For now, Talley walked inside the steel plant, then, and shut and locked the door. Outside, the sun came up sluggishly over the Sabbat city of Buffalo.
part three:
pillars of smoke
Saturday, 14 August 1999, 11:18 PM
Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.
My Most Eminent and Beloved Cardinal, the letter began, While I have no inkling of what I have done to displease you so greatly that you have decided to sentence me to penance among this den of madmen, brutes and liars, I would most humbly beseech that you would tell me so that I might make amends and thus be done with this entire matter.
Talley paused and put his pen down for a moment. It was, he thought, perhaps a bit strong, but he was not in a mood to be delicate. Besides, Monçada valued him and his service too highly, he hoped, to get overly upset over a letter. And if Monçada was right and there was a God inclined to rain miracles down upon the unworthy, this missive might even serve to get Talley out of here.
He shook his head to clear it and took up the pen again. The offensive on Buffalo was a qualified success. While the city was taken, as you no doubt have heard, the casualties were a bit heavier than expected. The intelligence Archbishop Vykos’s spy provided was mostly correct, but as you and I both know, the Devil himself lurks in the details.
One of those details was Lucita, who made an appearance. For whatever reason, she was intent on dealing with the ductus whom Polonia had put in charge of affairs. It seems odd to me that Lucita’s talents would be wasted on such a—and pardon me for saying so—pathetic excuse for a Lasombra.
The paranoid in me bears in mind your mention of a potential traitor. Of those I have observed among the high command here in the New World, only the archbishops would have access to the financial resources required to entice your prodigal childe. Polonia and Borges profit from drugs, graft, et cetera, in their respective cities; Vykos has had centuries to hoard its treasures. There are others, of course, in the Sabbat Internationale who would have the interest and the means to destroy an archbishop—the regent springs to mind—but you have narrowed the field to my unhappy triumvirate, and in this I trust your impeccable judgment.
I cannot believe, however, that any of the archbishops would have required the services of an assassin, particularly one as expensive as Lucita, even had one of the three harbored a desire to dispatch this MacEllen. Borges would have crushed him; Don Polonia would have simply clutched the man’s neck and twisted—from what I understand, he nearly did so at a war-council meeting just prior to my arrival—and Vykos would have turned the fellow into a nice footstool or endtable. None would have faced recrimination.
The matter smells of outside influence. I suspect this is no longer simply a family affair. Not that a third party arranging MacEllen’s demise—if such truly is the case—exonerates our beloved archbishops of designs upon one another.
Speaking of the archbishops, they are a fine set indeed. Vykos, when not busying herself with the siege of the stubborn Tremere (which continues apace without notable result), is the perfect hostess, deferring to Don Polonia in most matters of strategy and concentrating on her duties as archbishop of this fly-ridden city. She seems in little hurry for the offensive to continue north, now that her territory and status are fairly secure. With Washington embedded between Miami and New York as it is, she stands to benefit should a tragedy befall either Borges or Polonia, as would they if something untoward happened to her.
As for Don Polonia, he is a bit more of a cipher. His devotion to the sect seems single-minded and his strategies are excellent. But little things about the man still rankle. Why does he take such delight in baiting Archbishop Borges? Sheer perversity? Certainly Vykos is the more formidable threat to Polonia’s ascendancy to a position of prominence over the American Sabbat. Why, then, does he risk driving a potentially powerful enemy into his rival’s arms? It makes little sense to me, but in the meantime we have suffered no major setbacks in the field, and no losses of any Cainites of consequence.
Finally, we have Archbishop Borges, who seems intent on challenging his fellow archbishops at every opportunity, generally to the advantage of Polonia or Vykos. Borges may have bludgeoned his way to the top of that rubbish heap that is Miami, but he lacks the subtlety of his rivals. What were Les Amies Noir thinking when they extended to him the highest honors the clan can offer? His forte is the bullish, straight-ahead assault; he spends most of his nights feverishly scrutinizing reports from the field, looking for evidence that his people have done something praiseworthy. Perhaps he is intimidated; much of his support is scattered in the wake of the offensive, while much of Archbishop Polonia s is close at hand. I would not be surprised to discover him either the object or the instigator of Lucita’s attentions.
