Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Stewart Wieck

  Benjamin could indeed slow the Prince’s pursuit of the Kindred rebels, for while Benison controlled the police force of the city, all of the judicial system was under Benjamin’s sway. Any number of steps could be taken by Benjamin’s Kine to shut down the attacks Benison was staging with his own puppets. Hell, even a search warrant denied here and there could buy Thelonious several days.

  But did Benjamin dare such an action? There was no doubt that he did not care for the threat Thelonious leveled at him. Threat or not, Benjamin would have to do what was best for himself.

  What it really came down to, he concluded, was deciding the better pawn—or ally, if he choose to look at things that way—between Thelonious and Eleanor. Whichever way he chose—and he would have to consider the permutations for the remaining hours of darkness this night—Benjamin knew he could take no steps against the Prince before the party.

  Benison would know immediately that it was Benjamin’s interference that slowed his pursuit of the Anarchs, and the Ventrue reasoned there was no reason to create one’s own trouble when others already had the ability to heap it upon you.

  Monday, 21 June 1999, 3:18 AM

  Piedmont Avenue

  Atlanta, Georgia

  It was the result Leopold feared the most: an answer. But one plagued with innumerable more questions.

  His answer was only that he could indeed sculpt a Kindred, though it required him to enter his fugue state, a process he had never been able to control. More than that, this instance of letting go seemed different than ones before it. He recalled the details of what he considered his astral projection with little clarity, but he did remember feeling that his mental block had defeated even this magical state of creation. Then, he had floated even higher until he’d faded back to consciousness.

  Normally, his ghostly presence lingered an arm’s reach above his working self. Perhaps, though, his Kindred nature was heightening this power of his, or perhaps his was a power with even greater range than he supposed. Perhaps it was potent enough that he could again imagine himself an artistic genius—a creator with enough madness and extreme behavior to qualify.

  Whatever had happened and was happening, Leopold knew he needed more answers. His pursuit would be defeating the hydra, for where Kindred were concerned, every answer created two more questions, but perhaps he would stumble across an eventual truth that would let him begin to cauterize the bloody stumps before more mysteries could sprout.

  The problem was that his friends were as few as his enemies. He remained clear of politics in order to avoid creating enemies, but without an area of clout or control he could claim, other Kindred also had no reason to seek him as an ally. There were a handful of mortals he could turn to if desperate need arose—Rose Markowitz in particular, since he had saved her from the street and returned her to a life in art she presumably found infinitely more appealing—but there were no Kindred.

  Unless Hannah might help him. He thought on that for a moment.

  He remembered thinking of her mansion as he passed it last night. He thought of it as hers, though he guessed it was really the Atlanta chantry house of the Tremere, an extremely hierarchical clan that Leopold believed was bonded together by a common bloodline as well as common blood. That is, he’d heard that all neonates—newly created vampires—were required to drink the blood of all the elders of the clan.

  Blood was a powerful force for Kindred, and not just because of its sustenance. After all, any substance that could transform a bloodless human into a Kindred held secrets as yet beyond Kine science. A mortal who drank Kindred blood became a ghoul. A Kindred who drank another Kindred’s blood could become the latter’s thrall. In fact, Leopold had heard stories of countless ways that the power of Kindred blood could be tapped, and at the heart of a majority of these stories were the Tremere, a clan rumored to be descended not from Caine but from a secret cabal of wizards who had transformed themselves in the Middle Ages.

  Leopold shook his head in frustration. There were so many stories. Each likely untrue but carrying within it a kernel of truth. He would need eternal life in order to sort all of this out.

  He thought of Hannah and how he was almost glad for his inability—at least at that time about a year ago—to sculpt Kindred. He had never encountered such a morose, unanimated and unengaging Kindred or human. Hannah struck Leopold as combining all the worst characteristics of a prudish Victorian, prissy schoolmistress, and dour Quaker. She was skinny to severity, expressionless to stupefaction, and eerie as a Salem witch who wanted to burn.

