Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Stewart Wieck

  Perhaps there was no way to be certain, but Victoria always felt better if her plans survived random testing, such as the trials this very party faced. Like the idea of this party, plenty of plans did pass Victoria’s test, but others did not. Numerous seemingly good ideas and opportunities had been lost or gone unrealized, but the Toreador felt no regret. Implementation of those schemes might have led to disaster. They might have been set into motion by others who used her merely as a pawn. Besides, there was nothing irreproducible about a good idea. When randomness bade that she not take some course of action, then another, sometimes better, option always presented itself. And she had an eternal lifetime to explore them all.

  The whole matter was uproariously superstitious, and she understood that, but there was also a grace to Victoria’s games which pleased her and suited her artistic sensibilities. Perhaps she was on the verge of becoming a great artist after all, for there was something in the chaos of her actions that was itself beautiful. After finding a comfortable pattern of her own in decades of randomness, Victoria was delighted to discover that the Kine themselves were finding that chaos could be structured too. Most sciences eventually became arts, so perhaps this theory of chaos waited to be rendered into beautiful form by an undying mind that could attend to cycles no Kine could hope to witness.

  Or perhaps it was simply ridiculous. Victoria knew of Kindred who were mightier than she, but their number was not beyond counting, nor was their power beyond reckoning. Perhaps there were no Kindred greater than these. Perhaps the theories promoted by the Sabbat—that the Antediluvians were real and must be destroyed for any free will to exist among Kindred or Kine—were groundless and Victoria’s advance to power was slowed only by her simpleton games.

  And there were evenings when she thought how improbable her eventual command over any number of Kindred was. How could she hope to rule when her plots were hatched under the auspices of chance events no more believable than the signs a Greek oracle once gained from the intestines of birds or sheep?

  Finally, the elevator doors hushed open, and Victoria turned to see who would decide the fate of her latest plans. Her methods were crude in one light, but the Toreador always preferred to judge them in the light of what might be. Chances were that if she hid secrets from neonates, then someone held secrets from her, so she would circumvent their plans by proceeding only when her guile aligned with fate.

  And Victoria laughed to herself when she saw whom chance delivered her.

  First out of the elevator was Cyndy, the Toreador who had inherited the adjectives “vapid” and “witless” once Marlene passed on shortly before Victoria’s arrival in Atlanta. Victoria reasoned that these titles primarily fell to the short and athletic little bitch because Marlene was Cyndy’s sire, and misfits begot misfits, but they were also accurate enough no matter the exotic dancer’s lineage.

  Cyndy, who had apparently been speaking in a friendly manner to her fellow occupant, fell sullenly silent when she saw Victoria. Then she looked quickly away, but she did not resume her conversation.

  The Toreador was indeed short of stature and supple in body. Her figure was lithe and she possessed some grace despite what any knowledgeable observer would note as a complete lack of formal dance training. Her face was attractive, if a bit too rounded and cute in that way of slightly overweight college girls—no she was a bit too big really to catch the male eye, but she looked fresh and young and that would catch a man’s imagination. And because she was Kindred, she would always look so young.

  Whatever potential she possessed, however, she threw away in her huffy willingness to be crude, as when she clutched her crotch when she walked past Victoria without a word.

  Victoria allowed her deprecating chuckle to be faintly audible. To think that this upstart Embraced by Marlene on some careless night in the strip clubs and lingerie shops that formed her territory on Cheshire Bridge Road actually imagined she should have been named primogen of the Atlanta Toreador.

  Victoria chuckled again, though this time sourly and silently. She had become Kindred and left London only a handful of years before the Black Death decimated that city, and she had been in the United States in the deep, dark sleep of rest and recovery known as Torpor during the years of terrible influenza earlier this century, but she realized with what randomness such plagues struck. How could this hussy of a Kindred—she barely deserved the title—have survived the Blood Curse when other, eminently more capable and deserving, Kindred had fallen to it? Not that Victoria regretted the loss of these others. In fact, she chuckled again—and this snort of laughter earned a baleful glare and forceful spit from Cyndy—because such randomness clearly worked in Victoria’s favor this time.

  The second occupant of the elevator, who emerged as Cyndy stomped past Victoria, was just as interesting. He was also a relative low-life in Atlanta, but he was at least an individual of some merit or talent. Victoria watched with further amusement as Leopold stepped slowly from the lift. This Toreador was an apolitical sort, but even he surely understood there was bad blood between Cyndy and his primogen. He kept to cover until the potential confrontation passed.

  Victoria turned away from Leopold for a moment to watch Cyndy choose between the mammoth doors. Victoria noted with chagrin that the simpleton barely paused to absorb the wonder of the portals before her. Then Cyndy glanced back, apparently confused, but when she saw Victoria studying her, she huffed and stamped a foot as if these odd doors had been placed here solely to torment her. Victoria let a wan smile flicker across her lips, and Cyndy practically dove through Rodin’s presumably more manageable-looking Gates of Hell after tugging open one of the great doors.

