She let her eyes drop from the mirror, though she watched herself do this long enough to enjoy how demurely she executed it. For the remainder of the night, the eyes of others would speak to her of her beauty, for she was as gorgeous as ever even after over three hundred years on this Earth. Of course, the bulk of those years—349 to be exact—had been spent in this peculiar form of unlife that characterized the Kindred, in which she no longer aged as a Kine might, but hers was timeless beauty that won her as many stares and as much wanton lust as it had those handful of centuries ago.
As a mortal, Victoria’s splendid beauty had won her all that she needed. It was much more difficult to use sex to control a Kindred, as limp vampire males could prepare themselves only by means of special magical disciplines. She knew these means, of course, and could apply them, but something in the nature of the Kindred’s instinct for survival overwrote the almost unendurable compulsion of mortals to copulate and procreate. Kindred were rewired to care only for themselves, for even a childe created through the Embrace seemed to hold no special place in a vampire’s heart unless the vampire retained a great degree of human nature, or unless the childe reminded the more bestial vampire of something lost from an earlier, lesser lifetime.
But lust was still an easy sell. Most Kindred were very young—less than a hundred years old—and these were often still mortal in their minds. Their physiology would not react as Victoria wished, or cooperate as the vampires themselves often desired, or thought they desired, but their feeble brains were still wired for the copulation important to the Kine. Thus they were often easy marks.
It was a game no different from the one she had played in her mortal youth. All her husbands had been older men. Their stings could not prick her, but oh, how they must have imagined it might have been as she cuddled her slender yet appropriately rounded body against their bony and broken shells at night!
They would have paid anything. In the end, they had all paid everything.
It became much more difficult to ply her schemes the higher she moved into the hierarchy of the Camarilla. The men who controlled the organization were ambitious and time had dulled their memory of the pleasures Victoria might provide them. And it was mostly men, for the changes that occurred in the mortal world by virtue of the succession of generations did not affect the Kindred world as quickly as that of the Kine. On the other hand, they were still male, and their brains were still wired in a way that could prompt them to strut like peacocks.
Hence events like this one tonight. Certainly, she needed to continue the usual exercises of discovering allies and ferreting out enemies. Regardless of her greater plan, Victoria needed to become a locus of Kindred society in Atlanta. Soon the Kindred would come to rely on her parties—and not the insipid or insane, or both, Bible-studies gatherings required by Prince Benison—as the excuse to gather and discuss strategies and debate activities. Once she controlled the forum, it would only be a matter of time before she controlled the content as well.
And now was the time to do it. It looked as if the Kindred population of this Southern city would recover enough to make it a worthwhile starting point. A Reconstruction of sorts was underway in the wake of the Blood Curse, and now was Victoria’s opportunity to shape the protocols and traditions that would continue when the Kindred population doubled and tripled and grew beyond that again.
Victoria wiped the smirk from her face.
“Why didn’t you tell me we had arrived?” she demanded.
There was no reply, of course. The chauffeur would be silly to do anything but accept the blame.
Victoria noted that her car was parked before the elevator doors in the High Museum’s underground garage. How long it had idled there, she did not know. And while she was irritated at first, she decided to withhold punishment because the time likely did her good. It couldn’t hurt to hold clear in her mind some of the many plot threads that wound through this evening. Doubtless, she did not know them all, but the ones in her control would hopefully be woven a bit tighter before the night was done. Perhaps even knotted.
A second later, the door nearest Victoria soundlessly swung open. The Toreador kicked one sandaled foot through the opening and slowly extended her hand as well. Her hand was immediately accepted by a strong grip as one of the doormen helped her out of the car. Like her driver, these were ghouls in her employ. Because they were still half mortal, they thankfully did not suffer any of the sexual retardation of the Kindred, which meant Victoria did not always have to work so hard. However, she paid them with blood and cash as well.
