Clan Novel Assamite - Book 7 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  Fatima stood with her hands clasped before her. Her stare bore into Parmenides. He felt suddenly weak, as if he had not fed recently, which was not the case. A small muscle behind his left knee began to twitch uncontrollably. He shifted his weight.

  “We have decided,” Fatima said at last, evenly and without emotion, “that the arrangement with Vykos cannot continue. You will be allowed to destroy her when the opportunity presents itself.”

  The twitch in Parmenides’s leg turned to cramp and spread to other muscles. For a split second he thought he might be forced to drop to his knees, but he maintained his balance. He closed his eyes, rubbed at one as if a flying insect had gotten in it. He felt blood on his palm; he must have inadvertently dug his nails into flesh.

  “Before that time, there is something else you must learn,” Fatima continued.

  Parmenides could barely hear her. A strange roaring had sprung up in his ears to match the roaring pain in his leg. His leg reminded him of all the wrong that had been done to it—that Vykos had done to it! She had melded flesh and bone, forming one limb of two, and that one joined to the floor, and then put it all back eventually, when it suited her. The roaring in his ears became a pounding at his temples.

  “I must learn…?” he heard himself say. Fatima was so far away. He couldn’t see her. The headlights were shining directly in his face—but they were not; they still shone across the field.

  “Has Vykos spoken to you of Monçada?”

  Monçada. Monçada. The name rattled around in Parmenides’s brain and only slowly came to hold any meaning. “Monçada,” his voice said. Parmenides reached a hand—slowly—behind him until he felt the car. He eased his weight against it. The support seemed to help his leg. His vision began to clear, the pounding at his temples to lessen slightly. “Monçada. She mentions him occasionally…in passing mostly. She had certain…unflattering things to say about the templar he sent to oppose Lucita. And she mentions that Vallejo’s true loyalty lies with the cardinal and not her.” Parmenides smoothed back his hair, trying unobtrusively to massage his temples while he also stretched his leg slightly.

  “She told me,” Parmenides remembered, “that I needed to be the one to destroy Prince Vitel, so the glory would be hers and not the cardinal’s. She answers to Monçada, but there seems to be something of a rivalry between them—friendly or otherwise.” Certainly it was coincidence that speaking of Vykos seemed to ease the pain in his leg and head.

  You will be allowed to destroy her….

  Parmenides fought those words down, tried to ignore them for the time being. He had to keep the pounding at bay, had to impress Fatima favorably. He could see her clearly again now. She was staring at the ground, measuring what he told her.

  “You need to learn more about Monçada?” Parmenides said.

  “Yes. And his haven in Madrid—defenses, body- guards, and so forth. You can do this?”

  Parmenides nodded, perhaps a bit more eagerly than he would have liked. It was unbecoming to appear too eager. “I can.”

  Fatima regarded him for a long moment. Her eyes narrowed and Parmenides felt the weight of her gaze. Finally, she nodded decisively. “Do so. Then destroy her.”

  With that, the matter was resolved to Fatima’s satisfaction. She turned from Parmenides, climbed back into the Land Cruiser, and cranked the engine. The vibrating car against his back brought Parmenides back to the here and now.

  Do so. Then destroy her.

  He moved around the rear of the car and to the passenger’s door, trying to keep the pounding down, trying to concentrate on his most immediate concerns: to find out what he could about Monçada, about his haven and defenses. Fatima, or someone equally deserving, was going after Monçada, and Parmenides was to be a part of it. That was what he had to think about: the honor granted him by the elders. This would be but the beginning. He would prove himself. His name soon would be whispered in awe throughout the clan.

  Then destroy her.

  The rest would come later. No need to worry now. He settled into the seat beside Fatima as she steered the car back onto the gravel road.

