Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  This way, beckoned the muse.

  Leopold followed. The winding tunnels were even less real than when he had arrived early that morning. The black expanses of stone faded away into nothingness. The echo of every footstep fled unhindered to the very Stygian abyss.

  Leopold had lived with the eye of the artist. As a mortal, no detail had been beyond his notice. He saw not a vast desert, but every grain of sand.

  After his Embrace, what before had been natural became a struggle. While the creative urge lingered beyond mortality, the capacity to fulfill that urge did not. Leopold floundered, despaired. In time, he’d come to make do, to compensate for the loss of that which he could not recapture. Obsession with detail gave way to obsession with absence—the aesthetic of the numbing void. He found a certain truth among his limitations.

  Both the mortal detail and the undead loss, however, were mere facets of unSight. His greatest mortal achievement would be like a pale ghost to him now. How Leopold pitied those who were as he had been.

  The Eye allowed him to see how totally insignificant was all that he’d held dear. As he made his way through the caverns, he seemed to traverse a great emptiness. Not one whit of the mountain around him was real to the Sight, and the unSight that had plagued him for the past weeks was fading as if the old memory of a youthful lover. Leopold did not care that his right eye was crusted over with the ichor. In fact, he was pleased to be rid of the limited and confusing perspective. Sight prevailed.

  The change had come about sometime during the previous night—after he had achieved the girl, after he’d driven hurriedly north into the forested mountains. Had it been when he’d entered the caverns, or before that, as he’d trekked through the woods with the girl over his shoulder and the muse leading the way?

  This way.

  She still led him. He trusted her implicitly, she the agent of his enlightenment. He was Chosen. He would achieve such greatness that his name would be praised throughout the ages and touted more highly than that even of Toreador. Leopold would be the Toreador—the name no longer just the label of a clan but a title, his title, and he would be the measure of all those preceding and following.

  The essence of life, of beauty… the muse purred in his ear.

  Leopold cocked his head. Strange, he thought, that as the Sight became more potent and unfettered from the old vision, he still had not viewed more fully the beauty of the muse. Brief glimpses only.

  Patience, she soothed his mind.

  His brief doubt crumbled, indeed, as he stepped into the radiant glow of his subject. The girl was where he’d left her when he’d fled deeper into the caverns at dawn. She leaned against a twelve-foot stalagmite, her hands tied behind her. She was too weak to struggle. During the night she had evacuated her bladder. The sharp odor, a milepost of the living world, drew all of Leopold’s senses into order.

  Yes… life… beauty. The siren-call of the muse’s words guided his thoughts.

  He knew there was no reason to doubt her. Hadn’t she led him to his subject? Hadn’t she brought him to this place of glorious solitude? All that remained was for her to present him with the means—the tools. At her behest, he’d left behind his hammers and chisels, instruments of unSight that they were.

  He stood before the girl. She alone was real amidst the intangible surroundings of the cavern. The Sight revealed her to him—the rich tan of her skin, like freshly tilled loam; tightly curling ringlets, like creeping vines upon the face of the earth; the angle of her head leaning limply forward, a sunflower before dawn.

  Bring her to fruition, the muse whispered.

  “But… how?” Leopold muttered. He still didn’t understand completely. How could he do what she asked?

  I will show you, said the muse, as she took him by the hand.

  Thursday, 22 July 1999, 10:04 PM

  Meadowview Lane

  Hayesburg, New York

  Ramona couldn’t pick up Tanner’s scent, but how long had he watched her, with her catching a hint of his presence only a handful of times, and most of those only when he wanted her to know he was nearby? She didn’t know what he had in mind, and she wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

  Silently, she made her way back to the house. Ramona kept seeing images of Aunt Irma’s body lying abandoned among the trees. Aunt Irma—she ain’t my aunt, Ramona reminded herself, but the pangs of conscience at leaving the body in that secluded spot, where it might not be found for several days, did not leave her. Ramona couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling of kinship betrayed, and in a way Irma was a blood relative, for Zhavon’s blood still flowed through Ramona’s body. Not to mention Irma’s own blood.

