The rat nodded. Apparently the matter was settled, as far as he was concerned. He edged closer to Ramona, there being no further cause for confrontation.
“What is your name, Tanner-childe?” he asked in a way that was again mostly trusting and not unfriendly.
“Ramona.” She told him without really thinking. She didn’t think she had anything to fear from him, as long as he stayed away from the grave.
The rat waited for a moment, as if he expected her to say something more, but Ramona was silent. So he straightened a bit and spoke: “I am Ratface. I know all the towns and cities of New York. I am smarter than the lupines, swifter than the Sabbat.”
Still he looked at Ramona, as if she might have something else to say.
“That’s nice,” she said at last. I didn’t ask for your freakin’ life story.
They stood silently for a few minutes. Ramona watched to make sure he stayed away from the grave. Ratface sniffed around Table Rock, pointedly taking interest in everything but the grave.
“Your name is Ratface?” she asked eventually, uncomfortable with the silence, which was broken only by Ratface’s gentle snorting as he rooted around. “Your mama have a burr up her butt?”
Ratface paused in his sniffing. He looked up with what might have been a glint of sadness in his eyes. “It is what I am called…now.”
She didn’t need to ask why he was called that. “I wouldn’t let nobody call me Ratface,” said Ramona. She couldn’t help glancing down at her own monstrous feet, and thinking of her ears, and Tanner’s eyes.
What’ll they be callin’ me? she wondered. Was she any better off than this disgusting Ratface? Was she going to keep changing and end up little more than an animal? Ramona had always thought of the night she became a vampire as the change, but it seemed more and more like she wasn’t done changing yet.
Tanner’s got some shit to answer for, she decided.
And she could faintly hear the voice from before: There is strength in his blood.
Ramona shook her head, shook the voice away. She watched Ratface sniffing the large rock, nearby trees, the air. Finally, he climbed up onto the rock, turned three tight circles in one spot, and then sat. He continued to sniff at the air occasionally, but for the most part seemed to wait, without need for further conversation. His presence bothered Ramona. She would’ve preferred to be alone at the graveside and to sort through her grief privately, or perhaps to figure out why the great emptiness inside her so outweighed her sense of loss. She couldn’t understand why she felt so distanced from Zhavon’s death. But every time Ramona started to get hold of one of her tangled emotions, she was invariably distracted by Ratface as he fidgeted and grunted up on the rock. Her irritation with him, however, was mixed with a sense of relief, strangely enough. She realized chances were that nothing but time would untangle her feelings, and for now there was nothing to be gained by wallowing in pity and doubt, no matter how great the urge to do just that.
“Tanner sent you?” she asked Ratface.
“Yes. He has called a Gather.”
“Gather? Gathering of what?”
Ratface regarded her for a moment. Puzzlement crossed his features briefly, but then he nodded as if he’d answered some question for himself. “Of the Gangrel,” he said. “There are many not far away, guarding Buffalo. Many will come. Maybe even Xaviar himself.”
Gangrel.
Ratface’s words sparked memories in Ramona, brought back what Tanner had said to her the night before: Know that you are Gangrel.
And now Ratface used the same word. A Gather of the Gangrel.
“But what is Gangrel?” Ramona asked herself, not meaning to speak the words aloud.
Ratface chuckled again; it was the sound of an old lady trying to spit. “Gangrel is our clan. I am Gangrel. You are Gangrel. Has Tanner not taught you?”
Know that you are Gangrel, Tanner had said. And that I am your sire. I made you what you are.
“He’s my sire,” Ramona mumbled.
“Yes,” Ratface nodded. “And you—his childe.”
Ramona gave Ratface a hard look, squinted suspiciously. “Are you his childe?”
Ratface’s eyes bulged even larger. “Me? Tanner’s childe?” He laughed quite loudly this time. “Heavens no. And I wouldn’t let him hear you suggest that. He’s a picky one, Tanner is.”
“He’s an asshole is what he is.”
Ratface started to laugh again but caught himself. He glanced around nervously, as if Tanner might be listening from behind the nearest tree. “I’d be careful if I were you,” he said. His speech was more normal now; his initial me-Tarzan-you-Jane pidgin had given way to complete sentences, and he was proving talkative. “Tanner has Embraced before, but seldom revealed himself, as far as I know.”
