Clan Novel Nosferatu: Book 13 of the Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  I shouldn’t have wasted the time, Calebros thought.

  Time. There it was again—the sense that time was running out. But why, and for whom?

  It’s just that there’s so much going on at present, he told himself. Gather the pieces. I will reconstruct the puzzle. That was what he’d told his young Nosferatu charges, much as Augustin had often told him. Yet, truth be told, Calebros felt profoundly unsure of whether or not he was up to the task. The puzzle pieces were still all a jumble.

  There’s not so very much going on, he tried to convince himself. It merely feels that way. Expectation could be worse than crisis. So many loose ends dangling; so many axes waiting to fall. But still, he was making progress.

  There was no substantive news from Emmett yet, but that would change. Calebros had every confidence in his clanmate. And as for the Sabbat, they seemed still to be stalled in Washington. The storm was gathering, certainly. Calebros had no doubt of that. But from Jon Courier’s reports, there seemed to be dissension brewing among Vykos, Polonia, and Borges, and perhaps others. That was to be expected. They were a fractious, bloodthirsty lot, and the longer they were holed up in one place, the better for the Camarilla.

  For their part, the defenders of the seven clans were not sitting idly in Baltimore. Jan Pieterzoon had acceded to Calebros’s suggestion, which Marston Colchester had discreetly passed along—despite his air of perverse buffoonery, Colchester was, in fact, capable of acting discreetly. At any rate, along the lines of psychological warfare, Pieterzoon had hired an assassin. And not just any assassin. Lucita, wayward childe of Cardinal Monçada of Madrid. Lucita would certainly remove the targets whom Pieterzoon had chosen for her, and her activities would force members of the Sabbat, from the high command on down, to think twice about their every move. Beyond those benefits, however, there was another potential payoff, though it was far from certain. There was the chance that Lucita’s involvement in the war might possibly prompt the attention of another infamous assassin, a certain Assamite who seemed to have maintained a heated rivalry with Lucita over the years. But only time would tell if that came to pass.

  Time.

  Calebros sifted through the papers on his desk. Despite the press of weightier matters, he couldn’t manage to dismiss the melted man that Mouse had found. Something about the grotesquely disfigured victim struck a resonant chord. Perhaps that was it, Calebros mused: He identified on some level with this Kindred, ostensibly not a Nosferatu, who had been so hideously deformed. Seemed a reasonable enough explanation.

  No time for sentimentality, you old fool, he chided himself. There was Benito Giovanni to consider, the Sabbat, not to mention the still-missing Eye of Hazimel. And Anatole! The Prophet, presumably after keeping all the Nosferatu out of the Cathedral of St. John Divine for weeks, had allowed Donatello in, but now, Donatello could remember nothing of what had happened—nothing except a single, childish riddle. As if they had time for that. And to top it all off, when more of Calebros’s people had entered, Anatole was gone. Without a trace. And then these new unexplained happenings at the cathedral with the melted man…

  Blast it all to hell. Calebros tried his best to put Mouse and his enigmatic melted man out of mind and get back to work.

  Wednesday, 4 August 1999, 11:41 PM (local time)

  Inyo County lockup

  Shoshone, California

  “When do I get a chance to practice on him?” Kragen asked.

  Emmett swiveled on his stool beside Benito’s cot. “You don’t. Interrogation is my job.” Emmett stared coldly at the two Nosferatu outside the jail cell. Kragen was a brute, no two ways about it. He’d already cracked three wooden doorjambs here in the ‘off-limits’ basement level of the lockup by forgetting to duck. Rhodes scholar he wasn’t, but he possessed a low cunning and a sadistic streak that made Emmett feel like a humanitarian. Behind Kraken stood Buttface. He’d come by his name honestly. Emmett was sincerely grateful that he didn’t have to go through eternity with such an affliction.

  “How do I get good at interrogatin’ if’n I don’t get to do it?” Kraken grumbled.

  “You don’t have to get good at it. That’s why I’m here,” Emmett said.

