by Eric Griffin
Pleased for an opponent more tangible than the elusive shadow, Julius stepped forward to meet the challenge. His sword whistled through the air, and three of the creature’s arms fell to the floor in a spray of bloody ichor. It shrieked and staggered back toward its mates, which were still advancing deliberately. Julius licked his lips and tasted some of the mess that had splattered across his face.
Ghoul blood. Not potent enough to belong to a full-fledged vampire.
Tzimisce blood. Julius had tasted it before. Even if he hadn’t, where Lasombra roamed there were certain to be a few of their obedient fiends not far behind, like dogs waiting for scraps under the table. Add to that the presence of the freakish abominations now pressing their attack. Only a twisted Tzimisce mind could fashion something so horrid.
The battle ghouls nearest Julius hesitated for a moment, having seen what he did to their more impatient comrade. Throughout the gallery, most of the Kindred of Atlanta were going down, and quickly. Benjamin, a second-tier Ventrue, lay dazed on the floor as one ghoul beat him senseless with a leg broken from one of the statues. Nearby, a Gangrel who’d attacked rashly and unsupported was lifted off the ground by two monstrosities who used him for a wishbone. Julius didn’t pause to see which one ended up with the larger piece.
Amidst the carnage and swirling shadows, one salient fact sank beneath his primed fighting instincts—this was no mere Sabbat raid, to be beaten back and shrugged off, as he’d assumed when the Lasombra darkness had first fallen; this was the most Sabbat muscle he’d seen gathered in one place. Ever.
For the Kindred to prevail over the fiends and their shadow masters would take a miracle. Soon. Very soon.
He risked another glance around as the ghouls began to close on him again. The prince was not far. He shepherded his wife, Eleanor, behind him, the two edging back closer to Julius, giving up ground in the face of the ghouls advancing from that direction.
“Benison!” Julius called.
The prince, bloodied himself—from blows given or received, Julius couldn’t tell—glared at the Brujah archon. Julius whipped the second sword from its clasp on his back. Benison’s eyes narrowed for a moment at perceived treachery, but then Julius reversed the weapon, took the blade in his own hand, and offered the pommel to the Malkavian.
Benison nodded gravely, then took the weapon.
From this silent exchange, a peculiar hush, a weighty gravitas that smothered speech and action, radiated to encompass almost the entire gallery; the formation of such an unlikely, even impossible, partnership between prince and archon signaled to every Kindred present what Julius, in his broader experience, had already surmised—namely that the Sabbat, though the task was not yet complete, had carried the night. The vampires of the Camarilla were doomed.
Even the battle ghouls, automaton creations of the Sabbat, seemed to sense the moment, or perhaps their hesitation was no more than a tactical pause, a gathering of forces for the final flurry of destruction. Whatever the case, the respite lasted no longer than a single mortal breath.
Glass shattered. Shards of both the black dividers and the outer windows of the museum itself exploded inward, dug into clothing and flesh alike. Julius shielded his eyes but ignored the other dozens of glass splinters that tore into him.
Bouncing into the gallery through the shattered windows were a score of fist-sized orbs the color of flesh, that smelled of blood—and for good reason. The orbs, in unison, pulsated once, then again, and on the third pulse they exploded. Bloody ichor sprayed the chamber. Kindred recoiled in shock and surprise, then for some the blood and excitement took hold of their basest instincts. The hunger of the Beast arose within them, and they fell upon one another.
At the same time, the ghouls pounced, and the shadows renewed their attacks.
The giant malformities moved with deceptive speed. Julius was hard pressed. Only the knowledge that Benison was at his back—with the prince’s wife, Eleanor, huddled between them—allowed the Brujah to concentrate on the attackers to his front and flanks. His blade found many a target. Severed limbs tumbled. Julius cleaved the skull of one of the monstrosities as it staggered forward after suffering a blow to the knee. Its gargantuan corpse formed a breastwork of sorts, gaining for Julius an extra foot or two of space for maneuver.
Not far to his right, his Toreador hostess, Victoria Ash had fallen beneath one of the ghouls. Julius stepped toward her and struck at her attacker.
