Clan Novel Tzimisce: Book 2 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Eric Griffin

  But it was no Picasso that had ever been enacted on canvas, much less in such a vivid three-dimensional medium. It was like a vision discarded by the artist, cast aside and denied life—a vision of the very face of madness and cruelty.

  Victoria was certain that fever and blood loss had taken hold of her senses. She felt herself beginning to faint. Gentle words came to her, as if from a great distance.

  “My precious little rag-doll.”

  Victoria lost consciousness as Vykos began to wipe the grime from her cheek. She continued to scrub at the face until it shone, taking on the gleam and even the texture of finest porcelain.

  Satisfied, she bent low and planted a gentle kiss upon one perfect cheek. Her lips left a small darkened mark upon that cheek, as if from a smudge of lipstick. Upon closer examination, however, the mark would be discovered to bear the unmistakable shape, etched in exacting and indelible detail, of a serpent swallowing its own tail.

  Vykos gazed down with great affection at her new prize. “Bring her,” she called over her shoulder.

  She took three paces toward the street exit and stopped suddenly, struck by an even more delectable idea. “No…” she said, turning slowly, with one finger pressed mischievously to her lips and a look of artistic triumph in her eyes. “Take her to the Ghoulworks.”

  Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 5:12 AM

  Thirteenth floor, Buckhead Ritz-Carlton Hotel

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Parmenides awoke with difficulty. He could not seem to disentangle himself from the familiar dream. He had been running, or attempting to run. To flee. Infuriatingly, no matter how he struggled, he could not seem to lift either of his feet. He was rooted to the spot and pursuit was not far behind. The “other” would soon be upon him again.

  He could not even bring himself to turn to face the unknown terror that rushed headlong toward him, closing the distance at an alarming rate. The sense of panic grew to the point where it was nearly unbearable and then, suddenly, he felt the weight crash across his back, and he went down.

  Flailing, Parmenides pitched forward, suppressing a scream. Arms came at him out of the darkness, caught him, steadied him. He was standing upright once again. There were soothing words being whispered very close by. He tried to turn and face his unknown benefactor, but his feet were rooted to the ground. He stumbled again and nearly fell to the floor.

  The voices that came to him seemed disjointed.

  “Hold still won’t you?”

  “There’s no reason to flail about like that.”

  “I did not expect you to come back around so soon.”

  “I’m nearly finished now, though, and there’s no sense putting you under again.”

  “You’ll just have to tough out this last little bit, but we’re soon finished.”

  “That’s my brave boy.”

  “My young romantic.”

  “My philosophe.”

  It took him some moments to realize that there was but a single voice addressing him, and a while longer to piece together the flow of the monologue. It was not until a long time afterwards that he realized why he was having such difficulty with these basic cognitive functions. It was the pain.

  The pain. The howling, mind-numbing, nerve-tearing pain. Somewhere nearby, someone screamed.

  “Now, this won’t hurt a bit,” came the reassuring voice, which some distant part of his mind recognized as that of his client. Vykos.

  Again the piercing scream.

  “Tsk, tsk. Don’t they give you even some rudimentary training in mind-over-body techniques in that mountaintop paradise of yours? No one can be expected to produce quality work under these conditions.”

  Another long scream. “Now you’ve utterly ruined the nose and I’m going to have to start it again from scratch. And if you don’t hold still you might actually manage to tear one of those feet loose from the floor and do some real lasting harm.”

  Screaming, and more screaming, and a sharp slap striking something fleshy and nearby that might have been his cheek.

  “Now, are you going to calm down or am I going to have to put you under again?” She did not have to put him under again. Consciousness fled him. The flesh became unresisting and bent to her will.

  part three:

  the deception

  Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 9:46 PM

  CSX freight yard

  Atlanta, Georgia

  She swallowed deeply, and the life-giving nectar washed down her throat. By the time she became conscious of this, of what she was doing, it was too late, and Victoria feared to open her eyes. But so long as she’d imbibed already, she reasoned, nothing more could be lost by continuing to feed. If the blood was tainted or was being offered under any pretext that might later damn her, then the damage was already done. Beyond that, she hated to admit, the hunger that drove her to open her throat and gulp down the stream of blood left her little real choice in the matter. For the moment at least, the hunger was stronger than she was.