  Fatima let Parmenides out within two miles of the hotel that Vykos had co-opted from Marcus Vitel. She turned the Land Cruiser south toward the private airport and the plane that would carry her to Spain. Reaching under her shirt, she removed the P 226 Sig that she’d been wearing on her left hip. She had given Parmenides enough not-so-subtle indications that it was there, and he had responded accordingly, measuring his movements carefully. He probably had assumed that she doubted his identity, especially considering his completely altered appearance, but that hadn’t been the case. He was her clansman. At Fatima’s age, the blood knew.

  There had still existed the very real chance that she would destroy him, and if she’d moved against him, he would have guarded against the weapon in her left hand, more so than the dagger from the wrist-sheath on her right arm—the dagger that would have slit his throat and sent paralyzing poison coursing through his undead body. Then the 9mm explosive shell from the Sig would have finished the matter.

  It had not come to that, however. Fatima was not boundless in her confidence that Parmenides could destroy Vykos. That devious and venerable creature harbored more deceits than the desert had granules of sand. Under most circumstances, Fatima would have ordered her charge back to Alamut rather than return him to the fiend, but there was the chance that he might uncover some detail that would aid her own quest for Monçada. For that chance, she was rightfully willing to risk Parmenides. No childe of Haqim would shirk such duty. In a way, Fatima thought, Parmenides, in accepting his lot without question, was more steadfast in his loyalty than was she, doubting al-Ashrad’s word that the Way of Allah and the Path of Blood must one night diverge; than was she, still doubting in the back of her mind the elders’ pronouncement about the Kurd who had attacked her just two months before; than was she, possibly having endangered her mission by needing to see Lucita; than was she, still trying to ignore the fact that Lucita, like her sire, must be destroyed.

  Again, she fought down such thoughts. They did not further her mission, and she had much traveling still to do this night.

  Saturday, 25 September 1999, 12:12 AM

  A subterranean grotto

  New York City, New York

  Calebros yanked the sheet of paper from his Smith Corona and examined his notes in the light of the candelabra. The base of his former desk lamp protruded upside down from a trashcan by his desk.

  Rereading the words he’d typed, he was dismayed—but not surprised—by his unfounded assumptions. Little wonder. Merely thinking about Assamites unnerved him. He’d thought that Fatima might become involved eventually, but that didn’t mean he had to like it now.

  He reached for his red pen.

  Saturday, 25 September 1999, 2:47 AM

  Calle del Barquillo

  Madrid, Spain

  “You are sure it was her…?”

  The narrow alley was a dead nerve to light and sound. No voice would travel beyond its confines; no one walking past would see the two-headed apparition—actually two dark figures standing merely inches apart.

  “Or are you merely sure it looked like her?” Mahmud asked in a voice softer than a whisper.

  Anwar saw the wisdom of the question at once. “Her face matched exactly the pictures I have seen…the picture Fatima provided.” Anwar, not pleased about deferring to Mahmud, mentioned Fatima intentionally. True, she was Mahmud’s mentor, but Mahmud was not held in as high esteem by the elders as was she. He was stolid, reliable. But he was not Fatima. There were those who whispered that she had taken him as protégé for just that reason, so as not to be outshone by her understudy. Anwar did not know the truth of that, but he vastly preferred functioning independently in the field.

  “Then it was her face,” Mahmud said by way of placation, but then landed his own barb, “but who knows what tricks of shadow were at work, or what Tzimisce fiend might have copied her likenes
s?”

  Anwar could not see his clanmate’s eyes; so close were they standing that he viewed only the curve of Mahmud’s cheek, the motion of jaw, lips, and tongue as he spoke.

  “The fiends are not so precise,” Anwar said. “Their works are grotesque.”

  “Have you ever faced a Tzimisce elder?” Mahmud asked. “One that has been sculpting flesh since before you were at your mother’s teat?”

  “It was Lucita,” Anwar said with all the fierceness whispering could generate. “She stood there before the church, just…just looking, just waiting to be destroyed. And I could have.”

  “Perhaps. And you could have alerted her sire that all is not as it should be, that wolves are gathering.”

