Clan Novel Tzimisce: Book 2 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Eric Griffin

  Parmenides felt the reverberation of each buffet, fast and insistent, like a drenching rain. He was certain the downpour would drown its victim or spill him over the parapet. But the son of the mountain, from his lofty perch high atop the wall, did not perish.

  Or at least, he did not perish until after they had brought up the irons. From below Parmenides could see the flurry of activity; he could hear the metal bindings sing shut. But no sooner had the sound reached Parmenides’s ears, then there also arose cries of alarm and cursing.

  “Get that torch away, you fool!” someone shouted. But the torch was still held high aloft, and it had never dipped down behind the crenellated wall. There was a magnesium-bright flash of light followed by a curl of oily black smoke from the pinnacle of the Doge’s palace. Only then did his mentor allow the uncomprehending Parmenides to turn away, and together they melted back into the gathering crowd.

  In later years, Parmenides had often wondered at the circumstances that had brought him and his master to the foot of the Doge’s palace that night. He could never quite recall the exact pretext for the excursion.

  His training was not accomplished, of course, amidst the decadence of the Italian city-states, caught between the excesses of the Medicis and the depravity of the Borgias. The rigors of the khabar demanded the unambiguously harsh necessity of desert wastes and exposed mountaintops.

  Nor was it considered proper for a novice to be on hand to witness his brother’s handiwork—even on a mission with a much more satisfying outcome. The presence of an apprentice introduced too many uncertainties, too many opportunities for misstep.

  And yet when the Brotherhood was gathered upon some summer evening in that remote mountaintop Elysium, and the long amber pipes were lit and passed from hammock to hammock by exotic creatures with shy eyes the shape of almonds and navels like perfect diamonds—then some one among them would sigh contentedly and relate a most curious story.

  As the story gradually unfolded, punctuated only by generous servings of honey, dates, persimmons and ambrosia, he would relate how, on a certain unforgettable night, a much younger version of himself, accompanied by his master, had witnessed a marvel—the reciting of the fabled Words of Undoing.

  He would retrace the tragic tale in its entirety, unwinding each familiar sight, sound, emotion—right up to the point that that one fortunate brother was conveyed into the heavens in a fiery chariot.

  And after he had spoken, someone else would put by his pipe and speak in turn, telling his story of a night when he (a he that he hardly recognized across the span of years) and his master had witnessed that one forbidden something. And so it would go.

  And all of their stories were one story, but whether it was because their words and memories had grown hopelessly mingled in the course of so many decades of long, slow summer evenings, or whether it was because there was really only one story that was given voice endlessly, through uncounted generations of their people—that he did not know nor could he say.

  But these musings did little to reassure him. Parmenides possessed a driving curiosity and he had, of course, made discreet inquiries. The aspect of this matter which troubled him most was the fact that although, nearly without exception, all of his brethren could recount a singularly unsettling experience of witnessing the enacting of the Words of Undoing…he could never find one among them who would admit to having been a witness at any other mission, whether disastrous or not.

  The situation had the unpleasant air of an object lesson. A very costly object lesson. Parmenides could not escape the thought (an irreverent and probably blasphemous thought) that these dramatic failures had been arranged for the edification of the neophytes.

  Could the masters have foreknowledge of which missions would end in success and which were doomed to failure? No, not even the Old Man in the Mountain claimed such omnipotence.

  Still, almost any of the masters would certainly have grown to be a shrewd judge of which tasks were most likely to end in destruction. Such discernment was necessary in sorting out which missions to accept and which to refuse.

  But this, this smacked of something more sinister.

  Parmenides shied away from this dangerously unorthodox line of thought. Who was he to question the masters, those who had ushered him into the earthly paradise? He was not sure how one might even go about repaying such a debt. The balance on his account was nothing less than one eternal life.

  If the masters chose to teach him with hard lessons, to make him stronger, to forge him into a more reliable tool for their will, it was not his place to refuse them, to deny his sacred trust.