Beyond that, there is little to report. Vallejo seems to be edging toward Polonia’s service, presumably because service with a Tzimisce disagrees with him. He is often away on business of his own, which seem to be trips into the field to observe some of the more efficient packs in action. Perhaps he is looking for potential recruits.
On the whole—aside from the unmitigatedly disastrous assassination attempt on the Ventrue, Pieterzoon—the operation stands somewhat satisfactorily. Information flows on a steady basis. However, since the surprises at Buffalo (which, besides Lucita, included a clever little fellow of a Nosferatu who stayed behind long enough to make an extreme nuisance of himself), it has been decided that such intelligence should be supplemented by more extensive field reports from scouting details. A half-dozen or so have been dispersed, including some of Borges’s and Polonia’s favorite subordinates. Supplies continue to flow freely, though the antitribu Munro overseeing the operation is as unpleasant to deal with as he has ever been.
Other than that, the captured territories are being scoured and Buffalo fully invested. Several smaller cities nearby—Rochester, the ironically named Syracuse—have also been taken, to little fanfare. Again, the resistance was minimal. The enemy seems to be concentrating in Baltimore. One wonders precisely to what end. A counteroffensive to relieve the Tremere in Washington? Sensible, but unlikely; this whole thing smacks of the Americans’ Civil War, where opposing capitals glowered at each other from a few dozen miles away while war raged everywhere else. Atlanta? Nonsense, it’s too bloated and too far away from any other theater that matters. Still, I have made recommendations to the various archbishops that we prepare for the Camarilla’s resistance to stiffen. Even a dying dog has one last bite in it.
As for myself, I generally stay within the city, attaching myself to one archbishop or the other. Borges is resentful, Vykos distant, and Polonia utterly unconcerned. There has been no sign of Lucita since Buffalo, though I expect she will make her presence known shortly. Beyond that, there is no news to report. Decisions will be made soon on the Giovanni presence in Boston and the next target for assault—I would expect the so-called New England to bear the brunt of it—but now all I have is idle speculation, with which I would not waste your time.
May this letter find you in good health, and please keep me posted on the resolution of the chess game you had begun with Don Ibrahim. I have been playing in my mind with the board I saw, and think I may have found a way for black to triumph after all.
Yours in Utmost Respect,
Talley
The Hound glanced at the finished result and frowned. It was hardly literary, but it would serve to keep Monçada informed. Hurriedly, he stuffed it into an envelope and addressed it; one of the couriers constantly winging back and forth from Europe would convey it shortly. Hopefully, the messenger would be clever enough not to open and read it en route. Good couriers were, after all, very difficult to find.
Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 1:37 AM
HolyLand Amusement Park
Waterbury, Connecticut
Lucita had been to the Holy Land several times, and she could say with reasonable certainty that it was not located on a hill overlooking I-84 in central
Connecticut. Still, “HolyLand USA” was what the sign on the dilapidated gate read. Above her, on the summit of the slope, a huge cross outlined in yellow and white fluorescent lights cast a sickly glow over some of the sad-sack displays from the life of Jesus that dotted the hillside.
Once upon a time this place had been a curiosity, an inspirational amusement park for the good people of Waterbury. But that had been years ago, and now it was a ruin of overgrown weeds and broken-down fiberglass and chickenwire displays. The disenfranchised youth of Waterbury had long ago found their way here, and the park’s tumble-down remnants showed the effects of their long occupancy. Graffiti defaced the surviving figures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the disciples. Some of the latter were without heads; Lucita was fairly sure she’d stepped on part of Peter after hopping the ineffective fence. Some of the displays had simply been smashed or otherwise desecrated, and at least one had been carved by a particularly enterprising youth with a rough inverted pentagram.