  She would not have been an impossible subject to sculpt, but Leopold did not imagine she would be an entertaining one. Not that Leopold doubted her ability to sit for hours or even days—interrupted by daylight, of course—if the sculpting required it, but he doubted his ability to find anything within her to animate the soul of her depiction in clay or stone or marble.

  But he had tried that evening she suddenly arrived in his workshop. Leopold recalled that he had been having some trouble with an uncooperative model, when suddenly the frustratingly twitchy girl screamed and pointed at a black-clad and hooded figure standing at the base of the stairs. Leopold almost screamed too, but Hannah promptly lowered her hood and Leopold recognized her from one of his very few social engagements among the Kindred.

  “I understand that you cannot sculpt the likeness of a vampire,” she said in a voice so uninflected that Leopold had to pick the words out of the mechanical hum that was the register of her voice.

  The frightened Kine shrieked again, hurling herself at Leopold and pleading for protection, but her voice gurgled to a halt and she collapsed to the floor with such suddenness that Leopold imagined that her bones must have liquefied.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Leopold believed he’d said, as he crouched to the fallen woman and rolled her over. He brushed some debris from one of her breasts and off her stomach and propped her into a sitting position against a pedestal.

  Leopold must have looked worried about the mortal, because Hannah remarked in passing that she would be fine and would be forever incapable of recalling the ten seconds immediately prior to collapsing as well as the first ten seconds after awakening.

  She’d warned that it was only approximately ten seconds, and then she’d asked what Leopold might do to her in that time. From anyone else, the question might have been mischievous or even malefic, but Hannah did not crack the slightest grin or reveal the minutest twinkle of her eye. Leopold gained the impression that everything she did was calculated to draw a response and her presence could not be a variable in her experiments, so she remained constantly withdrawn and was present only to record the results.

  Leopold didn’t recall how he’d answered, but if he had it to do again, and his courage didn’t fail him, then he would like to say something outrageous to see how Hannah would react. He shook his head. She would probably take any suggestion, no matter how grotesque or enlightened, with the same stoicism.

  This impression of Hannah’s methods was confirmed, at least in Leopold’s mind, when she then requested that he sculpt her. Leopold protested and a bit testily snapped at her, “Unless you know Tremere magick that can break my block, then you’re wasting your time.”

  She pretended not to hear him, and Leopold was grateful, not resentful, of the fact, for she was an elder vastly more powerful than he. He swallowed his tongue and inwardly berated himself for his foolish outburst.

  Hannah had then seated herself in the chair in which the Kine woman had wiggled. Though an impossible subject, Hannah did at least sit still, though the absolute stillness was unnerving. Leopold was used to the Kindred’s lack of breathing—though the rise and fall of a Kine chest was a rhythm by which he paced his work—but Hannah’s frozen demeanor was eerie.

  When the witch grabbed the mortal woman by the foot and dragged her toward the chair, Leopold shivered at the creepy sight. She hefted the naked Kine to her black-robed lap and held her still as well. “Start with the Kine
and slowly include me in the sculpture,” Hannah had instructed.

  Leopold spent most of the night at it, and the Kine slowly revealed herself in his clay, but Hannah’s image remained a crude outline without mirroring a single distinguishing characteristic.

  Hannah let the torture end when she suddenly stood, toppling the human off her lap into a haphazard pile of pink flesh and jutting limbs. She then walked to the base of the stairs where Leopold had first seen her, and all this without a word before suggesting, “I brought no magic to break your block, but that does not mean that Tremere magic cannot assist you in the future.”

  Leopold tried to apologize for his failure, but a curt movement of Hannah’s hand cut him off. “You have ten seconds,” she said, pointing behind Leopold to the human.

