“You are presuming a great deal, Templar,” said Borges in a low, dangerous voice.
“You know something? I am.” Talley had suddenly had it with all of the damn touchy archbishops and their foibles that just made his job that much harder. “I am not doing this because I like you, Archbishop Borges. I don’t like you. But that doesn’t matter. I have been told to keep you from the Final Death, and that is what I will do—if you allow me to do it. If not, fine. I will declare my mission a miserable failure, return to Madrid and tell the cardinal what an uncooperative bastard you were. Mind you, the key word I use is ‘were’ because I have no doubt that without me to defend you, Lucita will fulfill her contract and be off spending her ridiculously large fee by the time my plane touches ground in Europe. At that point, I am sure that the cardinal will tell me that he’s very disappointed in me, and then he’ll ask me what I think of the latest move in his chess game, and if I am truly lucky, he will ask me to take confession. Then we will undoubtedly sit and talk, and wait for the official news of your demise.”
“I see.” The tone of Borges’s voice indicated quite clearly that he approved of neither Talley’s tone nor his manner, but there was a certain persuasiveness to the templar’s argument. “And if I cooperate, I have some minuscule chance of survival?”
Talley nodded.
“Ah. It appears, then,” said Borges, “that I have no choice but to put myself in your capable hands.” Talley bowed, from the waist instead of the neck. “If you don’t mind, Your Excellency, I will take my leave. This room is, to the best of my ability, secure for the moment. I recommend, of course, bright lights throughout. If you need me, I will be down the hall.” He went out, shutting the door behind him with an audible click.
Archbishop Borges sat for a moment, then got up and turned off all the lights instead. Humming tunelessly to himself, he sat down in the dark to wait.
Sunday, 29 August 1999, 11:15 PM
Lord Baltimore Inn
Baltimore, Maryland
The vampire who signed his name “Lucius” was, for lack of a better term, disgruntled. The recent council deliberations had not gone the way he’d wanted them to, not at all. Oh, the others had agreed readily enough that they were not quite ready to make a stand (a stance he intended to perpetuate ad infinitum until such time as the entire American Camarilla was backed onto the tip of Long Island or some other equally hopeless place), but then things had fallen apart. Lucius had voted for abandoning Stamford and the Connecticut coast, under the premise that the population density was too low’ to make the shoreline defensible. That argument had been shot down from multiple directions. The Bridgeport ferry was access to Long Island for a possible counterassault there. Stamford had financial importance beyond its size. Groton’s nuclear submarine factory could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Blather blather blather, talk talk talk.
In the end, Lucius knew he was beaten. Ideally, his plan would have cost the Camarilla its main approach to New York, and isolated Hartford, Worcester and Springfield for the taking whenever Polonia got around to it. Instead, the Camarilla had chosen to consolidate its forces along the coast, abandoning Hartford and indeed all of central New England. Hartford itself would be defended by a skeleton force a la Buffalo, as the lone ghoul to survive that attack had reported relatively heavy enemy casualties. Unfortunately, he’d also reported that the enemy forces were surprisingly sparse, almost as if they knew the city would not be heavily defended.
Lucius knew where that line of logic went, and did his best to discourage it subtly. He also took a moment to fudge as much of the ghoul’s memory as he dared, for the others would no doubt be looking for that sort of thing. Hopefully, that would turn suspicion in other directions. Lucius himself contributed the idea that the half-hearted attack on Buffalo meant that the Sabbat’s troops were clearly building up for an imminent assault somewhere else, and he had briefly whipped everyone into a fine frenzy of panic. That had passed, however, and as things stood Lucius simply wanted to be away from everyone and everything. He stalked out of the inn, brushing lesser vampires and ghouls out of his way with a word or sometimes even a look. They scurried off, compelled by the power of his will and his blood.
