There was more that was hidden from the others, she realized. She saw the brilliant light of the stars mirrored in the Toreador’s pulsing eye, in the throbbing nerve that connected the orb to the stone. As Ramona looked on, the megaliths themselves, a stone garden of giants, began to glow from within. Their earthy grays and whites and browns began to burn a fiery red, and more megaliths rose across the meadow. The other Gangrel did not see, could not see, the change in the stones, did not see that the megaliths grew opaque, that within them churned thick fluid-red and orange, the very stuff of the earth itself. Edmonson and Mutabo and the others still made their ways toward the Toreador. They regarded the megaliths warily, but no differently than before.
Ramona tried to call out to them, but the battle was a dream unfolding before her. She saw more clearly than they did, but she could not stop them.
The first explosion knocked her to the ground. The eardrum-shattering force shook the entire meadow. The fiery earthen magma within the erupting megalith spewed into the air.
In the next few seconds, another megalith ruptured, and then a second, and a third. Giant dollops of volcanic material erased Mutabo’s head and left arm. Another Gangrel near him stared in disbelief as she fell to the very spot that, a moment before, the lower half of her body had occupied.
I am Mutabo. I die for my clan this night!
I am Lisa Strongback….
I am…
Everywhere, the megaliths were glowing red and exploding. Ramona could see the fire within each stone churn and boil, then force its way out and across the sky in a blazing streak. All around her, Gangrel died. Their burnt and mangled bodies flew into the air and landed, to move no more. But the fallen called out in silent voice, and the litany of the dead grew longer:
I am Aileen Brock-childe….
I am… I am…
I am Brant Edmonson. I die for my clan this night!
Their cries were of defiance. Even in Final Death they did not yield to the enemy.
Ratface and those who’d begun on the far hillside were close to the Toreador now. Renée Lightning outpaced the rest. Hundreds of droplets of magma splattered against her, ate through her flesh. A megalith ruptured, spewing lava in magnificent arcs. Snodgrass disappeared on the far side.
Ramona stumbled. She couldn’t keep up. Her hair smoldered in the heat. Each step was a struggle of will in the face of all that she saw—all that she shouldn’t see. The ghost sight revealed too much; it might as well have blinded her. It liberated her and shackled her. She could see their approaching doom but could not negotiate reality well enough to save them.
I am Renée Lightning….
I am Snodgrass….
Ramona dropped to her knees. She was so tired. The knowledge that she had failed her clanmates drew away her strength. She’d been given the means to save them, maybe to lead them to victory, but she could not wield the ghost sight. She knew she should have been able to do something. Damn Blackfeather, she thought, more in resignation than in anger, as she sat numbly and waited for the spray of molten rock that would bring her painful life beyond death to a close.
Smoke hung heavy across the meadow, but through the haze Ramona saw the Toreador atop his small mountain of stone, with his eye and its obscene, throbbing nerve. He seemed heartened by the destruction of the Gangrel, and he seemed also to orchestrate the carnage with his gruesome eye. He held it in his hand still, and every direction he turned it, a megalith annihilated another Gangrel, or a pit opened beneath one of Ramona’s clanmates.
I am Jacob One-ear….
I am Nadia….
The monster with the eye was not all-seeing, though. He didn’t see Xaviar spring from the steep hillside above the cave entrance. The leather-clad body was a meteor of hope to Ramona; his red hair trailed behind like a tail of the spewing magma. Ramona had sudden premonitions of victory: She saw the Toreador fall beneath Xaviar; she saw the grotesque eye dashed to the stone and smashed in a spray of foul pus and fleshy matter.
But Ramona’s brief vision was of hope, not of the ghost sight, and reality did not bear it out.
Xaviar did strike the Toreador square from behind, but the Toreador stood solid, as if he were embedded into the very rock beneath his feet, as if he were an extension of it. Xaviar, expecting his target to give way beneath him, fell roughly to the stone.
Land on the nerve! Ramona hoped. Yank the eye out of his hand!