His distraction almost cost him dearly. He barely avoided a huge talon aimed for his head, a blow that, had it landed, would have relieved him of that portion of his anatomy. A slashing counterattack severed the talon, but there were five or six more poised to continue the attack. Julius lunged at the creature’s torso, hoping for a single, killing blow, but an unexpected drag on his leg threw off his attack, and he missed badly.
The taloned creature, luckily for Julius, stumbled back, and the archon turned to hack at what he assumed was a tendril of shadow coiling around his leg. Instead, he found Thelonious, the Brujah primogen of the city, clutching him, crawling his way up Julius’s leg. Thelonious’s own legs were missing, ripped off above the knees. A trail of blood led back to one of his limbs. But Julius was more concerned by what he saw in his clanmate’s eyes. The madness of hunger consumed him; the flesh grenades, no doubt, had plummeted him into a spiral of uncontrollable bloodlust.
Julius hesitated only a moment, then struck Thelonious with one powerful sweep of his blade. Head and body collapsed to the floor. Never mind that this was the Brujah primogen, that he was the leader of the revolt that had threatened to topple Benison. The necessities of battle did not always accommodate the demands of politics. Julius could not afford an additional threat at the moment.
As if in justification of his split-second decision, the taloned creature renewed its assault, and this time Julius struck hard and true. His sword bypassed the remaining claws and bit deeply into the ghoul’s body proper. The archon twisted the blade; it did as much damage coming out as it had going in. The beast stumbled backward over its fallen comrade and collapsed for good.
But still the shadows grasped at Julius’s legs and ankles, and the ghouls—their number never seeming to decrease, no matter how many he struck down—pressed the attack from all directions. The prince was down beneath a pile of the foul creatures. Eleanor, wielding a cudgel she’d scavenged from a felled ghoul, tried to help, but the weapon was too large and heavy for her tiny hands. She swung with precious little accuracy and even less effect. A great tendril of shadow smashed some poor bastard on the floor, over and over again, and then tossed him through a window. Meanwhile, Julius again waded into the fray.
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 1:10 AM
The Firedance
Atlanta, Georgia
An explosion rocked the top story of the Atlanta chantry. Gouts of flame burst from the upper windows and fled into the night with the shriek of tormented spirits. In the front parlor, the cedarwood sarcophagus that held Hannah’s remains smoldered gently amidst the conflagration.
Hands grimed with smoke, soot, and blood-sweat took hold of the unwieldy box. Ignoring both the heat and the pain, they dragged their burden roughly from the blaze.
The sound of splitting timbers cracked like gunshots in the still night. Rhodes Hall, haven of Prince J. Benison Hodge, slumped suddenly under its own weight. It disgorged a plume of golden sparks skyward.
Inside, amidst a cascade of shattering glass, badly mangled claws plucked forth the contents of the display cases. Each piece in the prince’s priceless collection of Civil War-era Enfield rifles was passed admiringly from hand to hand as they traversed the few short blocks down Peachtree Street to the High Museum.
At the High Museum, the Firedance was already raging out of control. The celebrants had torn through Midtown, looting and scavenging every piece of wood that could be lifted, broken, or pried.
They heaped the fruits of their labors at the foot of the curious sculpture that dominated the front of
the museum—a huge metal mobile, sculpted by Calder. The heat from the rising flames caught at the dangling, brightly colored panels, causing the mobile to rotate slowly with an eerie, piercing creak of metal on metal.
Moved by the spirit of frenzied abandon, the Sabbat leapt heedlessly over, about and through the flames. It was an ancient ritual for steeling the nerve. The celebrants sought to outdo each other in their audacious feats of daring and agility. Each firedancer that fell victim to the grasping flames only fueled the intensity of the capering mob.
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 1:12 AM
Parking garage, the High Museum of Art
Atlanta, Georgia
A thin line of shadow trickled through the crack around a service hatch on the outer wall. The blackness flowed to near Bolon, fearsome leader of the Tzimisce battle ghouls, and on the concrete floor the shadow took the shape of a man. It resembled a police chalk outline, except the body was more than a line; it was a solid mass of darkness. While the shadow remained on the ground, from the feet upward a mirror image of darkness formed vertically, as if the shadow cast a shadow of its own. Then the free-standing blackness took on more substance, shed its cloak of darkness, and there stood Vallejo.
