“He isn’t here. Let me take the call.”
And McDonough pulled a phone from his pocket—too fascinated by the green eyes to notice the guards’ hands automatically reaching into their jackets—and called the car in New York.
“Hello,” she said, walking to a corner of the room. Her lackeys edged out of earshot.
“Who is this?” asked Hesha, evenly.
“This is Victoria. Victoria Ash.”
“It’s a pleasure to speak with you, Ms. Ash—”
“Victoria—”
“To what do I owe this unexpected delight?”
“I have your man here…a Mr. McDonough…who came running an errand for you. Of course, Mr. McDonough wasn’t welcome above stairs…so as a courtesy to you, I looked for your errant friend myself.”
“And?”
“No one’s seen Vegel since midnight. A pity; he was a most enchanting conversationalist.” She paused. “Is there anything else that I can do for you, Hesha?”
“No,” he said, and there was as little emotion in that one flat syllable as there was enticement in hers. “Thank you for your efforts, Victoria. If Vegel should reappear…”
“I’ll tell him to call you. He has the number?”
“A great many people seem to have this number. Good night, Victoria.”
“Good night, Hesha.”
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 12:50 AM
Near Abingdon Square, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
New York City, New York
Hesha sat cross-legged, stripped of his coat and shirt, gazing intently into an eye of stone. In his hand he held the cord of a hollow bronze amulet. As the flashing, fickle energies twitched at his mind and his muscle, the swinging weight traced a pattern on the paper beneath it. A trickle of fine-ground, burnt powder fell from the pendulum’s tip. At last, he broke away from the focus, and looked down at the record of his work.
Five lines radiated from the center. One thin, and terribly short…another locus in New York, perhaps. Another, a third of the way around the compass from the first, was almost as small in length, but the powder there was piled high into a ridge, so strongly and frequently had the string been pulled to that side. A line as thin as the first stretched far, far to the west. The longest, thickest line ran off the paper to the east…the carpet spoiled the tail of it, but it suggested Asia.
The last line, sharp and distinct, led southwest. He would measure the charcoal carefully, later, and find where the longest line ended, if he could—but he knew, with a certainty that drove his fine, elegant hands into fists, that the track south would be roughly a thousand miles long, and that the Eye of Hazimel was loose in Atlanta.
He called for Thompson. Speaking as calmly as could—there was no use putting ideas into the man’s head before the facts were available—he commanded, “Thompson, get me a report from your team in Atlanta. I suspect…I want to know where Vegel is.”
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 12:53 AM
Parking garage, the High Museum of Art
Atlanta, Georgia
McDonough heard the shots before he saw anything.
He started the engine.
A handful of guards—the smokers—flew from the exit to their cars, firing at an unseen menace, and they trailed dark ribbons of something behind them. The ones that looked back, or tripped, or had to look for their limousines were cut down first—not by guns, but by the ebon tendrils.
Car alarms went off in every direction. Ghouls stepped from their master’s cars and drew weapons on the black mass that streamed unchecked down the ramp.
McDonough watched a gentleman in a pearl-gray suit turn and throw burning smoke into the darkness. The fire disappeared, and he lost sight of the grenadier. Other people—things—began to emerge from cover of the moving night. Vegel was gone…
The driver cursed, put the car in gear, and shot forward. He ran over a teenage girl whose arms were nothing but bone blades and sped through a firefight without giving either side a chance to blink. The exit was blocked, he knew—he pulled into the straight lane that led to the entrance—there were orange and white gates down, but by God, the limo could slam through them…and then McDonough saw a heavy trailer pull up to the curb, completely blocking the way out. It was hauling cement sewer-pipe rings and piles of iron rebar. Swarms of the enemy crawled out of the long gray cocoons. The streetlights behind it disappeared as shadow moved in…
McDonough drew his gun with one hand and reached for the phone with the other. The emergency code: A single button and the transmit command—but he was startled away, cringing as a monster—a boy, a skinny kid with filthy, flimsy clothes—leaped on the hood, firing over and over into the bulletproof glass. It splintered, and the red-fisted child laughed, threw the gun away, and punched a claw into the cracks.
