by James Moore
“You’ve lost me, not that the feat is difficult at this time. Suffice to say the day has significant potential for magickal rites?”
“That’ll do very nicely, I think,” Carl answered, throwing Kurt again for just a second as he heard the unexpected British accent added to the voice he associated with Zho and coming from the wrong mouth in addition. The more he pondered the situation, the more he realized how many similarities existed between the two men — similar posture, almost identical facial expressions, even small gestures when they spoke. It was disorienting, to say the least.
“Well, then, it seems the easiest way to handle this situation would be to keep you in Berlin for the next few days, yes, Carl?”
Zho spoke again, “An easy enough concept, but you may rest assured, Etrius will do everything in his considerable power to ensure that Carl is exactly where he wants him to be.”
“Besides which, I’ve only your word and Zho's to back up this little theory. No offense, Kurt, but I’ve really got no reason at all to believe either of you.”
“What do you mean?"
“Oh, come on now, Kurt. I hardly know either of you.” Much like Kurt had seen Zho do in the past, Magnuson started ticking off reasons for his arguments, lifting one finger for each point he made. “The first time I saw you, you had your fangs bared, and you were chasing after ilse Decameron. The second time I saw you was last night, and to bolster my confidence, you punched me in the head. The only time I’ve seen Thadius over here was when I woke up this morning. And to top it all off,” — he gestured with his free hand, indicating Zho — “he’s admitted to having sold the souls of all his descendants to a major demon. All of his descendants, which, by the way, includes me.” He held forth the four fingers he’d raised in his argument, waggling them to make certain his point was clear. “That’s four strikes against you, mate, and in cricket and baseball alike, that’s an out and then some.”
Kurt looked to the other man in the room, and Zho raised his hands in apparent defeat. “Don’t look at me, Kurt. I’ve been having this argument for several hours in numerous languages.”
Kurt opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again when a sharp knock came at the door. He waited a moment, fully expecting Jackie to open the door before he remembered that she’d left. Fighting off a wave of depression, he stormed across the room and opened the door himself. Charnas stood outside, dressed once more in his traditional leather biker outfit and carrying a bottle of Dom Perignon. “Hi, Kurt! I know how much you’ve missed being here in Berlin, so I thought I’d bring you a homecoming gift." The imp’s smile was electrifying, and Kurt found, much to his own amazement and disgust, that he was almost glad to see the demon. “Can I come in?”
In a flash, Zho stood behind Kurt, placing a hand over his mouth and speaking in his ear. “That is far too open an invitation, Kurt." The man took his hand away and looked to Kurt expectantly.
“You have a suggestion, then, Thadius?”
The mage nodded, smiling icily at Charnas, who, Kurt noted, was no longer smiling in return. “Oh, most definitely. I’d recommend you allow him into your home with the following stipulations: One, he may come in only this one time; tuio, he may touch nothing, and he must leave the bottle outside; three, he must state the truth and only the truth in every statement he makes while on your premises.”
Kurt contemplated the man’s words and nodded. “Agreed. You may only enter my home this one time, you may touch nothing during your time in this apartment and must leave the champagne bottle outside, and you must tell nothing but the truth while you are here. If you are willing to accept these terms, you may come into my home.”
Charnas bowed formally, his grin returning as he spoke. “I most humbly accept the conditions you have stated, Herr Westphal.” He threw the bottle across the hallway, where it exploded in a cascade of green glass and foaming liquid. As he crossed over the threshold, Charnas lifted off the ground and walked gracefully on the air. “Well, I'm awfully glad you made it here in one piece. I’d hate to think of anything happening to any of you. By the way, Kurt, how’s Jackie?”
“I — she’s not here.”
Charnas positively gloated, his voice a silken purr, “I know.”
“You miserable little piglet.”
“I could get her back for you. Just say the word, and it’s a done deal."
