by Eric Griffin
Victoria had a multitude of ways to bend an individual’s will to her whim—as both kine and Kindred, she’d always been expert in making others want her, passionately, desperately—but in first attempting her most potent means with Elford, she’d instantly realized that it would never work. He was too much a slave of his existing passion for his work to have an additional desire so instantly manufactured. With him, her only recourse was to ply her wiles over time. She might some night, soon or not so soon, be successful, but that was of little immediate help.
But what other options did she have? Victoria glanced at the pieces of cellular phone on the floor. Undeniably broken, and she had no reason to believe that she could repair it, even if she could reach it. Its loss was not a cause for total despair, however, because the Toreador had other means of summoning aid. There was no guarantee of success. Far from it. But as she regained her fighting spirit—hotly pursued, as it was, by her dread of the next session with Elford—she determined to try.
Over the many years of her nocturnal existence, Victoria had come into contact with countless Kindred, and now each and every one of them was a potential savior. Even those she had not compelled consciously to adore her could not have neglected to notice her irresistible beauty and charm. Her image would be indelibly burned into their psyche. Such was the nature of the gifts that accompanied, if not compensated for, the Curse of Caine in her case. Those other Kindred, it was true, might not be predisposed to help her. Their decision, however, was not entirely one of free will. They might resist her call, and most likely those powerful enough to rescue her from this hellhole were also powerful enough to ignore her summons. But Victoria could be quite persuasive.
Though their names sounded only in her mind, she began to call them, one by one, to her side.
Her urging and urgent request would persist for the remainder of the night, no longer, so it was only worthwhile to summon those who were likely nearby. Benison. Julius. She concentrated on their names. These two able warriors were probably dead with the remainder of the Camarilla who had reveled at Victoria’s party, but at least she would disturb their graves. She chuckled and called Eleanor as well. How ironic it would be if that bitch had survived somehow and managed to save Victoria.
She tilted her chin toward the ceiling and propelled more names into the ether. She would see what had become of the deserters from her party: Vegel. Hannah. Rolph. Perhaps their intricate plans of escape would be foiled by a return to Atlanta, assuming that’s where Victoria was—for she had no way to be sure.
And others too. She had few confidants, and no one she could honestly call a true friend, no one that remained loved as the centuries passed, but any of a short list of lovers, admirers or comrades—mostly lovers and admirers, she admitted; she’d had precious little call for camaraderie—might come if the circumstances permitted: Oliver, though she thought the Brujah brute was likely in torpor; Jan, though she knew he was in Europe, probably bound to his Ventrue elders in ways that New World Kindred could not fathom and that he could not overcome, even if his feelings for her persisted; Joshua, because if anyone could sniff out her whereabouts, it was this Gangrel.
Humor was a difficult proposition, but Victoria laughed at herself as she sent her next summons: Leopold. The youngster had saved her once at the High. Perhaps he could do it again—unlikely, since the shadowy tentacle had surely pounded him to pieces.
The process took a long while. By the time Victoria had mentally recited the list of names, dawn was near. Her tired, injured, violated body gave in immediately. She closed her eyes, and closed too her mind, attempting to go to that place beyond thought, where she might be free, at least until the next sunset, of the ministrations her Tzimisce tormentor would offer.
Thursday, 24 June 1999, 2:51 AM
Interstate 40
East of Asheville, North Carolina
Hardin squeezed the steering wheel so hard that his already pale knuckles turned bone-white. The truck shuddered and bucked. Discouraging sounds coughed forth from the engine. He smashed the dashboard with his fist until the plastic casing cracked and fell away.
“They’ll probably take that out of your deposit,” said Desmond, squished into the middle seat. On the far side of him sat Rojo, unconcerned. He picked his teeth with a fingernail—not his own; it was attached to a useful but disembodied digit.
Hardin glared at Desmond for the smaller man’s attempt at humor. There had been no deposit, no fee of any kind, paid for this U-Haul.
