by James Moore
Charnas. The imp had been watching the whole thing.
Monday, April 26, London
— Mad Dogs and Englishmen Use awoke to darkness, a smell like old cinnamon and cloves...and the chill touch of manacles around her wrists, holding them flat to the wall on either side of her head. She tried to move, but then felt a third metal band digging into her waist, separated only by the thin silk of the tea dress and forcing her into a seated position on the cold, stone floor. She heard a bolt rattle as she tried to twist her way out, but it was no use, and cold metal cut into her ankles as well, pinning them down, her legs numb with the chill. At least she was no longer staked. She might be clapped in irons, but it was better than being paralyzed.
Use peered about. Nothing but blackness, and echoing silence. Then, from beside her, she heard a sharp grunt and a rattle of chain. “Verdammt...”
She recognized the snarl — Kurt Westphal, the Ventrue Archon.
Use froze, remembering how much he hated her, then paused. She was lost, forgotten in darkness, and the man who’d spoiled her last invocation of the Iron Key sat beside her, but as far as she could tell, hadn’t noticed her yet.
It would be a stretch for the charm, but chains had locks, and locks had keyholes, and keyholes took keys. She cast about with her mind, searching for her talisman, then felt pain lance through her left wrist. Cold, colder than the grave, cold as ice in midwinter, it knifed into her lifeblood and sent a chill dagger shooting into her heart, paralyzing her with the pain of its touch.
A moment later, it melted, and Use was left with only the memory of pain and the knowledge that it had stabbed at her through the thread of her magic. She didn’t know what ritual had created the manacle, but the ward blocked her Thaumaturgy even more effectively than had the stake through her heart or the hours of daylight.
Use leaned her head back, trying to let her eyes adjust. It was dark as a tomb and just as silent except for the dead man next to her straining against his chains and cursing softly in German. But Westphal was not truly dead, for he still had a soul, as did she, and even though the light of the souls of the Damned was weak and sickly, their faded glow was still more than nothing.
Ilse turned to the lesser powers, hoping the discipline of Auspex might work where the greater magics of Thaumaturgy did not. She steeled herself for the knife of pain and ice, but it never came, and Use was able to extend her perceptions, the wan light of their souls to expanding to light the room.
The chamber snapped into focus at once, and it was as if she were seeing the world through high-resolution infrared goggles. Everything was washed in blood on blood, painted in shades of crimson and brown like an illuminated manuscript from the Burning Times, a cavernous room filled with slabs and boxes and huge hanging chains and metal hooks. And there, in the center of her field of vision, was the source of the red light, the egg-shaped sphere of another soul’s aura, painted crimson with lust, spotted brown with old hatred, streaked black with the marks of sin, and sparkling with the power of magic. And all these tints swirled in the hypnotic spiral of psychosis, the colors marbling the walls of the chamber with the ever-changing patterns of a magic lantern.
Ilse closed her eyes, allowing her Auspex to dim, then opened them again, peering closely. Within the monstrous aura was a man, tall and heavy-set, his face bloated and dissolute but his eyes regal as an emperor’s. He was dressed in long robes which might have once been white, but were now stained with blood or by his aura, Ilse wasn’t sure which. It probably didn’t matter. Beneath the bloodstains, the vestments were embroidered in gold with the paths of the Qlippoth — the dark reflection of the Kabbala — and the base Chakras of Hindu mysticism, while atop his head, he wore a mitered cap, edged in gold and worked with Hebrew letters trimmed in precious jewels. In one hand he held a crosier, a bishop’s staff, though where the cross or crook would usually be at the top, there was instead a Shiva lingam, overflowing with the energy of the Kundalini. The man locked eyes with Ilse and smiled. “Ah, Miss Decameron. You’re awake.” His voice was cultured, distinguished as an Oxford don’s. “It is always pleasant to be gazed on appreciatively by an attractive young woman.”
“Where are you, Crowley?” Kurt Westphal snarled beside her. “Show yourself!"