Eventually, he reached his haven and, with disgust, he slammed the door behind him. The Cainites he was forced to work with here, with their petty politicking and clinging ghouls, disgusted him. However, it wasn’t as if the Sabbat were any better these days. He’d handed that ungrateful wretch Vykos every tidbit he could pass to her. She’d learned troop dispositions, strategies, tactics—everything. But did she show gratitude? Did she offer the barest crumb of courtesy?
No. Instead, she’d threatened to expose him if he didn’t supply even more than he already had.
Lucius was the sort of Cainite who kept a very careful eye on his debts and credits, and from where he stood, by threatening him, Vykos had exhausted her credit line with him. It was too late to back out of the arrangement—the die had been cast, after all—but Vykos needed to be reminded that power still flowed in two directions. Grinning in a way that would have made a sane man flee, Lucius went to his desk, pulled out a piece of stationery, and began to write. He wrote quickly, though not necessarily neatly, and several times he had to resort to blotting paper to clean up the excesses of his enthusiasm.
The letter was brief and to the point, though a handwriting expert might have blanched at the style of what Lucius’s hand had scrawled. Carefully he folded the stationery and placed it in an envelope, which he addressed to “Sascha.” Then he flipped the envelope over and sealed it with wax, eschewing any particular seal in favor of an anonymous blob.
“Jack,” he called as he watched the wax cool. “Jack! You’re needed!” Bare moments later, the door to the suite swung open to admit a younger vampire, dressed in what Lucius could only assume was the casual wear of this decade.
“Another letter?” Jack’s tone was laconic, but his service had thus far been exemplary.
Lucius handed the envelope across the desk to Jack, who took it by one corner, as if he were afraid to smudge it with his fingerprints. Perhaps he was. “The delivery is a little different this time, Jack. Are you ready?”
“Oh?” was all Jack said, with no discernible enthusiasm whatsoever. For all the world he looked as if, in a moment more, he’d fall asleep where he stood.
“Yes. Vykos has been disrespectful of late. I do not appreciate such things. Therefore, it behooves me to teach her that such disrespect has a cost.”
“Oh.”
“Therefore, Jack, you must deliver this letter and a message.” He leaned forward with a hungry gleam in his eyes. “Find her chambers. Make my displeasure known. Show her that anywhere she holds sacred, my servants can go. Anyone she values, I can destroy. Do you understand me, Jack?”
Jack nodded, slowly. “Of course. Back in three hours.” He sketched a quick bow and walked toward the door.
“Oh, and Jack?” Lucius called after him.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget to deliver the letter.”
With a pained expression on his face, Jack left.
Monday, 30 August 1999, 2:26 AM
The Presidential Hotel
Washington, D.C.
The corner of a letter stuck out from under Vykos’s door as she returned from her evening constitutional and meal. “Hector? Use?” she called out, cautiously. Neither of the ghouls assigned to her door were present. That was odd. They knew better than to abandon their posts, on pain of her extreme disappointment. Furthermore, each had seen the ramifications of her extreme disappointment before, and as such had presumably learned not to disappoint her.
She stared down at the letter for a minute. The deliberate placement was a taunt, but the question was whether or not there was a trap attached to it as well. Clearly she was supposed to do something to the envelope, presumably drawing it forth and thus triggering whatever might be attached to it. She frowned and delicately pressed
her ear to the door. Nothing stirred within. Even straining her inhuman faculties to the utmost, all she could hear was the quiet wheezing of the air conditioning, the gurgle of water in the pipes and the vague confusion of voices from other rooms and other floors.
All of which meant nothing, of course. If a Cainite assassin, properly trained, waited behind the door, then of course she’d hear nothing. If there were some sort of electronic device tied to the letter, it would not betray itself through sounds she could recognize. The corner of the letter jutted from beneath the door, taunting her. She could not go forward, but could not just leave it there. Ordinarily, she’d call for a ghoul to deal with the matter, but none of her ghouls was responding to her calls.
