Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  The ladder led to another corridor, which ran past a small, cramped room where several more people were gathered and busy at a game of cards. Their familiar humor grew silent as Calebros passed. Either they feared attracting his displeasure at their idleness, or they were simply surprised to see him out and about, or perhaps a bit of both. Calebros ignored them and made his way to one of the next doorways, Umberto’s computer room. Umberto slipped past and easily into the seat before the terminal. He began typing in commands.

  “I thought you said he was ready,” Calebros grumbled.

  “He is. I’m just double-checking the link security.” Umberto’s nimble fingers tapping rhythmically across the keyboard sounded like the first spattering drops of a summer shower against a tin roof. His earlier hesitancy now vanished as he immersed himself in the embrace of technology.

  “I could hook you up a terminal of your own,” Umberto said without thinking, “if you got rid of that fossil of a typewriter and cleared off your desk—ow!” He jerked forward, away from Calebros, who had just boxed his ears. Umberto wiped a small trickle of blood from his right earlobe. Calebros took the seat that Umberto hastily vacated. An eardrum was a small price to pay to maintain the primacy of the pecking order, the elder thought.

  “Is it ready?”

  “Yes,” Umberto said, rubbing his ear. “Just type in what you want, and then hit enter. Your text is displayed after the ‘C’.” Umberto busied himself with massaging his ear and stretching his jaw, mouth open, mouth closed, mouth open….

  Calebros, seated at the terminal, stretched his legs to ease an aching knee, but met resistance under the desk. He pressed harder with his sizeable foot, eliciting a squeak of discomfort from below.

  “Who’s down there?” he asked gruffly, already knowing the answer.

  “Me, Mr. C.”

  “Me? Mouse, get out from there, you half-animate furball. Some of us have work to do.”

  “Sorry, Mr. C.”

  As the mangy little creature squeezed from beneath the desk and scrabbled away, Umberto directed a halfhearted, perfunctory kick in his direction, but the elder Nosferatu had already turned his attention to the computer. Calebros’s fingers, despite the long, gangly talons, moved with alacrity across the keyboard:

  C: Hello? Are you there?

  R: I am here. Are you well?

  C: Well enough. What news?

  R: I met with V. Ash three nights ago; have since learned that she is planning the party for the Solstice; probably will take place at the High Museum, if Prince Benison is amenable.

  C: Do you expect him to be?

  R: Hard to predict with him, but I don’t know any compelling reason that he should object.

  C: Is Ash suspicious?

  R: Not at all. The party, of course, was completely her own idea —as she sees it. She has already made arrangements for the particular statue to be transferred. I will see to it that H. Ruhadze is on the guest list. Will June 21 allow you sufficient time to prepare?

  C: It should. If Benito is on the guest list. Do you know if he is?

  R: He was one of the first she contacted. He is planning to attend.

  C: Splendid. I will inform Emmett. Any other news?

  R: Hilda sends regards.

  C: No time. Must go. Goodbye.

  Calebros pushed back from the terminal, forgetting the chair he was in had wheels—unnatural, that—and nearly running over Umberto. “Can you print a copy of that and bring it to me?” Calebros asked.

  “Certainly.”

  “Good.” With much creaking of joints, Calebros lifted himself from the chair and made his way back down the hallway. He felt his mood noticeably improved. Rolph was a stand-up fellow, and arrangements in Atlanta were progressing nicely. Emmett would be pleased as well. The entire operation promised to be a quiet, tidy affair.

  Calebros paused at the doorway to the room where the card game was taking place. He poked his head in. “Who’s winning?”

  A brief, dumbfounded silence followed before someone managed to reply: “Uh…Cass is.”

  “Good,” said Calebros, as he continued on his way. “Very good, indeed.”

  Friday, 11 June 1999, 9:40 PM

  Loading dock, High Museum of Art

  Atlanta, Georgia

  “And then this dude says, ‘If you on the schedule for that night, you better make sure you get off it.’ Except he doesn’t say, ‘schedule’, right? He says, ‘shedule’, like he got a damn speech impediment or something.”

  “He say what?” Odel asked, turning off the forklift so he could hear better.

