Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  And with the inevitability of dawn, Donatello did begin to put his thoughts together. He wasn’t sure if the walking helped, but he continued nonetheless. Regrettably, no other transformations accompanied the illumination of the past. His back, bowed like an angry cat; his jowls, sagging like a crone’s breasts; his eyes, sunken with an addict’s lack of will. These all remained. But the dim light of his mind began to glow.

  With these remembrances came the revelation that the ills of his body were the curses he would bear to the end of his unlife. He was Nosferatu, and though he was one that excelled among his kind as his clan excelled among the other clans in the gathering of information, it gradually became clear to Donatello that the last three nights of his life were lost forever.

  With a dread that he could scarcely comprehend, Donatello worried that the repercussions of a loss so miniscule in the context of an immortal life would reverberate in infinity. When would the butterfly of those few nights cause a hurricane in his life?

  Donatello shook his head. “Soon,” he muttered sourly. “All too soon.”

  He felt it would have been better to have lost three nights in the midst of a crazed Tzimisce ceremony.

  Or three nights wandering lost and alone in a wilderness infested by lupines.

  Even three nights of interrogation by the souls of the pious dead he’d instructed and directed centuries ago, when he’d been a priest of God among the mortals of this dark world.

  But to pass three nights in the company of that most enigmatic of the Kindred, the Prophet of Gehenna, Anatole…

  Three nights that he could not remember. Though fleeting images flickered in his mind’s eye, Donatello felt certain the full experience of those days would never be recalled. He was uncertain why he was so sure this was the case. Perhaps he was giving more credence to Anatole’s reputation than was warranted. Donatello sighed, kept walking, and strained hard to put concrete images to the few moments he could recall. As he had guessed and feared, by the time he was done, no new memories had surfaced.

  Three nights with the vampire who knew the secrets of the end of the world, and Donatello could remember almost nothing. Frightening indeed.

  He recalled his surprise when he’d entered the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Some unknown force had for many nights kept any Nosferatu from entering the place. They could go so far, but no farther. They’d felt Anatole was within the cathedral, but they did not know for certain. He’d entered over a month before and had not been seen to exit, but in light of their inability to enter, it was equally likely that he was gone entirely as still within the walls. And what could he be doing for a month? How was he hiding from the mortals that swarmed the place every day, especially every Sunday?

  The Nosferatu sent mortals to investigate. Even their ghouls—mortals with the Nosferatu blood within their surging arteries—were allowed entrance, and they detected nothing. One of these ghouls was even said to carry the blood of Calebros himself within her, and she still reported nothing. Another to enter was a wizard—not a Tremere, but a mortal wizard—who owed Calebros a favor of some variety, but he also could add nothing to the intelligence efforts of the clan.

  Of course, now Donatello suspected the truth. They had encountered Anatole, but were denied the memory of meeting. But that raised the question of why they could not at least admit to the confrontation even if lacking memory of its content, as was Donatello’s predicament. Perhaps they were physically unable to speak of it, just as Donatello could not bring his own name to his lips.

  So Donatello’s penetration of whatever force had kept him and his comrades at bay was a surprise. The Nosferatu recalled that as soon as he found himself able to enter the cathedral, he’d quickly retreated to the periphery to report this to one of the surveillance team members. A task force was quickly organized and a weeks-old plan for entry was dusted off and enacted. However, none of the others were able to take one step farther than any time prior. But Donatello still entered without resistance.

  He laughed now at his foolish courage then. For he’d pressed on. He recalled telling his comrades that this was an opportunity that could not be forsaken. He would enter and report back as soon as he was able.

  The chronology of Donatello’s memory then frayed immediately, for the next event he could recall was praying with Anatole. The picture of the event in Donatello’s mind arrived fully formed and realized from pitch darkness and deathly silence. Suddenly, there was an altar before Anatole and himself. Suddenly, Donatello heard his own voice, his memory making him feel as a passenger in his own body even though his memory of how he felt then was of himself completely at ease.