“Heavy losses,” spoke Monçada’s legionnaire to Bolon, “but victory will be ours shortly. The prince and the Brujah archon still resist, but few others.”
Bolon grunted. “If you want something done right…” He stepped over the body of the Camarilla ghoul whose bowels he’d been unraveling onto the floor. Bolon, like many of the battle ghouls of his command, stood nearly eight feet tall. He clattered when he moved, as the various plates of thick bone armor—all shaped from and directly attached to his body—grated against one another. Large spikes of bone protruded from his shoulders, elbows, knuckles, knees, and along the crest of his bone-helmeted head.
Vallejo squeezed the bridge of his nose as his senses cleared. The transition from shadow to body was sometimes a jarring shift in perspective. The allure of darkness, the unrestrained freedom of shapelessness, not to mention the unique union between himself and the other legionnaires as they merged together to form a far-reaching blanket of shadow—enough, in fact, to reach nearly from the bottom of the museum to the top—were seductive. It was tempting simply to remain a part of that common body. Indeed, the power to join their incorporeal forms was one of the uppermost achievements in their training under Monçada, and the addictiveness of that state was the cardinal’s insurance of their loyalty. Vallejo had lost not a few recruits who had been unwilling or unable to reclaim their identity from that common bond. But the strong persevered.
“Bring those barrels,” Bolon shouted to a few of his nearby ghouls, and they dutifully hauled over several oil drums that had just been unloaded from a truck and maneuvered them toward the elevator.
Vallejo was impressed by Vykos’s thoroughness even more so than her ruthlessness—no eventuality had been overlooked. The tiny knot of resistance upstairs would give way shortly, and the battle would be over. It was already won.
Armed with foreknowledge of success, Vallejo released his physical form to the darkness and climbed upward once again.
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 1:18 AM
Fourth floor, the High Museum of Art
Atlanta, Georgia
Prince Benison was free. Julius had skewered two of the prince’s assailants, and even Eleanor had distracted one long enough that Benison was able to regain his feet, crush the ghoul’s skull with a single blow of the Malkavian’s mighty fist, and retrieve his sword. The three Kindred had also managed to battle their way closer to the main entrance of the gallery—the two sets of gargantuan bronze doors, their panels covered with friezes. One of the sets of double doors nearly touched the gallery ceiling, thirty-odd feet above. Along with the slightly shorter set, they dominated the chamber, especially now that most of the sculptures and glass partitions had been overturned or destroyed outright.
Maybe they won’t expect us to break for the front door since many of them came in that way, Julius hoped. He viewed the elevator itself as more of a deathtrap than an escape route, but there were other avenues of egress in that direction. All things considered, it seemed worth a try.
Benison seemed instinctively to follow Julius’s lead. Not a word passed between the two, but they covered one another’s rear and flanks without fail. More than once, Julius felt the breeze of the prince’s loaned sword by his ear, only to see an unwary attacker fall at his side. And Julius repaid the prince in kind. All the while, Eleanor kept to the insular eddy between the two warriors, thwacking ghouls whenever they strayed within her reach and keeping out of trouble as much as she could. She was not well-versed in combat—she’d always tended toward the more subtle, though no less deadly, machinations and intrigues of Kindred society—but she was doing her best to help the two warriors, rather than letting herself become a burden.
The trio of Brujah, Malkavian, and Ventrue was at the base of the stairs directly beneath the oversized doors. Only a handful of ghouls now blocked their escape. Julius struck down one of those, his hopes beginning to rise, when he heard a strange sound, a creaking noise, the moan of metal and wood. He didn’t recognize it for what it was at first; not until the giant doors, and the faux walls that held them aloft, were toppling down on him.
Julius called out as he dove from beneath the falling slabs of bronze. He landed hard on his side, but rolled and was quickly on his feet, gratified to see that Benison had escaped the trap as well. Not so for several of the battle ghouls. Two, that he could see, lay sprawled, partially pinned beneath the upended flats.