The windshield tore apart, and the other taloned hand reached down.
McDonough was pulled from the car by his hair. The shatter-cubes of glass tore at his eyes and cheeks and hands. Half blind, he shot a full clip into the side of the beast who held him. The maddened vampire shook himself like a dog, and black blood spattered the concrete around them. Then he sank his fangs deep into the mortal neck, drained him dry, and howled.
Inside the remains of the car, the cell phone’s faint blue light blinked over and over and over again: “SEND?”
Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 2:36 AM
Near Abingdon Square, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
New York City, New York
The Eye was closed again, and the traces were cut dead. As mystified as Hesha had been to know it open and in another’s possession, he was twice as frustrated by the sudden silence. He rested his head on the high back of his chair and listened as Thompson called man after man. No driver—neither agent from the hotel—no pilots waiting at the plane. He called Fulton County police and reported the limousine stolen, and was told there were enough emergencies as it was—or wasn’t he watching the news bulletins? Call back tomorrow.
Thompson put his phone down for the last time. “Nothing, sir. I think…I think they’re dead.” His voice cracked. Ronald Thompson had chosen the team that escorted Vegel to Atlanta. They were his own agents, and some were even friends.
“We won’t jump to conclusions, Thompson. No one pushed their panic button?”
“No sir.”
“We’ll hope, then, that they’ve gone to ground somewhere.” With a keystroke, he put the news page onto the dashboard screen. “Tomorrow they may have time to get word to us,” he said. “They may even be on their way out already.” Patiently, Hesha let Thompson stay in the room, giving the old cop time and…companionship.
The mortal would need a day or two to adjust to the deaths. In Hesha’s own mind Vegel and his team were already six corpses—to be written off and replaced as soon as possible.
Wednesday, 23 June 1999, 2:24 AM
Near Abingdon Square, Greenwich Village, Manhattan
New York City, New York
Hesha turned on his laptop and called up a news site. Atlanta was having, apparently, a terrorist attack.
Historic Charleston lay in arsonous flames. Flare-ups in Savannah were being linked with a militia organization, denied by mayors and police departments, connected to the Atlanta incidents, isolated from the Atlanta incidents—it was a familiar pattern: the Masquerade. By tomorrow morning, the official reports would have settled into human history. He would have to find the truth (or what passed for it among the Cainites) along the grapevine or not at all.
“We’re going out, Thompson. When you’re ready.”
“Baltimore, sir?” asked the driver, hopefully.
“Not yet.” The Eye could be anywhere, now, and even the greater faculties available to Hesha in his own haven would be no help in finding it. There were, however, the two short traces close at hand. Somewhere in New York, there was a clue to Hazimel, and Hesha meant to find it. “I have questions for a few friends. Weapons and full jacket, Thompson, just in case. And call the A
sp. There will almost certainly be beggars at our door; I want room found for them. Have him join us tomorrow.”
Wednesday, 23 June 1999, 7:30 PM
Rutherford House, Upper East Side, Manhattan
New York City, New York
“Miss Dimitros?” the querulous voice of Agnes Rutherford called.
Elizabeth closed the crackling diary before her, stored it neatly in its case, and presented herself at the door of the bindery. “Yes, Miss Rutherford?”
“I am leaving now for London. Call the car around.” Elizabeth obeyed, and looked up from the phone to see her employer still poised in the doorway.
“Mr. Ruhadze’s secretary called and asked that you stay to show him the Thoth necklace.” Elizabeth nodded her acquiescence, and Agnes went on. “I wouldn’t ordinarily leave you alone to deal with one of our most valued clients, but he seems to be willing to settle for an associate on this occasion. Please remember our standards, Miss Dimitros. Your manners and deportment are not always what we could wish for in our staff,” she said, looking the younger woman up and down like a statue of particularly dubious provenance, “although I will admit that you do better than most Americans I have employed in the past. And keep those clothes on, Miss Dimitros—”
Elizabeth blushed bright red, eyes wide in indignation.