“Enough, Chamas!" Once again, Zho was livid, his single eye burning with an fierce inner-light. “Why are you here?” “Well, Ilse Decameron found me out. She looked me right in the face and gasped and called me a fiend. Well, far be it from me to overstay my welcome, so I just discoed on down to Berlin-town and decided to let you know what was what.” “I imagine the story is a tad more complicated than you let on, imp.” Zho’s voice was filled with contempt.
“Hey, I did nothing that Carl over there wouldn’t have done. I fulfilled my part of your orders to the letter.”
“Ignoring the intent, no doubt.”
“Precisely,” the demon smiled. “What can I say? I like to improvise."
Carl stood up from where he’d been sitting and walked over to where everyone else was congregated. “Would you care to introduce me to your friend?”
Thadius opened his mouth to speak, but Charnas beat him to the punch. “Certainly, Carl. This is Thadius Zho, your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather,” he gestured grandly to the mage. “This is Kurt Westphal, Archon to Clan Ventrue, and all-around hero-type. And I..." He paused long enough to bow again. “I am Charnas the Imp, servant to Thadius Zho and the cuter aspect of Charnas, Lord of Misrule, et cetera, el cetera. Tragically misunderstood, but always willing to please.”
“Pleasure, I’m sure.” Carl did not sound at all certain about the pleasure aspects, but he was polite enough, especially considering the circumstances.
“Not yet, you sweet thing, but I can fix that." Chamas warped and changed before Kurt’s eyes, appearing ever so briefly as ilse Decameron. Just as quickly, he was himself again.
Kurt stepped away, once again pulling himself under control. He was angry, angry with himself, with Jackie and even with Charnas. Mostly, he was angry with himself, for letting Charnas get under his skin and for letting Jackie leave him. His concentration was almost non-existent, but there was nothing he could do about the situation, save step away for a moment and calm down. The task ahead was too important to botch.
Behind him, the three others in the room were talking, Carl asking questions and Charnas and Zho giving him answers. A soft, feminine voice spoke beside him, “Kurt, I am so very sorry for your loss. If I — If I can be of help to you, you have but to ask.”
Kurt turned, surprised to see Jing Wei and embarrassed to admit that he’d forgotten she was with them. He studied her face, taking in her beauty and feeling a modicum of pleasure brought on by her presence. She smelled lightly of sandalwood, but her normal traditional attire was gone, replaced by one of his dress shirts that was almost as large as a dress on her.
“Hello, Jing Wei. I appreciate your kindness, but now is not the time for such considerations. Perhaps after tomorrow has passed, and assuming we are both alive at that point.”
“You could call her back to you. You know that you could. Why did you let her leave?” The part of her question that bothered him was that she actually sounded puzzled by his actions.
“‘If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it does not, it never was.’ Or something like that. I’ve never much cared for that silly little saying, but it fits well enough how I feel about Jackie .”
“You love her then?"
“Oh, my, yes."
“Then you are a very lucky man, Kurt Westphal. Love is hard to come by in our existence.” Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper.
“Only if the love is returned, my dear. If it is not returned, then I am truly among the Damned."
Jing Wei rested her head against his shoulder, and he brought his arm
around her waist, pulling her close, grateful for the simple contact. “May the love be returned one thousandfold.’
Two hours later, Kurt was back in his offices, attending to the mundane business he had set aside for the last few weeks. Much could be handled by others in his absence, true, but he preferred to handle it himself whenever possible.
That, and the tasks helped him keep his mind off Jackie. They distracted him from the knots of writhing demons that seemed to course through his chest and stomach, worrying at him with teeth sharper than razors. Were it not for the lack of bloody wounds, Kurt would have thought he was dying physically instead of simply feeling his heart, his soul, die.
The water clock on his desk, a miniature version of the massive original below him in the depths of the Europa Center’s main mall, let him know that the time for sleep would soon be upon him. In other rooms throughout the apartment, Magnuson, Zho and Jing Wei all rested or worried, whichever seemed appropriate. Magnuson was sleeping, his mind no doubt overwhelmed by the magnitude of his situation. Kurt had checked on him before retiring to his office and had heard the steady rhythm of his breathing, the slowed pulse of his heartbeat.