  But she still refused to open her eyes. Her other senses warned her that her bitter fight against the Sabbat hounds had unfortunately not resulted in her destruction. She heard movement, very close by. She smelled smoke and the unmistakable odor of burned flesh.

  Nevertheless, as soon as she appeared to be feeding purposefully, the refreshment was denied. A soft, crooning voice whispered, “Don’t like it too much, Toreador bitch. If you give in to that so easily, you’ll be little fun for the ministrations you’re meant to resist later.”

  The speaker moved closer to Victoria as his words purred forth. “Later,” he said again, and a puff of stagnant, ruinous air breathed hot and terrible upon her face. Her captor—for this was surely no benefactor—was so close that her skin tingled, and when she opened her eyes, her long eyelashes brushed the monster’s forehead.

  He—it—smiled.

  “Did you enjoy your drink?” he asked, suddenly licking a dribble of blood from Victoria’s lower lip with a thick and gristly tongue. He stared into the Toreador’s eyes for a moment, but she did not meet his gaze. She dared not.

  He shrugged and then stood, which made Victoria realize that she was seated. She was crudely bound, by metal bands about her wrists and ankles, to a wooden chair that might have been the throne of a fat pauper king. As the fog cleared from her mind, she registered, as well, her nakedness, and looked up at her captor.

  He backed away another step and smiled as he regarded her bare form. His mouth leaked another purr. “Your polished body will not excite me as it did your Ventrue customers, Toreador whore!”

  Victoria just continued her stare, however, not meeting his eyes. Her captor was a grotesque caricature of a starving mortal child. His body was impossibly emaciated, so that everywhere it seemed his flesh was stretched taut over the underlying bones. Everywhere, that is, except his stomach, which was bloated, straining the flesh, discolored with a gangrenous hue. His triangular head tapered to the small mouth, and upon a hairless pate the ugly beast possessed ridges of bone that ran in rows parallel to the width of the skull.

  His legs and arms were obscenely long and folded, suggesting something like a cross between a man and a cricket. Victoria could not determine how many joints these limbs possessed, but they alternately folded and spread, and she watched the Sabbat sway back and forth as he stood before her.

  Involuntarily, Victoria shuddered. She had hoped that the Sabbat hounds pursuing her would destroy her so that she might avoid just this sort of future, which was now a present she could not deny.

  “Care to ring your Ventrue lover?” the Sabbat whispered, dangling Vegel’s cell phone from long, skeletal fingers. “When they brought you to me, you were clutching it like a dying man’s prayer.”

  He put the phone to his ear and mouth and feigned a woman’s frightened voice, “Oh, darling, hurry, Elford has gotten hold of me and there will be nothing left of me to love but—” and here he changed his voice to a hoarse croaking, “a hollowed-out sack of scarred and bu
rned flesh!” Cackling, he threw the phone against the wooden wall—she seemed to be in an old railroad boxcar—that Victoria’s chair pressed against. Two large, clearly unusable, plastic chunks ricocheted to floor, exposing the guts of the device.

  As Victoria watched one piece of the phone spin slowly to a standstill, she tried to calm herself by such degrees as well. As it slowed, so she wound to a stop, to a spot deep within herself where she might forget the terrible times in store for her now. Perhaps some night she would reawaken, some centuries hence, and this nightmare would be over.

  But sharp agony jolted her body. She coughed and then choked in pain. She felt her limbs involuntarily flap like suffocating fish on the wooden chair.

  “Do not seek to escape me, Victoria,” Elford said pleasantly. “I told you before, you are meant to resist.

  If you do, then I will make your time with me more bearable.”