Suddenly, the crunch of footfalls on carpet startled Vykos. She’d forgotten she hadn’t restored her hearing to normal levels, and hastened to do so before the intruder spoke. A normal conversational tone would be painful, while a shout might deafen her.
“Good evening, Your Excellency.” Talley’s voice carried ahead of his presence. “May I approach?” Vykos smiled. This was a stroke of luck. The templar, as her protector, was among the very select few to know of this haven. “Of course. You’re just the man I wanted to see, Don Talley.”
“Just Talley, please.” He strode forward, a hint of confusion on his face. “Your Excellency, where are your guards? I had been led to believe that your protection was provided for by your servants. I don’t see them here.” Indeed, Talley and Vykos were alone in the hallway. There were no signs of even the briefest of struggles, no scuff marks on the paint or bloodstains on the cream-colored carpet. There was just one damnably insolent envelope sticking out from a door that it had no business being under.
“I was just pondering that same question myself, I must confess. I return from an evening’s work and find, not my servants, but this letter waiting for me. I am not pleased.”
Talley suppressed his urge to smile. “Have you read the letter?”
“Of course not,” Vykos responded irritably. “What sort of fool do you take me for?”
The templar made a vague gesture of obeisance.
“Forgive me, Your Excellency. In my current line of work, one must ask even the foolish questions.” He touched his index finger to his chin, frowned, and pointed at the letter. “May I?”
Vykos backpedaled gracefully. “I should prefer to be elsewhere if you did.” Talley laughed.
“You wound me, Your Excellency. I do have resources of my own, you know.” And with that, his form melted into a pool of shadow that, after a moment’s hesitation, oozed under the offending door. Careful not to touch the letter, the shadow wafted past it. There was silence for several minutes while Vykos stood patiently outside, content to let Talley risk whatever unknown dangers lay within. Vykos was more than reasonably certain that she could overwhelm or endure practically anything that might be waiting for her, but an incendiary device or some such might be extremely painful, and she disliked pain, at least her own. So she stood and waited, and half-amused herself devising suitable punishments for her missing ghouls.
The letter slid back beyond the door with a rasp. Vykos was suddenly alert again. She heard the sound of tearing paper, and then the bolts on the door clicking one by one.
The door opened and Talley stood there, the open letter in his hand. “Your Excellency,” he said almost apologetically, “you may want to see this.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked to the inner door of the suite. Here there were signs of struggle, long scratches in the woodwork and bits of paint and plaster from the wall on the carpet.
Talley reached the door and rested his hand on the knob. “Were you fond of those particular ghouls, Your Excellency?”
“They were ghouls, Templar. Stop wasting my time,” responded Vykos. “Are you telling me that my ghouls are dead? If so, say it and get out of my way so I can see what happened.”
“If you insist, Your Excellency.” And with that, Talley opened the final door.
The ghouls were in there, neatly laid out on the room’s single table. There was no blood anywhere, not even in the bodies, which had been cleanly dismembered and then reassembled. Nothing else in the room was even disturbed.
Vykos did not gasp. She did not reel in horror, nor did she angrily swear vengeance. She had seen worse, indeed she had inflicted far worse herself, in her laboratories and donjons over the centuries.
She was, however, furious over the insult. “Lucita?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“I would think rather one ‘Lucius.’ Would you be so kind as to verify this handwriting? The letter is rather familiar in its tone, so I would assume you’d know his script.”
It was not often that Vykos lost control, but on those rare occasions when she did, the occasional survivor inevitably described the sight as “terrifying.” She snarled, impossibly deep in her throat, and tore the letter from Talley’s fingers. The beautiful woman, the artlessly crafted shell, slipped away for a moment and in that second, the templar found himself face to face with Vykos’s true self—a ravening, formless obsession, an ancient rage that wore flesh and blood only because they were the sole materials at hand, and that would gladly set aside all bonds of sense and loyalty to destroy Talley at this moment because Talley had taken, briefly, something that was hers.