  Leopold glanced at the woman, then back to Hannah, but the Kindred was gone. The Toreador couldn’t recall what he did with the eight seconds that remained to him after that. He chuckled to himself now as he understood that he may have forgotten, but Hannah probably had not.

  That mysterious offer—if it was even that—from Hannah was all he had. He had no one else to turn to that he thought would be interested enough to listen to his predicament. He could go to his primogen, but that was Victoria and he would be embarrassed. He did not wish to reveal any of his thoughts regarding her. Besides, if she was involved in some deception, then it would be dangerous.

  Not that any deal with Hannah would be anything other than a deal with the devil, but for some strange reason, she seemed to have a personal interest in Leopold, and if his visit could intrigue her for selfish reasons, then she might be motivated to take action that could potentially benefit Leopold too.

  Leopold refused to fool himself into thinking Hannah might be cultivated as a friend. She was the type who simply did not have friends, or at least the friends she did have were known only to herself and not to those she marked with such favor. Her attitude was the same toward friend and foe, and in that she was both perfect and imperfect in the world of the Kindred. No one would ever be fooled by Hannah, for she seemed not to attempt deception, and while that removed a wide range of gamesmanship options from her arsenal, she also gained by this attitude. She was not shy about letting others know when their desires or goals aligned, as with Leopold.

  The summer solstice was tomorrow, so the nights were short and it had been an exhausting evening, but there was still plenty of time to attempt to visit Hannah before dawn. Besides, the sooner she knew he hoped to see her, the sooner she might deign to do so.

  Leopold didn’t relish visiting the Tremere chantry, but he wanted to see Hannah before the party that would mark the night of the solstice, especially now that he believed he needed to attend the party. He would be careful and not stray from the piece he had donated, but whether he liked it or not—and at this moment he was definitely troubled by the future—Leopold needed to circulate among the Kindred and better learn the ways of their games.

  He was truly damned.

  Leopold supposed the mansion was one of the first Reconstruction homes in Atlanta. It was awesomely huge enough to have been the home of an important Kine who saw to his own needs first. Or perhaps it was built at the behest of Kindred who needed safer hiding after untold dangers when Atlanta burned.

  The mansion was indeed enormous. Four complete stories high with gables that seemed to crisscross in a confusion of dizzying angles. Great windows capable of illuminating entire ballrooms with sunlight, now cloaked by thick, velvet curtains perpetually drawn. Leopold guessed it must have more than fifty rooms within its walls. Hannah was surely in one of them, but was she too engaged in some bizarre magical activity to receive him this evening?

  The Toreador was tempted to assume that was the case and try again another night before it was so late in the morning. But his need for answers drove him from the sidewalk along a short path toward the great iron gate at the foot of a brick walkway that terminated at the massive front doors of the mansion. The gate and narrow-spaced bars of the fence towered more than half again Leopold’s height above him.

  He noticed two security cameras rotate toward him and stop. They were mounted on the top of the brick columns that held the iron gate. The tall iron fence continued beyond each column.

  Leopold looked directly into one of the cameras and hesitantly waved. He glanced back at the street to see if anyone was passing, and when he saw all was clear, he spoke quietly toward one of the cameras. “I am Leopold of the Toreador Clan, and I request an audience with…ah, Hannah.” He stuttered because it seemed inappropriate to refer to the chantry leader as simply “Hannah,” but he knew no other name or title. It would suffice. Or so he hoped.

  And it must have, for in a moment the iron gate creaked open. Leopold looked at the hinges as he stepped through. He could detect no mechanisms that powered the opening, but he didn’t wish to ascribe to magic every event he witnessed at the Tremere chantry.

  Once through the gate, he walked steadily toward the front doors. The walkway was poorly lit, and a nervous feeling tickled him when the gates behind him closed. As he mounted the first of six brick steps, Leopold detected a shadow out of the corner of his eye.

