Beneath the house, the sedimentary rock of the Louisiana swamps formed a striated cavern. Here and there, great timbers or clusters of cypress wood spanned from the floor to the ceiling of the grotto, supports for the vast edifice above it. Wet vegetation crawled through various fissures in the ceiling, trail ing slimy webs across the short protrusions that also roughened its surface. Pools of still water gathered in depressions that pocked the uneven floor and a still air suspended a subtle, cloying scent of decay. Chas’s flashlight lit the darkness in a feeble cone, through which mist passed like the ephemeral bodies of the ghosts that had no doubt been barred from the ancient Kindred’s haven proper.
Then the voice hit Isabel, resounding like a church bell through her head. It was neither male nor female, a heavy, uninflected boom through her mind. The Kindred taking its rest here knew that she and Chas had arrived, and it extended a telepathic tendril into her mind.
Why have you come? it asked.
Isabel replied aloud, so Chas would hopefully have some idea of what was transpiring. “We have come to ask your motives. We want to know why you have hunted down so many of our number.”
Insolent childer, the both of you. Its affairs are its own. It needs explain nothing to you. You and your kind, who drove it so far under the caul of night—it does what it wishes.
“But, why? Is it revenge? Against the ones who hunted you in the past?”
Chas, regrettably, had failed to comprehend what was taking place. “The fuck are you talking about, Isabel?”
“It’s the mon—the Kindred. It’s talking to me through a mystic gift.”
Who is with you? It feels anger from the other. It sees a limn of scarlet. Do not bring an angry guest into its home! You have transgressed already; you have violated the sanctity of its haven. Presumptuous and insolent!
“This is my companion, Chas. Chas protects me. We mean no threat to you, Old One; we know that you could destroy us at a whim. The both of us come only for knowledge. Without knowing the cause of your ire, we cannot end it.”
“This is fucking creeping me out, Isabel.
“Please, Chas. I need to concentrate. You’ve dealt with this sort of thing before. Just let me talk to our host.”
Your protector is impetuous! How safe can he make you? It expected only one….
“What do you mean, you expected one? You knew we were coming?”
It knows. It knows. It knows the end and the dark. But some things still surprise it. Even the voices from the cold failed to tell of the arrival of another. It cannot grant the same immunity the cloaked man asked for. William Burke! Go back and tell your master that I shall follow his request to the letter!
“William Burke? What do you mean, Venerable Elder?” Isabel was puzzled by the unseen presence’s turn of words. “William Burke does not travel with me.”
“Who the fuck is William Burke?” Chas demanded, a growl edging his voice. “Oh, now what the fuck is this?”
Isabel watched as the air around Chas grew hazy—dark and dense, a black whirlwind spun around him. A legion of otherworldly voices howled in chorus, sounding like the force of a gale wind outside. The air in the chamber was frightfully still, however, unsettling Isabel and Chas all the more; the storm overtaking him was unnatural, made up of a torrent of ghosts who did not disturb the world of the living in any temporal sense.
Still, it seemed that the ancient Kindred had sensed Chas’s weakness, his proximity to the Beast. Isabel looked on as rage and anguish piqued Chas’s face. His eyes sank in, growing dark, and his mouth gaped like a fish out of water, fangs exposed. His hands clenched into fists at his sides and then opened again, as if he was trying to grab hold of his wraithly tormentors, who eluded his grasp with ease.
The disembodied voice again resounded in Isabel’s mind, a malicious tone with a tinge of mirth behind it. The other has a short temper. We have sent it an offering to see how it reacts.
As interminable seconds ticked by, Chas felt himself overcome by the emotional tide his attackers loosed upon him. The simple frustration of it ignited his ire, but the passion of the ghosts who whirled about him dragged him toward frenzy, an undertow of spectral turmoil and unleashed fury. Get the fuck away from me, he thought, and lashed out with his fist, striking nothing but a swath of cold air.
“Chas, keep calm. Keep calm,” Isabel warned, but what the fuck did she know? The storm refused to break—Chas could see individual faces in the ghostly tempest, smiling, mocking, and mouthing obscenities. Their shrieking echoed louder in his mind than his own thoughts. Again, he struck out, and then again, always failing to make contact. Chilling claws raked through his hair, lifted his jacket, tugged at his arms, and battered him from beyond the veil of darkness between worlds. A torrent of individual words and curses rose from the cacophony—cold, so cold, come, touch us join us be part of so warm, so much hate, so far from a man, can never truly, lost! too much black so away a little, hot black center.
The swirl of bodies came together, converging to form…something. A face. Chas cast his hands out before him, hoping to disperse the forming face, but once again, his hands passed through the apparitions. The visage grew more distinct, a skeletal rictus stretched over prominent bones. It became more defined, and then the skull cracked, erupting into a laughing scowl, filling the dead air with its shrieking mirth—
—and then vanished. The cackling however, continued, becoming audible to Isabel, who covered her ears before it deafened her. The laughter faded into reality and dropped a bit, changing from the roar of the dispersed ghosts to the very real, very present laughter of something in the chamber itself. Chas’s eyes narrowed to slits as he bristled. “What the fuck is so goddamn funny? What the fuck are you laughing at? You fucking…coward! Where the hell are you?” He lowered himself, looking as if he were about to pounce.