“Embraced?” Ramona asked. Everything Ratface said was like a riddle.
“Embraced. Taken a mortal to be one of us.” Ratface was still nervous. He spoke quietly and looked around constantly. “He has Embraced others, but mostly he has left them to flounder on their own, and they perished. He must think highly of you to have revealed himself to you.”
“Well, I don’t think too much of him,” Ramona grumbled. She could see that Ratface was amused by what she said, but he was just as obviously afraid of Tanner.
Ratface looked around again and then practically whispered to her: “Do you know why he called the Gather?”
Ratface clearly was asking about something he thought he shouldn’t be. He was hunched down like he expected to be struck for uttering the words. Ramona, remembering how Tanner had hit her without warning, supposed that Ratface’s manner wasn’t all that unreasonable. She was tempted to tell him everything she knew, just on the off-chance that doing so would piss off Tanner. He deserved it. But the truth was that she didn’t have a very clear of what had happened herself. In the end, she rejected candor for shock value.
“Because he was afraid.”
Ratface’s eyes grew wide again. Ramona suppressed her own laughter this time. That wasn’t what Ratface was expecting to hear, but it was true. She had seen the fear in Tanner’s face. She didn’t feel the need to go into more detail—to tell that she’d been scared shitless as well, and that if Tanner hadn’t hustled her out of the cave, she too, like Jen and probably Darnell, would be dead. She didn’t know what to say about the Toreador. She didn’t have much to compare it to. Better to let Tanner tell the story when he got back. But Ramona still had hundreds of questions, and Ratface was proving more forthcoming than Tanner ever had.
“So Gangrel is one clan,” she said. “Is Sabbat another?”
Ratface shook his head. “Not exactly. Gangrel is one clan of several that make up the Camarilla—the alliance that opposes the Sabbat.”
Ramona’s head was spinning. Every answer Ratface gave her created two more questions. “Jesus—sire, Embrace, Gangrel, Camarilla, Sabbat—I need a fuckin’ dictionary.”
Ratface continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “The Sabbat are…monsters. Very dangerous. They’d destroy the Masquerade if it were up to them.”
“Masquerade?”
Ratface nodded vigorously. “Before, when you were a mortal, did you know there were those like us living among you?”
Ramona shook her head. “Not really. I mean… they were just movies and stories and shit.”
“Exactly. That’s the Masquerade. If the mortals knew about us, they’d hunt us down and that would be the end.”
Ramona thought about that for a moment. She and her friends had almost always tried to lie low and not to attract a lot of attention. It just seemed safer that way. They’d mostly tried to hide from other vampires as well as from mortals. It made sense… unless the Sabbat thought there were enough vampires to take on the mortals. But if that were the case, why weren’t vampires in charge of everything already?
“Shh.” Ratface roused her from thought. His enlarged, rodent ears were pricked up. “That way. Someone’s coming.”
“You always were tough to sneak up on,” said a voice from the direction Ratface was peering. A moment later, a tall man strode out of the darkness and over to Table Rock.
He was taller than Ramona and Ratface, and wore sturdy hiking boots, worn jeans, and a heavy corduroy shirt, all dirty and dusty from long use but not tattered like their own clothes. The newcomer drew himself up before them. He picked a twig out of his long and unruly hair and flicked the tiny stick into the woods.
“I am Brant Edmonson,” he said. “When the mortals fought among themselves for the western lands, I prowled the trails. When Elijah the Cruel was lost to the Beast, I was with mighty Xaviar as we put him down.”
Ratface nodded respectfully. Ramona was caught off guard by what she considered the awkwardness of the introduction.
“I am Ratface,” said Ratface. “I know all the towns and cities of New York. I am smarter than the lupines, swifter than the Sabbat.”
Ramona listened to the words she’d heard before. She didn’t know what to say to this Brant Edmonson. Ratface seemed to have his little spiel planned already. The new guy didn’t seem to be a threat. His sudden appearance hadn’t alarmed Ratface, and Ratface was skittish if anything. This close, Ramona could smell that Edmonson was like them, that the blood didn’t flow naturally through his body, that it was really somebody else’s blood in the first place. Without thinking, Ramona reached out and shook Brant Edmonson’s hand. It seemed like the uptight, corncob-up-your-ass kind of thing that these folks might do.