  But now, it seemed, that the masters had chosen… No. The thought was too close to that place of pain and doubt which was, at present, denied him. The fiend was lying. There was nothing more to it than that. The very idea that the masters would abandon him to the clutches of the Tzimisce, it was unthinkable. It was a condemnation far worse than being chosen for some suicidal mission. In failure at least, there was glorious sacrifice and a quick end in the fires of purification.

  And yet he had been unable to touch the secret place—the sheltered recess of his heart upon which were writ the Words of Undoing. He could not summon up the sacred spark to ignite the inner flame.

  Parmenides doubted that even the precise neurological manipulations of the fiends could reach this inner sanctuary, much less bar the door against him. It was a place of spirit, not of the flesh, and hence not subject to their macabre arts.

  How then, was the way denied him? Was it some lingering curse, some final malediction of the Tremere witch, Hannah? Had she, through some obscure and inscrutable dark magic, stolen from him his Final Death even as he ushered her to her own?

  No, the execution of his mission had been precise, flawless. There was no room for error or even hesitation when stalking the Tremere. The warlocks held the uncontested honor of being the most deadly prey on the planet. None but the Brotherhood would be so foolish as even to attempt the feat. At the slightest misstep, their positions would have been dramatically and irrevocably reversed. It would have been his head decorating some trophy room of the Atlanta Chantry.

  His head… Again, Parmenides ran up against the barrier, a wall woven from screaming nerve fibers blocking this line of speculation.

  But if the change was not wrought by the witch, then that would mean that the masters had, knowingly or otherwise, sent him into the very heart of the Tremere’s unhallowed lair unprotected—without recourse to the ultimate escape.

  He was distantly aware that his body convulsed violently, shattered knees (perceived only as a throbbing mass suspended from his legs like a dead weight) curled upwards to thump against his chest. Someone cursed and pressed his thighs down hard against the chair, lashing them in place.

  Vykos. The barrier of exposed nerve endings standing between him and consciousness was rent from top to bottom.

  With great effort, knowing himself alone and abandoned among fiends, Parmenides opened his eyes upon nightmare.

  Thursday, 24 June 1999, 3:04 AM

  CSX freight yard

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Victoria stifled a scream. The pain was indeed intense, but it didn’t quite demand this strenuous a reaction. Elford didn’t seem to notice the exaggeration, though, and he cackled with delight.

  The stringy Tzimisce sat upon Victoria’s lap, straddling the Toreador. His unnaturally long and slender legs stretched past Victoria’s bare hips toward the wall behind the chair. She couldn’t fathom how there was room for them, but they seemed to fold at any angle, so likely they were looped back beneath the chair.

  Elford’s arms were bent at a half dozen elbows apiece, and they found purchase on a shelf made of Victoria’s bosom as the Tzimisce leaned into her and performed his work on the side of her neck.

  Victoria’s forehead and neck were now bonded tightly to the chair, so she was unable to move her head even a fraction of an inch. Her body was another matter, and when she felt pai
n, she arched her back and tried to buck the Tzimisce off her lap.

  The sick bastard liked that part, so Victoria kept doing it. Except this last time, because she was applying some torture as well.

  Elford suddenly stopped his work and looked into the Toreador’s eyes. His own orbs were filled with blackness, though a nimbus of madness lit their edges.

  With a soft, punished-child voice, Elford said, “You’re not resisting.”

  Victoria made a show of managing a grim smile. “I’m sure I will…when it really hurts,” she said, feigning determination despite what was surely already overwhelming pain.

  Elford’s narrow mouth split with a smile. “Maybe this…” he whispered, as he returned his attention to her neck where he was threading filaments of bone from her spine to form an exoskeleton row of needle-sharp points.

  He was like a laboratory rat, Victoria thought. Or one of Pavlov’s dogs, she revised, when he began to drool a gush of warm liquid that ran down her naked chest and stomach. Perhaps he’ll be mine in six months. When he slumped against her, his fat, rounded belly slopping against her own curved frame, she revised her thoughts again. He continued to slide down her until, a moment later, he was face down on the floor.