  He nearly tripped on the step in fright when a better inspection of the shadows revealed a pair of black mastiffs. They were both hunkered down and seemed ready to pounce and in an instant rip out his throat. Leopold knew enough about dog attacks to throw his forearm in front of his neck for protection should one or both leap, but the Toreador doubted such tricks would do him much good against these muscled beasts.

  He stood for a moment watching them drink in his scent with twitching noses. Then the front doors of the house opened, and Leopold retreated toward the rounded and open frame. Only after his feet were beyond the threshold and his arm brushed one of the mammoth door handles did he turn away from the dogs and regard the interior of the house.

  It was dark and incense-scented within the room, though “chamber” was probably more apt for the impressive enclosure. This door too swung shut of its own accord, and Leopold gained the uneasy sense of entering a carnival’s haunted house—a place meant both to frighten and invite, so that a guest’s discomfort could be turned to the hosts’ advantage.

  Still, there was no one to greet him, so he paused a moment to examine the decorations. They were all unsettling. A two-dimensional skeleton of the extinct dodo bird in a shallow, well-illuminated and glass-covered crypt in the center of the floor. A framed document on the wall that careful inspection revealed to be the signed confession of a woman who had burned at the stake in Salem, Massachusetts. A small, almost circular table with a half-inch lip around it to keep three perpetually spinning tops from hurtling off the edge. Two black tops seemed to harry a small white one.

  Leopold noted a mirror on the wall past the framed document, but despite great curiosity, he resisted peering within it.

  The room itself was large and high. The ceiling extended at least three stories up, and various macabre portraits decorated the upper reaches of the walls. A great curling staircase wound along the wall at Leopold’s left up to a landing that disappeared into hallways to the right and left on the second story. The stairs did not continue any higher, but Leopold noted a third-floor balcony that overlooked this chamber.

  There were also two pairs of great double doors in the room, one set in the walls in front of Leopold and another pair to his right. All four doors were closed.

  The Toreador stood for a moment, alternately surveying each of the vantages the room held over him, but spying nobody to attend to him, he took a seat on a large red divan near the table of the spinning tops. The clatter and motion of the tops helped pass a moment or two, especially as Leopold did not desire to gaze upon the recessed bird bones which the divan so neatly overlooked.

  Soon, a white-bearded older man entered the chamber through the doors that faced the front door. He was tugging at the sleeves of his tuxedo coat. “Pardon me, sir, but in absence of expectation
of visitors this evening I’m afraid the staff has gone a bit lax.”

  The man was Caucasian and his white hair bristled along the line of his jaw only. He was of average height and rather haggard appearance. As soon as he neared, Leopold ascertained that he was mortal, or at least a ghoul. Probably the latter, but it didn’t matter to Leopold. He wasn’t gathering information for a future raid on the mansion; he simply hoped Hannah could provide some answers, or even a solitary answer.

  “I wish to speak with Hannah, mistress of this chantry.”

  “Indeed, Lady Hannah has been appraised of your presence, Mr. Leopold, and she has instructed that you be escorted to her at once. You will please follow me, and please sir, do not stray a step from the path we take. If you do, you are liable to come to great harm, great confusion or both.”

  “Great confusion?” Leopold asked.

  “Yes, sir. Though the hallways seem entirely trivial to navigate, a wayward step is likely to deposit you in another wing of this house, or another house entirely. So please do take care.”

  Leopold dusted off his pants as he stood. Perhaps the dim light of the chamber hid the dust, but a thin layer of it had covered his body while he waited.

  The man took a small candle-holder from a low shelf at the foot of the stairs. Also on that shelf were a number of narrow tallow candles. He placed one within the holder and snapped his fingers above its wick. It lit instantly, burning with a steady yellow flame.

  The man, or ghoul perhaps, stepped to the base of the stairs and looked over his shoulder toward Leopold before mounting the first step. The Toreador took this as a sign to follow, and he immediately fell in step behind the servant. He reacted too quickly, though, and stepped on the servant’s heel, causing the old man to stumble forward.