by Eric Griffin
“I am weak.” His words were muffled against the fabric of her gown. Sobs wracked his rigid body. “I am weak.”
“There, there, my philosophe. Have no fear.” She stroked his hair, soothed the pounding at his temples. “You will redeem yourself.”
Sometime later, Vallejo stood before the shattered window and reported that the prince had escaped.
Wednesday, 30 June 1999, 12:51 AM
The Castle, The Smithsonian Institute
Washington, D.C.
Sascha Vykos sat high atop the sharply slanted roof of the Castle’s sole tower. She surveyed the city below. Her city, she reminded herself.
The bold plan that they had devised so many months ago in Madrid had at last come to its fruition. At Monçada’s urging, she had traveled to this New World. She had seized command of the Sabbat forces besieging the city of Atlanta. She had pushed forward the merciless blitzkrieg campaign, crushing all resistance along the Eastern Seaboard north to this point and driving the Camarilla before her. She had wrested control of the most powerful city on this continent from her enemies and their Antediluvian puppetmasters.
And now, at last, it was a time to rest—to rejoice in their victories, to honor their slain, to shore up their strength for the trials that lay ahead.
From below, she could hear the sound of an experimental steam-driven pipe organ—one of the curiosities of the Smithsonian’s extensive collection—coughing to life. Her guests were all assembled. She had watched them arrive, singly and in small clutches.
From her lofty vantage point, they looked very small and insecure, daunted by the prospect of walking openly through the streets of what most of them still thought of as an enemy stronghold. And perhaps, in some respects, they are correct, Vykos thought, a wicked smile spreading across her face.
Polonia and his flunky, Costello had returned from their ‘reconnaissance mission’—to Buffalo, or Atlantic City, or wherever it was—where they had tested the mettle of the Camarilla defenses and, no doubt, found them wanting. There was no other explanation for the enthusiasm in Polonia’s otherwise carefully guarded demeanor. This game of conquest and dominion was both contagious and addictive.
Borges and Sebastian had arrived separately, each from his own city. Vykos had no misgivings about the clandestine arrangement that had left Borges’s protege as the Bishop of Atlanta. She had even thrown Savannah into the bargain, although she believed that, at last report, Borges still reserved the prized port city for himself.
The arrangement was expedient. The fact was that she needed to ensure that these two ambitious conspirators were kept terribly occupied and well out of the picture as the campaign pressed north of Atlanta. The last thing she needed was to have to fend off the subtle manipulations and treacheries of the Lasombra while she was engaged in pitched battle with Camarilla forces.
Even the venerable Borges, whose eyes opened not upon life but only upon its shadowy subtexts, had been quick to seize upon Vykos’s proffered bargain. He had gone so far as to set his signature to the contract in his own blood. Dear old Borges.
Bolon and Vallejo, of course were already present. She seldom allowed her commanders far from her side these days. There was so much still to be done in securing the nation’s capital. Perhaps in a few weeks’ time she could spare one of them from the unrelenting labor of shoring up the bulwarks against the inevitable counterstrike.
The formidable Tremere chantry of Washington still stood defiantly, and the truth be told, Vykos’s forces, as scattered and disorganized in victory as were the Camarilla in defeat, presently lacked the cohesion to face such opponents. In time, she hoped, cut off from Camarilla support, the chantry would wither on the vine. For the present, it was enough that the Tremere had not stood forth in defense of Vitel, their long-time rival.
She was toying with the idea of sending Bolon back south for a time, to rally the shattered Nomad Coalition. The group had drifted apart after the untimely death of Averros. Vykos smiled at the memory. If anyone could win the respect of the hard-fighting and fiercely independent roaming packs, it was formidable Bolon.
Vallejo, of course, was something of a gift from her patron, the cardinal. And not one she would take for granted. But having secured so much in a mere week’s time—and what was a week to one such as Monçada, a manipulator so cunning that he measured out his machinations by the century?—surely he would not risk jeopardizing their gains by attempting to withdraw Vallejo to Madrid.
If it did come to such a conflict of interests between herself and the cardinal, Vykos thought, she had no delusions whatsoever about which master the seasoned veteran would obey. He would follow her orders unquestioningly, even unto certain destruction, especially after Vitel’s escape. Vykos had chided Vallejo only gently, yet his fierce pride had been wounded.
He would expect her, however, to follow the cardinal’s demands with the same unhesitating enthusiasm. She hoped she never had to disabuse him of the notion that she would.
Vykos shifted uncomfortably. This lofty perch was the only place she felt she could be assured of a reasonable measure of privacy. For the third time that evening, Vykos unfolded the letter. The unusual parchment had a disconcerting ruddy tinge to it and crinkled like dried leaves in the night breeze.
My Dearest Vykos,
How can I express the intensity of my feelings toward you at this moment? At the very thought of your nearness, I am consumed with an irresistible longing. My hands tremble in anticipation of our meeting. If I could but once caress the peerless arch of your throat, my fondest desire would be fulfilled.
But it cannot be. When I think of all you have already risked for my sake, I am both humbled and shamed. It is altogether too much to bear. Perhaps you will understand me when I say that I cannot allow you to endanger yourself further on my account. I would rather go willingly to the pyre than be the cause of your bruising even your delicate heel.