“I’m Ramona,” she said, then stepped back.
Brant seemed surprised and gave her a funny look, like he thought he was eating sugar but tasted salt instead. The funny look slowly faded though, and Ramona realized that his eyes weren’t focused on her anymore. He was looking over her shoulder. Ratface too, she saw, was looking to the other side of Table Rock. His ears were pricked up again.
Ramona turned and saw the dark figure across the clearing.
A throaty growl rumbled through the night, but the rumble was actually words: “I am Stalker-in-the-Woods. I do not run from the mortals. I catch their bullets in my teeth. I drink their blood and grind their bones to dust.”
Ramona edged away so that she wasn’t closest as the newest Gangrel stepped onto Table Rock. Stalker-in-the-Woods was hunched over, but still his shoulders were more than a foot higher than Ramona’s head. His wild mane of hair covered him almost like a cloak; he wore no other clothes. He was all gaunt muscle and scars.
Edmonson stepped forward. He stood with his chin raised defiantly.
“I am Brant Edmonson. When the mortals fought among themselves for the western lands, I prowled the trails. When Elijah the Cruel was lost to the Beast, I was with mighty Xaviar as we put him down.”
From where he stood, Ratface spoke his introduction as he had twice already. Stalker-in-the-Woods looked at him, and Ratface looked away, not meeting the creature’s gaze.
The attention of Stalker-in-the-Woods shifted to Ramona. He stepped closer. Ramona suddenly felt her mouth as dry as if she hadn’t drunk blood in a year. Stalker-in-the-Woods moved closer still. His eyes were yellowed and bloodshot, his face black with dried blood.
Ramona started to open her mouth, but no words came to her tongue. She wasn’t tempted to shake hands with Stalker-in-the-Woods.
“She is Ramona Tanner-childe,” said Ratface, at last.
Stalker-in-the-Woods ignored Ratface and stared at Ramona until she looked away. This seemed to satisfy him. He turned and moved toward Brant until the two were only a few feet apart. Edmonson held his ground. His hands were relaxed at his sides.
Ramona almost jumped when she felt Ratface next to her. She hadn’t heard him move. His hand was on her elbow and he was ushering her to the side.
“He’s a mean one,” Ratface whispered. “We’d do best to stay out of his way.”
Edmonson didn’t share Ratface’s opinion. He stood toe-to-toe with Stalker-in-the-Woods, and to Ramona’s surprise, the smaller, more human Gangrel smiled.
There was no warning of Stalker-in-the-Woods’s attack. He sprang with a ferocious snarl before Ramona even knew he was moving. Brant took the full brunt of the lunge. Stalker-in-the-Woods bowled him over backwards. The fight was quick and one-sided, but not in the way Ramona had expected in that first instant.
Edmonson went down under his larger opponent but was not surprised. He rolled as he landed, shifting his weight so that Stalker-in-the-Woods was caught off balance and tumbled off. Before the dust kicked up by Stalker-in-the-Woods’s lunge had settled, it was over. Edmonson knelt by his prone attacker’s side, one razor-sharp claw barely piercing the flesh of Stalker-in-the-Woods’s neck. If the larger Gangrel so much as moved, Brant could rip his throat out with the flick of a wrist.
The hard stares of the two combatants met, and an unspoken acknowledgement passed between them. Brant withdrew his claw and stood, never taking his eyes from Stalker-in-the-Woods.
Ramona felt sharp pain in her hands and looked down to realize that she had dug her fingernails—her claws—deep into her palms. She watched Stalker-in-the-Woods, expecting him any second to leap up and fling himself at Edmonson again. But Stalker-in-the-Woods climbed slowly to his feet. He did not dust himself off; he did not speak. He stalked slowly and silently away into the darkness.
Ramona briefly felt the urge to taunt him as he left, but she knew that she wasn’t the one who’d defeated him. He wasn’t somebody she needed to antagonize. Probably he could make quick work of her, like she’d thought he was going to of Brant.