Lucita stopped for a second and gazed at that, surprised that a mild twinge of anger still roiled in her gut at the sight. She had long ago left the Church behind—her sire’s attentions had seen to that—but found this petty sacrilege irksome. She’d seen evil—to some, she was its very personification—and this tribute to what some idiotic child thought was naughty belittled what she’d seen and done. She made a mental note that, when her work here was finished, she should find the author of this indignity and show him precisely what he was making pathetic reverence to.
But that would come later. Now it was time for business. Talley and Monçada be damned—she had a contract.
Broken glass, cigarette butts and other, less identifiable things were scattered everywhere on the ground. A less cautious hunter would have been betrayed by the crunching of the omnipresent glass under her feet, but Lucita had taken certain precautions. She smiled. Even if she hadn’t known that her prey was here, she would have guessed that he’d pick someplace like this to go to ground.
The traffic from the highway below was steady and insistent. It did a good job of masking whatever noises Lucita’s target (and any company he had) might make. The constant flow of cars added another concern, however—everything she did on this hill was highly visible to the mortals below, and that meant that her arsenal was limited. The tactics she’d used to distract Talley from MacEllen wouldn’t work here. Monstrous tentacles and forms of shadow silhouetted against a twenty-foot cross might be seen by her employers as a breach of the Masquerade, and part of the terms of any contract with the Camarilla was abiding by its rules.
She looked around. Nothing stirred on the hill. Lucita pursed her lips in an almost-frown, the yellow light from the icon above her making her appear almost jaundiced. She’d have to flush Torres out. Oh, he was here. Of that she had no doubt. There was evidence of him if you knew where to look—tracks in the high weeds that were made by someone dragging off a body, odd spatters of blood on the ground, a discarded shoe along the side of the path that looked too new to have been there more than a week. Actually, from the amount of evidence, Torres definitely had company.
Well, there was no time like the present to begin. Lucita dropped to her haunches and concentrated. The light from the cross, far from being the bane its manufacturers would have expected, instead helped her. Shadows sprawled behind every rock and bush, and crawled out from each of the surviving displays of crumbling piety.
It was very simple, really. Torres was nowhere in the light. He couldn’t move, for fear of being spotted. That meant that he was hiding somewhere in the shadows. And no matter how tough or learned Torres might be, it was certain that the shadows would not hide him from Lucita’s attentions.
She closed her eyes and listened through the darkness. The sounds of the rushing cars and of the wind skirling between the displays faded. Instead, Lucita’s world filled with darkness. She cast her consciousness about, from one place to another, seeking the faintest noise, the slightest movement….
There. And there. And over there. There were three of them, all doing their very best not to be seen. It meant that they’d seen her coming and probably had a good idea of who she was. It would make her work more difficult. She pulled back from the shadows even as she sensed the three moving to the attack, and spun to meet them.
There were already two knives in the air as Lucita stood. She dodged to the left, vaulting over the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and was rewarded by a pair of muffled crunching sounds as the blades cut into the fiberglass behind her. She could see all three of them, with the two she didn’t recognize leaping to the attack and Torres hanging back. He looked as if he couldn’t tell whether to help his friends out or run, and that indecision was exactly what she needed.
The two moving toward her were fairly nondescript, as far as vampires went. One was tall and lanky, with a straggly red beard and stragglier red ponytail, while his partner was shorter and broader, and had dark hair. Both wore what she’d heard disparagingly referred to as “Sabbat uniform”—black biker jacket, jeans, boots and leather gloves. The tall one already had another knife out, while the shorter vampire rushed her position with a scream. Farther back, Torres seemed to have finally made up his mind. He ran.
Lucita smiled. As the shorter vampire closed on her, arms wide and fangs bared, she simply dropped to a knee and rammed her fist into his gut with enough force to crumple a car door. The man’s scream abruptly transformed into a gasp as she felt something in his entrails give, and he suddenly sat down hard with a stunned look on his face. He tried to scrabble to his feet, and Lucita lashed out with a kick that collapsed his cheekbone and eye socket. He fell over with astonishing speed.
