Clan Novel Lasombra: Book 6 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Richard E. Dansky

  “My most sincere apologies, Rey,” she said, not particularly caring if he heard or not. She blew him a kiss, and another shadow tendril joined the first. His screaming could be heard now over the din of the traffic, mixed in with curses and pleas. The shadows had tugged their victim nearly back to the fence by now, and Lucita idly added another tendril to the mix. The three hauled Torres to the chain-link fence, and Lucita made another gesture.

  The third tendril wrapped around Torres’s chest and hauled him upright. The others still held his ankles, pinning him against the fence. He struggled, but to no avail.

  Lucita strode purposefully down to where her prisoner waited. She walked up to the fence and prodded him in the small of the back with a single finger. “A pleasure to see you again, Rey.”

  Rey spat. “Go fuck yourself, Lucita. What the hell are you playing at?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, no? This place is a long way from your usual nest.”

  “I’m a tourist. This is my vacation. Any other stupid questions?”

  Lucita made a great show of considering the lie, even though Torres couldn’t really turn his head far enough to see her. “Oh, I see. How could I have been so mistaken. Here I stood, thinking that perhaps you were here scouting, and I think that you’re trying to preserve your worthless skin a few seconds longer by attempting wit, which has never been your strong point. And furthermore, I think that I really have no inclination to stay in this city any longer than I have to, Rey, so I do not think your little delaying tactic is going to work very well.”

  “Oh really?” There was bravado layered over desperation in his voice. “So what’s keeping you here?

  You’re not dead yet,” she said. “But this can be remedied. You’d be surprised how little they’re paying me for your life. And did you know something else, Rey? I forgot to eat before I got here. Imagine that.” When she finished supper, Lucita dusted her hands of what was left of Rey and headed back up the hill. She left the two corpses of the younger vampires arranged neatly in front of the remnants of the Last Supper. It seemed, she thought to herself, entirely appropriate—at least as far as Rey was concerned.

  Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 2:57 AM

  Interstate 84

  Central Connecticut

  The phone rang precisely thrice before someone picked it up. There was a moment of fumbling noises, then finally someone rasped “Hello?” into the receiver.

  “Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Schreck’s personal secretary?” Lucita was in a good mood. She was headed eastbound on I-84 with the top of her convertible down, the wind in her hair and a completed assignment behind her.

  The Nosferatu (for now Lucita recognized the voice as belonging to the “woman” from the basement in Baltimore) on the other end of the connection chuckled briefly. “If that’s what you want to call it for the moment. Good evening, Lucita. How’s the convertible holding up?”

  “The car is lovely, thank you. Most satisfactory.” The Nosferatu made as if to say something else, but Lucita cut her off. “Are you finished with the pointless chitchat so that I can make my report, or do you wish to continue pretending that you actually enjoy talking to me?” On the right, a sign marking the turnoff for I-691 and Middletown flashed by in the night. Lucita ignored it, cut into the left lane and looped around a rig that was doing a mere eighty-five.

  There was silence on the line for a second. “And here I thought all of you Lasombra appreciated the social graces.”

  “Courtesy, yes. Breeding, yes. A sense of propriety, yes—even if one is no longer welcome within the loving arms of one’s clan. Assumed, unearned familiarity is another matter entirely. Do not presume on a business acquaintance, and do not pretend you know me or my kind. Now, do you want the evening’s report, or shall I hang up and simply enjoy driving this wonderful car you’ve given me?”

  The wind made it hard to hear the Nosferatu’s response, but Lucita was certain it was something quite rude. It was followed by an expectant silence, so she shifted the phone to her left hand, tucked it under her chin, and rattled off the evening’s details.

  “Torres is dead. Your spotter’s information was good, and once I was in Waterbury I was able to find him easily. Your man did not mention that Torres had runners with him, but I expected as much. They have been dealt with as well, but their bodies were left as a message.”

  “You didn’t get that?” The Nosferatu sounded surprised. “That should have been in the last transmission.”