“You will address me as Master Therion, Mr. Westphal.” Crowley stood there and continued to smile, absently caressing the shaft of his wand of power. “And please, don’t distress yourself. You will see me soon enough.”
Westphal growled, but seemed to gain control of himself, and Ilse looked over at him by the light of the madman’s aura. He was less securely bound than she was, manacled to four chains secured to a ring at the base of the wall, instead of having shackles pinning him directly to the stone. But he also looked much worse for the wear than she felt, with that slightly glazed expression that Kindred got when they were starved for blood after succumbing to frenzy. Use mentally measured the length of his chain and was not sure whether she was grateful that it was just beyond the reach of where she sat.
Crowley paced forward, tapping out his stride with the base of his staff, the iron foot striking sparks from the granite floor, then stopped just inches shy of Westphal's forward reach. “Please, Mr. Westphal. You are in my temple of Aiwass — ‘Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law.' Your aura is positively sick with worry, and yet you cannot bring yourself to ask about your woman or her state of health. Whatever might the trouble be?”
The German said nothing, and Crowley continued to smile. “It’s not as if you didn’t see her, Mr. Westphal, or perhaps I should say, gaze upon her, for I believe your eyes were open the entire time, and you were unstaked as well. Yet conscious? Well, I'm afraid you fell prey to the infirmities the immortal blood is heir to, as it was day at the time.”
“Is she alive?" Westphal croaked at last, staring blindly in a direction not quite towards Crowley's face.
“Ah, a reasonable question. Very reasonable, given the circumstances. Well, she most likely would have died unless I had intervened, and by ancient law, that makes her life mine. If, of course, you wish to go by anything so proscriptive as ancient law.” Crowley chuckled, fingering his staff. “Yet since she belonged to me, both by ancient law and my own, I chose to give her to my Beast. He desired her, and her red hair is a mark of great power and passion.”
“Schweinhund!” Westphal screamed, lunging for the madman. But Crowley just stood there and watched with vague amusement as the Ventrue thrashed against the length of his chains, fangs gnashing, face contorted into a mask of rage, until at last the German fell prostrate at his feet.
“Actually,” Crowley remarked with dry humor, “it’s not a Schuieinhund at all. At least, I do not believe so. As for precisely what my Beast is, now chat is a good question.” He glanced towards Use. “I assume you're familiar with the process of Gangrel de-evolution?” Ilse said nothing, and neither did Westphal, so Crowley continued. “The Gangrel Clan is unique in that the immortal blood warps their outward form to reflect their inner Beast. Or, in this case, the Beast of another.
“Now this is rather complicated, so please, follow and bear with me. On the isle to the west of here, there are a number of werewolves, what most Kindred prefer to term Lupines and who they themselves term Garou. Eire also possesses a great history of Fair Folk, properly referred to as the Sidhe, or in vulgar terms as faeries. I located a man I believed to have the blood of both running in his veins, for my divinations indicated him to be a direct male-line descendant Cuchulainn, or Cullen’s Hound, that hero so beloved of Yeats and Lady Gregory, the warrior Setanta,” He glanced to Westphal. “A redhead like your own Miss Jacqueline, marked for lust, passion and witchcraft, kin to wolves, faeries and witches, yet still latent in his power.”
Crowley gestured with his crosier. “I took this man and fed his lusts in manners both mundane and magical, giving him the means that all men crave to sate their passions while also allowing him to drink from a cup mixed with the blood of a
Gangrel elder and the blood of one of the ancient giants who walked the earth in days of yore. Which giant, I cannot say for certain — the provenance on the cask I acquired is somewhat fanciful, alleging the blood of the Merovingian Kings, of Bran the Blessed, or Finn the Fair, or Bres the Beautiful, the Fomor King, or even that it contained a measure of the blood of the first giant, Ymir, from whose corpse the dark and light elves purportedly sprang as black and white maggots. It really doesn’t matter. The histories are endlessly muddled, and for every legend that speaks of Finn MacCool as a clever giant, there's another that speaks of Fionne MacCumhail, the greatest of the Fenian warriors, and genealogies that prove him to be an ancestor to Cuchulainn.
