“Sorry,” Leopold said as he moved to help the man to his feet.
The servant accepted the help, but he didn’t reply to the Toreador’s apology or even look at him. He merely dusted himself off and mounted the first step.
Leopold was still close, so he heard the ghoul whisper a name, “Hannah.”
Though he couldn’t see the flame directly, Leopold gained an impression of the candlelight from the flickering shadows and an aura of illumination that surrounded the ghoul’s body. At the mention of Hannah’s name, the light lost its yellow hue and assumed a violet-colored flame.
And because he couldn’t see the flame directly, Leopold could not be certain of this, but he suspected that the purplish flame somehow led the servant to Hannah’s current location. He surmised this from the way the ghoul’s head flinched downward as if he were inspecting the light every time the pair achieved a intersection of possible paths.
The path the flame and/or the ghoul led Leopold along was extremely confusing. They passed through archways, traversed long and empty corridors, entered hallways and rooms through doors that seemed to serve no purpose, and generally took such a circumlocutious route that Leopold retained absolutely no hint of the direction by which he might return.
Additionally, he was so careful not to stray from the path prescribed by the ghoul that he barely had half a mind to record the route anyway. He would surely rely on this ghoul or another servant to exit the mansion, so there was no reason to risk a misstep that might hurtle Leopold from this Atlanta abode to some other place entirely. That threat was a bit fanciful, and Leopold would have been tempted to ignore it anywhere but in the chantry house of the Tremere.
The ghoul led the way without comment but for occasional polite formality: “Duck here, sir, the ceiling’s a bit low,” or “Careful of the step, sir.” Eventually he came to a halt before an ornate door that Leopold could not clearly see and turned to the Toreador.
The servant said, “Hannah is within this chamber. I will not announce you as it was her request that I. not do so. She might be in the midst of careful work, so I implore you to enter quietly and await her to address you. To do otherwise would be to abuse her generosity sorely in seeing you at all this evening, young Toreador.”
“I understand,” Leopold said. “But should I not simply wait outside the door until she beckons me within?”
The servant shook his head and answered, “Such was not her request. Now please enter.” At which the ghoul stepped aside and then quickly strode past Leopold and down a long hallway the pair had traversed a moment ago.
As Leopold watched the ghoul’s figure recede down the hallway, he marked the point at which he suspected he might no longer catch the ghoul even if he dashed at his fastest. Once the servant passed that point, Leopold was left with no alternative but to enter as Hannah had apparently requested. Pursuit of the ghoul seemed a reasonable option because Leopold did not wish to interrupt Hannah in the middle of some grisly experiment, and he could imagine no Tremere ritual that might be otherwise.
Again, though, he thought that a foolish excuse to back down from his pursuit of truth, or at least some answers. He stepped to the door, took a deep breath in a pantomime of relaxation, as he no longer breathed, and slid his fingers through the door handle.
Only now when within a foot of the door could Leopold appreciate the quality of the carving on its surface. It was very fine indeed, and he would have envied it if he’d ever seriously considered working with wood. He preferred marble and clay—lifeless media from which he could create life. Wood always struck him as too close to living. To carve it was less sculpting than it was experimentation, much as a scientist might do.
The door depicted a scene from the Greek myths, for the three-headed dog Cerberus stood faithfully and realistically rendered in a position before the gates to Hades. His shoulders were pressed low toward the ground, while his hind quarters pressed up. It left the distinct impression that the beast was about to lunge at an interloper, and Leopold was unfortunately reminded of the mastiffs he’d encountered outdoors. Perhaps they belonged to Hannah.
He depressed the latch with his thumb and pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. Reflexively, he tried the other direction, and indeed, the door swung outward into the hallway. Leopold’s domestic instincts were confused for a moment, as he believed that doors always opened into a room. Almost always, it seemed. The Toreador wondered if there was an explanation for the change. He suspected there was; either that or it was simply another tactic to make a visitor feel ill-at-ease. If the latter, then the dodo plus the tops plus the purple-flamed candle plus this door were certainly doing the trick. However, Leopold felt he was an easy mark for such games.