  Anwar could not rightfully argue with that. Though he ached for her, for her blood.

  “We are here to observe, to gather intelligence,” Mahmud said. “Pilar’s spies cover much ground; we cover the rest.”

  Anwar nodded. His face brushed against Mahmud’s. “Yes,” Anwar said. He was close enough in station to be unhappy about taking direction from Mahmud, but to challenge him further, when Fatima had lent him authority, would not do. “Of course.” The two assassins parted, each going to perform his appointed duties.

  Sunday, 26 September 1999, 12:50 AM

  Catacombs, lglesia de San Nicolás de las Servitas

  Madrid, Spain

  The hours were hopelessly tangled with the darkness. The black tendrils twisted time, picked it apart and rearranged it into different forms. Lucita herself was a master of shadow, but there was too much of her sire here. His soul had seeped into the very earth over the centuries, infused the walls, the floors, the black air, with his will. Lucita’s feet moved forward in weak, shuffling steps. The passageways confounded her. Every so often, something she saw sparked memories: tunnels of oppressive stone closing in to crush her; chambers with every inch of every wall covered by holy icons, small wooden plaques, the colors as faded as any memory of the hands, long dead and forgotten, that had painted them; rough-hewn passages leading down to hell; massive iron gates embedded in bedrock; halls of statues and carvings, the crucified Christ in his passion, the Virgin Mother prepared to intervene on behalf of the sinner; Pontius Pilate, his hands washed not o/blood but in it, a fountain and basin full of thick burbling.

  Here there was a mounted firebrand that burned but gave no light, there another torch, burned out for centuries. Amidst the darkness, Lucita was not sure which memories were of the present, which from years ago. She had blocked them out so well—so well that she’d thought she could come back to this place without revisiting them. The tunnels led onward, and she followed, unsure what was new ground, what she had seen before.

  The darkness parted for a moment. She saw Monçada, stripped naked to the waist, and herself drinking from a deep gash in his breast, suckling greedily of the blood. The wiry, gray hair on his chest tickled her face, caught between her teeth. His moans of ecstasy covered his silent psalms of praise to heaven. Lucita felt the darkness flowing within her, making her stronger, tying her to this place, closing in about her, parting again. She awoke to bliss, gentle fingers, a fine-toothed comb passing through her hair. Her hair had always been beautiful. Silky, flowing. But the path she had chosen was narrow, solitary. Neither time nor safety for servants, and since the night of her Embrace she could not see. Silver-backed glass denied her. She was dead to it, and to herself. For so many years, she knew her beautiful hair only by touch. She lay naked, beneath silken sheets, and a woman stroked her hair, spread it out across pillows and tenderly ministered to every tangle, smoothed the rough ways. The woman stroked a thousand times, and a thousand more. Lucita could almost imagine, could almost remember, the sensation of warm sunshine upon her face, upon her closed eyes.

  When next she opened her eyes, the woman was gone. The room was small, perhaps a monk’s cell at some point. But the cold stone was covered by bright tapestries, and a thick Persian rug awaited Lucita’s feet. She pulled back the blankets and stood despite the vertigo. She saw the white gown hanging on the door and then looked at her own bare body, forever young. The gown, though modest, was a bit too elegant, not what she would have chosen. She nearly chose the shock value of going about naked but shuddered at the idea of her sire laying eyes upon her. She took the gown and raised her arms, letting the folds of cloth slide down around her. She opened the door and stepped from the safe comfort of her cell into the swirling shadows.

  Her feet were coated with the dirt and dust of countless years. Her fingers too, for she had leaned against the stonework and the frescoes for support as she wandered. For as long as she could remember, she had been fueled by hatred, but now that cold fire was covered. She was too tired for hatred, for anger, and all that was left was emptiness. Monçada had beaten her, but it was not her body he coveted most highly, she knew. He needn’t have hit her a single time. She wouldn’t have held out long against his will. But he wanted her to come to him freely, un-compelled.