  At the moment of Elford’s slow descent, the door of the boxcar slid open several feet, revealing two figures standing outside. Even during the relatively short time of her captivity—short in terms of hours, perhaps, but interminable in the face of the horrors she’d endured—Victoria had almost forgotten the sensation of fresh air against her naked body—clean air, free of the taint of her jailer’s fetid breath, or the odors of blood and sweat and torture.

  The two figures climbed into the boxcar cautiously, surveying the interior in silence. They moved slowly toward Victoria and seemed to take no notice of Elford’s sprawled, corpulent form, as if they were satisfied that he would pose them no risk. The pair, one male, one female, edged closer still; they stared intently at Victoria and, as if they shared one expression, deep scowls crossed both of their faces. Victoria was clearly not who or what they’d expected to find.

  She could return their gazes only awkwardly, as her head was bound to the chair at a slightly uplifted angle. The man was very average looking, perhaps a bit taller than the norm; in his light safari jacket, he would’ve blended easily into a crowd—were it not for the visible scales covering his exposed hands, face, and neck, and the forked tongue that darted from his mouth every few seconds. He stared alternately between Victoria and the compact electronic device he held. Back and forth.

  The woman was nondescript, pretty but not in a striking way, though perhaps that was not a fair distinction for Victoria to draw. Her eyes were hard and demanding, offsetting what beauty she did possess. Obviously impatient with her companion’s indecision, she nudged Elford’s body with her foot. No response.

  “Is he dead?” Victoria asked. Then, effortlessly summoning and directing the snare of her potent charm at the perplexed male, she added, “Have you rescued me?”

  He looked up at her immediately and stepped forward to work at her bonds. “Of course we have,” he said, all hut stating that to suggest anything else would be absurd.

  Victoria smiled. This one, at least, did not possess the strength of will that had insulated Elford from such supernatural influence.

  The woman’s face registered incredulity. She spoke to Victoria’s newly won servant with scorn: “What are you doing, Orthese? Do you know this woman? Listen to me! We have to find Vegel and his driver first. Does the cell-phone signal lead here? Stop that! You can go whoring later.”

  Victoria immediately understood the situation, if not the full explanation of why these Setites sought Vegel. She turned her attentions to the woman, who was, in Victoria’s estimation, stronger—but not much.

  “Vegel’s phone is there on the floor,” the Toreador said. She wagged a finger toward the dark corner where Elford had kicked the pieces. “I am Victoria, a great friend of the Setite clan and a great friend of Vegel’s. Free me, and lead me to safety, and you may be my friends as well,” she offered magnanimously.

  The woman blinked, once, twice, then was busy helping her partner free Victoria. The Setites were now convinced that her rescue was more important than their original mission, presumably the recovery of Vegel—which meant that Hesha must have sent them. Which also meant they might have useful information about Hesha and Vegel and the party; information Victoria needed if she was ever going to see her way through the entanglements of that night. She still didn’t understand the game Hesha and Vegel had been playing. But someone had betrayed her, had used and manipulated her, and that she could not abide.

  But there would be time for that later. First things first, now that she was free of her bonds.

  Victoria looked at the scaled man. “Break his neck,” she said, indicating Elford’s body, prone upon the floor. She wasn’t certain how the Tzimisce had been felled—some poisoned dart, or a Setite spell, perhaps—but she’d rather he didn’t awaken before she and her new coterie were gone.

  The male Setite knelt beside the motionless Sabbat and wrenched Elford’s neck until it was permanently skewed at an awkward angle—as much as any physical deformity was permanent for a Tzimisce.

  Victoria’s back ached terribly when she stood, but this discomfort and some lesser wounds were easily repaired when each of her new friends provided several mouthfuls of badly needed vitae, after Victoria innocently suggested the idea. She was tempted to take her due in blood from Elford, but her rescuers confirmed her suspicion that there was some type of Setite poison coursing through his body, and that was better left alone.