You must put this rash notion from your mind. Surely there must be diversions enough in Atlanta to occupy your thoughts for the present. Await me there and I shall come to you, I swear it—in the Autumn perhaps. Yes. I have heard such remarkable things about your Georgian scenery. I should very much like to see your Fall.
My darling, every night we are apart consumes me like the midday sun. Why must you torment me so? You know that I have given into your keeping the keys to my dark soul. There is nothing I can deny you.
But if you must come, bringing fire and the sword into the secret places of my heart, come quickly. Better to yield to such arms as yours, than to fend them off.
“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain…”
Neglected, the letter fluttered loosely in Vykos’s hand. Her gaze was distant, staring out over the Mall at some imaginary point in the middle distance. She hardly noticed the telltale plumes of fires still burning out of control in several parts of the city. The sound of sirens and machine-gun fire and breaking glass rose up on all sides. A police riot-control helicopter banked over the White House.
“And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
Vykos did not know she had spoken aloud until she heard someone discreetly cough behind her. A head poked through the tower window. Parmenides craned his neck to peer up at her.
“It is time, my lady, shall we go down to them?” Vykos took one long last look over the silent city and rose. She descended the steep slope to the window.
Accepting Parmenides’s arm, she allowed him to help her over the sill—although he looked to be the frailer of the two. Apprehension was evident on his face as he blocked her advance toward the tower stair. “They will try
to kill you, you know.”
“I know.” She leaned toward him conspiratorially. “But they do not understand that tonight I have an insurance policy.”
Parmenides turned away sharply and would not meet her gaze.
“Oh, now you have gone and gotten your feelings hurt again. What is the matter, my young romantic, my philosophe?”
He turned upon her in anger. “You can ask that? What use can I be to you like…this?” He struck the cane against his crippled legs in frustration. Vykos winced, expecting him to go down in a heap, but Parmenides did not flinch.
“I think,” she said deliberately, “that you will have to do. Do not worry, you shall not fail me.”
He could not hold her gaze and his eyes fell. “You never have.”
Vykos took his arm. Together they descended the narrow spiraling stair to where the assembled Sabbat dignitaries waited to acknowledge and proclaim Sascha Vykos as Archbishop of Washington, D.C.
Friday, 2 July 1999, 1:22 AM
Manhattan, New York City
The cage descended into the darkness of the service shaft. Witgenstein steeled himself for the interminable journey. As many times as he had made this trip, it never got any easier.
He tried to occupy his thoughts by polishing the elaborate brass scissors-gates. The service elevator to the “dragon’s lair” was a genuine relic. It had somehow managed to evade every attempt at remodeling and modernization since the ’20s. Witgenstein knew that no one else would ever see, much less appreciate, the results of his handiwork, but he applied the rag with an affection usually reserved for vintage automobiles.
Three miles the shaft descended, straight into the belly of the Beast. The printing presses of the Times were one of the marvels of modern engineering. The thundering machines were so massive that their incidental vibrations reached near-seismic proportions. Firing up the presses would have instantly torn down not only any building they were housed in, but the surrounding buildings as well.
In the end, the presses had had to be sunk into the very bedrock of the island. The same unshakable foundation that made the city uniquely suited for its unceasing clamor sky ward also concealed wonders in its deepest recesses.
Witgenstein knew the elevator was nearing the bottom of the shaft by the onset of a sudden panicked feeling of vertigo. All at once, the narrow confines of the shaft had fallen away—receding upward into the dim distance. As many times as he had experienced this alarming sensation, it never failed to produce in him the feeling that his brass cage was hurtling unchecked toward the unforgiving bedrock.
Witgenstein forced his eyes back open, cursing himself for a fool. Squinting into the darkness, he could make out the shadowy presence of the slumbering dragons below. They seemed to fill the vast open space. Wisps of steam rose from their bodies and coiled upwards in the chill, damp air.
Already he could tell that something was wrong. In the uncertain light of his lamp, the presses seemed to glisten wetly. Thick, slimy strands of what looked to be seaweed choked the titanic rollers. But that was impossible. Those presses would easily have ground a strong man’s arms to pulp before anyone could even shut the machines down—assuming someone would be so incautious as not to accord the giants a respectful distance.
But to bring the presses grinding to a halt, those clinging strands must be as thick around as trees.
The service elevator splashed down and then continued its descent at a more leisurely pace. The rising water shorted out the electric lamp as Witgenstein clawed at the latch to the scissors-gates. Already, the lower reaches of the lattice were laced with clinging greenery, preventing their operation.
In time, the cage vanished beneath the murky surface.
Soon, even the echoes of his struggle receded, meandering back and forth between the walls of the narrow service tunnel as if trying to find their way.
Below, that which had stirred at the incessant buzzing of the presses returned to its contemplations.
About the Author
Eric Griffin was initiated into the bardic mysteries at their very source, Cork, Ireland. He is currently engaged in that most ancient of Irish literary traditions—that of the writer-in-exile. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his lovely wife Victoria, and his two sons, heroes-in-training both.