“I cannot, absolutely cannot go along with this, this travesty of a plan. I will not offer up my clan for the slaughter.”
“For the last time, Tomasz, not your clan!” The prince slammed a blocky fist down on the table. Fine cracks spiderwebbed across the wood. “You and your childer and their miserable childer will get away scot free if you follow my instruction. If you don’t, then so help me, I will leave you and yours here to die, and send a bunch of daisies to be laid on the grave of the Unknown Nosferatu every year. Damnation!” He picked up a half-full goblet and flung it against the wall; the blood the cup had contained made a jagged stain where it hit. Ghouls scurried in to clean the mess up, hut Lladislas snarled at them and they vanished.
Tomasz picked up his own goblet, which was still full, and chugged noisily from it. “Temper, temper, Lladislas. Beating up the furniture won’t impress me, won’t impress me at all. Now unless you can give me something, anything, to convince me that this idiotic plan will work, I’m leaving and making my own arrangements.”
“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” The Brujah prince leaned over the table, his body quivering with barely repressed fury. Tomasz got a close-up view of the bigger man’s fingers actually digging into the wood of the table, and decided that a conciliatory tack was in order.
“It just means that…I’m not convinced, not convinced at all that this plan is going to work, and was hoping you’d convince me.”
Lladislas drew his lips back in a grin that showed entirely too many teeth. “I told you. It’s very simple, and before you start complaining, it’s not mine, so bitching to me won’t get you anywhere. We are going to have to evacuate the city. No ifs, no ands, and no buts. I’m sure you’ve read the reports from Atlanta. As a matter of fact, I’m sure you have better sources than I do. You always do. And, having read those reports, what do you think our chances are against what’s coming?” Tomasz pursed his lips. “Somewhere between none and none.”
“Exactly. And like you, I have no intention of getting slaughtered. I also don’t intend to let the Sabbat profit from my city. I want this place to be a nail in their tire, a thorn in their side. I want them to waste so much time on Buffalo for so little gain that they burst blood vessels thinking about how badly they’ve been had. Does that idea appeal to you?
Of course it does. But I don’t see how what you have in mind is going to do that.”
“Bell’s idea, actually, but I think it’s brilliant. The brief version is this: We take your youngest neonate—what’s her name, Ashleigh?”
“Phoebe Ashleigh, yes. What does she have to do with any of this?”
“She gets to live out many an elder’s fantasy: near-unlimited right of creation.”
“But that’s absurd! She’s barely survived any number of… I mean, why are you…” A sudden gleam of understanding slid into the Nosferatu’s eyes. “Aha. Very clever.”
“As I said, credit Bell. Ashleigh is just the most convenient candidate.”
Tomasz shrugged. “What do you want to do with Phoebe? Just turn her loose? That strikes me as a poor, poor idea.”
“Already thought of. We tell her to go to the clubs and pick out a half dozen—no, a dozen pretty boys and girls of the sort that she used to be. She gets to haul them back to a safe house I’ll provide. She Embraces each and every one, and then a mysterious, shadowy figure—I had you in mind for this, actually, but I’ll take it myself if you don’t want to do it—can walk in and tell the babies that their only hope for being returned to human is to fight off the invasion of the monsters, and so on and so forth.” He held up a hand to forestall the inevitable explosion. “What are you going to do, tell them the truth? Half will run away and the others will join the Sabbat. If we don’t lie to them, they’ve got no incentive to fight for us, and every reason not to. Also, if we hold out the carrot of turning them back, we can also sucker them into abiding by the Masquerade. And so they’re ready, willing and eager to fight.”
“I was going to say,” Tomasz interjected with a hint of acid, “that I wasn’t sure they’d be in combat shape, if the assault is coming as soon as you say it is.” Lladislas’s expression went ever-so-slightly cold. “Honestly, Tomasz, it doesn’t matter if they are or not. They’re not supposed to win this fight.” More gently, he said, “They’re not even supposed to survive.”
