The essence of life. The essence of beauty.
They were his! And woe to every Toreador who had ever belittled him.
Never again! he vowed. They will bow down before me!
Patience, the muse reminded him, and brought him back to the task at hand.
“Yes.” His whisper rose and echoed throughout the cavern.
The sound seemed to revive the girl slightly. Leopold leaned close to her. She filled his Sight. Once again, he was intent only upon revealing the essence of truth.
Friday, 23 July 1999, 1:08 AM
Upstate New York
From the car, Ramona let Darnell take the lead. Not that any of them, even Jen, couldn’t have followed the trail. The kidnapper had made no apparent effort to conceal his passing. More telling even than his heavy footprints and the bent and broken branches was the path of milky green slime that led from the car and formed an intermittent trail into the woods.
Darnell sniffed at one of the piles of glop. “Fucker might as well’ve left a trail of used rubbers.”
While Darnell led them forward, Ramona looked constantly from one side to the other. She peered into the thick underbrush.
Jen, behind Ramona, noticed. “Could there be—”
“No.” Ramona knew the question that was on Jen’s mind, could tell by how extra skittery Jen was and by the smell of fear that surrounded her.
“Do you think he left a false trail?” Jen asked, embarrassed by the unspoken rebuke and trying to cover the question she’d set out to ask.
Ramona shook her head. “He wasn’t the sneakin’ type.”
“Then how’d he sneak up on you?” Jen asked.
Ramona didn’t answer at first. She opened her mouth to tell them everything—about Zhavon, Tanner—but then closed it without saying a word.
They got no need to know, she thought.
Darnell seemed to have latched on to the idea of finding whoever had hurt Ramona and kicking his ass, and Jen would go along. Why confuse the issue? There’d be time to tell more later.
“I was busy,” she finally said without turning to meet Jen’s eyes. “Keep a close watch,” Ramona added, and she could hear Jen stiffen. It wasn’t a false trail Jen was worried about, Ramona knew. It was the werewolf—werewolves; there was more than one vampire, after all—and what had happened to Eddie.
Ramona had other concerns. She didn’t pretend, to herself or to the others, that she wasn’t scared of those monsters. Anybody’d be crazy not to be. But worrying wouldn’t save her neck. Ramona knew that out here, away from the city and even away from small towns, if there were werewolves, she and her friends would be in deep shit. But there was nothing they could do except deal with it if it happened. That or run back to the city. And leave Zhavon.
Ramona wasn’t ready to do that.
It wasn’t, however, those particular creatures, blurs of claws and snarling death, that Ramona watched for. She did have the uneasy feeling that she was being watched—that same feeling she’d had quite often recently, that same feeling that Zhavon must’ve felt when Ramona had crouched outside the girl’s bedroom window. Ramona kept pace with Darnell, but her attention was set on the shadows among the trees.
Tanner.
She knew he was out there somewhere.
Is he? she wondered, beginning to doubt her intuition. We drove for a couple hours. Could he have kept up for that long?
The forest loomed impenetrably dark all around. The strange night sounds of the wilderness made every shadow come alive. Each insect’s chirp, every leaf that quivered in the breeze, also served to remind Ramona of what had happened to her ears. They twitched; they zeroed in on every sound. They were the ears, not of a person, but of a beast.
Just as her feet were no longer human feet.
You gave in to the Beast.
Those were Tanner’s words.
I made you what you are.
Tanner, who was so damned sure of himself. He seemed to know everything, could probably do anything.
I could’ve done it, Ramona decided at last. I could’ve chased a car for a hundred miles and never been seen. So surely Tanner could. How far had he followed her without her knowing? All the way from L.A.?
Darnell paused to sniff at the newest pile of slime. Maybe it was something about the quality of the minimal moonlight, or the effect as the light filtered through the forest canopy, but Ramona was fairly certain that many of the piles of glop had been different colors—some greenish like the first few, others much darker, almost black, some more translucent, and still others a sickly green and dark crimson, like a mix of blood and thick bile. But the foul scent was the same. Darnell confirmed that with a distasteful wrinkle of his nose.