Without her blood, they would age and suffer all the weaknesses of the mortal form. Because they were not strong enough to take her blood from her, she had absolute control over them. It made the sex boring, but she refused them more than an iota of free will because their proximity and intimacy to her meant anything more was too dangerous. In this she took the lessons of the elder Kindred around her.
Rarely were egalitarian vampires among those who long survived.
As her car pulled away, Victoria scanned the parking facilities. The amazingly wide variety of vehicles parked in the underground garage demonstrated in a snapshot the range of social strata of her guests. Her chauffeured Rolls silently backed into a space between two similarly ostentatious vehicles—one a great limo with driver waiting patiently within, and the other a sexy Dodge Viper for a Kindred of more solitary or adventurous nature. Only two of the off-road, or sports utility, vehicles so favored by the Brujah and Gangrel were evident. The Gangrel, who actually utilized the off-road nature of the vehicles, were unlikely to have more than one or perhaps two representatives here. Victoria didn’t mind if none made it. Likewise, Victoria doubted either of these SUVs belonged to a Brujah, unless one or more of that clan had decided to make use of the Elysium here to protect themselves against the retribution of Prince Benison, whom the Brujah had brutally attacked in the waning days of the Blood Curse last year. The few Brujah rumored to have survived the Curse were yet in exile among the Anarchs of the city who were all being subjected to the Prince’s crackdowns.
Finally, nestled here and there about the garage were the pathetic vehicles of the neonates. These Kindred were so recently Embraced that they still possessed the automobiles of their mortal years. Either that, or museum employees had abandoned those sad clunkers.
“Send me up to the party,” she said, pirouetting gracefully on her heel to face her ghouls and the elevator they managed.
“Of course, milady,” said the one who had helped her from the car. That was Gerald, a handsome and muscular manchild from Canada, who held one elevator door open.
She asked, “Has Benison arrived yet?”
“No, milady.”
“Julius?”
“No, milady.”
Victoria nodded happily. She hadn’t expected either of these major players to arrive so soon. It would have been difficult if one had arrived before her, and perhaps ruinous if both had. It was a chance she had taken.
She asked, “What about Benjamin?”
“He’s here, milady.”
“And Thelonious?”
“Yes, he too, milady.”
She was surprised they were both here already. They were also major players, though not in the league of the other two. The fifth great power that would be in the gallery tonight was Eleanor, the Prince’s wife. She was a linchpin for Victoria’s plans, but she and the Prince would arrive simultaneously, so no further inquiry was required.
Victoria stepped in and the other ghoul, Samuel, a lithe and dark-complected Bostonian, stepped in behind her. As Victoria leaned against the mirror-glass at the back of the small enclosure, Samuel quickly stabbed the “4” button. The elevator doors closed and Kindred and ghoul began to rise.
Victoria sighed as she gave further consideration to the laughable automobiles of the neonates. They were so human still. So young and still playing such foolish games. Young Kindred were truly like mortal children. So undisciplined.
So confident. So foolish. They felt the universe was at their fingertips because they were now a part of something previously unknown. A world unknown even to presidents and famous actors and men who had walked on the moon. But there was little they could do that would seriously impact the greater machinations of their elders. Despite their feeble attempts to gain power or wield influence, neonates inevitably found themselves outguessed and outplayed by those of Victoria’s ilk—Kindred who spent less time relishing their position than taking advantage of it.
Yet she knew she was a fool as well. Many elders probably laughed at the petty games she and her contemporaries played. Vying to control a city as if that meant something. Cities, nations, entire cultures were but fascinating baubles for the oldest Kindred, the so-called Methuselahs and even their elders, the Antediluvians. These latter were the unknowable and probably mythical vampires of the third generation—Caine’s grandchildren.
From their perspective, Victoria’s generation and even those older than she were but playthings discarded when their usefulness was over. At least, such were the stories the elders had told when Victoria was herself a neonate. She had little reason to distrust such rumors, for as in mortal life you are always second best to someone no matter your area of excellence, in Kindred life there was also always another who knew more or possessed greater powers. Whether this theory was true or not, it was a mirror Victoria always used to look at herself. To second-guess herself. She played delicious games with those weaker than her, so why could she not herself be part of a greater power’s game?