But then an explosion jarred the ground beneath Ramona’s feet. One second she was witnessing the duel between Xaviar and the Toreador, the next she saw only a blur of motion and flashing streaks of fiery magma. Everything went black.
Distant stars.
The next Ramona knew, she was staring at the night sky. It took her a moment to realize she was lying on her back. She’d been struck by the explosion and knocked to the ground. Almost relieved that consciousness must surely fade, she reached down to learn what part of her body had been ripped or burned away. To her surprise, she was fairly intact. She’d been struck, not by molten rock, but by Ratface. He stared up at her blankly. Smoke rose from the edges of the gaping hole in his chest, and blood and tissue still sizzled from the heat.
I am Ratface. I die for my clan this night!
Ramona eased out from beneath him and lowered his body gently to the ground. More than any of these other Gangrel, Ratface had tried to be a friend to her, but there was nothing she could do for him now. She expected to join him in Final Death at any moment. His name among those of the litany was jarring to Ramona. She’d become aware of the chant with the onset of the ghost sight. The litany continued, yet the ghost sight, she realized, was gone. The night sky was again the night sky: the stars burned as they should; the moon, bright but unremarkable, was low on the horizon. The ghost sight was gone.
Ramona wasn’t sure how long she’d blacked out. She looked back to the mound of stone where Xaviar and the Toreador battled, and whatever stubborn vestige of hope that might have survived this long withered within her. Xaviar was still upright, but at a very odd angle—the reason was readily apparent. Stone spikes, called from the surface of the mound, pierced him. They held him aloft. One spike protruded from the top of his right knee. Another had caught him through the biceps; his left arm was raised uselessly in the air. One foot barely touched the surface of the mound. He couldn’t free himself. The Toreador, only a few feet away, moved closer to the helpless Xaviar.
Ramona slumped back down to the charred ground. The tall grass that had covered the meadow was mostly burned away. The few remaining Gangrel had long since broken ranks—although the entire battle couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes—and were running, but the rupturing stones still spewed deadly lava into the air. Another explosion sent tremors across the meadow. Joshua Bloodhound lost his footing and stumbled headlong into one of the pools of molten rock that were growing numerous.
I am Joshua….
But above the litany spoke another voice: Get up Ramona. Keep going.
Ramona collapsed onto her back. She wanted nothing more than to stare at the stars until the rising lava closed over her, but the voice would not leave her alone. It was soft, pleading. You have to get up, Ramona. Get up. Keep going.
She raised her head and saw a dim figure standing very close to her amidst the acrid smoke and mist. Her eyes were watering heavily, but she thought she saw… “Jen?”
Ramona rose to her elbows. The smoke grew thicker and crowded down nearly to the ground. There was a figure before her, but it was no longer Jen.
Lying down when some bug-eyed mother needs his ass kicked?
Darnell, Ramona thought. He was there when he couldn’t be, whole of body, just as Jen had been. They were taking their place among the litany of the dead.
Ramona began to climb to her feet. “I don’t recall you kickin’ his ass,” she muttered at Darnell, but Darnell was no longer with her.
Don’t give up, Ramona.
Ramona froze halfway up. She touched a hand to
the ground to steady herself. Something stirred within her, some part of her that wanted to answer the voice, that wanted to answer Zhavon.
Don’t give up.
The girl stood before Ramona, beautiful, unmarred. She spoke again, and her voice was less gentle. She practically scolded Ramona: Don’t you give up.
Ramona smiled and rose to her full height, only to find herself alone by Ratface’s smoldering body. Fresh pangs of loss tugged at her, but she had regained her bearings, and the situation did not allow her to mourn.
The megaliths had stopped rising at last, so the explosions were fewer and more predictable, but the meadow was rapidly becoming a pool of lava, as more magma blurped up from the ground. Soon the blazing sludge would cover the entire expanse between the hills. There were still many oases of solid ground, like the slight rise on which Ramona stood beside Ratface’s corpse, but as the red lake slowly rose, the islands were becoming fewer and farther between.