  “He says, ‘shedule’. ‘Get off the shedule’,” Tyrel said more loudly, even though the forklift was off now.

  “Why he say that?”

  “I told you, I think he got a speech impediment. He always talk funny. I think he from Boston or New York. Maybe California.”

  “Naw, I mean why he tell you to get off the schedule?”

  “Shedule.”

  “What the hell ever. What difference it make to him?”

  “He says he’s doin’ me a favor. Gonna be some action that night I don’t want to be messed up in. He says stay away. Gonna be trouble. That’s why I’m tellin’ you too,” Tyrel said.

  “What kinda trouble?”

  “Don’t know. Just said trouble I don’t want no part of. Now, listen. He’s a strange one. He pay me sometime to tell him what I know about people. I don’t know if it’s drugs or what, but I figure if there’s trouble, he mixed up in it, and he oughta know, see?”

  “Huh,” Odel scoffed. “He just tryin’ get you fired.”

  “All I know, he ain’t lied to me before. I gonna do what he says.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  As the forklift hummed to life again, a figure separated itself from the deepest shadows near the back corner of the loading bay and slipped out the open door. None of the dock workers noticed.

  Friday, 11 June 1999, 11:54 PM

  Rebekah Scott Hall boiler room, Agnes Scott College

  Decatur, Georgia

  The knock on the door was faint over the clanking and hissing of the boiler, but Rolph knew who it was anyway. He didn’t have many visitors, and only one ever knocked. He opened the door and was greeted by a lithesome young blonde in a short plaid skirt and white oxford shirt.

  “Surprise!” she said, striking a pose.

  “You do not look like a college student,” Rolph assured her. “You look like a porn star pretending to be a Catholic schoolgirl. An aging porn star, at that.”

  “You say the sweetest things.” Hilda stepped past him, giving him a peck on the cheek as she did so. “But don’t think all your sweet talk is going to get you into my panties.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “You sly devil.”

  Rolph rolled his eyes. “Hilda. I’m a vampire. I’m functionally impotent. Why on earth would I want to get in your panties?” he asked, then added with more than a little cruelty, “Unless I had a very large truck I needed to park.”

  “Very large truck?” She seemed shocked, but then an evil grin spread across her face. “You sly, euphemistic devil!” She groped at his crotch, but he hopped out of the way. “How large is very large? Bring all that horsepower right over here.”

  “Dear God,” Rolph groaned in exasperation.

  “Funny. That’s what they always say. Dear God. Dear God. Dear God!”

  “Are you completely done? And stop humping the steam pipe.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “What’s news tonight?”

  Hilda let her Catholic-schoolgirl facade fall away with a sigh. Her skirt was long and tattered, the crisp white shirt now dingy and bulging from the pressure of countless rolls of sagging flesh stuffed into too small a garment. Her haggard face was also a victim of gravity, with dark bags under her eyes and floppy jowls all dangling. Her grin was practically toothless, her teeth far outnumbered by the stiff stalks of hair that sprouted from her nostrils.
>
  “More Sabbat action,” she said. “London Tommy is warning some of his contacts away from the High the night of the Solstice party.” With so few teeth, Hilda had a habit of smacking her gums together when she spoke. The effect was unappetizing, to say the least, yet still somehow managed to make Rolph thirsty.

  “London Tommy,” he repeated. “I suppose we’ll need to pick him off once all this blows over. Can’t have too many Sabbat hiding amongst our Anarchs, and he’s one of the more active ones.”

  “What’s wrong with now?” Hilda asked. “I say we do him now.”

  Rolph was taken aback for a moment. He was so often preoccupied with Hilda’s other perversions that he tended to forget about her sadistic streak, which was, in keeping with anything relating to Hilda, fairly wide.

  “No,” Rolph said. “If we take care of him now, his Sabbat buddies might get antsy. This little raid or whatever they have planned for the High is perfect. There’s some shooting, confusion. We grab Benito. Nobody is the wiser. They assume the Sabbat is responsible for him going missing. Emmett will love this.”

  “And there’s the Hesha thing,” Hilda pointed out.