“Chas!” Isabel shouted. “Stay cal—”
Too late, too little.
Chas leaped forward into the heavy void of the grotto, followed closely by Isabel. A few yards deeper into the cavern, a vortex of darkness whirled, and the laughter took on a timbre that suggested it had dropped within. Chas seethed; Isabel leaped to restrain him, but he slapped her to the ground, lost in the throes of frenzy. From the floor, Isabel looked up at Chas, seeing the whipcord muscles of his thick neck bursting from his collar, his fangs jutting from his gaping maw, knowing that he was doomed. He sprang forward.
And stopped in midair, crashing to the floor.
From the vortex stepped a painfully thin figure, looking like nothing so much as an animated scarecrow, half again as tall as a man. It had no fingers, only long talons, and tatters of a shroud hung from it like the cowl of the Grim Reaper itself. The figure showed no face, wearing a cobwebbed black veil attached to a perfect circlet of small, humanoid skulls, each missing the lower mandible. As it stepped forth, the vortex closed, fading into the featureless darkness of the cavern itself.
The thing’s head shook and the laughter continued. A bony finger pointed at Chas; the other hand waved capriciously. It has walked with God. It has seen the sky rain blood. It has escaped a thousand-year hunt and then another. It has slept beneath the flesh of pharaohs and later beneath their lifeless bones. And one so young—this—thinks that he can destroy it. Not tonight. More laughter. Not tonight.
Chas leaped from the ground, roaring, clutching hands outstretched—
—and transformed into a cloud of dusty ash. A few seconds later, the ash settled in a streak on the grotto floor before the figure.
It continued laughing. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
An anguished look crossed Isabel’s face. Despairing, she sank to her knees, her hands leaving prints in the remains of Chas’s body.
This is the might of it. This is what it can do, and will do. You cannot stop it; none can. It gives you leave, though. It wants you to know, and take back to your others, and tell them. The cloaked man would have you return to him, and it would have you do the same.
The dead figure stepped forward and stooped, grasping Isabel’s slim neck in its infernally strong grip. It lifted her, bringing her up to where its face would be, cocking its head as if examining her. Then it dropped her to the floor.
It has been here for centuries and none have found it outside a cursed few. And see what has come of them? Maddened, prowling through a swamp. Dead, nothing but a streak of dust. Gone, abating its thirst for a few nights. It does what it will. As shall it always. It is outside of time. But its memory is long.
Take that back to your masters.
“But…” Isabel protested.
No. No questions. Don’t coax it to prove the cloaked man’s weakness and have its way with you. Return.
Isabel turned to look over her shoulder, back to the grotto’s ingress. When she returned her gaze to where the figure had stood, all that remained was the still, black air and a feeble cascade of dust.
Thursday, 4 November 1999, 1:37 AM
British Airways Flight 2226
Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
Inside her rude pine box, Isabel opened her eyes and stared up at the veneer of wood that protected her from the attentions of the outside world.
Failure.
Utter failure.
Failure to resolve the fate of Benito Giovanni. Failure to take any hope back to the Giovanni concerning the ungodly potency of the cabal of ancient Kindred that would no doubt hunt them in the nights to come. Failure to prevent the sect war that would play out in the streets of Boston. Despite the fact that the Giovanni would maintain their supremacy in Boston, the conflict between the vampires of the Camarilla and the Sabbat would force the Giovanni underground for some time and necessitate that any action on their part be undertaken very carefully.
Still, Isabel comforted herself, wouldn’t all of this have taken place with or without her? Could Benito not be replaced? Could Ambrogino really expect her to confound the actions of a Kindred who may well have walked in the shadow of the mythical Caine himself—assuming Caine had ever existed at all? Was survival in the Jyhad not itself the ultimate success? Didn’t minor tragedies like these play out each night, winding through the unlives of the Kindred like the lines of incestuous ancestry in her own family tree?
After all, wasn’t the entire, ages-old war a simple diversion from the unnatural act of rising, alone, from the day’s rest to prey upon the mortals around the Kindred?
A single tear of blood trickled from Isabel’s eye, staining the soft wood beneath her.
Thursday, 4 November 1999, 1:37 AM
The Mausoleum loggia
Venice, Italy
Ambrogino pushed the hood back from his head and lit a candle.
With a withered gray hand, he pulled two cards from the deck.
The Fool.
Death.
And then he looked to the mirror. No doubt someone—something—else saw the same reflection from the other side of the polished glass.
Tomorrow night, he would meet Isabel in London.
About the Author
Justin Achilli lives at the bottom of a vodka bottle, where he listens to New Order and Morrissey. How he fit a computer and CD player in that bottle, he’ll never tell. Justin may well be survived by his cat, Zoe.
Clan Novel Giovanni: Book 10 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 20