On the mound, the Toreador remained beyond the reach of Xaviar’s flailing right hand and the claws that could yet prove fatal. Then suddenly to Ramona’s amazement, the creature abandoned his caution and stepped closer. Only now did Ramona realize that the Toreador was no longer holding the eye in his hand; the pulsing orb was back in its socket, more or less. She wondered for a split second if their enemy had actually taken hold of the eye—or was Ramona’s seeing that way a trick of the ghost sight? But there was no time to consider the question. The Toreador stepped closer to Xaviar.
“Kill him!” Ramona screamed at Xaviar, and was startled by the sound of her own voice cutting through the dense smoke and echoing from the exposed stone. “Kill him!”
Xaviar was more than close enough, but he could no more defy the will of the eye than had Emil, or had Ramona. The Toreador grasped Xaviar’s pinned arm and began to exert pressure. The limb bent and kept bending—not at the elbow or wrist or shoulder where it should, but in the middle of the forearm. The Toreador pressed slowly and steadily, meeting less and less resistance. The arm twisted like flimsy pipe cleaner.
Xaviar grimaced in pain. He clamped his teeth together until blood trickled from his mouth, but he didn’t cry out.
Having found her own voice, Ramona finally felt volition return to her body, but she was separated from the Toreador and Xaviar by a moat of lava that was too wide for even her to leap. She pawed at the ground, advanced to the edge of the molten river, but there was no crossing.
The smoke and steam were so thick now she could only make out figures on the mound, but if she couldn’t aid Xaviar, maybe it was better not to see. The Toreador would kill Xaviar—melt away his skull, or pick the limbs from his body—or maybe the monster would merely toy with Xaviar, like a cat with a wounded bird.
And if the magma didn’t claim her, the end would be the same for Ramona. Behind her a lone, crippled Gangrel, a dark-skinned woman, crawled toward the edge of the meadow, but every avenue of escape was now cut off by the bubbling inferno. Distorting ripples of heat played games with the smoke. Megaliths, no longer rupturing, stood like giant tombstones.
Ramona turned back to the mound, ready to meet her end at last.
The Toreador wrapped his fingers around Xaviar’s neck. Ramona waited for Xaviar’s flesh to melt away, for his head to loll at an impossible angle. But instead, the Toreador lifted Xaviar—lifted him with such strength that Xaviar slid up along the spikes. The sound of bone grating against stone sent chills down Ramona’s spine.
The Toreador lifted Xaviar free of the spike and held him aloft by the neck. The fight was gone from the Gangrel leader, or perhaps he was still mesmerized by the eye. He hung limply in the Toreador’s grasp.
Ramona watched helplessly for the final blow, but then suddenly the Toreador flung Xaviar like a ragdoll. His body appeared weightless as it sailed airborne over the pools of lava; it never should have gone so far—Ramona couldn’t imagine the strength of the throw—but finally Xaviar crashed to the solid earth not far away. She ran to his side. He gazed at her, confused. He looked down at his mangled arm and leg, then up at Ramona, as if questioning how he’d gotten to this state.
Ramona turned toward the Toreador, prepared to shout her defiance at it—I am Ramona. I die for my clan this night!—but just then, the smoke cleared. Not all over, but enough that Ramona could see the Toreador clearly—and he her. Viscous fluid dripped from the eye and streamed down his face. The final cry caught in her throat, as the eye took possession of her will. There was no Tanner to save her this time. There was no one. There was only the eye, and it was forcing her…to run.
Ramona turned and ran. She immediately fell over Xaviar. Almost without missing a step, she slung him onto her back and continued her headlong flight.
She had failed her clanmates, she’d resigned herself to death, but she couldn’t stop her legs from carrying her away from that eye. It was sending her away, discounting her as a worthy opponent, and she was of no mind to argue. Without slowing, she cast a fearful glance over her shoulder. The eye had turned from her as the Toreador surveyed its victory. Then the smoke closed in again, and all that was visible was a vague shape on the mound—and a glow radiating from the eye through the gloom.
Ramona caught up with the woman she’d seen crawling before. There was nowhere for her to go. Bubbling, molten rock blocked every avenue of escape. But as Ramona closed to within a few yards, the woman, much of her body covered with burns, jumped out over the rising lava. Ramona stopped in her tracks.