The cacophony beneath the hood grew more pronounced. Steam began to billow from the edges. Then, after a muffled explosion, the engine’s labored whirring began to fade. The speedometer needle, already gyrating between 45 and 55, acknowledged the engine’s death knell by plummeting toward single digits. Hardin turned the truck onto the shoulder, where it lurched to a halt.
Hardin stepped out onto the gravel. Desmond slipped past him. Rojo showed no inclination to get out of the truck. And what good would it do? Hardin wondered. What good would anything do?
There was not much traffic. Hardin glanced at his watch. They could spare a short break, he decided. No need to worry. Before long, someone would stop,a good Samaritan, and provide fresh transportation. And fresh blood.
Desmond, having wrapped rags around his hands, lifted the hood. After the smoke cleared, he stared for a moment at the engine. Then he stepped back, lowered his head, and made the sign of the cross.
“Gas?” asked Hardin.
Desmond nodded.
“Who put it in?”
Desmond shook his head this time. “Don’t know.”
“Rojo?” Hardin asked the darkly complected, red-haired passenger, who turned his malevolent gaze toward Hardin. “Who gassed the truck?” Hardin asked.
Rojo shrugged. “One of the gringos. They all look alike.”
Hardin started toward the rear of the truck but stopped and shielded his eyes against the light of the patrol car pulling over behind the U-Haul.
“Break down?” asked the trooper as he stepped out of his cruiser.
At just that moment, the U-Haul door, which had been closed but not fastened, slid open, and two more of Hardin’s passengers hopped down onto the gravel.
A deep scowl creased the trooper’s face. “You know it’s not lawful to carry passengers back there.” He reached for his citation pad.
“Yes,” said Hardin. “I know.”
The wide-bladed falchion thudded into the patrolman’s neck before anyone had even seen Hardin take the weapon from the sheath under his jacket. The trooper took an unsteady step backward in disbelief, then collapsed to the ground.
“Get him out of sight before that next car passes,” Hardin instructed the others. They hurried to obey, even though the other car was just cresting a hill several hundred yards away, and there was plenty of time. They lifted the body with ease, pausing only to return Hardin’s knife, and carried the trooper into the underbrush beyond the shoulder. Hardin could hear them fall upon the body like vultures and claim what the police officer no longer needed. Other passengers began to climb from the back of the truck. The car sped past.
“Jacques,” Hardin called to one of them.
“I am Jake.”
“Jake, who the hell ever you are,” snapped Hardin. “Who gassed up the truck?”
“That was Jacques.”
“Tell him to come here. Then you, Lonnie, Greasy, and Amber take the police car and bring us back three more cars.”
Jake did as he was told. As he and the other three were pulling away in the cruiser, Jacques ambled over to Hardin. Jacques was a short, squat man with thick hair. He never looked happy. Not that Hardin cared.
“You have diesel trucks in Montreal?” Hardin asked.
“Yeah.”
“You know the difference between gasoline and diesel fuel, you stupid, asshole Canuck?”
Jacques, looking increasingly unhappy, fidgeted about, but his answer was precluded by the falchion, which again z
inged through the air, seemingly of its own accord. Jacques’s head fell back. A moment later, his body joined it. There was very little blood.
Hardin leaned down and wiped his blade on Jacques’s pants leg. “Nine competent vampires would be too much to ask for, I guess.”
As Desmond dragged the body away from the road, Hardin glanced into the back of the truck. This, the smallest of the Sabbat war parties, traveled light. They’d be fine in the cars instead of a truck. Except for a few gym bags loaded with sawed-off shotguns and shells, there was no gear to speak of.
Hardin didn’t count the heads as gear.
There was the Camarilla Prince of Columbia—former prince, that was. Then there were the three from Asheville: Prince Van de Brook—what a whiner. The young Gangrel had died better; even the Toreador, Stein, had gone with some small dignity.
Again, Hardin didn’t really care. Piss on ’em all.