  So she enters Hell, Victoria noted as she turned to face Leopold, who had taken one step more only because the elevator doors threatened to close upon him. When they did slide shut, the young Toreador paled and seemed to shrink away for want of a hiding place. Wise enough in her judgments of men—Leopold was so young a Kindred as to be practically Kine in her mind—Victoria recognized some of Leopold’s discomfort as an attraction to his primogen. She had noticed this on a past occasion as well, but before his evident desire had been more straightforward—an uncomplicated urging from the parts of his mind that retained some portion of physical need, perhaps.

  As she thought on the matter, Victoria turned her head slightly to the side and raised her eyebrows a fraction—body language to invite the timid Toreador from his hole. She decided that there was definitely something different in Leopold’s attraction now, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She would eventually, though, as she was very good at reading people, a talent she had possessed as a mortal but even more so now when her heightened senses detected so much for her to analyze.

  Leopold attempted a friendly but not too personal smile as he approached Victoria. The latter’s acute hearing read fear in the surprising flutterings of Leopold’s heart, and it wasn’t the stage fright that might normally disarm such an introvert. Victoria decided there was something more poignant to this fear. She also decided it wasn’t a fear of Victoria herself.

  She asked, “Are you all right, Leopold?” Leopold’s smile hung on his face a little too long. Realizing that, he wiped it away and said, “Yes, Ms. Ash. Just, ah…nervous about the, ah…premiere of my work tonight.” The smile returned as Leopold unconsciously attempted to reinforce his lie.

  “Of course, of course,” Victoria graciously accepted. And then she reached forward to embrace him, which, as she anticipated, startled Leopold. His body went rigid, but he managed to relax as Victoria kissed him lightly on each cheek.

  Still holding him, her face close to his own, with Bolero advancing toward its climatic notes, she said, “And it’s a remarkable achievement, considering the short notice I provided. I apologize for that.”

  Leopold did not answer, but instead returned the hug. Victoria was greatly amused by his schoolboy ineptitude as he tried to use clumsiness as an excuse for holding her very close and plac
ing his hands very low on her back.

  Then she suddenly disengaged, which further startled Leopold. Victoria would have delighted in playing more games with the whelp, and his sculpture was indeed a respectable one, but she needed to attend to the matter of the doors before she embarked on any course of action this evening. Even if that course were as simple as the befuddling or seducing or embarrassing of a young Toreador.

  She said, “But, please. Don’t allow me to delay you. There may be Kindred even now admiring your sculpture. I hope I will have the opportunity to speak to you again later.”

  “You’re not coming in as well?” Leopold asked.

  “No, no, Leopold. I’m the hostess, so I’m greeting my guests. Now run along. I hear the elevator returning with more guests.”

  Leopold listened but could hear nothing except Bolero, which was achieving the peak of its enthusiasm. He stood so long that he blinked twice before nodding and walking toward the doors.

  He immediately pulled up short. His mouth was agape when he turned to regard Victoria with disbelief. He jabbed each index finger in the direction of one set of doors and silently tried to elicit explanation from his elder.

  Victoria just smiled and nodded before opening her own mouth slightly and pointing at it to help Leopold correct his unappealing expression. Then she waved the back of the fingers of her left hand to scoot him along. Leopold did a doubletake once more, but then he approached the doors without further encouragement.

  Victoria watched him intently, for her plans now essentially hung on his shoulders. Cyndy had limited Leopold’s ability to determine how Victoria would proceed this evening, but the final determination was the young Toreador’s, for he was the second to choose an entrance.

  Victoria ran the permutations of her eccentric rules through her mind. The fact that the two individuals who arrived on the elevator were of opposite sex and the same clan necessarily dashed an entire assortment of possibilities, so Victoria ignored those and focused on those involving a male and a female who were both Toreador, and beyond that a male who entered after a female.

  The rules were extremely complicated, but they were so thoroughly codified in Victoria’s thinking that the complexity did not occur to her, just as the obscure rules of cricket did not befuddle a fan of that peculiar sport. And so Victoria did not imagine herself obsessive about the measures she took to protect herself from unwary cooperation with the plans of another.

  She grew somewhat impatient with Leopold as he dawdled in his examination of the scenes depicted on the doors of Heaven. He seemed particularly engaged by one of the panels—the lowest one on the right standing door—but his body obscured it and Victoria frankly did not know the piece well enough to recall the Commandment depicted in that spot. She wanted to rush Leopold along, but she dared not do that. Hurrying him was only an option when he was not before either door, and if she did so now she might as well not have staged this elaborate game, as Leopold was likely to duck through the nearest door.

  In this case, Heaven would mean she would should cancel her plans, for it was the taller door and would be entered by the taller of the two, who was male, which meant Victoria should enter through Hell and cancel her plans.

  However, if Leopold entered through Hell, then Victoria could not follow, and her entry through Heaven would mean her game was afoot. It seemed likely to her that that would be the case as Leopold examined Heaven first and would presumably enter through Hell after inspecting it too.