  The Nosferatu also recalled Anatole beside him. The Malkavian prophet also knelt before the altar, and Donatello recalled thinking for an instant that this was odd. Little was known about Anatole, but the fact that he had forsaken God centuries before was largely accepted as truth—at least to the extent that any information about the mysterious madman could be accepted as truth.

  But that quickly passed, and Donatello could also recall thinking that the Kindred’s kneeling before the altar was proof. Proof that it had indeed been his faith that had somehow kept other Kindred from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This despite the fact that crosses and other religious relics held no power over the Kindred. Perhaps that, in turn, was proof that Anatole’s visions and prophecies truly came from a source beyond anything other Kindred could imagine.

  If all that was true, then Donatello accepted that he’d been able to enter because he’d been a priest of God in his mortal years. Not an especially caring—nor, to be certain, especially corrupt—one, but one who did what was expected by his elders even if that was not as much as he knew was expected by God. Evidently, it had been enough, and even now as he walked the streets of New York City, Donatello felt a flush of piety and faith wash through him. He clutched again at his chest for the missing cross. He still wore it during these eternal nights, though he’d thought the reason was pure derision of his mortal past and his own loss of faith. Now, he wondered if there was a deeper explanation.

  And there had been Anatole himself, of course. It was Donatello’s first memory of seeing him. His features were tranquil and smooth. A slight film of dirt and grime covered an otherwise Pentelic form. The Malkavian’s blond hair had been pulled back in dreadlocks that in turn hung like ornate tassels around his downcast face.

  Donatello had led the prophet in prayer.

  The Nosferatu stopped walking and gathered himself. He had left belief in God behind long ago. Like others of his kind, he bore a beast within himself, but unlike any but others of the Nosferatu, he looked like a beast as well. He had been a man good enough in his mortal life to be allowed a mortal’s death. When that was denied him, Donatello had gradually grown to accept that there was no God who made such decisions in the first place.

  At a standstill now with the skyscrapers of Manhattan looming not far in the distance where their lights formed the new constellations by which—or to which—men guided themselves, Donatello’s memory began to dry up. He felt his cursory communion with the almost entirely forgotten past drain from his motionless feet into the concrete below. And from there…deeper.

  Through the bedrock and into areas of this mammoth city already forgotten in a span as short as a few hundred years.

  And his thoughts dribbled deeper still. Not toward a fiery core of the planet, but toward something dark, something Donatello could not face and felt certain did not concern him in any event. He shuddered. Somehow, that thought sounded more hopeful than true.

  What did concern Donatello were idle feet making for an idle mind.

  The Nosferatu broke into a walk exaggerated so that he might psychically shake free of whatever he’d begun to glimpse. Had Anatole shared something of his apocalyptic visions with Donatello? The Nosferatu did not know, but this moment, when he was alone and fighting amnesia, was not the time to attend to such thoughts. As his stride slowed to th
e steady rate of before, images again began to tumble from an unknown compartment in his brain.

  There were other memories of praying. Both of these other scenes were set in a garden of some kind, and they were bowed before an odd sculpture of a woman formed of welded metal.

  And a brief glimpse of the past in his mind’s eye revealed to Donatello a scene of Anatole sitting beneath that sculpture with his sandals on his hands, listening to Donatello’s questions. The Malkavian would not say why he was in New York City. Instead, Anatole massaged the sandals together in a sort of act of supplication.

  Or maybe, Donatello imagined, it was communication. Perhaps this was how—or at least one of the ways—he spoke to the heavenly powers. Or drew their attention. But Donatello could make no more of the scene, because his memory of it was so brief. Imagining it as a film, moving in frames through his memory, Donatello guessed he had but three frames of Anatole; and to be honest, he could not tell if the sandals were being rubbed or clapped together.