  Kraken snorted but didn’t complain further. Buttface didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a big talker. These two were the local talent. Purely small-time. And I thought Montrose was an ass, Emmett thought, then caught himself in the awful, unintended pun. And, of course, Montrose was an ass, but that was beside the point.

  Emmett’s own men, whom he’d brought with him from the East Coast, were in the other room. They were merely insurance. There wasn’t much chance that Clan Giovanni would find out about this operation. The biggest worry was keeping Kragen and Buttface away from Benito. Emmett felt pretty confident that, given half a chance, they’d be a little overzealous with the prisoner, and before long there would be no prisoner left. Benito was the one locked up here, but it wasn’t to protect the Nosferatu from him.

  “Look,” Emmett said finally to Kragen, “you bother me. Why don’t you take Hemorrhoid Boy there and scram.”

  Kragen didn’t take insults kindly, but he obeyed, and that was all that Emmett was worried about. Those two aren’t going to keep quiet after this is over, he thought as he watched them shamble out the door, Kragen remembering to duck this time. They’re going to grumble and spill their guts to anybody that’ll listen. Then again, that might not be all bad. If everything went well, secrecy wouldn’t be so important after the fact. It might be better if word got out that it was the Nosferatu that had abducted Benito. It would send the message that the clan wasn’t going to sit back meekly and take insult and injury. The Giovanni might get a bit nasty, but it wouldn’t be anything that Emmett and his brethren couldn’t handle—he hoped. Conveying a position of strength to the other clans would more than make up for any complications from the necromancers. Again, he hoped.

  Emmett took a miniaturized tape recorder from his pocket, turned the device on, and set it on the floor beside Benito’s cot. The Giovanni had definitely seen better nights. He was blindfolded, and Kragen and Buttface had unceremoniously stripped him and stuffed him into an orange Inyo County jumpsuit the first night Emmett had arrived with his captive. That was the night that Emmett had decided the two southwestern sociopaths would not touch the prisoner again. Emmett was fairly certain they had broken Benito’s arm, as well as opening a deep gash in his head, in the process of changing his clothes. Benito had been torpid at the time, so he hadn’t made much of a fuss. Still, Emmett was determined that if any carnage occurred, it would be at his direction.

  The gash in Benito’s head remained open, attracting flies. His arm was still broken as well, but it looked straight enough. Probably it would heal—if and when Emmett allowed him a sufficient amount of blood.

  The jail cell, without the lurking presence of Kragen and Buttface, was calming in the same way as a cheap funeral parlor, minus the flowers. The stark cinderblock walls were painted that washed-out, institutional pink. The toilet, in this case, was superfluous.

  Emmett carried the keys to the barred door in his pocket. He leaned over and slid a briefcase from beneath Benito’s cot, dialed the combination and opened the case, from which he removed one of several glass test tubes. All were full of blood. Emmett also took an eye-dropper, which he filled from the test tube. He leaned close to Benito.

  The Giovanni had always been fairly fleshy for a Kindred. Fat city living—or unliving, or whatever; Emmett wasn’t one for semantics. Currently, however, Benito’s pasty white skin was drawn tight over his bones, like a shriveled plum. Emmett snickered at that thought. Yeah, I’ve got a giant, vampire prune here. “It’s good for you,” he said. “Keep you regular.” Then he remembered the tape recorder, picked it up, rewound, and started recording over again.

  Before feeding drops of blood to his captive, Emmett brushed the flies from Benito’s lips. Where Emmett’s fingers brushed, the skin flaked away like scorched paper. Very gently,
Emmett pulled Benito’s mouth open slightly and began squeezing in droplets of blood.

  Almost instantly, the Giovanni drew an involuntary breath between his parched lips. He was trying to drink, his body attempting to draw the sustenance it so badly needed. Another drop. Benito’s gray, withered tongue stabbed weakly at the air, like some meek but desperate subterranean creature testing the light of day.

  Emmett fed him two more drops of blood, then leaned very close to Benito’s ear. “Gary Pennington,” the Nosferatu whispered. He dripped two more crimson droplets. “Gary Pennington,” he whispered again.

