by Eric Griffin
“This is the big time, tough guy. Whatcha gonna do? These bastards here,” he gestured to the conference table where the rest of the assembly looked on with alternating distaste, detached curiosity, and ill-concealed blood hunger. “You think these guys are gonna stand with you when they see how you pay back the folks who put you where you are now? Come off it. These guys are the real deal. Hell, these guys are the Sabbat, I mean the real Sabbat. The folks that make things happen. You’re not dealing with a bunch of low-life drifters and clansmen; fugitives and survivalists, weirdoes and cultists, anymore. You think these guys are sitting around waiting for someone to come along and tell them what to do and who to do it to?
“Look at that guy,” Hardin gestured angrily in the direction of the Little Tailor. “You think that guy gives a damn about your Coalition? That guy is one weird mother. And I’m willing to bet that he’s been doing that same twisted shit since before, well, since before Dr. Frankenstein was a glimmer in Mary Shelley’s eye. And he’ll still be doing it long after you and I have bought a worm farm—really bought it, I mean. For keeps, this time.”
“For keeps,” Averros agreed ominously.
Hardin circled warily, positioning himself so that the wall was behind him and Averros had to turn his back on the entire treacherous assembly in order to face him. The knives were spinning freely now, flipping through a complex series of patterns, too fast for the eye to follow.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Hardin’s menacing whisper cut through the barrier of whirling blades between the two. “You’re unarmed. I’ll cut you down where you stand, before you can even lay a hand on me.”
“Look, I don’t want to kill you and my guess is that you don’t want to die,” Averros said in a tone one might take in addressing an idiot child. “Although I wouldn’t want to have to prove it with only the evidence of the last few minutes. If you want to do this thing, take your shot. Otherwise, give me the blades and sit down, ’cause I’ve got a city to storm and some Camarilla bastards to hunt down and make plead for their pitiful unlives, and you are holding up the show.
“So what’s it gonna be, Ripper? You take a cut at me and you won’t walk out of here. You know it. Look at these bastards. Go ahead, look at them. These guys will eat your sorry carcass for lunch—would have eaten it already if I weren’t standing here between you and them. You think they’re playing around? This is for keeps, Ripper. This is the show. So let’s do it like you mean it. One blood…”
Hardin’s right arm shot out, unleashing a screaming arc of steel at point-blank range.
Averros made no effort to sidestep the oncoming blade. He held Hardin’s eyes unflinchingly.
The swirling knife cut hard, banking out and down. It slammed home into the table with a resounding chunk and stood there trembling.
“One body.” Hardin snapped the remaining blades shut and purposefully turned his back on Averros. He took three steps toward the table. With each step, he could feel the muscles between his shoulder blades tense in anticipation of the retaliatory strike. Once. Twice. Thrice.
Nothing.
He let out a long slow breath as he slid the blades noisily, disdainfully, across the great circular table. They clattered to rest near its center, well out of reach of any of the councilors seated around the perimeter. Without a sideward glance, Hardin took his seat. “Your pardon, venerable Borges. I believe the gracious lady from Canada had the floor.”
Averros held his ground as if lost in deep thought. His gaze never wavered from the space Hardin had so recently occupied. He could not help but feel glad for the respite offered by the other’s theatrics.
He let his eyes fall closed for a moment as he collected himself. With one part of his mind, he summoned up the power of the blood to staunch the new wound in his left side, just beneath his arm. With another, he reached for a loose strand of shadow and lashed it in place to mask the cut where the blade had sliced neatly through his leather jacket—without even slowing—and then glanced away sharply to impact the table.
Snatching up another trailing end of shadow, Averros turned toward the assembly. He flashed a disarming smile for the benefit of those who were still watching him expectantly and took hold of the high seatback with both hands. He leaned into it, feeling its weight, its solidity. It steadied him.