  Donatello knew that he should return to Calebros and report these little things he could recall. Or at least return to the cathedral. Perhaps even try to enter again, though he felt that would be folly. Besides, his shriveled stomach somehow managed to grumble in protest, and Donatello knew he was not yet made of the steely determination that bred courage and confidence. He would retreat to his subterranean home, draft a report, and be done with that matter.

  Or so he hoped.

  That hope was almost immediately dashed, for something still nagged at his mind. Something other than the darkness in the bowels of the earth that he thought he could still will himself to forget—a cruel turn of fate this evening when he otherwise struggled to recollect so much.

  An image flashed in his mind, but it vanished before he could slow it down or even see it. It came again. A figure. Very close to him. Whispering. Surely it was Anatole.

  Again. Yes, it was the Prophet. Whispering his parting words. Phrases uttered a mere hour ago, yet they were weighed down so deep in the sediment of Donatello’s mind that he could barely uncover them.

  Again, and the Nosferatu could hear some of the words. A riddle. Three nights spent with the Prophet of Gehenna looking at both Heaven and Hell and he walked away with a riddle? Donatello knew beyond doubt that the man was indeed mad.

  And wise, so what was the answer to the riddle?

  Donatello puzzled over it to distraction until dawn nearly overtook him. Then he hurried to a phone to call the warren at least before both he and Calebros slept the daylight away. Umberto answered and listened patiently as Donatello repeated the riddle a second time:

  “One in a minute, and one in an hour. Walk a mile in but seconds to deliver my letter. Tell me, oh wise one, which way do I go?”

  Donatello hurriedly pried open a nearby sewer grate. There would be safe sleeping somewhere near here. For a Nosferatu willing to scrounge, there was always safety close at hand.

  Saturday, 31 July 1999, 5:14 AM

  Beneath 114th Street, Upper West Side, Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  Mouse had been just a few blocks from the subway when he’d heard the world rumbling. He’d been rummaging through the sewers. Such treasures down here, and he didn’t have to worry about the upperworlders seeing him. Nobody to hide from, nobody to mistake him for a big dog if they did see him, and no Sabbat, thank goodness. Both times the Cainite gangbangers had seen him, he’d been able to ditch them pretty easily, but it made him nervous, and being nervous made him shed, and shedding made him itch. Or maybe that was just the multitude of critters that shared his shaggy coat with him.

  He’d been shuffling along in the shin-deep sewage to see what he could dredge up. And there! The brief glint caught his eye but then submerged again. So he reached down, cupped his hands beneath the surface of the gray-brown muck, then raised them, letting the liquid run through his fingers. There. He smiled. He was left holding a fairly intact pile of feces, and sparkling up at him was a partially buried, perfectly good, wonderful, silver button. He plucked it out and dropped everything else back into the flow. The button he rubbed between his hands until it was clean, then wiped his hands on his fur and clothes. The button wasn’t actually silver, of course. But he could pretend. It was white plastic, but it was shiny, and therefore a treasure. Mouse favored shiny treasures. He dropped it into his pocket, almost as pleased as if he’d found a few tasty kernels of corn.

  That was when he’d heard the rumbling. It wasn’t the familiar regular purr of the one train; that was a sound and vibration that Mouse didn’t notice anymore, like the ticking of a clock that, after time, becomes more conspicuous by its absence than its presence. This sounded more like the buildings above ground, or maybe the streets, were tearing themselves apart. Not explosions really…maybe an earthquake? Except the disturbance seemed localized—not distant, but contained.

  Mouse took a minute to set his bearings. He was nothing if not curious, so off he set. He moved purposefully through the sewers, up a rusted metal ladder, and then along a narrow access tunnel that brought him to the storm sewers, where there was easier and more frequent access to street level. By the time he reached a rain-gutter opening, the worst of the rumbling had ceased, but there was still something going on. He was less than a block from the big church that Mr. C. had said to stay away from. But the last Mouse had heard, that Anatole guy was gone, disappeared. So it shouldn’t matter, Mouse figured, if he went a little closer, because that seemed to be where the noise was coming from now—window-rattling thuds and whomps, like somebody was dropping boulders off the scaffolding around the church.