  The small amount of blood, even had Emmett fed him the entire dropper’s worth, was not nearly enough to restore Benito’s strength or to allow him to begin to heal his injuries, but it did serve to draw him slowly toward consciousness. Beneath the blindfold, there was the movement of spastically blinking eyes. Benito’s tongue continued stabbing at the air, searching desperately for more blood.

  “How the mighty have fallen, you pompous fuck,” Emmett hissed. “I’m going to know everything you know. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve waited two years, we can wait two more if we have to.”

  Emmett placed a droplet of blood on Benito’s cheek, just beyond the reach of his striving tongue. Benito tried to buck but hardly shook the bed. He didn’t have the strength. He didn’t have the strength to lift his hands, even had they not been tied beneath him.

  “Gary Pennington,” Emmett said, a bit more loudly this time. “He helped you, didn’t he, Benito? He was in on it. And then you killed him, didn’t you? I want to know it all. I want all the details. You’re going to tell me everything, Benito. Did you contact him, Benito? Was it your idea? Benito…”

  Emmett squeezed the rubber bulb on the end of the dropper, holding his fingers together so that all the blood ran from the dropper into Benito’s slack mouth. The Giovanni’s tongue sprang to life again at once, darting from side to side, soaking up every speck of blood it could find. For the first time in many nights, sound escaped from Benito’s throat—a faint gurgling moan.

  “Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito…”

  Emmett reached for another test tube and refilled the eyedropper. He would bring Benito along slowly. The art connoisseur was little more than a torpid mass of primal instincts, a hungering pile of undead flesh, but Emmett would bring him back. Ever so slowly. All Benito would know was that he hungered, that he desired blood. And with each drop he would hear the name.

  “Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito…”

  First to return would be a few of the most basic of motor skills, and then, slowly, the blurriness would begin to recede. And Emmett would be there leading him all the while.

  “Gary Pennington. Tell me, Benito….”

  After three hours and three more test tubes of blood, Benito began to speak. At first he merely responded to the names that Emmett whispered, but soon he spoke names himself, different names. “Nickolai…” Benito rasped. By the beginning of the third cassette tape, he had progressed to sentence fragments. He wasn’t quite ready for dates or addresses, but Emmett was confident those too would come, as would all the plans, all the vile schemes.

  Oh, yes. They’ll come, Emmett thought. It was just a matter of time.

  Thursday, 5 August 1999, 1:51 AM

  Crown Plaza Hotel, Midtown Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  “Lie still, my friend.” Nickolai lifted the I ♥ NY sweatshirt that he had bought for his troublesome patient. The deep gut wounds had been the ugliest—shredded organs and muscle and sinew—bur they were significantly healed. The internal tissues had knitted back together, and even the surface-entry wound, which had been wide and gaping, was largely repaired. The quintuple lacerations on both chest and left shoulder were completely mended, use of the left arm returned. All that rejuvenation merely from the blood of two prostitutes.

  No, more troublesome than the patient’s physical well-being was his mental condition…

  “She is here? That’s what you said—that she would be here,” he said.

  …His mental condition, and the fact that his stinking, sputtering Eye kept seeping acidic pus onto the sheets.

  “Yes, Leopold. She’ll be here. I promise. You can trust me,” Nickolai reassured him.

  Leopold was, in layman’s terms, fried. Intelligible sentences from his lips were the exception rather than the norm, and on the rare occasion that he did manage to utter a comprehensible thought, invariably he was asking after her. His right eye, the normal one of the pair, stared crazed and fanatical. The other, the Eye, bulged out dramatically, as if it might pop from the too-small socket at any moment. The fleshy membrane that served as a lid was obviously darker than Leopold’s own skin—as if there might have been any doubt that he was not the original owner of the Eye. Adding to the overall foulness was the intermittent fizzling and dribbling of a pungent, gelatinous ichor from the orb.

  Nickolai was envious. Fascinating, he thought, at least once every few minutes. How, he wondered, could such a rank neonate stumble across such a wonderful…thing! The secret, for now, was safely tucked away in Leopold’s addled mind. Along with other secrets. Nickolai had surmised something of Leopold’s mental state over a week ago, but when the warlock had actually, physically, found the boy five nights ago, wandering north of Central Park and caressing a stone hand—and being caressed by it!—Nickolai’s suspicions had been confirmed. Leopold remembered nothing of their previous time together.