  As Lucita walked, fingers trailing along the stone that was hidden from her eyes, she came to another of the colossal gates that, at intervals along different routes, had blocked her way. She sensed its presence before she saw it, as one might sense the great void of a chasm before stepping into it. With both hands she was unable to grasp completely around a single bar. The iron was cold like a winter gravestone, immovable as the earth. Beyond, the passage curved to the left and upward. There was also a tunnel branching off to the right. From the left, Lucita smelled air that was not quite so stale, not so totally saturated with the blackness from the soul of her jailer. From the side tunnel came a rumbling growl and movement of shadow like a slowly rising tide. Neither path was open to Lucita, just as neither of the paths that she or her sire would follow could ever be opened: She would never surrender willingly to him, and he would never leave off trying to see that she did. They had come to an impassable portal, had reached it hundreds of years ago, and never would they cross the threshold. Yet they were bound together by blood.

  The only possible escape for Lucita lay elsewhere, in Final Death or insanity. As she stumbled away from the gate, despair clutching at her heart, the darkness rushed after her.

  Monçada was at his prayers, kneeling in the chapel, when he heard the door open behind him. Her footsteps had been silent. Had she come thinking to destroy him, as she had on several occasions in the past? He did not raise his bowed head or turn to face her.

  “Join me in prayer, my daughter?”

  Lucita did not speak. She walked past him to the altar, to the single candle that burned there. She wore the simple white gown that Cristobal had provided for her—classic lines, peerless craftsmanship. She hated it, of course.

  Monçada was acutely aware of her silence. No profane rebuke to his invitation; she neither spat at him nor suggested he defile himself with the crucifix. This was progress. She stood with her back to him, facing instead the altar, the candle, the crucified Christ.

  “I cannot stay here,” Lucita said.

  Monçada sighed. “But you have been away for so long.”

  She placed her hands flat upon the altar and leaned forward until her lovely hair dangled dangerously close to the candle flame. Fatigue was apparent in the angle of her shoulders, her neck, her hanging head. Monçada had given enough blood to revive her, not to make her strong.

  “If you keep me here,” she said, “I will destroy myself.”

  Monçada found himself surprised both by her words and by his capacity to be surprised. Defiance he expected from his childe, but self-destructiveness? That type of behavior, he’d always suspected, would be merely a phase she would outgrow, but to think of her destruction coming at her own hands…. Monçada suppressed laughter. She shared his blood; she was too strong to succumb to despair for long. No, this was a gambit she’d dreamed up to force his hand.

  “And how would you do that, my daughter?” he asked. “Are we not a hardy lot? Cut off your own head? Difficult. Do you
gaze at that flame wistfully? Do you think any fire could long burn in my haven without being smothered by shadow? Do you think that were I to keep you under lock and key you would ever escape to meet the sun?”

  Now she turned to face him, and Monçada saw the grimy smudges on the white of her gown and across the perfect curves of her face. “I will find a way,” she said. “I will destroy us both.”

  This time Monçada did laugh, though out of care for her feelings he choked the guffaw off short. “Melodrama suits you even less than cynicism, my dear childe. But I will prove to you that I hold only your best interests to heart.

  “You are a childe of the modern nights, my daughter. I know, I know,” he waved away her protest, “you were born and Embraced long ago. Of all people, I should know that. Yet the ideals of the modern age were alive in you long before they infused the rest of the world—independence no matter the price or folly involved, self-aggrandizement at the expense of all others. Those were the qualities that drew me to you originally, though even I did not fully understand at the time. Ah, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

  “I will allow you your freedom,” he said, reaching out a hand to her. She hesitated, but then came to him this time. “But you mustn’t go far.” He closed his fingers around her wrist and held firmly against her weak opposition. “You must remain in the city. I will have Cristobal arrange a suitable house, but you must not leave the city. Will you promise me that?”