  Mouse didn’t see anyone on the street, but he made sure to hide himself as he climbed out of the sewer and made his way down the block, just in case. He noticed at once the cracked and broken pavement—not potholes, which were nothing new, but stripe after stripe after stripe of crumbled asphalt, like ripples on a pond.

  The noise grew louder the closer he got to the church. Mouse still couldn’t place what he was hearing—it sounded like a pile-driver, distinct pounding blows but at irregular intervals. Each whomp clattered deep in his chest.

  Mouse slowed as he drew closer to the church’s gardens. He was feeling increasingly that this little expedition was not a good idea. Something about the violence of the sounds he was hearing put him off. There weren’t any screams—screams were always a bad sign—but he thought he might have heard grunts and moans just below the pounding. As often was the case, his curiosity got the better of his prudence. Profoundly puzzled, he peered hesitantly around the stone wall and into the gardens.

  He could do no more than stare dumbfounded at what he saw. Until he finally turned and ran.

  Sunday, 1 August 1999, 1:27 AM

  Pendulum Avenue

  Baltimore, Maryland

  “Come. Sit with me,” Victoria Ash said.

  A cheerful little ditty popped into Marston Colchester’s mind: Sit on my face, and tell me that you love me! But he restrained himself.

  “It’s so good of you to come visit me,” Victoria said.

  “I guess you’ve been pretty busy since you got into town,” said Fin, youngest childe of Prince Alexander Garlotte.

  Colchester watched them from the far side of the room. Victoria had been a busy beaver since taking up residence with Robert Gainesmil, Baltimore’s foremost native Toreador. She had put the bug in Gainesmil’s ear that she would like to meet Fin. Gainesmil had obediently passed the word along, and now here was Fin. He was a beautiful boy, young and handsome. Somebody might as well have wrapped him up and put a bow on his head. Victoria was going to eat him alive. And not in a way you’re going to enjoy, buddy boy.

  “Alexander speaks fondly of you,” Victoria said.

  Funny, he speaks of fondling you.

  There was a pause. “He did? Of me?” Fin asked incredulously.

  “He most certainly does,” Victoria assured him. “As for my being busy, there’s actually very little f
or me to do here. You know how men are…all wanting to protect me from the grueling and dangerous work of defending a city.”

  I’ll give you some gruel, baby.

  “Well, the Sabbat’s nothing to mess around with,” Fin said. “Have you ever—”

  “So it was very thoughtful of you to come see me,” Victoria interrupted. “You know,” placing a finger to her inviting lips, “Alexander hasn’t said as much, but I do believe that you are the one he’s grooming to succeed him as prince some night.”

  Colchester clapped a hand to his forehead, but no one took notice of him.

  Fin laughed. “You must have me mixed up with Isaac.”

  “No. Isaac is an able sheriff, but I think Alexander has grander designs for you. I mean no slight to your blood kin.” Victoria reached over and brushed aside a lock of Fin’s hair. “But there are depths to you that I don’t see in Isaac.”

  Fin’s mouth dropped open. Colchester sighed, shook his head back and forth. Then he saluted, as if an unseen bugle were sounding Taps.

  From there, it was just a matter of time. Not that Fin had had a chance from the start. As Colchester had been completely aware, the boy was way out of his league. He’s awfully cute, but not too bright. A perfect vehicle for Victoria’s spite. She fed him a steady diet of lies, everything that he wanted to hear and was only too willing to believe. She filled him with a grossly exaggerated sense of his own importance, and patently absurd ideas about what he should expect from his sire the prince.

  “He prefers assertive childer,” she assured Fin.

  Ridiculous. Garlotte went out of his way to surround himself with yes-men. All he wanted from a childe was for him to bend over and take it like a man. Thank you, sir. May I have another? That made Colchester think of Garlotte’s middle childe, Katrina. There was a hottie. I wouldn’t mind bending her over and—