The room inside was filled with a thin reddish smoke that drifted in diffuse clouds. The room was mostly dark, but candlelight from every corner illuminated the area just enough to cause the smoke to seem to glow. Leopold stepped into the room and quickly closed the door behind him. Now was not the time to be timid, he thought. If this room held danger for him, then he had been led here with purposefully dire intent. Even if he managed to circumvent such intent once, he would not escape the mansion alive if the Tremere did not desire it. Therefore, his brazen move was born not so much of bravery but of resignation.
Before his eyes adjusted to the dim light, Leopold heard the regular ding of some small percussion instrument. The tone of the sound made the Toreador think of finger cymbals like the kind utilized by belly dancers. And wasn’t that a thought: Hannah cavorting and writhing like a belly dancer!
As the light became sufficient for him to see more, Leopold did in fact make out a moving figure in the center of the rectangular room. The movement was very slight, though, and the silhouette dramatically thin and pointed. He imagined that it must be Hannah.
The movement was the use of finger cymbals as he supposed, but Hannah did not emulate the wild gyrations of Middle Eastern dancers. Instead, when her slow and steady beat called for it, Hannah lifted her left arm and mechanically crashed two fingers together. The brass implements flashed briefly in the low light, and Leopold noted this reflection was always in time with the noise they created. He doubted this was coincidental.
The perimeter walls of the room were lined with books, though no kind of book that Leopold recognized. These were of various shapes and misshapes and one close at hand that he could reliably examine bore a title on the exposed spine, but it was gibberish to him. Some Asian language, he guessed. Others he briefly investigated seemed bound in cracked leather, and the Toreador wondered if this wasn’t a library of ancient tomes of magic.
Judging by the five candles, Leopold estimated that the room was about thirty feet across, though the presence of five candles alerted him to its likely pentagonal shape. Five low-rising tables with side edges cut at an angle so they could be pushed flush together sat halfway between the walls and Hannah’s position in the center of the room mirrored the orientation of the walls. And through the silky strands of red smoke, Leopold noted that Hannah stood within a pentagram fashioned of metal and inlaid in the floor.
He hoped she realized he had entered, and he somewhat regretted the haste with which he’d done so. He thought it prudent not to disturb Hannah, but perhaps it would have been wiser to draw attention to himself to make certain she would not unknowingly place him in danger. Still, he reminded himself, she apparently knew he would be coming, so if she was unable to maintain her sense while in a meditative state, then surely she would guess that he might be present. Besides, what careful Kindred—and Hannah was surely careful—would let a potential threat remain in the same room when she was vulnerable?
Nevertheless, he continued to worry.
Gradually, the pace of the beat hastened, and Hannah’s ringing cymbals seemed louder. Despite the increased energy, though, her motion seemed just as controlled and precise as before.
Then Leopold noted that the candlelight began to flash in time with the beat. First one
candle and in a moment a second in unison with the first flared at the musical beat. The flash was not brilliant, but it was noticeable. As Leopold watched and wondered, a third candle joined the first two.
The beat was quick enough now that Hannah was chiming her finger cymbals once a second, and she no longer lowered her arm after each stroke. Instead, it remained lifted and outstretched before her.
When a fourth candle joined the pulsing rhythm, Leopold had the distinct impression that Hannah’s work was nearing completion. Surely, the addition of the fifth candle would complete her ritual.
Just then, a slight wind seemed to blow through the room, and its gusts also joined the timing of the music and candles. The red smoke that had drifted lazily about the room now took a shape demanded by the air flow, spinning as it was blown by each timed gust. Slowly, as if unwilling to kneel to the wind, the smoke coalesced into an air funnel that surrounded Hannah. It swirled in fits and starts, for though its motion never ceased, it accelerated each time the strange indoor wind blew.