From the car, the trail had led steadily upward into the foothills of the Adirondacks. The climb would’ve been tiring for a mortal, but Ramona was flushed with the vigor of fresh blood and with the knowledge that, somewhere ahead, Zhavon was in trouble.
That girl has the worst luck, thought Ramona. Would any of this have happened, she wondered, if Zhavon’s mother hadn’t tried to protect her daughter by sending her away from the city?
Or if I hadn’t found her?
Ramona felt the weight of guilt settling onto her shoulders, but only for a moment. But she would’ve been killed that night she was attacked if I hadn’t been there, she reminded herself. Ramona deftly shifted the blame back a step further to the cause of her own problems and, by extension, most of Zhavon’s:
Tanner. He made me what I am—or so he says. He set all this in motion.
Ramona kept searching the deep shadows for his shape. She tried to ignore the smell of the putrid slime and sought that other familiar scent, but she didn’t find it.
Is he out there?
Darnell stopped as they reached a ridge crest. He paused only briefly to sniff at the air and at the ground, then gestured down the opposite slope. “This way. We’re gettin’ closer.”
He seemed very intent on catching his prey. Ramona wasn’t sure if he was driven by the desire to avenge the injury to his friend, or if the hunt had taken hold of Darnell like sometimes it did her.
“How do you know we’re closer?” Jen asked.
Darnell stood upright very stiffly and gnashed his teeth together. From many instances before, Ramona recognized his disgusted reaction to any of many things that Jen said or did. This time, however, he didn’t launch into a rant. Maybe the hunt had gotten the best of him, or maybe away from the familiar landscape of the city he wasn’t so sure of himself.
Whatever the reason, he spoke in a low, if strained, voice to Jen: “The scent is fresher here. We’re gainin’ on him. Can’t you tell?”
Jen scratched around at the dirt while not meeting his gaze. “We’ve come a pretty long way, and dawn’s getting close. Shouldn’t we get back… to shelter?”
We’ve got all the shelter we need right here under our feet, Ramona thought, but she wasn’t paying full attention to Jen.
Through a break in the trees, a long meadow was visible below to the west. The meadow ended in a steep cliff wall, and near one edge, partially hidden by a small stand of tenacious pines, was the opening to a cave.
“There,” said Ramona.
“Huh?”
“What?”
“There.” Ramona pointed at the cave. Darnell and Jen came to her side, followed the line of her finger. “That’s where he is.” Her finger began to quiver.
That’s where Zhavon is.
“Why do you—”
Darnell cut Jen off. “You’re sure?” he asked.
Ramona nodded. “There’s a mortal with him. I wanna get her out of there.”
She didn’t look over at Darnell, but she could feel his pointed stare boring into her.
Haven’t you felt it, Darnell? she suddenly wanted to scream. Haven’t you felt the old life—the real life—slipping away, bit by bit with every mortal you feed on? We’re losing… something. And she still has it! I can’t let her go.
But Ramona stared ahead at the cave opening and said nothing.
“Let’s go,” said Darnell at last.
Jen was shuffling around nervously. “But what about the sunrise?”
Now it was Ramona who spoke through clenched teeth: “I won’t let the sun get you.”
The fair-skinned vampire wasn’t relieved in the least by what Ramona had in mind, but Jen could tell that this was not a time to argue. She followed grudgingly as Darnell led the trio down the slope.
Sure enough, the trail of eye-ooze and bent shrubs led down to the meadow and straight across it.
“Wait here while I follow the trail across,” Darnell said. “If it does lead to the cave, I’ll signal, and you circle around.”
“Fuck that,” said Ramona and followed right behind him.
Jen, not about to be left by herself, followed too.