  Victoria’s insides still spasmed, though the pain had lessened—for the moment. She looked for the first time into the face of the creature who planned to torture her. To break her. But he was no longer looking at her face. She followed his gaze along the length of his arm to where his hand cupped her bare right breast. Wafting smoke obscured the details for a moment, but he blew his fetid breath and cleared the air. He chuckled as he withdrew his hand. Victoria felt twinges of pain as her seared flesh peeled away from each of Elford’s fingertips.

  Upon the alabaster of her pure skin were five black and shriveled marks, pressed into the firm flesh of her breast.

  “Oh yes,” Elford murmured, “you had best resist.”

  He raised a glistening, scalpel-like claw toward her mouth. Victoria’s fear rose uncontrollably within her, and she vomited forth the blood she’d so recently consumed.

  Wednesday, 23 June 1999, 3:52 AM

  East Bay Street

  Charleston, South Carolina

  The not-so-distant flames danced toward the heavens, whipped themselves into a spasmodic frenzy, and from the widow’s walk atop his home of more than two centuries, Davis Purrel could do no more than watch. Watch as the flames grew closer. Watch as, like a red tide, they washed across the Battery. The mortal firefighters struggled valiantly, and occasionally they managed to check the advancing firestorm. But invariably the fickle winds swept in from the bay, giving new life to the flames and howling like banshees through the eaves of Purrel’s magnificent home.

  If the wind were all we had to contend against, Purrel thought, we’d have a chance.

  He’d received word of the dozen or so boats trolling into Charleston harbor several hours earlier. Immediate response might have saved his city. He’d heard rumors of the attacks on Atlanta and Savannah the night before, of course, but who could have expected something of this magnitude so soon on the heels of actions a hundred miles to the south and over twice that far to the west?

  As proof of his error, his city burned. He’d made so few mistakes over the years; how ironic that the consequences of this one should be so harsh. So final.

  “Davis, you must come in.”

  At first, he thought the flames were calling to him, entreating him to embrace them, as they embraced the heart of the city he had seen rise from colonial port to center of culture and commerce. But the voice belonged to the old man who stood half protruding from the trapdoor behind Davis.

  “Davis,” said the old man again, “come inside.”

  Davis ignored Antoine Purrel, ostensible owner of the Purrel-Turney House and most recent in a long line of descendants who had been the face of Davis Purrel’s power in the kine world. The features of Davis’s proud face were reflected in the older man’s: distinctive, aquiline nose; sharply set brow; narrow jaw and squared, cleft chin. Antoine’s face was fleshier. His skin hung loose, a milepost of time, though it was Davis who was much older, who was both progenitor and protector of both the Purrels and of Charleston.

  I’ve been a shepherd here, thought Davis, and it was true. He had ruled the city fairly and wisely, and been surprisingly successful for a rare Toreador risen to the position of prince. From the start, he’d culled the rebellious element who would’ve brought instability to his city, but even in this he’d not been callous or cruel. And the city had flourished. Today, the neoclassical mansions crowded into the bastion of splendor that was the Battery, the point of land in the crook of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, rivaled the glory of any other period, even the last antebellum years.

  But now the wolves are among the flock.

  The flames could not be denied. The Sabbat jackals had done what the mighty Union fleet had been unable to accomplish in that last glorious war—take the city by sea.

  “Davis, do you hear me?”

  “Go to bed, Antoine,” said Davis with a sigh. “It’s much too late for you to be up.”

  “By God, there’s fire all around!” said Antoine defiantly. “I’m not going to burn in my bed. We should go to the house in Columbia and come back when this is taken care of.”

  “Go, if you wish,” said Davis. Perhaps the old man could save himself, but Davis doubted it. The roads would be watched, the harbor sealed.