  What about all the others? Ramona grew angry with her own potential for guilt. Drinkin’ somebody’s blood don’t make ’em family—else I got a damn big family. She pushed aside these ridiculous thoughts. She couldn’t take responsibility for every mortal who stumbled into her path. Not if she wanted to survive.

  Sustenance. Nothing more.

  Though many of the scars from the morning sun remained, Ramona’s strength was mostly returned by the infusion of new blood. She slipped inside the house and found what she was looking for—the keys to the old Buick in front of Irma’s house.

  As she pulled away from the curb, she was full of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Twice, with Zhavon and then with her aunt, Ramona had lost control. The bloodlust had overwhelmed her. Only the unexpected attack had saved Zhavon. Irma hadn’t been so lucky—if being saved by that thing with the eye could be called lucky. Ramona didn’t know anything about her attacker. She couldn’t explain the unnatural, bulging eye she’d seen as she’d lain in paralyzed agony. Finding Zhavon was most important to Ramona now.

  Why? So you can kill her before somebody else does? she asked herself.

  It was a question Ramona couldn’t answer, but the same compulsion that had driven her to follow the girl, to taste her blood, drove Ramona now.

  I’ll control the hunger, she promised herself. She’d worry about the details later. First, she had to find Zhavon.

  Tanner’s words haunted her thoughts as well.

  I made you what you are.

  Gangrel.

  He’d made her a vampire. That much seemed clear. Why? Why her? And what else did he know that she needed to learn? He’d said something about a lesson. But Ramona could still feel the sting of his hand against her jaw. I ain’t about to take orders from that asshole. I never asked for this.

  But he seemed to know so much more than she did.

  Ramona pushed the idea from her mind. Zhavon. That was what she needed to concentrate on.

  He took the girl and drove north out of town. That’s what Tanner had said.

  Ramona didn’t know the roads around the area. She didn’t know what was to the north except the Adirondack Mountains, but for some reason, she had the impossible feeling that she could find Zhavon.

  Don’t ask, girl. Just go, she told herself. Thinking too much might drive the feeling away, might leave her helpless. So she turned the car north. But another thought brought her up short.

  Jen. Darnell.

  What should she do about them? They don’t need to get mixed up in this, she thought. This is my hassle, not theirs.

  But what if they were already mixed up in this? Zhavon had been missing for an entire day. Irma would’ve called the police, and in a small town like this, Ramona guessed, they wouldn’t make the distraught aunt wait long before they started looking. What if the police had searched the abandoned elementary school? It seemed an obvious place to hide.

  Ramona turned the car around as quickly as she could without seeming too reckless. It wasn’t so late that the streets were empty, and she didn’t need somebody recognizing Irma’s car with some strange person behind the wheel and calling the cops.

  Ramona felt like she was crawling through the town toward the school, but finally she arrived. From the outside, everything looked the same as she’d left it the nig
ht before.

  She made her way around behind the building and climbed through the broken window that they had found. Ramona made her way to the gym and was greeted by darkness and silence.

  The basement? she wondered, but decided she didn’t have time to hunt for her friends. “Guys, it’s me,” she called out.

  She heard them coming up the stairs— Darnell’ s light tread, Jen’ s less stealthy steps—although Ramona could tell they thought they were being silent. Darnell stepped through the doorway from the stairwell and into the gymnasium but said nothing.

  “Ramona!” Jen was relieved to see her friend. “The police were here during the day. We were afraid—”

  “Any trouble?” Ramona cut her off.

  Darnell shook his head. “They just poked around a little and left. No big deal.”