Unhappily, she always admitted that she could be, and that was what drove her. Perhaps this very party was an event someone mightier than her had put in motion through her. It seemed natural to her because it suited her ends, but were her ends the means to another’s goal as well? Might a Methuselah or even an improbable Antediluvian have good reason to see Victoria claim greater power in Atlanta or the Camarilla? Victoria could only hope so, but at the same time she shuddered to think her careful plots, her deceptive double-crosses, her ruthless games were not her own.
And this was why it was good to be a Toreador. She could be fickle and mischievous without anyone looking more deeply than the blood that ran in her veins. Being Toreador was her excuse to be unpredictable, and she tried to keep herself guessing as well. Well, not unpredictable, for that was the role of the Malkavians, the madmen among the Kindred. As a Toreador, Victoria was allotted a certain leeway to rationalize changes of heart. So long as any change of direction she chose bore the signs of a whimsical carelessness, then Victoria could execute her plans with less scrutiny.
In fact, she was about to make a huge decision regarding her future this evening. She pushed herself off the wall of the elevator. The door was beginning to slide open, but Victoria already knew what she would see. There would be two portals, and each led to a different future.
As the doors began to open, Victoria hesitated at the brink of the elevator. Her big moment was approaching, and she was suddenly apprehensive.
Samuel asked softly, “Did you forget something, milady?”
“No, no,” Victoria answered in a voice without its customary commanding tone. Despite the sanctuary of the elevator, this quiet exchange was overwhelmed by the music that drifted from beyond the lift. Victoria gained confidence from what she heard. It was Ravel’s Bolero, a piece first performed in 1929 or so, she couldn’t recall the exact year. Those were years when the Masquerade had been easiest to uphold because the times were fast and carefree in Paris, much like the ’60s in the United States. She felt emboldened as she recalled her successes of those distant evenings.
Chin high again, Victoria stepped out of the elevator and swiftly turned to face Samuel. Her voice more certain again, she said, “Quickly now, go back down and fetch the next guests. But remember, now is the time to create a pretext to wait until two people are ready to be lifted to this floor. More than two is acceptable, as we discussed before, but a single guest would be disastrous.”
Samuel was suitably perplexed by this command, just as he and Gerald had been when Victoria first explained the procedure last night. However, she was certain he would perform this duty even without satisfactory explanations. This was all part of Victoria’s safeguards, and explanations would only cause others to believe her as mad a Malkavian hatter. Therefore, she kept the specifics of her odd behavior to herself and hurried Samuel along.
“Disastrous,” she remonstrated him again with a wagging finger as the elevator doors began to close at Samuel’s depression of the first-floor button. The vacuum of the elevator tube whooshed as Victoria turned to examine her handiwork.
Indeed, two pairs of enormous doors faced her. They were propped up as part of a temporary wall that divided a shallow entry area from the remainder of the gallery beyond. All of the huge doors were closed, and though the ceiling of the gallery beyond could be seen over their tops, they nevertheless fulfilled their function as entryways.
And that was the crux of it. Which door did each of her guests choose? More importantly, which door would the next guests select? For that would determine Victoria’s entryway, and that would have great consequences for the remainder of her evening and her life.
The doors on the left were by far the largest, and at over thirty feet high they taxed the altitude of the High’s upper ceiling. These monstrous doors were of beautifully sculpted bronze, and they displayed ten individual scenes in eight separate panels arranged in two columns of four, over which a stretched a lintel divided by a central bearded figure flanked by two more scenes.
The fact that this central figure was biblically bearded, swathed in draping robes, and held aloft an engraved stone tablet, fixed his identity for even the densest of Western viewers as Moses.