  Satisfied with his appraisal of Heaven, at least for the moment, Leopold did indeed move to The Gates of Hell. Victoria grew a bit nervous and excited over the approaching moment. She sometimes wondered if she prepared these elaborate games not because of fear of being given direction by others but because she feared to give herself direction. She always rejected the notion, though, because she was not timid person. Just cautious.

  Victoria had not really heard the elevator before, especially over the final throes of Ravel’s eighteen-minute-give-or-take masterpiece, but now Victoria did register the cling of its doors on the ground floor in the near absence of further music. It sounded as though some piece that made the Toreador vaguely call Beethoven to mind was beginning, but the early portion of the piece was very faint.

  Leopold seemed just as curious about the near-formless masses that swirled across the face of the doors of Rodin’s masterpiece as he had been of the starker images of Triqueti’s. He even glanced back at Victoria another time to shake his head in awe and wonder.

  He started to ask, “How did you acqui…” but trailed off when Victoria turned away and toward the elevator as if she had not heard him.

  When she glanced back, Victoria murmured a quick, “What? Did you say something, Leopold?”

  The younger Toreador waved the question away as if he realized he was pestering her. “Nothing. I’m sorry to keep you from your other guests.” He then placed his hands on the doors and slowly moved them over the surface as if imagining it was suddenly forming under his fingertips. Or perhaps he imagines what he would have done differently, Victoria mused, as that reaction was often a great or even good artist’s reaction to the work of a master. They saw not so much the work, but how the work differed from and therefore defined their own.

  Having successfully deflected Leopold’s question, Victoria now turned in earnest toward the approaching elevator. She was frustrated to be caught here actually greeting her guests. It was a formality better suited to receiving lines, not a small gathering of Kindred. Besides, if new guests arrived, then they would become complicating factors in her game, though the permutations that presented were also predetermined, of course. However, she would much rather the decision be a less complicated affair. It was just like reading the auguries of a lamb’s bowels where too much blood—too much sign—might obscure the important facts evident in the intestines. The fewer guests the better.

  Victoria smiled when she heard the elevator doors open on the third floor. Samuel was playing the delaying game as she had instructed, for not enough time had passed. Victoria had known that certain guests were beyond the ability of the ghouls to delay in the garage, so a few tactics like this were necessary.

  Victoria turned again to watch Leopold more directly. She had not, of course, taken her eyes from him, but her gaze had been inconspicuous for a few moments. She wanted to strangle the young Toreador when he returned to the larger doors of Victoria’s self-styled Heaven. He looked closely at the lowest right panel again, and rubbed it as he had Rodin’s work, but then quickly stepped back to take in both gargantuan sets of doors.

  Victoria did not know whether or not to be appalled by such apparent contemplation. He actually seemed to be choosing which door to use as an entrance, as if it mattered to him.

  Victoria was curious about why he finally chose Hell, but he did indeed return to Rodin’s work and slip out of the hallway after a brief struggle with the heavy door. She would have to inquire of him later, for now that his choice was made, she could freely discuss the doors with him, if not her true reasons for utilizing the doors.

  When Victoria neared The Ten Commandments, she looked with interest at the panel that had most interested Leopold. She didn’t like what she saw. The panel showed Naboth. He was dead—stoned to death because Ahab and Jezebel coveted his vineyard.

  The Commandment came to her mind because she knew it well. It was one that had troubled Victoria during her mortal years.

  Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor’s.

  Victoria swallowed hard. All she did was covet the things of her neighbors.

  Victoria tried vainly to make herself feel better rather than read this as a sign that she was being misled after all. For indeed, it was Naboth, not the covetous Ahab or Jezebel who was dead in the panel’s depiction. And this was one of the more powerfully executed scenes on th
e door, so perhaps Leopold examined it merely for technical merits, not because he was attuned to anything greater than the feeble powers a young Kindred such as he might possess.

  In the end, Victoria shrugged. She was committed to her choice and to her methods. If she superstitiously feared every sign she saw, then she would indeed be a timid person who must surely rely on the games to make decisions—not just safe decisions—for her.

  Victoria Ash entered a Heaven where she found only demons.

  Monday, 21 June 1999, 10:10 PM

  Boston Financial Corporation

  Boston, Massachusetts

  The handsome Italian man reclined behind his mammoth desk of cherrywood. Benito’s phones were organized as always, and while two nights ago he had sat here in irritation that he was receiving phone calls, he was now equally upset at the lack of one.

  Lorenzo Giovanni was normally very reliable. In fact, Benito had already put a good word in for the ghoul. Lorenzo desired the Embrace, of course, as did virtually all Giovanni who learned there was more to their very extended family than undreamed-of wealth. Benito might have to rescind that recommendation, though, if Lorenzo did not call soon, or at least have a very valid excuse for his tardiness.

  There was only so much time Benito could carve from his family responsibilities in the last forty-eight hours to devote to a matter that was, after all, a personal issue; but after a long discussion about security issues with his cousin, Michael, Benito had contacted Lorenzo in Atlanta.