The justicar was met with silence as he stalked down the aisle to the conference table. The impression of Xaviar’s agitation grew more palpable with each step.
Queasiness took hold in Jan’s gut. They’ve taken Buffalo, he thought. The Sabbat has taken Buffalo. If that outlying point no longer remained in Camarilla hands, then the noose was tightened around all their necks.
“Justicar Xaviar,” said Prince Garlotte, when the Gangrel was sufficiently near, “how may we be of service?” The prince, despite the unannounced arrival of a justicar in his city, appeared totally composed.
With Xaviar’s final few steps, the two Malkavians seated to Jan’s right abandoned their places and prudently created some distance between themselves and the justicar. Xaviar stood alone by that side of the table, scant feet from Jan on one side, Theo Bell on the other. The Gangrel took a moment to observe the other Kindred present. He seemed to calm somewhat, but the tension in his right hand, still clutching shut the cloak draped over his shoulders, was visible enough.
“We must abandon the city,” Xaviar said without preamble. His words swept across the table like the first gusts of a stormwind, but instead of chaos, silence reigned.
“Has Buffalo fallen?” Jan asked at last, unable to wait for Garlotte to speak, as would have been proper, and at any rate, Garlotte would not have asked that most important question. He refused to see the strategic importance of that other city, as he called it, and that if the scattered Sabbat forces in the Northeast were able to join those in Washington to form a deadly ring around Baltimore, all would be lost.
Garlotte suddenly seemed less important as Jan realized Xaviar was staring down at him as if the question made no sense whatsoever.
“Buffalo,” Jan tried again. “Has the Sabbat taken it?”
Xaviar allowed himself a mirthless laugh. “The Sabbat is nothing.” His gaze shifted from Jan to Theo and finally to Prince Garlotte. “We must abandon the city. Every Kindred is needed.”
Those around the table regarded him with varying degrees of befuddlement, curiosity, and fear. Jan believed that he saw something of madness in the Gangrel’s eyes.
The Sabbat is nothing.
“I’m afraid we don’t understand, Justicar,” said Garlotte. “Needed for what?” The prince couldn’t have been happy with the suggestion that his city be abandoned, but he trod lightly with the justicar.
Xaviar had little patience even for Garlotte. The Gangrel began to snarl, Jan thought, but then it seemed merely that a muscle at the comer of Xaviar’s lip was twitching.
“The Final Nights are at hand,” the Gangrel said.
The stark note of prophecy jarred Jan. The words, painted with the mingled accents from hundreds of years in the Old Country, from the lips of the justicar touched a place within Jan as deep as his need for victims, a place as central as the hunger to what he had become. The Beast stirred within him.
The Final Nights are at hand.
Such words were sometimes uttered casually among the ignorant, or disingenuously by those hoping to strike terror into the hearts of listeners, but Xaviar was neither fool nor demagogue. He was one of seven justicars, chosen of the Camarilla to oversee its mandates. He was Gangrel, of all the clans closest to the Beast and sensitive to its emanations.
Other words of prophecy, newer words, sprang unbidden to Jan’s mind:
The Gangrel was consumed by the Beast. Flesh of his flesh. Soul of his soul. And at the Tower of the Saint atop the Isle of Angels, the Unholy Triad was complete. Kinslayer. Betrayer. Beast. The Beast walks the earth. The Undoing of the Children of Caine is at hand.
The words were attributed to the Cult of the Wanderer, an obscure group of lunatics that had arisen from the ashes of the Blood Curse. The words spoke of the end of time. They spoke of Gehenna.
“What are you saying?” Garlotte tersely asked the justicar, latest in a string of Kindred telling the prince what to do with his city.
Xaviar, if possible, was even less used to and more irritated by opposition than the prince. This time, the Gangrel did snarl. “The Final Nights are at hand,” he said again, as if that should explain it all, but he found himself still facing uncomprehending stares. “The prophecies are coming true!” he barked finally. “An elder power has risen. We must destroy it or be doomed!”