The fieldgrass, weeds, and wildflowers in the meadow stood taller than a person. Even without the ichor from the eye, Darnell could easily have followed the trail of broken stalks. As the three made their way across the meadow, Jen was constantly glancing back over her shoulder at the eastern horizon. As a result, and more irritating than her mere nervousness, which Ramona was used to by now, Jen kept stepping on Ramona’s heels, or stumbling and making much more noise than Ramona and Darnell combined.
After the third or fourth time she was stepped on, Ramona whirled and growled. “We’ll kill him, and we’ll stay in the cave,” she whispered sharply. “So watch where you’re goin’!”
Jen, despite her embarrassment, seemed somewhat relieved, and they made their way to the cave entrance without further incident. The black hole in the cliffside was larger than Ramona had realized from the ridge. Probably a large car, if it got this far, could fit through the opening. Beneath the pines that had forced their way up through the rocky soil, the wary trio paused and cocked their heads at the sound of a distant voice. Ramona could feel how close they were. She had to restrain herself from rushing ahead to Zhavon’s rescue. They slipped silently through the opening.
The cave narrowed almost immediately, forcing them into single file, Darnell, Ramona, then Jen. They stepped carefully, and even Jen avoided kicking loose rocks. Probably the sound of dripping water—there must be an underground stream somewhere, Ramona thought—covered whatever slight sounds they made, but they said nothing to one another. Whether it was because of the acoustics of the cave or the potency of their hearing, the sound of that voice reached them every so often. And once, only once, Ramona heard a pained moan—a voice different from the other, a voice she recognized.
Zhavon!
Ramona again fought back the impulse to run headlong to her. We’ll do this together, Ramona told herself. She’d brought her friends. It’d be stupid to run off by herself. But now, with every step, she waited for another moan, for Zhavon to call out. If Darnell or Jen heard the second voice, neither reacted.
Hold on, Ramona silently urged Zhavon. Hold on.
She thought of what this must be like for the mortal. Ramona and her friends, and the kidnapper, she guessed, could see fairly well in the dark, even the pitch black of the cave. Zhavon, though, would be blind, surrounded by the darkness, the touch of the kidnapper’s hands, his fangs….
Pure rage began to well up within Ramona. She felt her own fangs slide down. Besides stabbing her with a stake, this guy had stolen her mortal.
His ass is mine! Ramona crowded Darnell, silently urged him forward.
Within a few steps, the passage opened into a much larger chamber. The ceiling rose beyond sight into the darkness.
“Yes,” came the voice from ahead, much more clearly now. “Yes, my dear.”
Darnell grabbed Ramona as she darted past him. He shook her by the shoulders, his eyes rebuking her, demanding caution. Ramona threw off his hands but held her place. He was right, she knew.
Together, the trio edged their way left along the cave wall. The floor was a maze of stalagmites. Slowly, Darnell led them closer to the voice.
“There… no, not quite… ah, yes.”
Ramona stopped so suddenly that Jen almost ran into her again.
Blood. Ramona smelled blood. Zhavon’s blood.
Bloodlust mingled with rage, urged Ramona forward, but she held back. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep, calming breath—a throwback to her mortal days. Hold on, she thought again, but this time the words were for her own benefit more than Zhavon’s.
Darnell raised a hand to his friends, urged them to greater caution. With her next step Ramona could see, around the edge of the stalagmite in front of her, the kidnapper. His back was to them. She vaguely recognized the unkempt hair, the threadbare sweater and the old, dirty workpants. Her glimpse of him before had been so brief.
Darnell held his position, motioned for Ramona to move around farther to the left. She crept silently to the spot he’d indicated. Still, she was behind the kidnapper. He seemed to have no idea anyone was in the cave besides himself and—
He stepped back and turned just enough that his eye was visible to Ramona—that enlarged, throbbing eye. Thick trails of slime had drained down his face and body. The glop around the edges of the eye fizzled and popped as Ramona watched.
Then he took another step back and revealed…
Zhavon?