  “It doesn’t matter at this point. Both are dead.” She blew her horn as she nearly ran up the tailpipe of an Infiniti, which took a moment to wobble over to the right lane. “And no, I did not hear that. Interesting.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. Well. Damn. You said you got both?”

  “I did. Out of the goodness of my heart, I will not even add them to the bill.” She paused. “I must admit, I was surprised to find Rey here, of all places.”

  “It was a lucky break,” the Nosferatu admitted carelessly. “We knew that they’d sent out scouts, so we put people out to watch the main roads. One of our roving spotters on interstate detail caught him by accident in Duchess County and called it in. From there, it was just a matter of getting people on the right roads to look for him. Are you still on for the last two targets?”

  Lucita’s expression melted into a frown. The next mark was insignificant, but as for the archbishop, she’d been contracted not once but twice to take out that target, and Talley, damn him and his “professional courtesy,” would oppose her. The money was frankly unimportant. It was the principle of the thing. No one kept her from what she had claimed for her own. No one.

  Not anymore.

  “Lucita? Are you still there? Lucita?”

  “Hmm? Yes. Just…some difficult traffic.”

  There was a deliberate pause at the other end of the line. “Are you sure that you can handle Talley?” the Nosferatu asked, as if reading Lucita’s mind long distance. “We can send in help if you need.”

  Lucita’s brow darkened with anger. “Good night,” she said, and broke the connection. In the near distance, the lights of Hartford obscured the stars and turned the night sky a sickly purple. The city was still in Camarilla hands, for the time being. She’d stay here for the next few nights, regrouping, and then press on. One more simple assignment, and then it was on to the big one.

  Not to mention, she thought, Talley.

  Wednesday, 18 August 1999, 3:17 AM

  A subterranean grotto

  New York City, New York

  Calebros handled the long, wooden match with considerable deftness despite the gnarled talons that served as his fingers. He lit the final candle on the candelabra—a device he kept as far as possible from his desk, piled high with papers and folders, while still close enough to benefit slightly from the flickering illumination. His former desk lamp had flickered once too often for its own good, and Calebros had reacted…well, violently. Thus the candelabra.

  At least candles were supposed to flicker. Calebros had enough sources of tension in his unlife without cantankerous desk appliances. He’d long since thrown in his lot with the Camarilla, unlike many of his clanmates here in the Big Apple, and right now everything was going the Sabbat’s way. Perhaps Calebros had put too much faith in Pieterzoon, but if a childe of Hardestadt couldn’t save the day, so to speak, what hope remained?

  Calebros returned to his work, taking a several-nights-old report from his desk and exorcising his agitation with a red pen.

  Thursday, 19 August 1999, 3:49 AM

  Wisconsin Avenue

  Washington, D.C.

  Four vampires could often do safely what no mortal in his right mind would even attempt, in this case wander the streets of Washington, D.C., after dark without the slightest fear for their personal safety. The fact that three of the four were archbishops of the Sabbat, and the fourth was a bodyguard who could, on any given night, give each of the three a run for his money didn’t
alter the situation that much. It simply meant that the quartet was impossibly formidable, instead of just being extremely nasty.

  Currently the four—Archbishop Sascha Vykos of Washington, Archbishop Domingo Polonia of New York, Archbishop Borges of Miami, and the ominous, silent Sir Talley, who strode four paces behind them—were taking their ease on Georgetown’s main drag, walking past closed pizza joints and used-CD stores. The homeless, who normally dotted the street after the students and tourists and Eurotrash had gone home, took a look at what was coming down the street and, one by one, withdrew into doorways or side streets or alleys, shivering there until the four predators had gone.

  They needn’t have worried, however. Three of the four were after bigger prey, and the last wasn’t after anyone in particular at all.

  “It seems that we have two problems,” said Vykos, who had slipped her arms through those of the Lasombra flanking her. Borges flinched at her touch, while Polonia accepted it without hesitation.