Jan battled mounting cognitive dissonance. His frame of reference had little room for elder powers, for the Final Nights. Futilely, he tried to reconcile the world he knew—Kindred politics, the Sabbat, princes and clans—with childish superstitions suddenly lent credence by the passion of a justicar. Not just passion, Jan realized. Fear.
“Elder power?” Prince Garlotte was standing now, his patience stretched to the breaking point. He waved his hand dismissively. “If some decrepit Gangrel has gotten loose in the woods—”
“No Gangrel did this!” roared Xaviar, and he pulled back his cloak and thrust forward an impossibly mangled arm. His left forearm was not broken but twisted, warped into unnatural curves and bends. Familiar claw-like fingers dangled from the end of the useless limb.
Jan had been edging his chair away from the Gangrel. The tension between prince and justicar had rocketed out of control, and Jan had feared violence.
Between battling elders was not the place to be. But now, with the shock of Xaviar brandishing his crippled arm, the crisis was at least temporarily averted. Garlotte, and the others, gawked openly at Xaviar’s disfigurement. Victoria looked away. One of the Malkavians, the Quaker, had dropped beneath the table and was whimpering.
Theo Bell was the first to recover. “What happened?”
Xaviar’s eyes were downcast now. He stared at the center of the table. “It destroyed all those I took into battle. One other escaped, maybe two…I don’t know.”
“How many Gangrel?” Bell asked. His deep baritone seemed to hold the terror at bay for all the Kindred.
“All those who defended Buffalo.”
Bell nodded grimly.
Jan tried in vain to fathom what sort of creature could destroy such a collection of Gangrel.
“An Antediluvian,” said Xaviar.
“Antedi…” Victoria gasped. The name from legend seemed to catch in her throat. She clasped a hand over her mouth and started shaking her head.
“The third generation is rising,” Xaviar said. “The Dark Father will not be far behind.”
Victoria’s hand slid down to clutch her neck, as if her throat had been slit. “There’s no such…” she whispered more to herself than to anyone else, but the proper words eluded her. “No such…”
But Xaviar heard her, and her doubt enraged him. “It called fire from the earth’s belly against us! The very ground beneath our feet obeyed it!” His eyes bulged. He bared his fangs and raised his deformed arm. “It melted flesh and bone with its hands! And its eye…throbbing, pulsing.” He held his right hand open as if cupping a giant orb. “To look into it, into that eye…” Xaviar’s mouth twitched again; he tried to repress a shudder, “was to stare at Final Death.”
Yet you escaped, Jan wanted to say—but to do so would have been to invite dismemberment, for even a one-armed Gangrel justicar was not to be trifled with.
In hurried phrases, Xaviar described the scene of carnage he’d beheld in the Adirondack foothills, far east of Buffalo—fountains of lava and fire, spikes rising from the earth to impale, slabs of stone crushing Gangrel, lakes of blood and fire. But always he came back to the eye—glowing, throbbing, holding Cainites in thrall while the risen Antediluvian tore their bodies limb from limb.
“Xaviar,” said Garlotte, having regained his calm, “surely something attacked your people. We do not doubt you in that. But to abandon the city…?”
“What difference are Camarilla and Sabbat when we are all destroyed?” Xaviar shouted. “The Sabbat will fight with us against an Antediluvian!”
“Treason!” Vitel was on his feet and pointing an accusatory finger at Xaviar. “The Sabbat are no better than animals!
I will not submit to them!”
Xaviar stepped forward, as if he would charge through the table. He held a clawed hand before him. His face seemed suddenly more snout-like with his bared fangs.
Despite the danger, Jan was searching his memory for any scrap of information about the Antediluvians, but regardless of the legends or prophecies recalled, he knew what his sire would say, what he had said, hundreds of times.
“The Antediluvians do not exist,” said Jan. “We know that to be the truth, and the Sabbat, whatever propaganda its leaders may spew to control the rabble, knows it as well.”
The words struck Xaviar like a blow to the face. He jerked his head around to face Jan and moved dangerously close. “We know that to be the truth?” he bellowed, mocking Jan. “This,” he stuck his twisted arm in Jan’s face, “this is the truth! I have seen the truth! I have stood before that eye and felt the truth as it toyed with my body as if I were made of soft wax!”