His side still burned like hell, but he couldn’t spare it much attention. As the eyes around the table turned once again to the Montreal delegate, Averros took advantage of the opportunity to send the thread of shadow snaking toward the knife that still thrummed in the tabletop. The twist of darkness coiled tightly around the blade, concealing any telltale trace of blood that might yet be clinging to it. Only then did Averros allow himself to relax a fraction.
Hardin would pay later, of course. And keep paying, the smug bastard. Averros had seen the gleam of triumph in Hardin’s eyes just before he had turned his back. Averros would make a point of remembering that look, so that he could arrange Hardin’s face in just that same expression after the body had been laid out.
No, there was no doubting it. Hardin had scored first blood and he knew he had done so. There would be no working with him until he had been put back in his place.
But to his credit, Hardin had kept his little show of defiance private, just between the two of them. To the rest of the council, it must have appeared as if Hardin had backed down—backed down in a rather flamboyant manner, but backed down nonetheless. That counted for something.
He had allowed his commander, and thus the Coalition, to save face. Lord knew the Coalition had little enough clout here as it was—only what shred Averros could personally wrest from the voracious lords of the Damned seated all around them. It was something of an unwritten rule among the Sabbat. A law of conservation of respect. Among this company, esteem could neither be created nor destroyed. It had to be taken from someone else who already had it.
Yes, Hardin deserved some credit. He had pushed the matter to the brink but had drawn back from the edge before blowing their one shot at the big time. Maybe he only did it because it was the only way he could think of to save his own miserable undead hide. But he took the fall.
Hell, Hardin knew what was at stake here. A victory in Atlanta would give the Coalition the clout it needed to play with the big boys. But they wouldn’t get a juicy piece of the action in Atlanta unless Averros could convince the council that he had what they desperately needed—a bloodthirsty horde of seasoned killers poised (as far as such a mob might be said to demonstrate any degree of poise) to descend upon the unsuspecting Camarilla.
Averros was a fair, if unforgiving leader. Hardin, he decided, would pay. But he would be punished in a manner that suited his transgression—he would suffer personally and privately.
“We are satisfied,” the Montreal representative waved dismissively toward the blades in the center of the table, as if she would brush them from sight.
“But we,” Averros countered, “are not yet satisfied.”
Dozens of wary eyes regarded him once again.
“The point I was making, gentlemen, the point that Capitan Caldwell had expressed so frankly in his earlier comments, is that all weapons have not been removed from this council chamber.” He turned pointedly upon the Little Tailor of Prague.
His meaning was not lost upon his audience. Even the war ghoul began to growl menacingly in protest.
The gentleman so accused did not meet Averros’s gaze. Instead, he very slowly removed his eyeglasses and held them up to the light. Taking a tattered and obviously bloodstained handkerchief from his pocket, he proceeded to polish the lenses. Periodically, he paused in order to hold the frames up to the light again. It was not long before it became clear to all assembled that the lenses had become evenly coated with a clinging red film. Satisfied, the Tailor replaced the glasses on the bridge of his nose and addressed the group.
“Gentlemen, it is to me no great surprise that many of you should remain somewhat apprehensive, even distrustful of my presence here toda
y. I knew that, as a visitor from the Old Country, I could expect something of a cool reception from my New World cousins. No, do not deny it. I know this to be so.”
The Little Tailor held up a finger to forestall an argument that was not forthcoming. All eyes were immediately drawn to that wickedly tapering finger. Like many of his Tzimisce brethren, the Little Tailor was not easy to look at. Each of his fingers had apparently been stripped of all flesh and sharpened into long, delicate needles of bone. He wagged his finger knowingly at them, revealing long viscous-looking lines of blackened catgut threaded through his needles. These strands ran along the inside of his palm, over the hump of his wrist and away down his forearm into the recesses of his sleeve. Averros’s first disturbing impression was that the Little Tailor’s hands and arms had been flayed open, revealing the taut lines of vein and artery beneath. He quickly saw that this was not so. The moist black catgut simply wound over and about his arms, like thread on a spindle.