“I looked over the security tapes from yesterday, and I advise you not to run around tonight in greasy T-shirt and torn dungarees. This is Rutherford House, not a jumble sale.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Liz straightened her shoulders beneath her navy silk dress, and tried to remember whether her plain leather pumps had been polished this week, or the week before. “I brought a smock to work in today, Miss Rutherford.”
“Be sure you aren’t wearing it when you answer the door, Miss Dimitros.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Elizabeth escorted her employer to the street door, bid the old lady a polite and properly subservient good night and safe flight, and set the alarm after her.
Delicately, wearing thin cotton gloves, she took the collar from its display and brought it to the viewing table. With care she draped and pinned it on a velvet model of a woman’s neck and shoulders, and stepped back to see that the clasp fell correctly, into the hollow of the throat. From the files upstairs she brought the provenance papers—the photographs of the site at which the necklace had been found, copies of reports of its discovery, its sales, the bankruptcies and inheritances, the final auction that brought it to the Rutherfords—and set the House’s signature, cream-parchment, gold-embossed folder on the table beside the treasure. At the customer’s chair, she laid a jeweler’s loupe, calipers, a fountain pen, and a pad of cream-and-gold stationery for notation. Prepared, she turned down the front lights and slipped back through to the workroom. She donned her smock, and set to work on her desk with a home-coming smile.
“Good evening, Mr. Ruhadze. Please, come in.”
“Call me Hesha?”
“Whatever you like.” Elizabeth reset the door, and turned to her customer. “Miss Agnes wanted me to tell you how sorry she was not to be able to attend to your needs herself.” She paused. “If you’d follow me…”
An hour and a half later, Rutherford House’s claims for the necklace had proved—so far as could be told by loupe, light, and letter—genuine. The sum agreed to was lower than the first mentioned by Elizabeth, higher than the first suggested by Hesha, and comfortably above the mark Miss Agnes would have been pleased by in person.
They’d passed into companionable conversation, finally. The mutual embarrassment of their last meeting was gone. The assurance was building that the night to come would be, at least, intellectually interesting, and they had discovered considerable tastes in common. “So, Elizabeth. How did you come to know all this?
“Oh. It started with a bachelor’s degree in art history, which my father promised me would lead nowhere. After I graduated, it looked like he was right, so I hung the first diploma on the wall and went after another.”
“Something practical this time?”
“It was supposed to be an M.B.A.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“My master’s thesis was The Dissemination from Mesopotamia of Key Motifs in Neolithic Pottery.’” She grinned weakly. “Wall Street expressed no interest. My father had a fit.” They watched each other across the table for a moment. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.
“Never this late, thanks. It’d keep me awake all night. But don’t let that stop you.”
“In a while. I’ll need it to drive home.” She tilted her head and returned a cooling question: “How did you learn all this, Hesha?”
“I just grew up with it. My family had a rather…eclectic collection of North African household goods from the fifteenth century. Don’t ask me how Grandfather came by it all.” He thought for a moment. “How is your desk coming along?”
“Fine,” she replied, mildly surprised. “Very well, actually. I was just putting it back together when you came.”
“May I see?”
Elizabeth blinked, and smiled. “Sure.”
The desk stood magnificently, whole once more and polished—where polish could help its scarred hide—to a high sheen. She took the last of her tools and buffers away with the smock, and watched her companion approach the edifice. Hesha Ruhadze slid three fingers across the right side panel. He kneeled to see light on the grain’s edge. He rubbed one thumb over the curved saucer of a drawer-pull, and finally slid his dark hands flat across the smooth surface of the restored top.