Victoria knew, of course, that this was Henri de Triqueti’s The Ten Commandments, but she had little idea which of the ten scenes represented which of God’s commands. One notable exception was the second panel up on the left side, for this was the panel that allowed these mirror-opposite doors to fit another underlying theme of the displays in the gallery beyond the doors.
“Thou shalt not kill,” God said, but it took only a handful of humans to already be too many before Cain took matters into his own hands. For Kindred, though, Cain was “Caine,” and legend extolled him as the first of the Kindred, the reason Kindred were called such at all, for if Caine’s blood was passed to his progeny, and they passed their blood containing some of Caine’s to their progeny, and so on, then even Victoria Ash, six generations removed from her biblical ancestor, carried with her some of the First One’s blood. Even so diluted as it surely was within her, it was the source of her amazing powers, as well as the attendant curses over which some Kindred pouted but which Victoria had years ago decided to accept as part of this surpassingly grand existence.
All of this warbled through Victoria’s mind for two reasons. First, the scene on the gargantuan doors that illustrated the Sixth Commandment was in fact that of Abel’s death. In it, angels descended to transport Abel to Heaven while Caine was outcast. Second, because Victoria strongly held the fear that her actions were often not her own. If the blood she carried within her was so potent, then how else might that blood hold her in thrall? If not in Caine’s service, then what of one of his awesome progeny of the fifth or sixth generations whose blood she also carried?
And this fear was what made her game tonight so important. It was why the opposite of The Ten Commandments was so important.
Victoria turned slightly to the right and took in once again one of the most incredible works ever created by the hand of man. Since it too was sculpture, the man who fashioned the work could be none other than Auguste Rodin. Though shorter than the thirty-three feet of The Ten Commandments, Rodin’s The Gates of Hell did not seem dwarfed despite its mere twenty-four-foot height.
This lack of diminishment was entirely due to the genius of the work, for it was a true masterpiece. The kind of creation Victoria
sought but doubted she would ever achieve in the artwork she created.
This great door also possessed a lintel divided by a central figure. In an early, but already almost complete, form of Rodin’s great The Thinker of later years, the figure was seated and leaning forward, his chin braced on the inwardly curled knuckles of his right hand, and his elbow supported by his left thigh. It was Dante, and he imagined the scenes of his Inferno on the door about him.
Standing upon the top of the door frame were three figures, essentially three views of the same man from different angles. Their heads were bowed and their hands clasped in a moody and lethargic reenactment of the Three Musketeers.
Beyond these distinct trappings, the remainder of the door was indeed as if from Hell. Wells and troughs of barely discernible figures and scenes covered each of the doors, as well as the door frame. Within the turbulence was both the passion of creation as well as the pain.
Against the white walls and ceiling of the High Museum’s gallery, the darkened bronze of the two sets of doors made them seem even more ominous. Their massiveness served only to heighten the impression that a decision of a serious nature was before the one who approached. And as a pair they created quite a contrast: The Ten Commandments’ symmetrical design of panels and its generally clean sculpted lines against the blurred and difficult-to-comprehend Gates.
And Dante, in the pose of The Thinker, above the Gates made contemplation seem natural.
Victoria’s plan was foolishly superstitious, but in order to believe that she was free of the invisible shackles of a power greater than herself—a Kindred greater than herself who might imagine the lovely Toreador a chess piece on his field of play—she rigorously applied randomness to much of what she did.
The pitter-patter of Bolero was gaining healthy momentum when she heard the rumble of the elevator and stepped away from the doors. Which door would her next guest use to enter the gallery beyond? Would he or she step through Heaven or Hell? The forthcoming answer would determine much about what Victoria did this evening; specifically, whether or not she should make her bid to become Prince of Atlanta in the place of an ousted Benison. The Prince was not here yet, but his arrival was a certainty. Victoria’s scheme to supplant him, or at least to move closer to the top, was risky, and she would only feel secure about implementing it if she could be certain that the idea was her own, and not one planted in her subconscious mind by another.
Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 8