He had his itinerary, and he was on schedule. These backwater “cities” were hardly worth the trouble to clean out, in his opinion, but then again, they weren’t that much trouble. Still, Hardin was anxious to rejoin the main forces and get in on some of the real fun. Like Atlanta. Now that had been worth his time—burning the Tremere chantry house to the ground. Made easier, of course, by the fact that Vykos had already taken care of the Tremere head honcho.
Head honcho. Hardin glanced at the collection of wide-eyed heads in the truck and smirked. I’ll have to remember that one for Desmond.
Atlanta had been a blast, all right. This other puny shit was just biding time. He wouldn’t have to wait too long. Winston-Salem, Roanoke, Charlottesville…and then the Big Enchilada.
Headlights again. But this time they were coming from the opposite direction, down the wrong side of the interstate. Hardin recognized the car that had passed earlier, except now Amber was behind the wheel. Hardin didn’t care for her face—it was too pouty—but she had nice tits. The car screeched to a halt next to the truck.
“Move over,” said Hardin, as he opened the door and shoved her aside. She bared her fangs and hissed in response to his rough treatment. “Save it, sister.” He stuck his head out of the window. “Get the stuff and let’s go!
“Throw the heads in the trunk,” he added, to make sure they didn’t get left behind.
Desmond and the other two Sabbat formed a bucket brigade of sorts and passed along the gym bags and the heads. One head got away and bounced around at bit, but Desmond scrabbled under the car to retrieve it.
“What about Jake and the others, jefe?” Rojo asked, as he sauntered over and got into the car.
“We’ll catch up to them,” said Hardin. He didn’t feel like waiting any more. “If we miss them, they know where we’re headed.”
Thursday, 24 June 1999, 3:00 AM
Thirteenth floor, Buckhead Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia
Parmenides awoke. A moment later, he realized. that he had awakened and he cursed the names of some seven and forty gods before he was forced to pause his maledictions long enough to conjure up the names of further supernatural oppressors upon which to heap scorn and vitriol.
He was not dead.
Well, that wasn’t technically true. He was dead, of course. A vampire, a walking corpse. But he was still, as they say, among the living. To be more precise, he was in a luxury hotel in a very exclusive neighborhood of the city of Atlanta. In short, he was among over three and a half million of the living.
More significantly, he was still among the unliving. He was a prisoner of—in order of his ascending horror and despair—the Sabbat, the Tzimisce, and one Sascha Vykos.
From the time of his Embrace, he had heard tales of the depravity of the Sabbat—their unclean and mocking rites, their predilection for drinking the blood of their sires, their insane efforts to hasten the coming of Gehenna. It was all somewhat hard to credit. Why anyone would actively seek the Final Retribution of Caine, the Dark Father, he who is called the First Murderer and the Kinslayer, it was difficult to imagine.
As a newcomer to the world of the undying, Parmenides had suspected these rumors—like so many similar stories meant to frighten childer—nothing more than old wives’ tales. In this case, those of very old wives.
He was forced to concede, however, that these accounts were no more extraordinary than the wild assertion that blood-drinking predators stalked the world by the light of neon marquees and headlights. And he no longer felt himself in a position to judge those particular claims impartially.
In later years, he had on more than one occasion been brought into close contact with the Sabbat and had found nothing that would lead him to dismiss those disturbing childhood tales out of hand. Such encounters always left him with a lingering sense of unease—one which even the blissful rewards of the mountaintop Elysium could not entirely expunge from the spirit.
In dealings with the oily Lasombra, Parmenides experienced an unsettling sensation, like having a viper slide across the sleeper’s thigh. He had, of course, had ample opportunity to handle snakes in the Elysium. Venoms were an ancient and revered part of the profession. He knew the touch of even the deadliest cobra to be cool and smooth and not unpleasant in and of itself.
The sensation he felt in the presence of Lasombra, however, was something quite different. Something shifting, hot and glutinous—the touch of a serpent from a childhood nightmare.