I leave that sort of petty dickering to Yeats and Lady Gregory, as it makes so much little nevermind.
“Suffice it to say, whoever or whatever the blood originally belonged to, my regimen worked. My subject grew in stature and strength, the giant's blood lending him potence, the vitae from the Gangrel elder drawing out the Beast and increasing his fortitude, and the changes of the Gangrel line began to come upon him as well, aided, I believe, by his kinship to the wolves, and by the fact that I had been conditioning him to accept my will as his own. I then used a petty discipline to unleash my own Beast into his body, and my greater lust united with his own, beginning to craft a suitable vessel for my own passions.”
Crowley paused, leaving the only sounds in the room the low, animal growl in Westphal's throat, then the madman continued, “I then began to experiment with rituals. The Sabbat have a rite known as the Shadow of the Wolf, where you take a skin cloak and use it to change shape in the manner of the Lapp shamans, which, while amusing, proved insufficient for my purposes. Then there was another ritual along similar lines which I’d discovered during my travels in India, the Rite of the Sacred Rebirth, involving both ingredients you would expect and that you might not expect: blood and sugar, asafetida and saffron, various rare pigments and herbs, and a cloak sewn from the skins of not one, but five, Lupines.
“With the aid of my Gangrel minions, I procured the requisite number of shapeshifters, a pack of renegade Garou, lust-filled degenerate half-breeds who belonged to some peculiar Scottish cult that worshipped a corrupt interpretation of the World Serpent, Jormungandr. I then added my own flairs to the ritual, skinning each of them at the full of the moon, the time of their birth, then locked them in pens, still alive. This done, I proceeded to loose my own Beast into the body of my Gangrel-ghoul-changeling-childe, persuading a number of Gangrel to do likewise, while I whipped and tormented the skinless Lupines.” Crowley paused, a beatific expression on his face, and he fingered the lingam staff in his hand. “The metamorphosis was astonishing. Though only Kin, my subject transformed into the monstrous war-form of the Lupines, a great, red-furred Beast, driven wild with lust and hunger, taking for his own form even more that of the Great Beast than any of the pathetic half-breeds I tormented and much larger. A wolf from the Dawntime, and a creature that begins to approach a worthy vessel for my lust.”
Crowley looked down and smiled. “I was not certain what I should do next to increase the power of my Beast, but then Providence supplied me with a beautiful, debauched redheaded woman...”
With a snarl, Westphal launched himself at Crowley, screaming in frenzy. Crowley gazed on, faintly amused, still an inch shy of the extent of Westphal's chains. “Please, do not alarm yourself, Mr. Westphal. Your paramour displayed unusual fortitude for my impromptu rite of Shiva and Kali. Truly, she played her part quite well.”
Westphal thrashed against his chains, cutting his wrists on the shackles. Dark blood sprayed in an arc, staining the hem of Crowley’s vestments. The madman idly stroked the wood of his crosier, not seeming to notice. “I believe she may even still be alive, though I would have to check to make certain.”
Westphal screamed again, cutting himself deeper as he thrashed, gnashing his teeth as he tried to reach Crowley. But the cuts were dry, and a moment later he fell to the floor, all his blood burned in frenzy.
Crowley took the foot of his staff and poked Westphal, then flipped him over, tilting his head up so Use could see Westphal’s eyes, now glassy with torpor, and the film of dried blood on his fangs. “A pity this one wasn’t taken as a Gangrel, don’t you think? He would have made a splendid Beast. So many passions locked so deeply inside. He lusts for his woman, and even though he has never seen its true splendor, he envies my Beast from mere implication, and that leads to wrath and vanity, and of course, pride. With the Ventrue, one can never forget pride. Five of the Seven Passions. If he were only trained in the proper arts, what a potent spell he might craft." Crowley sighed elaborately. “Truly a pity.”