  “Give me your jacket, please,” Victoria told her scaled rescuer. He did so immediately, and it was just long enough to cover her nakedness. “How did you get here?” Victoria asked the woman.

  “We have a plane waiting at a private airstrip. We must get back to Baltimore, to Hesha.”

  “Excellent.” Victoria allowed them to lead her from the boxcar nestled in the midst of radiating rail lines. How many other victims of Elford’s pleasures were secreted away in the freight yard? she wondered. And what fiendish arrangements secured them from mortal discovery during the daylight hours? There was no time to answer these questions, or to search for more prisoners. Even Vegel, from what the Setites said, might be here, maybe in one of the nearby boxcars.

  That’s his problem, Victoria thought. She and the Setites were getting out of town as quickly as they could, no detours for anything or anyone.

  “Excellent,” she said again. Prince Garlotte of Baltimore was an old acquaintance, another of those admirers whom she could call on in her time of need, and she might need some time to recover from this ordeal before she’d be ready to deal with a Setite of Hesha’s acumen.

  “Of course,” the woman agreed. The man nodded his assent.

  But as they turned to leave, a sudden urge took hold of Victoria. “Just a moment,” she told them, and climbed back into the boxcar. It wasn’t easy. She suppressed her desire to flee from the place of her imprisonment and torture. Only a few seconds, she promised herself, as she hunted for and found a pair of pliers that Elford had used to such grim effect on her. Victoria carried scars aplenty from her time with him—open wounds that didn’t seem inclined to heal, painful protrusions of bone too numerous to count. She would carry his grisly visage in her mind for many years, long after she had healed the markers he’d left on her body. If she managed to heal them. But in these last few seconds before her escape, Victoria claimed a memento of her own choosing.

  Friday, 25 June 1999, 3:41 AM

  Thirteenth floor, Buckhead Ritz-Carlton Hotel

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “Awaken, my sweet young murderer. I am sorry that I cannot allow you to remain unconscious further. It is by far the simplest buffer against the pain, but you are at present dangerously close to delirium, and your legs will not knit if you continue to convulse so. I trust you had pleasant dreams.
”

  Vykos’s smile was innocent and her gaze intent upon him as if expecting, nay hanging upon, his response. She looked somehow different than he remembered from their recent confrontation. Her features had a certain fawn-like cast to them. Her eyes larger. Her face, warmer, softer. Her ears tapering gently.

  No, not fawn-like, he corrected himself—faun-like. She seemed a wild creature stepped from some woodland bacchanal, still spattered with dew and over-enthusiastic libations.

  He could not hold her intent gaze. “One thing only I wish to know,” he croaked, struggling to find his voice again. “The masters, you said the masters knew of this abduction, that it had been arranged, approved.” He hurled the words like accusations.

  Vykos looked pleased. “Oh good. You do remember.” She squeezed his hand affectionately. “They had led me to believe that you would deny it, rail against it. But there is no shame in having been given. In fact, it is a great honor that has been lavished upon you.”

  Parmenides could not believe what he was hearing. If the fiend’s words were to be credited, she would have him think that he was betrayed by his beloved masters—his wise and just mentors, his protectors, his spiritual guardians, his brothers—into the hands of devils. And furthermore, that he was to be proud, to be honored by this casual betrayal by those he loved above all else.

  “An honor? Is it an honor to fall unavenged among your enemies? Is it an honor to be sold into the hands of your persecutor? Is it an honor to be denied even the dignity of the final…” Parmenides broke off abruptly, fearing that in his rush of emotion he had said too much, strayed too close to revealing one of the sacred mysteries to an outsider, a barbarian, one of the unilluminated.

  “I knew you would see it that way.” She beamed. “Your masters spoke very highly of you. They said that you were an instrument of keen perception and one which they could ill afford to lose. That is what makes their gift all the more touching.”