  Ramona knew it was more serious than that. All three were aware of how vulnerable they were during the day. Direct sunlight or no, there was no guarantee that any of them could defend themselves while the daytime sleep clung to them. Even a small group of mortals could prove fatal. But Ramona didn’t want to get into all that.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Jen started forward but then stopped when she saw that Darnell hadn’t moved.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  Wherever he’s taken Zhavon, Ramona almost said, but she stopped herself, because she could see the challenge in Darnell’s eyes. What would he do if he knew the reason Ramona was so often away was a mortal?

  Ramona didn’t have time to answer Darnell’s question.

  “My God!” said Jen, as she forgot her hesitation and crossed the gym to Ramona. “What happened?” She reached toward the large bloody splotch on Ramona’s chest but stopped just short of touching the stain. Not realizing she did so, Jen sniffed at the blood from a distance.

  “Some bastard drove a stake through my heart, and I’m goin’ after him,” Ramona said, telling the truth without being completely truthful. “We don’t have a lot of time.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and strode out of the school. Jen’s footsteps were right behind her from the start. Darnell was more reluctant, but he caught up with them by the time they reached the old Buick.

  As they drove away from the school and the town, Darnell in the front next to Ramona, Jen in the backseat, Ramona told them how her attacker had snuck up behind her and jabbed the stake through her body. She told how she’d watched helplessly as he left, and of the bulging, oozing eye. That interested them enough that she sidestepped any mention of Zhavon or of Tanner.

  “A stake through your heart?” Jen asked incredulously. “And you got it out? You… lived?”

  “I’m here, ain’t I?” said Ramona.

  She was uncomfortable with misleading her friends, but she was more uncomfortable with the idea of telling them. Why, she didn’t know. Something about both Zhavon and Tanner was too personal, like Ramona’s own failure to control herself in the presence of blood. Her thoughts were too confused to expose to anyone else yet. Darnell and Jen didn’t need to know, she decided without managing to ease her conscience.

  “What’s this?” Jen asked from the back seat.

  “What?” Ramona asked, confused. She felt fingers touching her ear and jerked her head away from Jen. “What are you doin’?” Ramona raised her own hand to her ear. It wasn’t bleeding or anything. Then she felt what Jen must’ve noticed. The tip of Ramona’s ear, instead of rounded as it should’ve been, rose to a point. The back edge, covered with short, thick hair, curled over a bit— like an animal’s.

  “What the…?” Ramona felt her left ear. It was the same as the right.

  “Ramona?” Jen asked nervously. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She could feel Darnell staring at her from the passenger’s seat.

  He’d said very little since they’d gotten in the car, busying himself instead with drumming his fingers on the door or shuffling his feet as he’d listened to Ramona. He was staring at her still, at her ear, but his mind, as usual, pressed on to pragmatic matters. “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked.

  Ramona’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. His question was another that she was trying not to think about. Last night, she’d made her way almost directly to the house where Zhavon was staying, even though Ramona had never been there or even seen it before. Tonight, she drove along unfamiliar roads. She turned when it seemed the right thing to do. “Yeah,” she said, “I know.”

  “What’s happening to you?” Jen whispered, but the words were like thunder to Ramona’s primed senses.

  She looked over her shoulder at her female companion, then at Darnell. The same question was unspoken on his lips. This time, Ramona answered with complete honesty. “I wish to God I knew,” she said, unable to keep the uncertainty and fear from creeping into her voice.

  They rode in silence for the next half hour. Midnight passed. Ramona watched the road but tried not to think about it. Picking the turns seemed easier if she didn’t pay too much attention. When she consciously tried to figure out where she was going, doubts crept into her thoughts. She became convinced that she was leading her friends on a hopeless, wild goose chase, that at any moment, they would demand she turn the car around and take them back to Hayesburg, back to the relative safety of the school. After all, it had been in an equally remote area that Eddie had met his end. She cringed at the thought that she might be taking them all to their Final Deaths.

  She tried to avoid those thoughts, to shove them back down whenever they surfaced. She thought instead of Zhavon—of the taste of her sweat and blood, of the scent of fear and anticipation, of how natural it had felt to hold the girl tight, to feel the ripple of her shoulder blades, the arch of her back.