  “Right. I’ll see to him myself. Was the statue there yet, with the others?”

  “The Dead Abel,” she nodded. “Unloaded tonight.”

  “I’ll update Calebros.”

  “And when all this is over,” Hilda said, rubbing her fat fingers together, “we’ll run London Tommy through the meat grinder.”

  “Ah…yes.” For a moment, Rolph pondered which would be worse: to be in Hilda’s good graces, or her bad graces. In the end, he couldn’t decide if there was much difference.

  Monday, 21 June 1999, 4:12 AM

  Service stairwell, High Museum of Art

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Rolph worked the corner of the putty knife expertly along the edge of the wooden door frame. The door’s hinges and the padlock that ostensibly secured it were rusted but sound. No one on the museum staff used this particular door—a door that had not been marked on the building’s original blueprints, yet which had served Rolph well on various occasions. The door itself, to be quite accurate, did not open. But, with appropriate pressure—a bit more than the typical kine might apply—frame and all would swing outward, allowing passage. It was a convenient route of access hidden practically in plain sight.

  That was the problem. Rolph wasn’t sure that Vegel would notice it. Vegel was Hesha’s man, attending Victoria’s Solstice party in Ruhadze’s stead. Rolph and the Setite would transact their business just prior to midnight, and then the Setite needed to be spirited out of and away from the museum. The false door was to be part of Vegel’s escape route.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Emmett said from behind Rolph. “It seems obvious enough to me.”

  Rolph paused only briefly in his work, then continued with the putty knife, slightly enlarging the cracks that previously were almost invisible. “If he doesn’t realize how it works,” Rolph explained with forced patience, “he’ll rip the entire door off, and I’ll have to repair it all later—if someone else doesn’t find it first.”

  “Hmph,” Emmett snorted. He was pacing back and forth like a hideous, curmudgeonly metronome.

  “I’m almost done.”

  “You might as well nail a giant stop sign to the door.”

  Rolph finished the bottom-most edge of the doorframe and slipped the putty knife into his pocket.

  He reached into another pocket and, with a satisfied grin, produced a strip of yellow police-line tape.

  Emmett stared in disbelief. “You’re not really…”

  “One thing I have learned about the other clans,” Rolph said, “is not to overestimate them.” He turned and tacked the tape across the door. “Just because a tunnel or an escape route or a hiding place is as plain as day—if you’ll excuse the expression—to you or to me, does not mean that one of the others would recognize it even if he fell into it.”

  “Hmph.”

  “I’ve dealt with Vegel before. He’s bright enough…for a Setite. But if there’s a lot of confusion, which there should be…” Rolph waved his hands, rolling them at the wrists to represent distraction, and then ended the gesture with an almost apologetic shrug. “Well, he might need a little pointer.”

  “How about a neon sign?” Emmett suggested sardonically.

  “I will deal with Herr Vegel in my way,” Rolph said, deciding it was pointless to debate with Emmett. “You deal with Don Giovanni in yours. Would you like to look over the gallery again, or the main elevator, or the ramp to the lobby?”

  “Thank you, but no. You’ve been quite the thorough host. I’ve got a map of the place right here.” Emmett tapped his head with a gnarled finger. “I know what I want to do. I’ll fill in the others.”

  “Then we should—” Rolph came up short and pulled the suddenly vibrating pager from his pocket.

  “Who is it?” Emmett asked suspiciously.

  “News from Boston.” Rolph squinted at the peculiar message. “The graverobber has traded shovels.”

  “Christ,” Emmett hissed. “Benito has changed plans. No kidnapping in Atlanta, it looks like. Well, screw him. I’m not going to wait anymore. Let’s get back. Now. I need to get on the horn to Calebros, and to Boston. Unless you have more decorating to do here…?”

  Rolph ignored the jibe. His plan was still going smoothly, even if Emmett’s was not. “No, I’m done.”

  “Gloat on your own time.”

  The two left the door and headed farther down the stairwell to one of several alternate exits. Rolph did not, of course, wish Emmett ill. After all, Emmett’s task was far more vital to the clan than was Rolph’s own. Rolph was settling an old debt, whereas Emmett needed Benito’s information to settle a much more recent score. Still, Rolph did derive a certain perverse satisfaction from the turn of events and from the fact that his own operation was proceeding flawlessly.