The beat quickened further, and Leopold grew more nervous than before. Making no great effort to be quiet, while consequently working to avoid a loud interruption, the Toreador shuffled around the perimeter of the room so that he stood facing Hannah. He hoped to at least make eye contact with her, but it was fruitless—the hood she wore hung low over her face, covering it almost to the tip of her nose.
The beat was so rapid now that Hannah’s fingers chimed more than three times a second. Then, the fifth candle flared and a blinding flash flooded the room as all the candles spilled intense white light. Leopold’s eyes were spared great trauma because they reflexively closed. Some part of him had known that the rapid cadence had built to its crescendo, though he could not explain why or how.
When Leopold urged his eyes to open, he found the chamber mostly dark again, though the steady light from the candles still provided sufficient illumination for a mortal to see, let alone a Kindred with heightened senses. Hannah remained in the center of the chamber, and her hand remained outstretched, though she did not clash the cymbals again.
The red smoke still swirled, but it had coalesced greatly and now formed an air funnel only a couple of feet high and not that wide that extended from Hannah’s uplifted hand. The smoke became denser and denser and the red transformed to ruby and that to the crimson of blood as the funnel compacted further, reducing slowly in size until Leopold could just barely make it out in the light spinning on Hannah’s palm.
Throughout, Hannah stood completely still, presumably unable to see what was happening because her hood was still lowered.
When her outstretched hand suddenly snapped closed, Leopold jumped, startled by the movement after the hypnotic spinning of the smoke. As Leopold calmed himself, Hannah threw back her hood and regarded him, her eyes already set in place to stare directly into the depths of Leopold’s.
Leopold continued to lock eyes with Hannah, though he did so nervously. Not hiding his uneasiness, he said, “I thought the Tremere did not share their secrets.”
Hannah was silent and it was she who broke eye contact to examine the contents of her hand. The brief look Leopold gained revealed only that the smoke must have solidified into a physical object of some sort, and it was something that was still red.
He continued, “Your magic, I mean. I thought the Tremere did not allow others to learn their magic.”
Hannah’s gaunt, pale and emotionless face turned back to the Toreador. She said, “That is usually true.
Then—” Leopold began.
“From what substance have the candles been fashioned?”
“I don’t—”
“What was the order of the notes my cymbals rang?”
“I’m not—”
“What direction was I facing?”
This time, Leopold remained silent, and Hannah echoed this for a split-second.
Then she said, “You see? I have revealed nothing to you. Not yet at least.”
“What do you mean?”
Hannah took a moment to arrange her hood, smoothing it so it would lie flatter against her back.
She said, “Follow me into the next room, Cainite.”
The statement was so matter-of-fact that it was something between a request and a command. Leopold followed. Something of the delicacy between coercion and force was in the use of the old term “Cainite.” Leopold rarely heard this term used, as “Kindred” was the preferred slang among the younger vampires he encountered more frequently. Leopold wondered if Hannah was really so old that such a term came to her naturally, or whether it was an affectation like that of some Kindred who imagined themselves power-brokers with rising influence despite their youth and general ignorance.
Not that he would call Hannah ignorant. To the contrary, he’d heard her called the All-Knowing before, and while he believed her to be only a few hundred years old, she was rumored to be within a hand’s digits in generations from Caine. Probably that was exaggeration, but Leopold, who was no real judge of such matters, suspected she could well be five or six generations removed from the supposed source of Kindred, or Cainite, blood.
Hannah stepped to one of the walls, and when she brushed her hands against its surface, the candles suddenly extinguished themselves. A moment later, the illuminated outline of a door was revealed where Leopold had not previously detected one. Hannah’s thin frame was silhouetted in the light that poured through the doorway, but only for a moment as she stepped on.