“What if they do?” Lladislas just looked at Tomasz, and the latter looked away. “Ah. I see.
There’s no other way. All we need these Kindred for is to provide a speed bump. To make the Sabbat stop and look around and take a long time settling in here before moving on to the next city, so we buy time for our defenses. I will level with you, Tomasz. I don’t particularly like you. Left to my own, I couldn’t care less if you or Ashleigh fell down a sewer grate and got eaten by one of your mutant alligators. But I am prince. I have a duty, one that I take seriously. That duty is to take responsibility for this city and the Kindred in it, and for the moment, you are part of that responsibility. Once we abandon this place, that ends, at least temporarily. You’ll be free to spit in my beer, puke on my shoes and tell the rest of the world about all the dirty deeds I’ve done. But for the moment, I am prince. This is what we’re doing, because the prince says so, and because it’s the only chance we have of getting the city back. Ever.”
Tomasz looked up. “It stinks, you know that. It stinks to high heaven, and there are going to be a lot of pieces to pick up, even if it works.”
“We’ve dealt with mass disappearances before, or don’t you remember ’96?”
“Eighteen or nineteen?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not really. But there will be an accounting for this.” Lladislas made a dismissive gesture. “Tomasz, we are Kindred. There is an accounting for everything we do, and an accounting for that accounting, and on into the centuries. You know that as well as I do. So make your mark in your ledger, and let Ashleigh make hers, and let the reckoning come when it may. And in the meantime, do what I tell you to or you won’t have the time to make that mark.” The Prince of Buffalo closed his eyes for a moment. “Mind you, even if you refuse, the whole thing goes forward. I’ve got Baughman lined up to do it as well; he’s even agreed to stay behind and oversee the initial phase of things with Haraszty. I can do this without you. I’d rather do it with you. It will make the whole thing look better from the outside, and that would make my job easier. And right now, I really don’t need anything that makes my job harder. Do we have an understanding, Tomasz?”
“An understanding, yes. A perfect one. If you will excuse me?” The Nosferatu rose to his feet and made for the door. As he reached it, he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll deliver Phoebe to you in an hour. She’ll have at least enough understanding of what’s going on to be helpful, though I suspect she won’t deal well with the shock of having all her childer slaughtered. You might have to put her down, too. For the good of the plan, of course.” Tomasz strode out, his back as straight as he could make it. One of the waiting ghouls shut the door behind him, and Lladislas found himself alone in the room, with only the faint smell of spilled blood in the air to distract him.
He sat there for a solid quarter of an hour, until the ghoul at the door timidly knocked and stuck his head into the room. “Your Majesty? You said to tell you when Mr. Baughman arrived and, uhh, he’s…”
Lladislas turned around without bothering to disguise his expression, and the ghoul abruptly paled and stammered.
“Send him in,” was all the prince said, and the ghoul bolted. A few minutes later, he returned leading a short, wiry Kindred in jeans and a shirt in a revolting shade of orange. Lladislas composed himself as the ghoul scurried out.
“Mr. Baughman. Glad you could make it. I have a little job for you, one I’m hoping you’ll find worthwhile. Mind you, if you’re not interested, I understand; I’ve already spoken to Tomasz about handling part of it and he can certainly take care of the whole thing. But if
you want in, there’s a place for you. Frankly, this thing needs one of us Brujah to hold its hand, if you know what I mean.”
Baughman looked back at the door, which had just clicked shut behind him. The ghoul was nowhere to be found. It was just him and the prince. The same prince, a little voice in his head noted, he’d spent fifteen years agitating resistance against. Of course, he’d come back to the fold and more or less settled in to the Camarilla routine, but this situation was looking awfully like a setup….
“Of course, Your Majesty,” he said as he settled into a chair. “What can I do for you?”