Ramona had expected it to be her bound to the large stalagmite, but instead there was some… Ramona wasn’t sure what it was. It was vaguely human-shaped—torso, head, arms, legs. It had hair on its head and its groin, and what looked like one nippled breast, but the rest of the body was hideously deformed. The arms and fingers were bent—not broken, but twisted like clay or hot plastic—in impossible directions and—could it be?—fused somehow to the stone monolith that the creature was tied to at the ankles. As Ramona realized more fully that she was looking at a human form, she saw that the chest cavity was exposed. In view were a framework of ribs, lungs slowly taking in and expelling air… and a beating heart.
My God! Ramona recoiled in disgust. How can it be alive?
She looked away from the disfigured face, stared instead at the rope around the ankles, at the relatively untouched feet, at the discarded clothing around the feet on the cave floor.
And Ramona recognized the clothes.
She took another step back, unable to absorb what she saw.
The kidnapper, his gruesome eye focused only on the creature before him, stepped forward again. Unaware of his hidden audience, he reached a hand out to his captive’s face. The creature instinctively flinched but was too weak and disoriented to resist effectively. Where the kidnapper’s hand touched, the cheek sagged.
It’s melting! Ramona had never seen anything like this—skin melting like wax!
The torturer drew the flesh out with his hand in a way that no skin should ever stretch. He touched the elongated cheek to the creature’s shoulder, rubbed gently as skin melded to skin. He held the spot for a moment, then patted it gently. And all the while he touched her, the eye glowed an unnatural saffron, like a jaundiced, rotting egg.
“Yes, she is beautiful,” he said, as if answering a question. He leaned forward and gently kissed the creature on its newly shaped cheek. “You approach perfection, my lovely. You will make me the toast of every Toreador.” A giddy laugh wracked his emaciated frame. The glow receded from the eye again. “I will be the Toreador of Toreadors!”
Toreador? Ramona’s mind was reeling. She couldn’t make sense of what she saw or heard.
But then the creature opened its mouth—the portion that would still open—and a low, pained groan escaped its lips.
The sound drove Ramona to her knees, confirmed exactly what she’d been trying to tell herself was not, could not, be true.
Another agonized moan.
The scent of blood, the clothes, the voice…
Zhavon!
Ramona’s vision began to cloud over with red bloodrage. Her fingers curled into claws matching those on her feet. She gla
nced over at Darnell. He seemed too calm. He was gesturing to her. What was he trying to tell her? Then she understood. She should go high. He’d hit low.
No sooner had she realized his meaning than she nodded once and then sprang. Darnell leapt at the same instant.
Ramona was going for the eye. As she soared through the damp cavern air, she could already feel her claw skewering the eye. She could see it pop from the socket, trailing a stream of gore and blood.
But the future she foresaw was not to be.
Darnell’s low, less-arched dive brought him to the kidnapper a split second before Ramona. Darnell slammed into the Toreador’s knees and he lurched violently.
Ramona landed on his shoulders, and the slash of her claw raked across the kidnapper’s face—a fraction of an inch to the right of the eye. She caught a nostril, and pulled away a sizeable hunk of his nose, but his initial stumble was enough to save the eye.
All three landed roughly on the ground, Ramona on top of the Toreador, Darnell rolling away and quickly on his feet again, ready to strike.
“What…? Who are…?” The Toreador’s cries of distress were cut off as Ramona wrestled him onto his back.
As she raised a hand for a blow that might well take his head off, he bared his fangs and hissed like the cornered animal that he was.
Ramona knew for certain that he was one of them.
At that same instant, however, the deformed eye seemed to bulge even larger and glowed a sickly yellow. Suddenly, the fizzing ichor around the eye sprayed into Ramona’s face. She reflexively closed her eyes, but the slime burned her skin like acid, and where it struck her already blistered skin, she felt it burning through to the bone.
Ramona threw her hands to her face, burning them too, and rolled away, screaming in pain.
“Ramona!” Jen, seeing her friend hurt, sprang into action now. Ramona opened her eyes in time to see both Jen and Darnell charge the kidnapper, who was quickly on his feet.
Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 11