Elizabeth realized, suddenly, that she was frowning; that she didn’t like the way his eyes roamed over the wood. Almost hostilely, she asked, “Why are you so interested in my desk?” It was the first time she’d used the word ‘my’ aloud for this possession; it was a defense, and she realized it once it was spoken.
“I’m not.” He withdrew his touch. “I’m interested in why you care so much about it.” Hesha leaned against the wall, and brought out a charming smile. “Why is the desk a he, and not a she, Elizabeth?”
She exhaled, less as a sigh than as an exasperation. Tension fled from her neck to her shoulders. Resignedly, she walked to the cabinet corner, and traced the grain of the old cherry with the index fingers of both hands. “Sleipnir, may I present to you Mr. Hesha Ruhadze. Hesha—Sleipnir.” She performed the mock introductions, and paused.
“Sleipnir,” said her listener, sardonically.
“This desk, Hesha, has eight legs. Look here—” she pointed to the feet, originally carved to resemble vases on pedestals, “—eight hooves, chipped by steel-wheeled chairs and cloven by his handlers. Someone cared for him properly, once. You can see the difference between the finish by the center drawer and the finish farther away—there was a blotter to protect his hide; you can still tell the dimensions of it by feeling for them.
“But there was a right-handed owner who was sloppy with his coffee. There was a typist who liked their machine facing the same way as the rest of the desk, and who didn’t bother to repair the case of their typewriter. Hundreds of lines of ink were tattooed in by the carriage return. Here and here and here—” she struck with her knuckles at dark, ovoid burns on the varnish, “he has seen fire; there were cigarettes left carelessly to die in his company.
“Vandals have pierced him with arrows—God only knows why they wanted to fire nails and screws into the poor thing, but there are the holes to bear witness. There is red paint that spots him like blood, and there is white that flecks him like froth. He is missing parts of himself; his drawers have been jarred to the very bones and were ready to collapse within him. He has been cut and burned, but he perseveres. He has seen battles and carried the writer through; he has probably survived more enterprises than will survive him.
“He is a war-horse, eight-hooved. Sleipnir.”
She finished defiantly, standing between a worklight and the old desk. Her brown eyes flamed clear golden, and her profile was as sharp as the moon’s.
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Hesha Ruhadze stood watching her, and said nothing. The Eye was in his thoughts, and the death of Vegel and his retinue, and the memory of a daymare: Thoth with a woman by his side who was remembered, later, like the moon in Inundation. He waited, testing the moments before she spoke, or broke, or moved, but silence was no good weapon against her. “You picked up the art of a skald when you studied the Norsemen,” he said.
Elizabeth searched his face. He seemed serious. “Thank you,” she said, gravely.
“No,” he began slowly, “thank you. And please pardon my intrusion into your privacy. I…felt a mystery here, and my particular passion is…detective work. Will you forgive me?”
She waved a vague hand. “For my being incredibly silly and melodramatic over a typewriter desk? Of course.”
But he could see that it still bothered her, and he considered carefully what next to say to the mortal. If he let it go lightly, the resentment would take root, and a useful tool perhaps be lost. If he took the matter too seriously, she would suspect mockery again, and resent that as well. Hesha took three measured strides to close the gap between them, and looked into the brown eyes of the half-lit woman. “Still. It was an intrusion, and I’m sorry.” He paused, as if contemplating the scornful lips tilted up towards his own. “Where will Sleipnir go from here, Elizabeth?” asked Hesha, looking away, returning to a business voice.
“My home.”
“Good.” He started toward the front of the shop, and held the door to the show floor open for her. “You said the other day that no one uses typewriters anymore. I have to confess that I still use an old one, every now and then. I’ve nearly worn down the question mark; I’ll try,” he said, facing her across the table that held the collar, “not to wear you out with questions tomorrow.” His black eyes held concern in lightly wrinkled lids. “If you’re still available?” She smiled faintly, and nodded. “Meet me at Charles’s Fifth at seven?”
She smiled more broadly and replied, “I’ll be there.”
Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 2