And then there were the Tzimisce. Parmenides understood that in the polite circles of Kindred society—the garden parties and ice-cream socials that made up the unlife of his delicate Camarilla cousins—self-respecting vampires were embarrassed to even think about the Tzimisce. It would be a humiliating faux-pas, like bringing up the topic of lepers over tea. Except, of course, that lepers generally tended their own business, and that business rarely involved the torture, maiming and eventual (very eventual) death of respectable folk who would like to pretend that there was never any such deformed creature loosed on this green earth.
Parmenides had had few dealings with the Tzimisce. As a whole, the fiends tended to be withdrawn, solitary, obsessed with their disturbing experiments into the pseudo-scientific, the occult, the anatomical.
The Tzimisce were almost universally disinterested in concerns of politics, social climbing, and powermongering—those pursuits that so intrigue their brothers in the Sabbat, the Lasombra. Not surprisingly, the Tzimisce seldom found themselves in need of the kind of services that Parmenides had to offer.
This Vykos was a notable exception. First of all, she was not freakish in the manner of her clan. The Tzimisce reveled in deformity. They made an art and a passion of it.
Among the ancient brotherhood of assassins, there existed sage advice regarding the fiends. It was said: “If, in the course of your duties, you come upon a monstrosity lurking in the shadows, it is a Nosferatu. You have been seen. The victim will be warned. Depart, and submit to the scourge of the masters.
“If, however, you see a monstrosity capering in the torchlight, that is a Tzimisce. Go your way and do not return until three full nights have passed—and then only to confirm that your target is already dead.”
Vykos was no capering monster. She was very human. And very female. Almost painfully so, Parmenides thought resignedly. She was beautiful in the same way a pouncing tigress was beautiful—all grace and inevitability.
Her other obvious departure from the predilections of her kind was her ambition. Vykos was preoccupied with the deadly game of Cainite politics—a game that slew with the same inevitability (if not always the same demanding standards of grace) as did the tiger.
While the game itself could devolve into the crude and merely bestial, Vykos maintained a reputation for an unflinching style and finesse that was rare among her clan. While most of her kinsmen were willing to leave the actual Sabbat leadership to their brethren Lasombra, Vykos had made a habit of besting them at their own game.
Parmenides knew that others of his order had been of service to Vykos in the pa
st, and that she presently had an extensive portfolio of as-yet-unfulfilled contracts with the masters. The thought that she might jeopardize such a relationship…
He flinched away from the thought. There was something painful there, something he was not yet ready to touch, to examine in detail.
Parmenides was delighted that he could address these issues in such a rational manner. The Sabbat, the Tzimisce, Vykos. He repeated the words again, curious and not displeased at the utter lack of response they produced in him. He suspected that the part of his mind that was capable of registering pain and terror was otherwise occupied at present.
This revelation, however, was somewhat less than reassuring. In addition to raising some pointed concerns about his physical well-being, this discovery seemed to conjure up more uncertainties than it dispelled. He had more than a passing curiosity as to which of his higher cognitive functions were presently under his control. He decided upon a small experiment.
He was fairly certain that emotion and pain centers were not responding in the manner to which he had grown accustomed. He further suspected the immediate cause of this shortcoming was extreme physical duress.
Other reflexive reactions seemed to have short-circuited as well. From his very early training, he knew that his autonomic functions had been specially tuned to prevent the possibility of his capture during the course of a botched mission.
He had only witnessed this fail-safe mechanism in action once. It was in Venice, now some centuries ago. But it was not something one was likely to forget. One of his brethren, in an attempt to escape the Doge’s palace, was interrupted in the act of diving to the relative safety of the canal. He was hauled bodily back over the parapet and vanished under a shroud of blows—the tender ministrations of uncounted fists, heels and pike staves.
From his vantage point at the edge of the labyrinth of narrow streets far below, Parmenides saw his brother fall beneath the throng. He started forward toward the wall. His guardian, however, put a restraining hand upon his shoulder. “Attend,” he scolded. “Be vigilant now, lest you miss how our little brother accomplishes his escape.”