The night was growing old, only a few hours before dawn, when the voice assaulted Kurt for the second time. EMBRACE HIM. The sheer force behind the words caused his body to twitch.
He spoke softly, a whisper that could not hope to escape the sound-proofing of his office. “Who are you?”
EMBRACE CARL MAGNUSON. STOP THE TREMERE BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. The words were like hammer-blows against his psyche, lightning strikes that electrified his soul and demanded his submission.
“Who are you? Answer me, damn your soul!" He focused all of his senses, closed his eyes, and stopped breathing, preparing himself to capture every nuance of the voice. “Are you Democritus?”
DO NOT DEFY ME, MY CHILDE.
“Are you Camilla, my grand-sire?” There was no answer, but the absence of communication was not an answer. He sensed, or possibly only imagined that he sensed, a masculine essence to the voice that rang through his brain. “I have
served the Ventrue faithfully, but I defy you! I will not follow the orders of a voice that has no name, no meaning to me. Once again, who are you?"
The presence slammed against him, an oppressive weight that pinned him in place and sought weaknesses in his defensive armor. Kurt felt his body spasm, felt himself fall from the plush chair behind his desk and roll across the floor, his muscles dancing in a gran mal seizure. Negative suns ignited behind his closed eyelids, and the taste of his own blood filled his mouth. He dared not think, save to focus against the attack. He was only dimly aware of the chair falling across him, and the splintering wood in his hand was no more substantial than the wind. Faint distractions, hardly worth noticing when compared to the storm that ripped across his mindscape.
EMBRACE THE MAGE! DO NOT RISK ALL THAT WE ARE!
The images in his mind, the super-novae that pulsed across his close-eyed vision with each lashing that the presence delivered, revealed at last what Kurt had already suspected. The face of a man, his image reversed like the nebulous explosions that formed his separate parts. Three weeks after his Embrace, Kurt had seen the man for only the briefest of moments, a graceful figure dressed in a fine silk suit, his long dark hair pulled back and braided, his beard and mustache perfectly trimmed. The man had looked at Kurt and smiled, and in that moment, Kurt had wanted to weep in adoration. Bindusara, the Philosopher of Alexandria. Surely there were few among the Ventrue who did not want to gain his attention, few who did not desire his respect. Bindusara knew more of the Kindred and their ten thousand year history than most vampires could imagine. He was hated, feared, reviled, revered, loved and envied by most of the clans, and he was virtually idolized by the Ventrue. The greatest mind among the clan, and Kurt was trying to struggle against him.
Almost before he had finished accepting what he fought against, the conflict was over. He waited, fearing a return of the storm that had nearly destroyed him. After the previous few seconds, the silence was almost more than he could stand. He opened his eyes. The deep red carpet of his office spread out before him. The weight of his chair shoved against his neck, an unpleasant burden that he shrugged aside, listening in satisfaction as it rattled and crashed against the wall behind him. Kurt unclenched his fists, releasing the broken fragments of his desk that he had apparently ruined when the seizures struck. Where his face had rested moments before, a pool of black stained the carpet — his blood. Kurt felt the panially severed section of his tongue flap against his canines and grimaced in pain.
He stood, his muscles groaning in protest. The room tilted threateningly, and he was forced to grab the edge of his desk to maintain his balance. A heavy splinter of oak rammed into his hand, and he savored the pain, something physical to remind him that he was alive. After a few moments, when the room had once again settled back into focus, he righted his chair and sat down, hard.
Bindusara. He had defied Bindusara, and he suspected the Scholar of Alexandria would not forget the slight. “I —I did not mean offense. I simply could not allow one I did not know to command me, milord."
There was no response.
“What if you had been one of the Tremere? An enemy of the clan?”
There were no answers to his questions.
“I — I cannot do this thing you ask. Please, I do not want to make another suffer this damnation.”
The silence continued for several seconds. Then, EMBRACE THE MAGE, CARL MAGNUSON. WE CANNOT RISK THE VENTRUE CLAN AND THE CAMARILLA.