  Other thoughts intruded as well.

  I made you what you are.

  Ramona glanced out the window, saw the increasingly infrequent signs of civilization, and she wondered how Tanner had secretly followed her for so long. He’d obviously followed her in New York City, and from the city. Had he followed her before that? If he really had made her what she was, that meant he’d been in L.A. On the night of the change, he was the one who’d taken her from behind, who’d forced her head back and…

  She shook her head to clear her mind. Where you goin’, girl? she asked herself. But hadn’t that always been the question?

  Without warning, Ramona slammed on the brakes. Jen crashed into the back of the front seats. Darnell threw up his hands against the dashboard. Just as suddenly, Ramona threw the Buick into reverse and punched the accelerator. Jen toppled over onto the floorboard.

  “What the hell…?” Darnell fought to an upright position.

  The car zigzagged, almost out of control but not quite, as Ramona sped backwards down the narrow country road. The reverse lights threw all the rest of the night into pitch darkness.

  “Ramona…!” Jen was climbing up the back of the driver’s seat.

  Ramona slammed on the brakes again. The car skidded backwards to a halt. Jen and Darnell were thrown against their seats. Ramona flicked off the lights, stared hard for a moment out the window as her friends regained their composure.

  “There,” she said, and threw the Buick into gear again.

  She turned off the pavement and onto an uneven dirt road. Ramona hadn’t really been four-wheeling before, and she suspected that the Buick hadn’t either. Even in the darkness, she could see farther without the headlights, but as the car picked up speed, each sharp turn became that much more difficult to handle. They bounced over washed-out gullies. Bushes and tree branches lashed the car.

  “What the hell are you doin’?” Darnell shouted.

  Ramona didn’t take her eyes off the dirt track. Another curve sent them fish-tailing. The back end of the car slid around, bounced off a tree, but Ramona kept going. She had the steering wheel to hold onto. Jen and Darnell ricocheted off the sides and roof of the car.

  Ramona didn’t fight the compulsion tha
t propelled her and her friends along this suicidal course. What’s the point? she wondered. She hadn’t been able to stay away from Zhavon, or to keep herself from feeding on first Zhavon and then Aunt Irma. Why should this be any different? In that way, she, like Darnell and Jen, was merely along for the ride.

  The Buick clipped another tree. One of the extinguished headlights shattered. A moment later, a low-hanging branch smashed into the windshield. Jagged cracks, like bolts of lightning, shot across the glass.

  “Ramona!” Darnell was inches from her face, was yelling at the top of his lungs.

  She slammed on the brakes again. The car skidded one way then the other, then, amidst a cloud of dust, came to a halt.

  Silence.

  Ramona stared straight ahead.

  In the backseat, Jen was reverting to mortal ways—hyperventilating.

  Darnell eyed Ramona angrily. “What the fuck are you doin’?”

  Ramona stared at the car in front of them, the car that the Buick had stopped only two or three feet shy of—a dark sedan with a Georgia license plate.

  Darnell saw the car now. He blinked, unbelieving. “I’ll be damned.”

  Friday, 23 July 1999, 12:45 AM

  Upstate New York

  Patience.

  But how could Leopold be patient in the face of a discovery that was the culmination of so many years of life and unlife?

  Patience… or you will break her, the muse warned.

  It was true, he realized distractedly. The girl passed easily out of consciousness, and though he didn’t need her awake, the fruits of his labor were more sweet that way.

  Does her fragility detract from her perfection as a subject? Leopold wondered.

  He took a step back and focused the Sight fully upon her. As he did so, his doubts were soothed, like the cries of an infant appeased by mother’s milk. Already, this work transcended by far anything he had ever before attempted, and most tellingly he was no longer fumbling along in a clumsy attempt to please the muse. This time, she had taken him by the hand, and he’d seen the truth. He’d felt it. It had coursed through his body more sweetly than any mortal’s blood.