Suicide, she thought—not a far-fetched idea at this point.
But then Ramona saw the arc of the Gangrel’s leap and the small islet among the magma where she would land—close enough to the edge of the meadow that a second jump might lead to freedom.
When the Gangrel landed, however, her feet and legs punched through the topsoil, revealing the islet to be a flimsy coagulation of dirt and weeds that had been raised up rather than covered over by the lava.
The woman was too shocked to scream, but the pain was clear on her face as she sank to her knees in the magma. The illusory island was broken apart by the force of her landing.
Ramona could think only of the woman’s flesh and bones melting from the bottom up. Her thighs sank under. Xaviar moaned; his mouth was mere inches from Ramona’s ear. There would be no escape. For any of them.
But the silent woman caught Ramona’s eye, and unspoken understanding passed between them. Without hesitation—if she’d thought, she’d have faltered—Ramona leapt.
The fumes from the lava burned as she passed over. If she’d miscalculated even a few inches or badly compensated for Xaviar’s weight, it would all be over quickly. Ramona seemed to hang in the air, to move more slowly than physics would allow.
She crashed down onto the shoulders of the other Gangrel. Her impact drove the woman down to her chest. Ramona paused only a fraction of a second to regain her balance, then jumped again.
She sailed over the magma, and when she and Xaviar landed, it was on the solid earth where the meadow began to rise—not far from where she’d crouched with Ratface and the others, what seemed impossibly long ago.
Ramona looked back one last time, but the woman was gone, pushed under by Ramona’s second leap.
I am Maria Evernorth. I die for my clan this night!
Ramona shifted Xaviar’s weight, then turned toward the hill and ran.
Monday, 26 July 1999, 3:51 AM
Upstate New York
Even after she’d crossed the nearest ridge and was beyond the reach of the moans of the dying and the odor of smoke and charred flesh, Ramona couldn’t keep from her mind the images of carnage she’d seen that night. No matter how hard she ran, she couldn’t outdistance the likenesses of burned and mangled bodies. With each step, Xaviar’s weight was more a burden. She stumbled through the forest as if blind. The darkness surrounded her, thick and heavy. Her normal night vision seemed to have fled like the ghost sight before it. No light from above penetrated the canopy, and she imagine
d that each tree, each dark shape, was a megalith pregnant with hellfire, having thrust its way to the surface. Every sound was the Toreador tracking her down. But the eye, if it were near, would cast its sickly light.
Fatigue, as well as darkness, enveloped her. Her run slowed to a labored jog, then to a staggering gait. The Toreador could have her if he caught her, she decided. The exhaustion was of spirit as much as of body. She had emerged from the slaughter—but even her state of relative wellbeing was torment. It was proof that she had failed her clanmates, else how could they be dead while they survived? First Eddie, then Jen, Darnell, and now…how many others? Even Xaviar, who survived, was crippled. Ramona had only a rough idea of how many Gangrel had gathered, and how many had died. She didn’t remember seeing any others escape, but the meadow had been so full of smoke and fire and death….
She continued on aimlessly, with no goal in mind more significant than avoiding the nearest tree. Initially heading east over the ridge, she must have veered to the north, because her steps soon carried her to a familiar locale.
Ramona wasn’t sure how many minutes she’d been standing and staring at Table Rock before her mind registered where she was. She laid Xaviar on the flat stone. It was noticeably cool after the hellish inferno they’d just escaped. He lay there, stunned and beaten, moving only to cover his face. His skin was splotchy with burns, but most telling was the left arm that hung useless at his side. Already, some of the damage done by the spike had begun to heal, though Ramona wondered if even the power of blood could repair completely that jagged wound. It was horrible to look upon, but less so than what remained of the lower portion of his arm. Below the elbow, his forearm turned in several impossible angles, not broken and shattered like the wound above, but reshaped—whole, yet bent one way and then another back on itself in a crude semblance of an S-curve.
Clan Novel Gangrel: Book 3 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 20