical, alchemical elixir-tablet, fashioned from his own blood, created to augment his servants’ powers and bond them to his will. “I’ll have one for you when you return.”

  As the boy’s naked feet flapped away into the darkness, the dead man turned his attention again to Elisha. “My dear, sweet girl. I am sorry to have left you so.”

  He lifted her—she weighed little more than a bundle of river reeds—and cradled her in the crook of his arm. Pushing the tattered shift away from her body, he bent one weakened leg away from him, exposing the flesh of her thigh and the delicate pink pucker that hid above. As a hungry man eyeing a roast and spitted calf, the dead man stared at the enfeebled girl’s haunch. Carefully, delicately, he bit into the flesh of her leg and felt the musky skin give way beneath his fangs. A weak trickle of blood coursed into his mouth, at first slowly and then in greater volume. The dead man drank with a detached fervor, indulging himself in the sole passion that animated his cursed frame, lapping up the blood in rivulets. With but a few seconds’ draught, the flow ceased completely, just as the boy returned from his errand above.

  The robed specter dropped Elisha’s body to the floor, where it came to rest with a dull thud. He rubbed one finger coarsely across his lip and motioned to Nusrat to come closer. “And now, would you please get rid of that?”

  The boy answered, “Yes, master,” but the dead man had already turned to go.

  Before he reached the top of the stair, the dead man met the door attendant, whose eyes held a wide look of shock. “Master, you—the skies have—”

  “Spit it out, boy. I don’t keep idiots in my employ,” the dead man snapped, nonetheless worried about the effect whatever lurked outside had had on his attendant. Djuran was not the brightest of slaves, but he was stalwart. Could it be that the pharaoh had finally tired of his cadaverous vizier’s ways? Had he sent a royal guard to arrest him and press him beneath stones? Had a sergeant come to arrest him? It would likely be the gravest error of that sergeant’s life….

  As he ascended the stairs with the stammering Djuran behind him, the dead man saw what had the boy so agitated.

  The skies were lit with brief bursts of ruddy lightning and the humid air held the tang of blood. Indeed, as the dead man looked out over the sands and walls of Egypt, they all became stained with a heavy brown-red rain.

  The Lord God had caused blood to fall from the sky.

  Thursday, 15 July 1999, 1:27 AM

  Seasons Restaurant, Bostonian Hotel<
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  Boston, Massachusetts

  “So, you’re proposing what, exactly?” Isabel looked sternly at the Kindred before her. He had been sent from Baltimore at the behest of Jan Pieterzoon to entreat Giovanni support against the Sabbat. His name was something French, or maybe Canadian, but his English certainly didn’t have any accent.

  “Recognition of the Giovanni claim to Boston,” replied the agent. “The Camarilla will formally acknowledge the supremacy of Clan Giovanni in Boston and its immediate environs. That is, in exchange for the support of the present members of the clan against the Sabbat’s efforts along the eastern seaboard. It’s in your best interests, you know.”

  “Don’t patronize us, you fucking pindick,” barked Chas from across the table. This meeting had convened at the last minute, by request of Francis Milliner.

  Francis was the eldest member of the Milliner family, the Boston branch of the Giovanni. Isabel believed him to be more than a bit paranoid, but she indulged him. Much had recently taken place in Boston, including the execution of one of the most dangerous loose cannons ever known to the clan. Genevra Giovanni had been a Sabbat sympathizer, having use for the Giovanni family only insofar as it served her immediate needs. Not that every Giovanni vampire—and probably every vampire, period—didn’t harbor similar selfishness, but the open display had made her powerful enemies among the clan. Masterfully, the Milliners had hidden her elimination beneath a veil of organized crime violence. Isabel had to give Francis credit— he had crafted an almost century-long ruse to use as a smokescreen for whatever untoward befell him and his brood, and never thought twice about playing it out to take Genevra out of the picture. For his foresight and cleverness, the elders of the clan decided to allow him to drink the heart’s blood of the rogue, bringing him closer to the power of the elders themselves. Who knows how many other contingency plans Milliner had up his sleeve?