Tuesday, 10 August 1999, 10:42 PM
Underneath Marine Drive
Buffalo, New York
It would have been a surprise to several of Buffalo’s Kindred to discover that the haven of Tomasz the Nosferatu was not ankle-deep in sludgy water. It also was profoundly lacking in the smell of rotting garbage, any sort of sewage, or even the odd piece of salvaged, broken-down furniture. Tomasz may have had a face like week-old roadkill, but he liked his creature comforts, and his main haven reflected this.
The haven was in a storm drain, true, but it was a side chamber raised a foot off the tunnel that led to it. Arrangements of glowing fungi marked the corridor; some labeled traps that Tomasz had painstakingly set up over the years while others marked safe routes. Only he, and a few of his childer, knew which species of growth meant which. Farther out in the darkness, the watchful eyes of rat sentries gleamed in the faint light. No one, mortal, Kindred or other, could approach Tomasz’s haven without Tomasz’s learning of it.
Response time was something that was near and dear to the Nosferatu’s unbeating heart, and he tried to make sure he always had enough of it. At the moment, however, he didn’t have any, and he didn’t like that one bit. And that was why he found himself entertaining company that even he found dubious in his haven.
It wasn’t that Dustin was particularly ugly. By Nosferatu standards he was almost handsome, and could nearly pass for normal in bad light. Currently he was sitting on one of Tomasz’s elaborately carved handcrafted chairs (brought over at great expense and difficulty from Krakow), being a perfect guest and paying rapt attention to everything his host said.
No, the reason Dustin had a somewhat shaky reputation among even his clanmates was that he liked to play with fire, and that was the sort of thing that made even other Nosferatu worry.
“I don’t like this, don’t like this at all.” Tomasz paced up and down on a Persian carpet that was five decades old and showed not a thread out of place. Behind him, light sparkled on a collection of Viennese silver that had been lovingly acquired over a hundred years. “There is something amiss. Dustin, I need you.”
The younger Nosferatu shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Why me? Where’s Phoebe?”
Tomasz grimaced. “She is on…other business. But Dustin, this is something more along your specialty anyway.”
Dustin grinned, showing teeth going every which way. “Meaning you want someone killed, and sweet lil’ ol’ Phoebe ain’t up to the dirty deed?”
Tomasz shook his misshapen head. “No, not exactly. I need you to watch for me. To kill if you have to, but mostly to watch.”
“I don’t get it.” Dustin stood and took great care to dust off the chair, his movements just this side of exaggeration. “So you need someone to watch. Send your rats and leave me out of it.”
Tomasz waggled a cautionary finger. “No, rats will not do for this. I need sharp eyes, and a good mind behind them. If you had studied more, you’d know rats are limited in some ways, some very important ways.”
Dustin failed to disguise a look that conveyed a deep sense of “whatever,” and took a step toward the exit tunnel. “That’s nice. What now?”
“What happens now is that you stay when Phoebe and I go, and you keep yourself alive so you can tell me what really happens. I do not trust this.
I take it refusing is not an option?”
“It is always an option, but part of that option is accepting the consequences of refusing.”
“Ah.” Dustin opened his mouth and closed it again. “Crud. Do I at least get to fight back if they spot me?”
Tomasz spread his hands in an expansive gesture. “Of course. You are of no use to any of us dead, so do what you must. Just remember what you are there for, though. You have a reputation for…too much enthusiasm. It will not serve you in this.”
The younger Nosferatu chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry. I like my skin, and I pack a few surprises these days. I’ll make it out in one piece.”
“You had better, Dustin. I am relying on you. And I think you will find the rewards for this task to be suitable.”
“Oh really. Well then, we’ll have to discuss those when I catch up with you. Have the rats tell me where the meet point is. I have some prep work to do.” With that, he loped off into the darkness. Tomasz muttered something that might have been a curse or a farewell, then set about packing. In the darkness outside his home, rats chittered to each other, softly.