  Talley, stalking behind, noticed this as he noticed everything else. Mostly, however, his gaze was on everything hut the three vampires in front of him. Instead, he kept an eye on the rooftops, the doorways and the alleys, and especially the shadows. He knew better than to expect his warning had served any purpose, other than to allow him to say he’d made every attempt to comply with the letter of Monçada’s instructions not to harm the cardinal’s childe.

  Talley didn’t think Lucita would be brash enough to try anything here, but then again Lucita had been brash since before her sire had brought her from life into unlife. Surely she couldn’t be rash enough to try to attack all four of them…but then again, deciding that she couldn’t possibly do something meant that you stopped defending against that particular eventuality.

  Lucita, he knew, was very, very good at finding out where you’d let down your defenses. So, Talley decided, the best course was to assume nothing, prepare for everything and use that as an excuse to ignore the discussion the three vampires he was escorting were having. It was, he found, surprisingly difficult. His eye kept being drawn back to the obvious tension ahead of him. To the casual observer, the trio might look like three friends on a night out, possibly students or, given their exotic features, attaches from one of the nearby embassies.

  But Talley could read the body language of those three like he could read a map, which was to say with but a quick glance, and what he read bothered him. Polonia’s movements were graceful by human standards, but compared to the archbishop’s usual feline grace he was positively wooden. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere.

  Vykos, by comparison, was almost too ostentatiously at ease. She laughed too loudly and too often. Her walk was still predatory, but over-exaggerated.

  As for Borges, he moved under tight control. Every brush against Vykos, every laugh or comment made him stiffen.

  “So we have two problems,” he heard Polonia say. “First, there is the matter of the most noble and notable Theodore Bell, who seems to be behind many of our problems. Pieterzoon appears to be leaning on him heavily. I would very much like to see what would happen if we removed that crutch, and would be very pleased if the Ventrue toppled as a result.”

  Borges spat. “Should we even be discussing this here? This is neither the time nor the place to be planning serious matters.”

  “On the contrary,” Polonia’s voice was smooth and a bit amused, “it is the perfect time and place. For once there are no idiot Panders banging on the table, no ghouls snacking in the corner and no pack priests needing to be disciplined just so we can all agree that fire is hot. We, and Mr. Talley behind us, are the real powers here. What we decide is what happens. The rest is mere shadowplay, a puppet show to make the others follow us more willingly. For the moment, however,” and a note of surprise crept into his voice, “I find myself a bit weary of playing to the crowd.

  “So, we have a problem. Two, actually, but I think we should deal with Bell first before moving on to the other.”

  Borges harrumped. “I think I’d rather hear what you think our other problem is, Don Polonia. We keep on trying to tackle things piecemeal, and I worry that we are spending too much effort and time by doing so. Perhaps one of our problems can help solve another, yes?”

  Vykos gave a silvery peal of laughter. “Why, Archbishop Borges, that’s an excellent notion.” Borges almost skipped a step and Talley could see his shoulders tense in a way he’d seen in wolfhounds about to leap to the attack. “What else do we have on the agenda, Archbishop Polonia?”

  Polonia gracefully disengaged from Vykos’s arm and made a gesture that was more or less equivalent to a shrug. “I don’t see how it will help in this instance, but the other concern I have is Boston.”

  “Boston?” Borges snorted disbelief. “What about it? It’s been ripe for the taking for years. It’s a rotten fencepost. All we have to do is lean on it and it will fall over.”

  “As far as the Camarilla is concerned, yes. However, there’s another power there that concerns me far more. The Giovanni are strong there, and getting stronger, and unlike the Camarilla they don’t play by any rules.”

  “True enough,” Borges chimed in. “Half the time, you can trust the Camarilla’s own Traditions to hamstring them in a fight. The necromancers are under no such compunction. Unfortunately, they fight to win.”

  “Indeed. And their allies among the dead make them more formidable than their numbers would indicate.” Vykos sounded a trifle concerned, though Talley admitted to himself that it could just be wishful thinking. He’d known Vykos a long time, known of Vykos for even longer, and had only heard the Tzimisce sound afraid all of twice in all that time. He liked hearing Vykos afraid. It let him know how, should it become necessary, he could take the freshly minted Archbishop of Washington down.