Xaviar turned from Jan and began pacing back and forth, waving his good hand in rage and disbelief. “We exist, no matter what the mortals think. Do the Antediluvians need our belief? Or would they rather catch us unawares?”
“Legends,” said Jan. “Folk tales, myths. Nothing more.” Hardestadt had always been emphatic on this point, and Jan was nothing if not well-schooled and obedient. “There must be some other explanation.
“Bah!” Xaviar flung his head so violently that he sprayed droplets of froth from the corners of his mouth. “The Ventrue can rot!” He shot a challenging glare at Prince Garlotte, but the prince folded his arms and kept his peace.
“Theo,” said Xaviar, “bring your Brujah. I will gather more Gangrel. We will get Tremere sorcerers from the chantry in New York. We don’t need the rest—weaklings and cowards!”
All eyes turned toward the Brujah archon. He sat perfectly still, as always keeping only his own counsel. “My instructions from Justicar Pascek are to do what I can to stop the Sabbat.”
“Do you doubt what I say?” asked Xaviar, the question half entreaty, half threat.
“No.” Theo didn’t hesitate this time. “But Pascek would be pretty pissed off if I just dropped what I was doing, just like you’d be if one of your archons ignored you, and just like Hardestadt would be if Pieterzoon here up and left. Shit, Hardestadt probably has more clout than my boss and you put together.”
Through narrowed eyes, Xaviar looked from face to face around the table. Only the four Kindred at the places of honor met his gaze unflinchingly: Garlotte, Theo, Vitel, Jan. Isaac and Gainesmil cast nervous glances at their prince and were careful to avoid eye contact with Xaviar. Lydia, the Brujah, did likewise except for watching Theo for nonexistent signs of his reaction. Colchester was doing what Nosferatu did best—not drawing attention to himself—while Roughneck and the Quaker were, respectively, stalking around the room mumbling, and under the table. Victoria, since the first mention of an Antediluvian, had retreated within herself. She was absorbed with her thoughts and memories, speaking to no one, perhaps not completely aware of what transpired around her.
When Xaviar turned toward Jan, the Ventrue held his gaze for quite a while. The Gangrel was a fearsome creature, but Jan had studied at the knee of a master, one of the eldest of the Camarilla. No slash of Gangrel claw could tear down the loyalty that Hardestadt had spent centuries to build—the loyalty and the fear of failure. Within Xaviar’s bestial eyes, what Jan had first taken for madness now crystallized and became something else, something harder, less forgiving.
Xaviar, with great effort, took a moment to regain his composure. His good hand rubbed across the red stubble on his chin. He licked the back of his hand and, like a cat, smoothed down the hair above his left ear. All the while, the small muscle at his lip jumped, and his eyes burned with disgust. His face, still showing signs of strain, seemed more human again.
He raised his crippled arm, but this time didn’t brandish it so violently. “Twelve nights ago this happened. For three nights I grieved. I roamed the mountains mad with rage. Then for six nights I hunted. I had many wounds and little strength. I hunted animals, then mortals. When I’d wandered as far west as Buffalo, I found a Sabbat pack and drank their thin blood. Then for three nights, I traveled here, all the way searching for a Gangrel seer who had spoken to my people before the massacre—it was he who told us of the Final Nights. But he was not to be found. Each of these nights, from sunset to sunrise, I fought the desire to go back to that place, to fight the creature and its eye, to die as my clansmen died. But I did not. The Camarilla must be warned, I told myself. Then together…together…we will go back to that place. And there will be blood and vengeance.”
Again the Gangrel justicar looked from Garlotte to Bell to Vitel to Jan.
“As justicar,” Xaviar said, “of Clan Gangrel, of the Camarilla, I take command of all Kindred in this city. We will destroy the Antediluvian.”
The shocked silence was broken only by the panicked muttering of the Quaker under the table: “Sweet Jesus…sweet Jesus…”
Then slowly, deliberately, Prince Garlotte rose to his feet. “With all due and proper respect, justicar,” he said, the weight of his decision evident in each syllable, “retaining this city is the most vital interest of the Camarilla at present. We do not question your authority. Considering the dire consequences of your demand, for all Kindred, however, we demand a conclave.”