  Leopold did remember. He gazed up at the teacher through the fantastic prism of Sight. Nickolai was the teacher’s name; it was a name Leopold knew. He knew many names. And he remembered a great deal.

  Truth, to Leopold, was a great, dark, underground river. He walked along its chalky banks. In places, the river ran straight and sure, flowing inexorably toward its destination. In other places, the river grew wide, and the current was not so strong. The water meandered, split into separate channels, wandered between rocks and beneath the knobby roots of blighted swamp trees, their branches pulled low by crimson Spanish moss—all beneath the vaulted darkness of living rock.

  Leopold stepped closer to the river. Who was this person he was watching? The name escaped him now, when a moment before it had been as familiar as family. No matter. The paunch-bellied man was not her, not Leopold’s Muse. Leopold had thought he’d found her again, thought that she’d taken him by the hand, but he was no longer sure. He could feel her presence, her nearness, in the dragon’s graveyard, but would she reveal herself to him again? She had already given him so much. He must not be greedy. She had led him to the cave and presented him with the tools he’d needed.

  My masterpiece…

  Leopold stared down at the water. Blood dripped from the hanging moss and painted circles on the river, ripples carried lazily downstream, spreading as they moved, leaving the point of their impact smooth and clear until the next drop fell. Leopold dipped his foot into the water.

  He stood in the cave again, his masterpiece towering over him. Never had he known such contentment, such peaceful exhaustion, awash in the afterglow of the most skillful and elusive of lovers. His Muse had brought him here with whispered promises, and she had proven as good as her word.

  The wolves stared at him. Surely they understood the honor accorded them, their droll existence graced by the opportunity to partake of perfection, to become a fragment of perfection. Rivulets of blood clung to the mammoth column of sculpted stone, sweat upon his lover’s brow.

  Another face watched Leopold. Teacher? No, nor the Muse. Another woman, a seer, whom Leopold had touched and studied. She had placed her seed in him—Leopold laughed at the irony—and he had birthed her anew.

  There were others—so many visitors. A troublesome man who’d left very quickly. And also Leopold’s teacher.

  “I’ve been searching for you, Leopold,” he had said. But Leopold had been so busy. For three days and three nights he had labored. The Muse had directed him, and the te
acher had watched over his shoulder—though, in truth, Leopold had been too enthralled to be constantly mindful of the other’s presence. And when Leopold was done, the weight of all the stone had seemed to press down upon him, to force him to his knees, to his belly.

  He’d awoken to find the Sight gone. Taken from him. Stolen.

  “Do you want it back, Leopold? I can help you.” The teacher again. But so stupid for a teacher. Did he want it back? Did blood call to blood? Did greatness call out to the worthies?

  “I shall have it!” Leopold had screamed. “I-shall-have-it!”

  The mere memory was too painful. Leopold withdrew his foot from the water. He waited until the ripple of his passing was swept downstream, then tested the waters again.

  He was in the dragon’s graveyard, Sight restored, brought to the city by his teacher. I can help you. Stepped through the portal. Leopold had found the thief, the snake, and shown him the error of his ways. That was before. The righteous indignation was ebbing already. No lasting harm was done, after all. The Sight was restored, and Leopold was holding the hand of his Muse—but not his Muse.

  “Just a piece of a statue,” his teacher was saying, “but I can help you find your Muse again. Come with me, Leopold. Didn’t I help you find the Eye?”

  Leopold pulled his toes from the river. His foot was covered with blood. He watched the red water flow past. He was unsure what to do next; his Sight was restored, but his Muse was gone. He tried to listen to the teacher, Nickolai—that was his name. But the teacher seemed so far away.

  “Leopold?” Nickolai couldn’t trace the blank stare of the neonate’s right eye—it gazed at some nonexistent sight in the far distance. Nickolai was more interested in the left Eye, distended and constantly in motion, like some ever-curious creature. Or ever-hungry, he thought. Continuously shifting position, gangrenous pus ever percolating and seeping.