Tuesday, 10 August 1999, 11:02 PM
Underneath Louisiana and Seneca Streets
Buffalo, New York
Unlike Tomasz’s haven, Dustin’s was quite literally a hole in the ground. More to the point, it was more a workroom than anything else. Dustin was a tinkerer, and he eschewed the “normal” Nosferatu hobbies of breeding monstrous ghouls, cultivating fungi and otherwise playing to stereotype in favor of building devices that left his clanmates leery of his company. He’d been a mechanic in life, and the bug to take things apart only to put them back together better was one that hadn’t left him when he’d been Embraced. He’d just turned that interest to things that were more pertinent to his current condition.
It was one of those projects that concerned him now. It lay mostly disassembled on a workbench as Dustin took heated shears and cut lengths of plastic strapping. Whistling something that might have been an Offspring tune before he mangled it, he slid buckles onto the straps, folded over the plastic weave and used the flat of the still-hot scissors to melt a seal into place. On the workbench, a small gas flame jetted merrily into the air; a hose led from the burner to an ominously large tank. Most Kindred would have been climbing the walls to get away from such an arrangement, but Dustin was self-confessedly weird. On an intellectual level, he knew precisely the sort of damage open flame, especially the stuff flaring forth on his workbench, could do to him. He’d spent agonizing weeks regrowing the flesh on his hands after a couple of particularly nasty accidents, and he could feel the ravening, insane fear of flame that still lurked inside him every time he turned the gas jet on.
But that was nothing compared to the rush he got from seeing fire, from watching it dance and flicker and flare. In his rare philosophical moments, Dustin reflected that, on some gut level, he knew how a moth felt around the light.
There was a practical benefit to the whole obsession, too, however: Even other Kindred regarded Dustin as more cracked than an eggcup in an earthquake, and tended to give him a wide berth. That suited Dustin just fine, as he really had little interest in politics and less in being patronized by the pathetic quintet of Kindred who hung on to Prince Lladislas’s coattails. Dustin liked being in the dark, he liked being left alone with his toys, and he liked making Tomasz’s too-thin blood boil on a regular basis. Beyond that, everything in existence was gravy.
With a grunt, Dustin looped the straps through eyelets on the back of a large metal tank, then held the scissors in the flame for a minute to re-heat them before sealing the straps on. “Hope this damn thing works,” he said to himself, and began strapping the aluminum tank onto his back.
Wednesday, 11 August 1999, 2:16 AM
Interstate 270
Near Garrett Park, Maryland
Tolliver had lived out of a dumpster for over twenty-four hours, and he frankly hated it. His jaw was still in three pieces where MacEllen, the bastard, had broken it. The back of his head ached, though at least
he’d been able to mend the cracks in his skull and stop the bleeding. And to top it all off, he smelled like rotting fast food, old rainwater and vomit. All in all, it sucked, but he’d been damn lucky the dumpster wasn’t emptied during the day.
As inhospitable as the surroundings were, he’d needed the time to heal, and he figured he’d hang here until suitable transportation came along. In the meantime, there was at least enough food and shelter, and he could be a patient sort of vampire when necessary.
Minutes ticked by. He hunkered down on top of the dumpster and watched for a suitable ride to arrive. Minivans came and went, as did broken-down Fords, dinged-up Toyotas and almost everything else imaginable. Finally, a perfect specimen rolled in.
The car was a black convertible, one of those squat little Beemers that had been all the rage a year or so back. The top was down so Tolliver could see the driver, a woman traveling by herself. She seemed utterly oblivious to anything except herself and her car, which meant that he’d be able to get close without a problem.
Plus, from what he could tell, she was a looker.
Soundlessly, he sprang down from his perch and moved towards the gas pumps. Other cars whizzed in and out, but Tolliver ignored them. He’d be out of here so fast it didn’t matter what anyone saw of him.
The driver was just getting back in when he reached the convertible. Her back was to him. It was perfect.
Clan Novel Lasombra: Book 6 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 9