Clan Novel Lasombra: Book 6 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Richard E. Dansky

  CLAN NOVEL

  LASOMBRA

  By Richard Dansky

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Clan Novel Lasombra is a product of White Wolf Publishing.

  White Wolf is a subsidiary of Paradox Interactive.

  Copyright © 1999 by White Wolf Publishing.

  First Printing September 1999

  Crossroad Press Edition published in Agreement with Paradox Interactive

  LICENSE NOTES

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  Dedicated to Benjamin and Esther Cherdack, and to the memory of Joseph and Sara Dansky. Thank you for your love, support and encouragement in all my endeavors, even the ones with fangs, implements of destruction and things that went bump in the night.

  This one’s for you.

  Table of Contents

  part one: minuet

  part two: troy

  part three: pillars of smoke

  part one:

  minuet

  Friday, 16 July 1999, 10:04 PM

  Two Logan Square

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Morty never really understood the meaning of the term “meaty thump” until the very last second of his existence, not that the knowledge did him much good. After all, the thump in question was made by his body hitting the weed-split concrete of the sidewalk; and the meat, well, the less said about that part, the better.

  From thirty-seven stories up, Lucita looked over the edge of the building dispassionately, her long black hair dancing in the strong breeze. The wind tugged at her loose sleeves and leggings, but less effectively, and the chill of the air failed to raise goosebumps on her olive skin. Once, a wind like this would have brought tears to her eyes, but no longer. She looked over the edge at the splatter pattern Morty’s immortal guts had made on impact and tsked to herself. It was messy, too messy. She was getting sloppy in her old age.

  Morty had been a warm-up, not even a paying job. He’d simply crossed Lucita’s path a year or so previously, the last time she’d been in Philadelphia, and had made a profound annoyance out of himself. Lucita prided herself on keeping an even keel these nights (her sire, Satan roast his flabby, scabby soul, had constantly harped on her temper as something that would someday get her killed) but there were still a few ways to get a rise out of the dreaded Monçada’s only childe.

  One was to call her “babydoll, sweetcheeks” or any other such “endearment.”

  Another was to try for a quick grope, though God alone knew why a vampire felt the need.

  And a third was to resort to crude insults relating to Lucita’s ethnicity.

  Morty had gone three for three in the space of thirty seconds, which had to be some sort of record even among the sort of low-rent dirtballs Lucita ran with these nights. As a result, he’d gotten himself reclassified, moving from the list of “imbeciles who can be ignored” to “practice.”

  Two nights back, Lucita had agreed to a new assignment. The Kindred who’d arranged the deal had been a quiet sort who seemed to find the entire arrangement bitterly distasteful. Still, he’d been courteous and professional, and she’d found no reason to refuse the offer. The price had been right, the timeframe had been agreeable and she had been getting, not to put too fine a point on it, bored.

  But it had been some time since she’d taken on an assignment of this caliber, and she didn’t feel quite right about diving in immediately. Instead, she felt rusty. She felt unprepared. She felt like…she needed practice.

  And thus it was that Three-finger Morty, one of the meanest sons of a bitch ever to run a pack through the streets of Philadelphia, ended up as a bloody smear on the sidewalk outside a brew pub.

  Lucita sighed and hugged herself, more as a gesture of worry than as a way of warding off the weather. As warm-ups went, dealing with Morty had been barely worth the trouble. She’d be after bigger prey now, more powerful, more intelligent, and certainly more likely to be aware of her modus operandi than some street-level thug.

  “This one,” she said to no one in particular, “looks like it might actually be work.” Then, without a backward glance, she opened the door to the stairwell and drifted down in its shadows, on her way to leaving the city behind.

  Playtime, like Morty, was over. She had work to do.

  Saturday, 17 July 1999, 10:12 PM

  The Presidential Hotel

  Washington, D.C.

  Sascha Vykos sat on the edge of the immaculately made bed in her suite and angrily regarded a hand-written letter. The missive had been waiting for her this evening when she’d emerged from the haven she’d claimed. Formerly the Presidential Hotel had housed Marcus Vitel, the deposed Prince of Washington, D.C., but after he’d fled the city and Vykos had been confirmed as archbishop, it had seemed as natural to usurp Vitel’s home as it had been to usurp his domain. She also maintained a suite at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill that, incongruously, the Sabbat had descended upon as its field headquarters in the nation’s capital, the better to conduct cloakroom-style business on the fly; but whenever she could, she spent her days slumbering in Vitel’s rooms. If nothing else, it was safer. After all, apart from her personal ghouls and bodyguards, no one knew precisely where she was havening. In theory.