Leopold stepped into a room that was in stark contrast to everything else he’d seen in the Tremere chantry. It sported the furnishings and character of an archetypical corporate office. There was a small wet bar; a large, flat-topped oak desk; aerial photos of golf courses hanging framed on the walls; two plush chairs that faced the desk with a small round table supporting a humidor between them.
The ordinariness rattled Leopold more than any of the odd and arcane tableaux he’d encountered already this night. He felt slack-jawed as he staggered toward one of the two over-large chairs and took a seat. Hannah was seated in a leather executive chair behind the huge desk.
She placed the object in her left hand on the desk, and it was immediately recognizable to Leopold as a vial of blood. He unconsciously licked his lips, though he immediately regretted this display. The blood was so obviously thick, and its dark, dark crimson surely meant extraordinary flavor.
Hannah was impassive as she surveyed the Toreador. Leopold expected her to say something, but perhaps a full moment passed and she offered no conversation. So Leopold said, “You said that night you visited me in my workshop that there might be a way you could help me in the future.”
Hannah said flatly, “Indeed. There are doubtless many ways I could help you.”
Again, Leopold expected her to say more, but he didn’t let the conversation idle so long this time. Looking down at his lap, he said, “You’re probably right, though I’m sure you could name more ways than I could.” He looked up at that, with a slight grin on his face, but Hannah’s face was still an emotional blank.
Leopold continued. “But I’m hoping for one particular kind of help.”
Hannah said, “Of course. You seek the identity of your sire.”
Leopold was stunned. “Yes, that’s true. How could you possibly know?” Perhaps she was All-Knowing.
The Tremere sat straight-backed and rigid in her leather chair and seemed to take no enjoyment from the surprise she caused her guest. Again, though, she remained silent.
Leopold’s concern was only heightened, and he asked, “Are there others who know of this uncertainty of mine as well?”
“It’s unlikely that there are many.”
That didn’t reassure Leopold.
“I can help you, of course,” Hannah said. Indicating the vial of deliciously dark blood on her desk, she said, “That’s what this is for, after all.”
Leopold imagined himself shrinking into his stuffed chair. Was he so transparent? Did the Tremer
e witch possess some powers of detection or mind-reading that enabled her to predict him thus? Had he revealed something to her when she visited his studio, something he didn’t recall, just as the Kine woman with him would forget some of her time there? These thoughts and others raced through Leopold’s mind. Imagining that she might even now be reading his thoughts, he tried to banish them and even replace them with thoughts of confidence.
She raised an eyebrow at him, which on her face seemed to the Toreador an almost stunning display of emotion. “But you must tell me something first.”
“If I can,” Leopold offered.
“Why should I help you?”
Her voice was so devoid of engagement that Leopold imagined his case closed already. There was nothing he could offer, and she knew it, or she must know it if she knew so much else. He felt a hopelessness wash over him. The previous night suddenly seemed enormously long. His sculpting of Victoria almost vanished on the horizon of his memory. But then he knew what to say.
“As I am clearly the one between us who knows so little, I propose that you tell me why you should help me.”
Hannah’s eyes narrowed to slits, contracting not like a human’s but more like a snake’s. She seemed to appraise the Toreador before her.
“Yes, there is perhaps one reason I might help you. You must promise to sculpt me—”
“But you know I cannot sculpt Kin…Cainites,” Leopold interrupted. “We established that when you visited my work…shop…that…ni…” Leopold trailed off as Hannah’s face registered more and more indications that she did not believe the Toreador’s protest. Her left eyebrow raised, then she craned her neck forward a bit, and finally slitted her eyes in that serpent-like manner again, and Leopold cracked. Could she already know about his success earlier this night?
He said, “But I’ve done it once now, so perhaps I can do it again. I agree to try, but inability cannot be construed as failure.”
“Agreed, but there is more to my price.”
“Oh?”
Hannah stood and walked around the desk toward the Toreador. “The sculpture must be life-size and life-like. No artistic interpretations. It must also be full-figure, not merely a bust or a portrait.”
Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 6