Talley did not move, though in the split-second between his recognition of the threat and the time when the letter was pulled from his hand he went from relaxed to battle-ready. The room was full of shadows and the draped windows offered the perfect escape if he needed it, but he sincerely hoped that neither would be necessary. If Vykos attacked, there would be no way anyone could reach the room before one or both of them was dead.
“Your Excellency,” he said in a low, tight voice, “calm yourself. Read the letter if you must, though I recommend waiting. Yes, I read the letter, to make sure that the envelope itself was not trapped and to see if there was a clue as to what had occurred here. I am sorry if that offended, but I prefer to fulfill my office and see to your safety properly.” He raised his hands, slowly. Behind Vykos, the shadows coiled eagerly, silently, awaiting the order to strike.
Vykos stared at Talley through mad eyes. She said nothing, but with infinite slowness, sanity crept back into her gaze. Her loose, monstrous flesh slowly collapsed in on itself, revealing the elfin features of Elizabeth Bathory that Vykos had been wearing since her arrival. “Give me a good reason not to destroy you, Templar,” she whispered, voice shaking with the effort of control. “No one does this to me. No one sees me like this. No one tells this tale.”
For an instant, Talley considered offering up the fact that the fight would be no sure thing as a reason not to pursue it, but thought better of the idea. There was no sense in prodding the Tzimisce’s tender ego, not if he wished to calm her down.
“Because,” he said in a soothing voice, “I don’t think that our mutual patron would appreciate that, Archbishop, and because we are both old and wise enough to know that tempting the cardinal’s displeasure is a foolish thing to do. Because it would no doubt make this Lucius very happy to goad us to fighting amongst ourselves. And because,” and he very gently smiled, “my estate would not be able to pay for the damages we’d no doubt incur.” He took a step back, not coincidentally toward the window. “Do you agree, Your Excellency?”
Vykos’s eyes were sane now, but there was an icy hatred in them. “Fortunately for you, I do.” She glanced at the letter and threw it on the floor. “Lucius will pay for this.”
“I would expect nothing less of you. He has, if I may say so, chosen perhaps the wrong Cainite to try to ‘teach a lesson.’” Talley pulled up a chair a respectful distance from the table and sat.
“He has the power to enforce his will, if he truly feels the need. His ego is such that, at the moment, he is content with small demonstrations.” She walked over to the table and flowed into a chair. Her elbows rested on the tabletop, bare inches from Ilse’s naked and ab
used cadaver. “This was by way of a demonstration that he feels I am not properly appreciative of his efforts on our behalf. It’s rather petty, really.” She gazed at the dead and drained ghouls, her expression now distant.
“It would seem, yes.” There was a minute of silence. “So it is to be Hartford?”
Vykos nodded absently. “The enemy prefers to protect Stamford, it would seem, and the other resources of the coastline. Hartford is being held with the same sort of screen we saw in Buffalo. It is ripe for the picking, and it is a big enough prize to take. Besides, it opens the door to Boston faster than even Archbishop Polonia anticipated. I wonder what they are up to.”
Talley licked his dry lips. “In truth, their overall strategy does not concern me, except as it relates to my assignment.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that, Talley?” Vykos’s voice was surprisingly mild. “I find it hard to accept that the notorious Hound has no interest in conquest and the chase.”
The templar shrugged ruefully. “You’ll have to believe it, Your Excellency, because it’s the truth. I loathe this continent and most everyone on it, and look forward to the end of the war simply because it’s the only end I can see to this assignment. So who gets to earn immortal glory at Hartford?”
“Archbishop Borges, most likely. I still have the Tremere chantry to deal with before I can move on, and Archbishop Polonia has too many other things to deal with. The pack leaders and Panders can shout and demonstrate about wanting to run amuck, but after MacEllen’s destruction, Hartford needs to be taken efficiently and without loss. An archbishop taking personal command of the operation lends a certain gravity to it. Don’t you agree?”
Clan Novel Lasombra: Book 6 of The Clan Novel Saga Page 18