“You are jealous of your hard-won freedoms,” the Tailor continued. “This is good. And for many of you present at this assembly, perhaps, the excesses—even the cruelties—of Europe’s ancient ones is not the stuff of distant legend, but rather of all-too-recent memory, yes?”
There were a few mutterings of assent from around the table, but the rumbling undertone was dangerous rather than affirming.
“It is nothing with which you need concern yourself, Master Tailor.” The voice was icy. It belonged to an ambitious young Lasombra of Borges’s camp. Perhaps even one of his kin, the Tailor thought. It was always difficult to tell among the Lasombra. They had an unsettling habit of fawning all over their elders, even when they had no right to expect that such attentions would be received. They were like puppies in that respect, squirming over one another, shouldering their way toward the center of their master’s attention and affection. It was, well, it was just not quite proper. It was enough to make any self-respecting Tzimisce somewhat queasy.
The Tailor remembered the youth’s name from an earlier examination of the golden placecards—Sebastian. Such a lovely name. It always reminded him of beautiful young boys pierced through with barbed arrows.
“The fact of the matter is,” Sebastian was continuing, “that we are justifiably wary of the convoluted games of dominance and empire played by our old-school ‘cousins’ across the Atlantic. How can we hope to make any progress in tearing down the deadly web of intrigue cast by the Antediluvians, if in so doing we blunder into a no less formidable trap laid for us by our European counterparts?”
There were scattered words of assent and one loud “amen” from the New York faction. Perhaps there was some story there, the Tailor thought, but it would come out in time, no doubt. He knew from his decades of experience among the dungeons of the most notable houses of Europe—it would all come out in time.
“The one fact that you are overlooking,” a commanding voice cut through the commotion with military precision, “is that the gentleman of Prague is no powermonger. So far as I have been able to determine, he himself has little, if anything, to gain from this undertaking.”
“Except of course, the favor of your master!” Sebastian retorted, turning angrily upon the speaker. “You will not deceive us so easily, Vallejo. Do you deny that the Butcher of Prague is here at the specific request of your beloved cardinal?”
All around the table, faces that had not seen the sun in generations suddenly went a full shade paler. Only the very incautious even dared to look in the direction of the Little Tailor to observe the full effect these words had upon him. A number of those present had spent the entire assembly thus far very pointedly avoiding that particular ancient and derisive epithet. Sebastian surely realized his mistake as soon as the words had left his lips. But he stuck to his guns and did not turn from his confrontation with Vallejo.
“The butcher,” the gentleman of Prague repeated the words as if searching for some meaning in them. Sebastian winced, hearing the syllables parroted back at him. He tensed, expecting a blow.
“The baker. The candlestick maker,” the Little Tailor mused aloud. “Now there’s a moral there somewhere. No, that’s a fable.” He seemed lost in thought. He drummed the tips of his fingers together distractedly. The bone needles clacking together sounded like the rattle of machine-gun fire in the silent chamber.
The entire assembly seemed to hold its breath.
“Do any of you know the one that goes…” the Little Tailor began. “No, never mind, you wouldn’t know.”
Sebastian was perspiring openly now. Tiny beads of shadow and blood seeped from his pores and stood out in bold relief on his forehead.
“Be easy now, grandfather,” another Tzimisce soothed, perhaps the representative from Detroit. “You have much work to do still this evening and we mustn’t keep you from it.” He took the ancient one by the arm to help him to his feet.
The war ghoul bellowed a challenge, shattering the uneasy hush that had fallen over the room. The other quickly loosed his grip upon the Tailor’s arm and retreated a few quick paces.
“All right,” the Tailor chuckled indulgently.
“One more, but then it’s off to bed with all of you. Let’s see now. This is one of my favorites. Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” His voice trailed off into a quiet murmuring that, after a while, might have been the beginnings of a snore.
As one, the group seemed to exhale. But soon a low chuckling was heard. It began deep in the Tailor’s chest, but it rose in pitch and intensity until it swallowed the room.