Eleanor was trapped as well.
She grimaced in agony, hundreds of pounds crushing her slight frame, and above her stood three more ghouls, the elevator closing behind them, who must have been responsible for toppling the doors. Among the newcomers—one of whom was larger than the others and wore spiked bone armor—were three oil drums.
Julius and Benison both started toward Eleanor, but the ghouls tipped the barrels, and a fiery flood was unleashed over the doors, down the steps.
Greek fire! Julius recognized—or some modern equivalent that flowed like oil and scorched like molten lead.
Before Julius or the horrified prince could respond, the liquid fire swept down over Eleanor. Her tiny body burst into flame. Her screams mingled with those of the trapped ghouls whose masters had decided worth sacrificing to squelch the final Kindred resistance.
Again, Julius could only dive out of the way. He had the presence of mind to knock Benison out of the path of the spreading inferno, and as the two climbed to their feet together, their gazes met.
Julius had thought that, over the centuries, he had seen firsthand all of the horrors that war had to offer. But within the prince’s eyes was a depth of pain and suffering, an anguish so fresh and pure, that goosebumps stood on the archon’s skin. He turned his head—unable to hold that gaze for longer than a second—and when he turned back, the pain was gone from those green eyes. They were glazed over. Benison stared at him with a blank gaze, his face completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever. It was an expression that unsettled Julius more than the overwhelming grief of a moment before.
Julius had seen the will drain from men in battle, had seen their fury dwindle and all volition abandon them. He thought, at first, that he saw that same death of will in Benison, and knew that, alone, he himself would be able to resist for only so long.
But not for the first time, Benison surprised him. The prince raised his sword and charged at the thickest knot of ghouls in the gallery. Before, he had roared and bellowed with battle rage. This time, not a sound passed his lips. Now it was Julius who followed the Malkavian’s lead.
The liquid fire had spread through the front portion of the gallery, incinerating the bodies of the dead and wounded, Sabbat and Kindred alike, but its momentum was spent. The attack had done its worst, and Julius and Benison still stood. Smoke billowed toward the ceiling, thickening the sh
ifting darkness. A harsh alarm sounded, a piercing electronic wail that struck Julius like an arrow through the brain, and flame-retardant chemical began to spray from the sprinklers and foam as it came into contact with oxygen.
The noise and added confusion worked to Julius’s and Benison’s advantage. The ghouls were slow to coordinate their attacks, and one by one they fell beneath the Kindred swords. Benison slaughtered them in silence. Scarcely any of his blows failed to rend arm or leg or head from a body. Julius, too, waded into the gore. Footing became treacherous with blood and entrails ground underfoot, and the foam coating the floor.
They fought from one end of the gallery to the other, but behind the shadows, through the smoke, there were always more ghouls. They marched forward, undaunted by the annihilation of so many of their brethren, if they noticed the carnage at all. And still the shadows, which by themselves had brought down many of the Kindred, tried to distract or hinder the two Camarilla elders. It was only a matter of time, Julius knew, before a ghoul struck a telling blow, and once either he or Benison went down, the other would follow shortly.
The prince hacked mercilessly at the ghouls. He was a dispassionate butcher; his sword taking on the aspect of cleaver, dripping blood and dispensing dismemberment to any who stood before him. So much so, in fact, that Julius made sure not to push ahead of the prince, to guard his flanks and rear instead. Benison in this state might not recognize the Brujah. Benison might simply destroy whomever or whatever moved within his sight, until he was free or dead.
They fought their way past one of the few remaining intact pieces of statuary, using it for cover of their left flank for several steps. It was a large piece, a man kneeling above his four sons, but the uppermost figure grinned disturbingly over the carnage as if he saw and heartily approved of the bloodshed around him. Indeed, Kindred and ghouls lay scattered about the base of the sculpture, some burned or mutilated beyond recognition, all caught as if frozen in the contorted throes of violent death. Final Death, for beings that might otherwise have proved immortal. Chemical foam rose like floodwater to cover their bodies.