  Then again, there was quite a distance between “possibly mildly concerned” and actually afraid, and Talley knew better than to confuse the two.

  “…Saying we should ignore the Camarilla for the moment and just strike full force at Boston?” Polonia’s voice was incredulous.

  “Not ignore it. Keep up harrying attacks at the cities on the front. Wait for Archbishop Vykos’s friend to tell us where they’ll be weak and hit there with small units. Such tactics brought us Buffalo, did they not? And in the meantime, go after the Giovanni sons of bitches so hard with everything else we’ve got that Venice sinks another six inches in sympathy.” Borges was flushed with excitement, his left hand tracing maps in the air as he outlined his plan.

  Vykos frowned and interjected. “It’s a good notion, but how do we put it into practice?”

  Polonia sidestepped a pile of trash in the middle of the sidewalk and nodded. “The difficulty is in getting men there. We can’t come down from Montreal because the territory in between is hostile, rotten with lupines. We’d lose most of our forces before we got within shouting distance of the city. Heading north from New York forces us to strike out across Camarilla territory, which negates the whole point of your excellent strategy, Don Borges. The same holds for any move east from Buffalo. And the Giovanni have a very firm hold on the airport and docks, so sea or air maneuvers are unlikely at best.”

  “Are you so sure of the latter, Archbishop?” Vykos asked.

  “Quite. I’ve had occasion to use their services.” That almost broke Vykos’s stride, and Talley gave a quick laugh that he swallowed in a cough. “Oh yes, they’re excellently professional.”

  “Dare I ask why you placed yourself in their hands?” The laughter and coquettish tone were gone from Vykos’s voice. “A whim? Surely not.”

  Polonia laughed. “More of a fact-finding mission. I wanted to see first-hand how they were managing to smuggle so many Ventrue into New York. I came away slightly waterlogged and very impressed. They have a superb, almost enviable operation.”

  “And did you learn how to end the flow of Camarilla vampires into your city, Archbishop?” Borges’s tone was deceptively mild, implying that the whole thing was a t
rifling affair and that anyone of reasonable competence could be expected to handle it with a minimum of fuss.

  “No,” said Polonia softly, “but I did learn some other very interesting things.” The implications hung in the air a moment, and Talley watched the other two very carefully for their reactions. Unfortunately, he was predictably disappointed by what he saw.

  “Ah,” replied Borges, dismissing Polonia’s comment. “Well, sooner or later they won’t have anywhere to come from, no?”

  Talley could almost hear Polonia forcing his face into a smile at the insult. “The man with snakes in his garden has more to worry about than the man with uninvited guests, Don Borges. You’d do very well indeed to remember that.”

  Borges bristled, and for an instant Talley thought he’d have to intervene. Fortunately, Vykos did so before he had to. “The truism is quaint, but I still haven’t heard what you intend us to do.”

  Polonia took an extra step forward, spun on his heel and bowed deeply. The entire procession ground to a halt as he did so. “The noble archbishop is, of course, correct. May I beg your indulgence one moment, then, to explain my humble plans?”

  Borges frowned. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, Polonia.”

  “Nor in yours, dead man. Now hold your tongue for a minute, before it flaps out too far and gets cut off.” Pushed too far, Borges descended into angry sputtering, which Talley was quite certain was what Polonia had wanted all along.

  “As I see it, the key is still Bell. Pieterzoon leans on him, relies on him. He is the means by which the damned Ventrue integrates himself into the machine of the American Camarilla. Soon, the two of them will function in harmony, coordinating their efforts and maximizing their results. It is at that precise moment that we must remove Bell, once and for all. If we do so, we succeed twice over. First of all, by destroying Bell, we take a dangerous piece of the enemy’s off the board. Even better, we hamstring Pieterzoon, who must suddenly start to function without his ever-reliable crutch. It will take him more time to rebuild his operations than it did to build them, and in the meanwhile the advantage is all ours.