Edmonson was not taunting Stalker-in-the-Woods, but neither did he seem particularly worried. Unlike Ramona and Ratface, who were glancing nervously toward the deepest shadows every few seconds, he looked as if nothing had happened. The only difference was that now the dust on his clothes was fresher and billowed into small clouds when he crossed his arms.
“So you’re Tanner’s childe,” Brant said.
Ramona nodded.
“I’ve learned a lot from Tanner,” he added.
“Wish I could say the same,” Ramona muttered without thinking, then wished she hadn’t said it.
To her relief, Edmonson smiled, and not nervously like Ratface when she’d criticized Tanner earlier. She saw no fear of Tanner in Brant’s eyes; she saw no fear of anything.
“Tanner is a good teacher,” said Brant, “in his own time.”
In his own time. His words reminded Ramona of something he’d said earlier. When the mortals fought among themselves for the western lands, I prowled the trails. The western lands—did he mean the West-west? Cowboys-and-Indians West? It sure sounded like that to Ramona. But that would make him over a hundred years old! No wonder they treated her like such a baby. She wanted to ask, but she didn’t know if she should. There seemed to be strange customs among these Gangrel. First, the stiff, formal sort of introductions—it seemed very important to them to announce who they were, what they’d done. Second, the fight that had begun and ended in two blinks of an eye. That she thought she understood. She’d seen turf wars in L.A. Edmonson had made it clear that he stood above Stalker-in-the-Woods. But clear for how long? Ramona wondered. She kept glancing over in the direction he had gone.
Saturday, 24 July 1999, 3:32 AM
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
There was no fighting the swirling darkness. It pulled Johnston down, and he was mildly surprised when he eventually found himself again. His precarious time-sense was completely subsumed beneath the burgeoning perspective that dominated his awareness, and much to Johnston’s dismay, this new perspective was as fractious and chaotic as his own was orderly. He was assailed by whirling streams of contradictory thoughts, fears, needs.
Johnston sensed a consciousness that he should have been able to wrest under his control, but the consciousness was bolstered, augmented. It was slippery and strong, and before he knew it, Johnston felt tendrils of personality coiling around hi
m. Frantically, he extracted himself from the entangling psyche. He’d recovered from his disorientation just enough to pull back. The tendrils snaked after him, but Johnston remained beyond them. With great effort, he closed himself to the maddening consciousness—to the mad consciousness, he realized—by latching onto a distant sensation, tangible evidence of his own identity. He did not see the quill, but he felt it in his fingers—the smooth, gently curving barrel; the downy plume. It was inextricably linked to who he was, to the ritual he performed, and it was his anchor amidst the raging storm, his shield against the other.
Having shored up his sense of his own consciousness and held the cyclone of the other at bay, Johnston reached out again to that perspective. He searched for sensory stimuli, for context to the madness. He searched thoroughly but quickly. His defenses appeared firm, but he might or might not have warning if they gave way. If that happened, he would be swept away by the storm.
The vision formed quickly, forcefully, and for a moment it threatened to pull Johnston back into the madness. But he was steadfast in his resolve. His finger stroked the quill. He distractedly worried that he might damage the instrument, but the alternative was far more ominous.
Johnston found himself (not himself, the other) in an open space—dark, damp, cool. Through non-existent light, he saw insubstantial walls, shimmering formations of rock, limestone. The surreal surroundings faded almost completely from view, then returned to partial reality. Johnston felt as if he was real (not he, the other), but that the parameters of the environs danced temperamentally through ever-shifting phases.
Then the hands reached forward, his hands (the other’s hands), and took hold of that alone which, except for the hands themselves, was real and substantial—a young black man; Kindred, judging from the exposed fangs. Exposed because the man’s lower jaw was missing. No, not missing, Johnston realized, but stretched impossibly far, so that it hung down below the man’s knees. The Kindred’s tongue was forked, not once but perhaps a half dozen times, and each of the resulting strands of flesh wagged and squirmed, giving the appearance that somehow the man had unhinged his jaw and was swallowing a miniature head of Medusa. His eyes rolled up into his head, but he was not yet destroyed.
Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 14