“No, that’s right. They couldn’t put him back together, could they?” His eyes remained closed as he spoke and he smiled contentedly. “Well, it was like a jigsaw puzzle, really. Yes, a life-size jigsaw puzzle. First, they had to gather up all the little pieces. And they weren’t likely to find all the little pieces, now were they? No, not if you’ve hidden them well. They’ll never find the pieces. Never find the pieces. Never find…” his voice trailed off into a taunting childish singsong.
Very soon, the unmistakable sound of snoring echoed across the conference table.
“I believe,” said the venerable Borges, “that we should adjourn for the evening. If any of you would like to pursue further some of the issues raised here, I will be more than happy to receive any and all of you in my suite on the upper floor of this hotel. For the rest of our honored guests, I will bid you good night and look forward to seeing you here again at the same time tomorrow evening.”
The company did not quite tiptoe out of the room, but they did retire in short order, leaving the old one and his attendant war ghoul in possession of the field.
Sunday, 20 June 1999, 2:37 AM
Penthouse suite, Omni Hotel at CNN Center
Atlanta, Georgia
“I tell you, I don’t like it,” Sebastian stormed. He hung languidly on the heavy blackout curtains that ringed the lavish penthouse suite. They served a function much like tapestries in the great castles of Europe—to keep out the worst excesses of an unfriendly clime. In the wind-swept North Atlantic, the unwanted extremes were those of cold and draft, while here the obvious concern was to keep out the deadly rays of the unforgiving Atlanta sun.
Borges raised a quieting hand. “Enough. You made your point in council. And in doing so, you managed to avoid the primary threat—which was, incidentally, the very real possibility of your being gutted where you stood by Vallejo. But, as they say, tomorrow is another day.”
“Vallejo? Who had time to worry about Vallejo? You threw me upon the mercy of the Butcher!”
“I?” Borges settled back deeper into the plush, throne-like chair facing the fireplace.
The flickering flames made Sebastian distinctly uneasy. It was not only that the evening was oppressively warm already. Nor was it merely the instinctive fear of fire that was deeply ingrained in all the Children of Caine. It was that, well, even when his master faced directly into the firelight (as he was doing at this very moment) Sebastian still could make out n
o hint of Borges’s features save that gleaming, predatory smile.
It reminded him that although he and Borges were of one blood, they were not of a kind. “Your pardon, Borges. I am not myself. The very thought of that monstrosity! I feel quite unwell.”
“Nonsense. It was a calculated risk. The exact probability of your being torn apart right there in the council chamber, although difficult to calculate precisely with all those Tzimisce wildcards in the equation, was actually quite slight.”
“That is very reassuring,” Sebastian replied. He picked up the poker and, holding it up to one eye, sighted along it. He tested its heft and struck up the en garde position. Borges continued to stare fixedly toward the fire.
“You might have told me,” Sebastian continued, “that ‘Butcher of Prague’ was more than just a passing slight, a play on an occupational title.” He resumed a more casual stance and, taking the poker between both hands, flexed it one or two times experimentally. “I actually thought for a moment there that he was going to lose it. I mean, really lose it. What would you have done if that thing had just gone berserk?”
Borges waved a hand dismissively. “Now, it did not come to that. And in this, at least, we have cause to be grateful. Yes, overall, I must admit to being quite satisfied with the evening’s events.”
“You did not answer my question,” Sebastian brooded. Then, with a sudden theatrical twirl of the poker, he planted it like a cane and began to walk jauntily across the room. He stopped, trying to seem casual about it, directly behind Borges’s chair. “But I did not think the council such a decisive victory. The Nomads, for instance, monopolized far more than their share of the proceedings. I was well prepared to shout down a disorganized rabble of thin-blooded ruffians. But I thought they put in quite an impressive showing.”
Borges did not turn from contemplation of the flames. “Far too few casualties for the opening session. It bodes ill for the morrow.”
“An astute point.” Sebastian raised the tip of the poker and regarded it critically. “But a moment ago, you were claiming a clear victory for our party.