Even as she rose out of the crouch, the other vampire threw his knife and reached for yet another one. It was a good cast, and the spinning blade caught the light from the cross in bands of yellow and gold.
Lucita didn’t duck out of the way. Instead, she merely extended her left arm, palm out. Beside her, the man she’d punched whined in pain. She ignored him.
And the knife smacked neatly into her hand, the blade slicing through her palm and out the other side. Lucita gritted her teeth, but made no other show that the impact affected her. Thick blood dripped down her hand onto the ground, but she ignored it. Perhaps fifteen feet away, the vampire who’d thrown the knife paused, mid-cast, as she removed it from her hand.
“Care to try again?” she said, as the hole in her palm knit itself shut. The knife in her right hand was slick with her blood, but it was weighted well, and sharp. The blade was leaf-shaped, about three inches long, and it had been polished to a high shine. Idly, Lucita wondered precisely how many more the childe had on him.
The vampire snarled something that might have been a curse, and let fly with his remaining knife. His aim was off, however, and the throw missed her by a good foot to the right. She laughed, taunting him, and he leaped over the display in front of him to come after her. Lucita circled right, placing his downed friend between the two of them, and feinted first left and then right with her stolen blade. Her attacker backpedaled, clearly not ready for a taste of his own medicine, and in that instant she rammed the knife down on the crippled vampire on the ground in front of her. The point of the blade went into the back of his neck as easily as if it were going into thin mud, and the man spasmed once before collapsing completely.
The other vampire didn’t care about his friend, or perhaps simply saw that Lucita’s knife was now stuck between a pair of his cohort’s cervical vertebrae. He charged in, reaching out for Lucita with the obvious intent of tackling her and using his superior size and weight to bear her down. Behind him, Lucita could see Torres making for the fence. The sight sobered her. It was time to finish this, and to see to her real target.
The lanky vampire charged, and Lucita shoved the body of his ally at his ankles as hard as she could. As Lucita could lift small cars if she put her mind to it, the cadaver went flying at her assailant fast enough that he had no time to leap ov
er it. Instead, he crashed to the ground as the dead weight of his friend took his feet out from under him. The man’s jaw hit the hard ground with an audible crack, and before he could scramble to his feet, Lucita brought her booted foot down on the back of his head.
The vampire’s skull collapsed messily, as Lucita’s boot went through his skull and nearly out the other side. She stared down at the corpse for a long second, then shook her foot free and took off after Torres.
He was over the fence by now and headed for the highway. Lucita summoned the strength of the blood within her (less than she thought she’d had, as healing the knife wound had taken some doing) and surged forward. Torres saw her coming and panicked, leaping the rest of the way over the fence and stumbling forward as fast as his legs could carry him. Within seconds, Lucita saw, he’d reach the highway. There was light traffic, and with a little luck Torres would make it across the road and into the maze of buildings on the other side. She might catch him there, or she might not. And if he got away, he’d go to ground so deep that she’d probably have to spend weeks to find him again.
It had to end now, witnesses be damned. She stopped running and seized hold of a shadow on the far side of the fence.
Torres was a bare twenty feet from the road. The headlights of eastbound cars illuminated him in flickers. Lucita concentrated and, under her breath, muttered a prayer.
The tendril of shadow shot out and wrapped itself around Torres’s foot. He screamed and fell, hard. Lucita smiled and made a “come-hither” gesture. In response, the tentacle of blackness started dragging the howling vampire back away from the road. Torres clawed at the dirt, which came up in his hands. He clung to weeds, which broke under the inexorable pressure Lucita’s servant exerted.
A car coming around the curve slowed, a face peered out from the window. Lucita cursed, and called more darkness to hide the scene. No other vehicles gave evidence of any observation, and Lucita smiled. Torres was ranting obscenities, but the sound of the passing cars drowned them out. He was as alone and lost as if he were in the middle of the Sahara.
Clan Novel Lasombra: Book 6 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 14