  That was why the presence of a cream-colored envelope sealed with wine-colored wax had been such an unpleasant surprise. None of her watchful ghouls had seen any interlopers during the day or early evening, yet there the letter sat on her doorstep, delicately arranged without even a smudge of dust. She knew who had sent the message. But messages like this were supposed to be conveyed by prearranged courier drop. Her haven was certainly not one of those drops, and that could only mean bad news.

  The note was from her source inside the Camarilla, signed “Lucius” as usual, for reasons chat presumably had died with Caesar in the Forum. The brief message did not in fact contain good news. It noted that the conference of Camarilla elders in Baltimore had been reinforced by the powers-that-be back in the Old Country. Specifically, Ash, Vitel, et alia, had received as reinforcement Jan Pieterzoon, a Ventrue of some reputation as a strategist and schemer. Vykos was familiar enough with Pieterzoon’s work, if not with the man himself; while he wasn’t the threat that a member of the Inner Circle
or one of their lapdogs might be, he was still a power in his own right.

  The rest of the letter was less galvanizing, detailing the reactions of the various conference members to Pieterzoon’s incipient arrival. There was the usual Camarilla-style backbiting and protestations of noble self-sacrifice, but the short version was that most of the delegates were tom between resentment over having to share the credit if they should happen to triumph, and secret relief at the desperately needed help.

  Sighing, she re-folded the letter and tucked it back into the envelope. It was then that she noticed that the signet ring used to seal the wax had left an impression in the shape of the Camarilla’s telltale ankh. It was a droll touch, and not one she would have expected of “Lucius.” Either the spy had developed a sense of humor, or it was intended as a reminder that her whereabouts were known, and the knowledge could be passed along to others at any time. It was all dreadfully, unnecessarily complicated, but upon reflection, Vykos came to the conclusion that most Cainites of her age or older simply didn’t know any other way to be. The simple and direct died simple and direct deaths; only the devious and elusive endured.

  Carelessly throwing the letter on the floor, Vykos sighed. Pieterzoon’s arrival was, to say the least, an unexpected complication. She frowned, crossed her legs and then uncrossed them, and found herself fidgeting restlessly. That would never do, not with the war council set to resume its so-called deliberations within the hour.

  Suddenly impatient, she clapped her hands, twice. The door of the suite opened and one of her ghouls, a dapper, thin man with a hatchet face and a reddish beard that could best be described as “sparse,” entered. “Yes, mistress?”

  “Kevin, I need you to make a phone call for me.

  A phone call, mistress?” The ghoul’s face and tone both registered his surprise. “Of course. Whom shall I call, and as to what end?”

  “You shall call me, and you will do so when the circumstances demand that you do so.” Kevin still looked puzzled, and internally Vykos debated whether she was doing the right thing by trusting even this simple task to him. He showed no signs of active disobedience, but precious few of competence, either.

  Vykos sighed. Even if Kevin did not understand what he was doing, or why he was doing it, his expression should be one of rapt attention, reflecting a certain trust that all Vykos might ask of him would be explained to him properly. Confusion, when seen from that perspective, was a manifestation of distrust, and distrust was a form of disloyalty.

  She would, she decided, do some work to make sure that Kevin’s expression never troubled her again, if he succeeded in carrying out his instructions precisely. Otherwise, she’d express her displeasure more emphatically, and more permanently.

  And then she told Kevin what she needed him to do, and when, and why, and she watched the light of recognition dawn on his face. It was, Vykos noted, possibly one of the most irritating things she had ever seen.

  “Of course, mistress,” he said, bowing and backing out of the room.

  It took Vykos all of perhaps three seconds to decide that, regardless of how well Kevin performed his task, he wasn’t going to see morning.

  Life, even eternal life, was too short to put up with that sort of thing.

  And in the air vent, something that looked almost precisely like a cat arched its back, then turned and scurried away.

  Friday, 16 July 1999, 10:48 PM (local time)

  Iglesia de San Nicolas de los Servitas

  Madrid, Spain

  The heart of the church was a huge, mostly empty room with a stone floor. In it, a fat man sat on a simple wooden stool, contemplating a chess board. A smattering of white pieces, including a handful of pawns and a single bishop, had been removed from play. So had a few black pawns, but that was all. White had castled and was concentrating on establishing a strong defense, while black was on the offensive but seemed oddly disorganized, and one of its knights was in imminent danger.

  “It seems like a resignable position.”

  Cardinal Ambrosio Luis de Monçada looked up from the board, a beatific smile on his face. “Ahh, Sir Talley. It is good to see you in the flesh, my son. You are well? The trip was not too arduous? You have fed?”