Jan watched Xaviar closely. Though the Gangrel had seemed close to violence with both princes earlier, this gambit by Garlotte, no matter what he said, and though technically sound, was a tremendous affront to the justicar. Xaviar, on edge as he was, might snap. Politics be damned. The only question then would be who would support Garlotte to Final Death. And who would stand by and watch.
Xaviar flexed the claws of his right hand, stretching the long digits and curling them in, over and over, without seeming to realize he was doing so. His gaze bore into Garlotte. “Who will stand against me?” he growled at last. “Let there be no confusion.”
A long silence passed, finally broken by Jan: “The Antediluvians do not exist.” His lot was thrown in with Garlotte, though, considering the unyielding position of Jan’s sire, he had little real choice.
“So speaks the slave of Hardestadt.” Xaviar turned to Theo.
Bell slowly shook his head. “I have a job to do here. Until we know more…”
“So speaks the slave of Pascek.”
“Aid us against the Sabbat,” said Prince Garlotte, trying to offer the justicar a way out of this confrontation without losing face, “then we will see to this…this other matter.”
“So speaks the slave to his city,” Xaviar said, turning from prince to deposed prince. “Vitel?”
“There are other dangers in the world,” Marcus Vitel said, “but I will have my city back, and I will see the Sabbat destroyed. Or myself in the attempt.” Jan sat perfectly still. Though the threat of violence had passed, something more monumental now hung in the balance. It was clear that Xaviar could not hope to prevail through a conclave. His response might well change the course of Kindred history.
A soul-baring growl began deep in the justicar’s throat, only barely taking the form of words by the time it escaped his mouth. “Then damn you all, slaves of the Antediluvians.” He took a long time and regarded each Kindred in turn, as if branding their visage in his memory. “Damn you all. For this I swear: I will see that creature dead, and its eye ground to dust. And if first I have to drink an ocean of blood to be again whole of body, it will be the blood of your clansmen.” He thrust a finger toward Garlotte. “And yours,” toward Bell.
Then he turned to Jan. “And perhaps the blood of your sire.”
Despite Jan’s best efforts, the threat struck rage into his heart, not from fear that Xaviar would carry it out, but from the lack of respect conveyed for Hardestadt. Jan rose partially from his seat. Only a supreme effort of will kept him from launching a fist at the Gangrel’s jaw—a suicidal prospect, and no doubt what Xavi
ar was hoping for.
Jan lowered himself back into the chair. “I assure you, honorable justicar, it is not lightly nor with any pleasure that we refuse your request.”
Xaviar sneered. With his good hand he leaned forward onto the table. “Save your words for those who would listen.” He glanced meaningfully at Theo. “Though I would have expected better of the Brujah than to sell themselves cheaply to Ventrue masters.”
Bell responded not in the least to the justicar’s baiting.
“Very well, then.” Xaviar dug his claws into the table top. “The Final Nights are at hand. I leave the blind to lead the blind. This is not the first time the clans of the Camarilla have shown their disdain for the sacrifices of the Gangrel. But it will be the last.” With a quick raking motion, he gouged out a handful of wood and ground it to splinters in his hand. Then slowly, he let the remnants sift through his fingers. “See how well you find your way without us. Tell your masters if you wish. I’ll tell them soon enough in person. Let the union be dissolved.”
As Xaviar stalked from the silent chamber, Jan didn’t fully notice Victoria still trapped within her own mind, a finger absently stroking the near-perfect jaw. He didn’t see the ebon statue that was Theo Bell, nor the Malkavian hugging his shoulders in a far corner, nor the other madman curled into fetal position on the floor, nor the others staring dumbstruck after the justicar.
Instead, Jan saw the portico of an ancient temple, a temple that was the only hope of civilization—seven mammoth columns supporting the structure that protected learning and law and order. Only now, one of the seven pillars had cracked and toppled to the ground, where it lay smashed beyond repair. And Jan had pushed it.
Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 5 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 17