  Tuesday, 22 June 1999, 12:40 AM

  The High Museum of Art

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Rolph was keeping his head down. Or up, rather. He was peering through the slats of the air-conditioning vent that was his current hiding place and gazing down at the Kindred below. They were resplendent in their evening finery: tuxedos and nineteenth-century suits; elegant gowns; even the occasional leather jacket and torn jeans carried a certain luster this evening. The Kindred of Atlanta and prominent out-of-town guests were here tonight to see and be seen. Rolph shared only the first of those two motives, and only he suspected that something was very wrong.

  Not because of what was happening—the scheming, double-crossing, and backstabbing that were endemic to the goings-on of surface-dwelling Kindred—but because of what was not happening. Surely he should have heard something: a few gunshots, screams, perhaps a small explosion. Rolph had corroborated Hilda’s reports through alternate sources both here and in Miami. The Sabbat was supposedly planning some excitement for tonight, undoubtedly a guerilla raid or the like to bloody Prince Benison’s nose, wound his pride, and provide at least a propaganda victory to spur on Atlanta’s Anarch element. The prince had been quite capable all on his own of grievously raising the ire of more than merely the fringe elements of Kindred society. The current rebellion among the younger generations (and of a select few, well-placed elders) was of his making, but the unrest was the type of situation that the Sabbat simply couldn’t resist. Perhaps that was the method to Benison’s madness—foment revolution against his own rule, and then flush out Sabbat moles in the city as they became more openly active.

  Rolph, in his place of hiding, shrugged. Anything was possible with Benison. The Malkavian seemed to court disaster often, but his apparently rash and imprudent actions along with his inscrutable designs tended to keep his opponents guessing and off balance.

  Regardless, there was no Sabbat raid. Not yet. Rolph’s sources had seemed to think that midnight was the magic hour—but it had come and gone without event. What increased th
e oddity was the fact that Rolph felt certain that the Sabbat were out there. In the city. More so than usual. One of his sources in Miami had reported movements of certain individuals from that city, and Rolph himself had noticed an influx of Kindred—trying with limited success to keep out of sight—in Atlanta.

  Rolph fished around in his pocket and pulled out a tarnished brass watch on an equally grimy chain. Quarter till one. No raid.

  Despite his concern, Rolph found himself increasingly drawn into the drama unfolding beneath him. It wasn’t in his nature to ignore the little games, the snubs, the plots. Victoria had really outdone herself. Not only had she invited into the sanctuary of Elysium Thelonious, one of the activists among the Anarchists opposing Prince Benison, but she had also included on the guest list the Brujah archon Julius. Julius had a history of animosity toward Benison—a sentiment the prince heartily reciprocated. Rolph was uncertain whether the archon was cooperating with Victoria, or if so how closely, but Julius had arrived almost an hour ago and had not yet presented himself to the prince. That was a lapse in decorum which was likely—and undoubtedly calculated—to rub Benison the wrong way, and possibly to lead to strife.

  Rolph observed the unfolding events with interest. Would Victoria’s scheming create a breach between herself and the prince? he wondered. Whatever damage occurred tonight would be linked only indirectly to her; she had merely mixed numerous, volatile personalities, and as a newcomer to the city would claim ignorance. But her choice of guests, at the very least, would attract Benison’s suspicions, if not his outright enmity. It was a dangerous game she played. Benison was equally likely to laugh it off or to banish her from the city.

  Yes, the morality play with Victoria, Benison, and Julius was the most significant focus of the evening, Rolph decided. The Sabbat must have bungled and aborted their raid. No surprise there. Furthermore, that increased the likelihood that Erich Vegel, entrusted with the prized Eye of Hazimel to deliver to Hesha Ruhadze, had left the area safely. Rolph had handed over the Eye just prior to midnight, anticipating that the raid would cover Vegel’s hasty exit. With the raid failing to materialize, Vegel would have to make his own excuses should Victoria accost him in the future.