  Talley, as the templar called himself, nodded assent to all of his host’s questions. “Your hospitality, Your Eminence, is as always impeccable.” He eased his long frame down onto the stool opposite Monçada. Talley was bony and angular, with a face like a hound that has just seen the fox vanish once and for all. His hair was white, though his features made him seem no older than thirty. His hands were his most remarkable feature: They were long and slender, and the fourth finger on each was longer than the middle one. In his living days, Talley had once been accused of being a werewolf because of those remarkable hands; having dealt with any number of lupines in his time, he now found the recollection amusing. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, clearly hand-tailored by someone who knew how to accentuate the clean lines of the human predator.

  By contrast, Monçada wore a simple priest’s robe, and sandals that flapped against the floor as he tapped his foot, contemplating his next move. “Unfortunately, Don Ibrahim, my opponent in this game, is of the stubborn sort who will fight to the last angry little pawn.” He looked up with an expression of mock concern. “And you seat yourself in his place! Truly, my son, I thought you were on my side in this matter.”

  Talley rose and bowed. “Forgive me. I shall, of course, repair to your side immediately, and beg humble apologies for my treachery.”

  Monçada chuckled, a thick, wet sound. “No, no. Sit. I just find that too many of the young ones these days have a dreadful tendency to get wrapped up in chess metaphors. It’s lazy thinking.”

  Talley did not sit, but leaned over and picked up the black queen. “Mmm. Considering the chessboard, I’m not surprised the privileged few who see it are whipped into a tizzy by it. Lucita?” he said, indicating the piece he held.

  Monçada reached a pudgy hand out for it. “Of course. The set itself was a gift from Vykos. He does marvelous work, do you not agree?”

  “He?”

  The cardinal shrugged massively. “He, she, it—it changes with its whim. I met Vykos first when he had his original form, and that is how I know him. He does me the courtesy of resuming it when he comes to visit.”

  “Ah. If it’s all the same, I’ll avoid the issue and keep this form for the foreseeable future.”

  Monçada gave a delighted laugh. “Your courtesy is greatly appreciated, and I trust you to keep the face that suits the one they call ‘The Hound’ best.” He looked at the chess piece, then replaced it on the board. “Pity she was so reluctant to pose for this. Ahem.” He looked up. “You would like to know why you are here, yes? The pleasure of your company is, while something I do not get nearly enough of, not sufficient to cause me to summon you.”

  Talley kept a poker face. “I trust not for confession, then? I’m afraid I’ve racked up quite a list of sins in the centuries since Jeffrey first brought me here; I must admit to having been a bit lax in my churching.”

  “We should make time for that soon, then, my little Hound. I have faith in you to perform the task I’ve set you without harm, but more faith in other things. God is merciful, but only if we avail ourselves of that mercy. And it is incumbent upon those of us who are irretrievably damned to pay careful attention to how we tend our souls. We are damned for a reason within God’s scheme of things, but that does not excuse us from obeying those of God’s laws that He has left to us.”

  Talley shifted uncomfortably. Unlike most of the Sabbat’s archbishops and cardinals, Monçada had actually been an archbishop in life, and a pillar of the Church during years when faith was a palpable thing. Oddly enough, his belief had not deserted him upon the Embrace, instead twining around an ineffable belief in his own damnation. It was a curious combination, but a potent one, and Monçada’s ability to draw upon the strength of his faith was one of the reasons he was so widely fear
ed by even those who served him. Still, the cardinal’s devotion to the sect did little to set those Cainites of little or no faith at ease around him. It was fortunate, then, that Monçada spent all of his time within the heart of his massive, mazelike cathedral haven. The cardinal did not journey forth into the world; the world, when he needed it, approached him humbly, and on bended knee.

  In the distance, bells were tolling.

  “Tut, tut,” the cardinal said suddenly. “I trust you to keep your body safe enough to house your soul until you return, and then we’ll shrive you. In the meantime, there’s work to do.”

  Talley nodded. He was almost as old as Monçada, certainly faster and possibly stronger. But the cardinal had a presence, an aura of paternal wisdom and sheer power that made Talley feel like a child—a mortal boy—once again. He felt the need to garner Monçada’s approval, to seek shelter and safety under the cardinal’s beneficent gaze. It was most likely a trick, a side effect of some power or other that the cardinal didn’t even realize he was employing, but the impact was devastatingly real.

  Then again, according to Talley’s great-grandsire Boukephos, Monçada had possessed that gift even when he was alive. It had been, said the ancient Greek, the deciding factor in Embracing Monçada, even over the protests of the Muslim members of the clan who were affiliated with the other side of the Reconquista. Now those self-same Cainites sought his counsel on matters temporal, if not spiritual.

  “So what is this work you have for me?” Talley had to force himself away from his contemplation of the cardinal, and it was clear Monçada was aware of his distraction. “I work better when I know what I’m actually supposed to be doing.”