  Davis had never bothered to tell Antoine much about the inner workings of the Kindred world. No, the old man had never possessed the proper acumen to operate among the plots of the undead as anything other than a pawn. He was capable enough to assume the public face of the family, to show himself at the country club and the Historic Foundation meetings, but little more. Antoine’s son had been little better and was now banished to the West Coast, but the grandson—ah, now there was a promising lad. Jason Purrel was away at art school. He had no talent to speak of, but he possessed certain sensibilities and strengths of character that Davis admired. Enough so that Davis had planned to ghoul the boy someday. Now that would never happen.

  “You shouldn’t be close to these fires,” Antoine scolded.

  “Antoine,” said Davis slowly, calmly, “I have always been truthful with you—”

  “That’s a damnable lie,” said the old man.

  Davis allowed himself a wry chuckle. “Fair enough.” He leaned against the railing of the widow’s walk. His head hung low, but his voice was strong and clear above the din of fire and wind and sirens. “But know that I speak truthfully now. If you do not leave me at once, I will kill you where you stand.” Davis craned his neck to face the old man. “Do you believe me?”

  Antoine’s face was grayer than before. He seemed suddenly vulnerable to the stench of smoke that even the gusting winds could not dissipate. He licked his lips and, without a word, retreated down the stairs. Davis turned back to the city and heard the trapdoor pulled shut behind the old man.

  The flames were close now indeed. The firefighters scurried around like ants, but for every fire they tamed, another sprang up. Davis knew better than to believe that even the ill-timed wind was responsible for the leaping of the flames closer and closer to his haven. He could spy at least a dozen historic structures already marred by fire, black swaths across their facades like the scars of pox on the face of a beautiful child. He could not look upon the scene for more than a few moments before he turned away.

  Perhaps if I just went out, if I gave myself to them, he pondered, perhaps then they would spare my city.

  Davis did not think of his fellow Toreador of Charleston; he did not think of the other Kindred who served him willingly or grudgingly. They could all roast in the morning sun, for all he cared. But his beautiful city—the fine mansions, the brick carriage houses, the spacious gardens around his own home. He could not watch it all destroyed, and what would resistance do except ensure that it all burned?

  Davis turned his gaze toward the faint outline of the fort in the harbor. Is this what you felt like, Major Anderson? he thought to ask the long-dead Union hero of Sumter. Surrounded, cut off, watching that which you served crumble around you?

  But the only response Davis heard was a sickening crackle as the roof of one of his estate’s outbuildings, t
he old cattle shed, burst into flames. The end was near. He considered climbing back through the trapdoor, for he longed to run his fingers along the plasterwork ornamentation within his home, to gaze upon the crystal and bronze chandeliers, to walk one last time down the grand, free-standing staircase that dominated the entry hall.

  No, he steadied himself. I will await the flames here. They will not be long.

  Wednesday, 23 June 1999, 3:59 AM

  Thirteenth floor, Buckhead Ritz-Carlton

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Vykos waited patiently. Eventually, a ragged moan told her that her charge was clawing his way back toward consciousness. Noting the precise time, she found herself, not for the first time this evening, surprised at the Assamite’s tenacity.

  Another of her clan might well have immediately and obsessively fallen to recording such minutiae in some interminable experiment journal. Vykos was not in the habit, however, of leaving such revealing written records of the exact abilities and tolerances of her subjects.

  The first time he had come to, last night, he had taken her unawares. The fool had fought his way back to consciousness right in the middle of the sculpting. Vykos noted that the subject had not attempted to employ even the most rudimentary of pain-control techniques—this despite the fact that a major portion of his face was, at the time, laid open to the bone.

  He had screamed, of course, and the accompanying facial contortion could not have eased his discomfort. But the pain neither stopped nor slowed him. It wasn’t as if the subject transcended the pain, or blocked the pain, or defied the pain. It was simply that the sensation of agony, in all its primal glory, failed to act as a deterrent.

  Vykos found herself wondering if the nervous systems of these legendary killers were somehow crosswired as part of their training and initiation? Vykos ran down the list of likely suspects: drugs, posthypnotics, laser surgery, voodoo, neural inhibitors, fanaticism. The possibilities were intriguing, but her speculations were inconclusive.