Kurt shook, his body demanding that he follow the commands of the Methuselah. He closed his eyes again, focusing on the voice and preparing himself for the worst. After all that had happened in the last week, all that he had endured, all that his Jackie had suffered through, he could not do what was demanded of him. “Anything else, Bindusara. Anything but that. I will kill him if I must, but I cannot damn him. I will not damn him.”
EMBRACE HIM.
“No."
YOU MUST. The voice struck him again, a vicious dagger driving between his eyes. Kurt felt the desk in front of him press against his legs, and then the weight was gone. A distant crunching sound reached his ears.
“N-No! I will not do this. Anything but this!”
Again the silence, and again he waited before opening his senses to the outside world. The oak desk was turned over, belly-up like some poor animal bludgeoned to death. His legs felt scraped and bruised from where he had apparently lashed out to strike the lectern in another seizure. His skull pounded, a steady keening agony accented only by the echoes of Bindusara’s voice.
DO NOT DEFY ME, KURT WESTPHAL!!!
“I must. What you ask of me, I cannot do. Not and live with myself. Better that he die. Better that you kill me.”
Kurt trembled with fear, waiting for the next attack. Every sound, even the spasmodic movements that still ran through his tortured nerve-endings, caused him to whimper. He had never before felt abuse like that which Bindusara had so easily dealt him. When consciousness faded from his body with the rising sun, he was still waiting.
The moon reached its zenith before Kurt was once again
ready to deal the people and the matters at hand. More phone calls were made, to both of Berlin’s princes, to Gilbert Duane in Miami, Florida, and to J.Oswald Hyde-White at the inn he called his home. With Gilbert Duane’s assistance, he managed to wrangle a promise of aid from the Malkavian elder of Berlin. First, Hyde-White and his madmen would keep the Tremere of Berlin occupied with a dozen distractions, and second, the Malkavians would use their influence with the Nosferatu to locate the potential sites where Etrius and his clan would attempt this great ritual, if such a ritual was to be performed. The princes started making calls of their own, each approaching the connections they had in the elder Kindred network throughout the world to ensure that no gross violations of the Masquerade would go unpunished. There was no guarantee that the Trem
ere would attempt a global attack against the Masquerade, but if they did, the Ventrue would stand ready to stop them. If need be, the Ventrue would have to work a few charms of their own to have systematic blackouts of satellite reception across the entire planet. Not an easy task, but one that could be accomplished. The wheels were set in motion to assure that Etrius and his Tremere could not possibly accomplish their feat by means of assaulting the mortals of the world with the truth of the vampires in their midst.
Finally, a last phone call to Democritus, one that explained in detail all he had learned and all that he hoped to accomplish before the end of the following night. The Ventrue Justicar gave him compliments for a job well done and promised that there would be rewards in the future. Kurt made all the right motions and said all the proper words, but did so with less enthusiasm than most would have expected from him. Democritus himself asked if there was anything wrong, and Kurt admitted that he was tired, rather than boring the man with details of his shattered heart.
Then Kurt spent almost an hour pondering who had
commanded him to stay and handle the task at hand, rather than go after the woman he loved. He could swear that he had been in contact with someone, some ancient influence that forced his will into submission and attempted to Dominate him. Only his sire, to the best of his knowledge, had control enough over him to literally force him to watch as his reason for living walked away. Yet the Justicar had asked him if there was anything amiss. Surely the man was not that heartless, especially to one with whom he was pleased. Then if not Democritus, who?
For the first time since his Embrace, Kurt found himself pondering the intricacies of the Kindred society with something akin to fear. Democritus was almost surely Blood Bound to his sire, and his sire before him to the one who had given her the Embrace. From Democritus to Camilla to Bindusara to...? He had no idea who Bindusara’s sire was; for all he knew the man was Embraced by Ventrue himself. Was it possible that each had Bound their childe as surely as Democritus had Bound Kurt? If so, could the Blood Bond that ran through the lineage allow each to control not only their own get but the childer of their get as well?