Ilse looked at Crowley, his face lit only by the psychotic swirl of his aura. “I suppose it’s redundant to say you’re mad.” He removed his staff, and Westphal's head fell back to hit the floor with a sickening crack. “Oh, please. Miss Decameron. I think thoughts most mortals shall never think, dream dreams that others cannot dream, see sights that few will ever see, walk boldly where angels fear to tread, and where for that matter even the devils dare not venture. And I am mad?” He looked at her, smiling slightly, the sepia tones of his aura swirling around him. “Go out into the streets and tell the people what you see every night, what you know to be true, the unthinkable secrets you’ve discovered — they'll lock you up! Vampires — Stuff and nonsense! Only the mad believe in vampires! Witchcraft — Balderdash! Only little children believe in witches! Ghouls and demons — Oh, please! No one in their right mind believes such silly stuff!”
He sneered, shaking his head. “And you inquire if I am mad?”
Ilse felt her blood turn chill, and she sank back against the wall. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I enjoy shocking people’s sensibilities,” Crowley replied matter-of-factly, “and because I hate the Ventrue and the Tremere equally, although the Ventrue are so much easier to shock.” He kicked Kurt Westphal, then stuck the base of his staff in the German's open mouth, admiring the juxtaposition for a moment before removing it.
“You Tremere, however, are somewhat more aware of the world's possibilities and are therefore a bit more sport than the poor, hidebound Ventrue." His expression was the patient look like a father might give a favorite child, still fingering his crosier. “You are nevertheless blind in peculiar ways, and you inquire if I am mad.”
Crowley’s expression became a bit kinder, though his aura still showed the cancerous brown of hatred. “I suppose I shouldn’t fault you if you dare not think as grandly as I might. The Tremere line is tainted with cowardice twice over, and it’s a fault all of your blood are heir to." He leered. “Don’t you wish to know why?”
“No,” Use said, cold rage helping to move her blood. “There, you see, more of what I mentioned,” Crowley said. “There are questions you dare not ask. You clothe it as pride and loyalty and respect, almost as bad the damnable Ventrue, but it all boils down to one thing — cowardice.”
“Oh, save me your spite!" Use snapped, unable to take it anymore. “I know why you hate us. it’s a standard lesson. The Ventrue had a Malkavian embrace you and tell you you were of our line, so you’d run amuck and embarrass our clan. Well, it worked for what little it was worth, but the cat’s out of the bag, and the most I can do is say I’m sorry that we didn’t invite you in before the Ventrue played their little trick. The charm on the manacle does you credit, and you might have made a place among the Tremere, but what's done is done and it can’t be changed. You’d have to be crazy to think otherwise.”
The cold rage that had filled Use had spent itself just as quickly, and she suddenly wondered what she’d done, for she saw the scarlet of anger swirl for a moment amid the crimson of Crowley’s lust.
Then Crowley smiled. “What a good girl! She’s learned her lessons. Yet, we wonder, has she been brave enough to question them? Has she learned how to read between the lines of the approved histories and make a guess as to the actu
al truth?” He patted her on the cheek, but withdrew his hand quickly before she could bite him. “Silly girl. You would truly be a fool if you thought even for a second that I would allow anything to happen to myself that I did not already want.”
He turned, pacing a step away, tapping the stone floor with his crosier. “The truth of the matter is, my good child, that I am what I always have been — a magus, what you might call a mage. You really thought I was just some foolish cultist and charlatan who the Ventrue used as their dupe?" He laughed long and loud, his voice echoing through the chamber. “The reverse is far closer to the truth."
“You see, though I was a mage, I had discovered for myself the unpleasant truth that your own founder had already learned — magic was slipping from the earth. Credit where credit is due, Miss Decameron, I must admit Tremere beat me to it. Then again, he was born centuries before me, and the truth of it is something that any fool can see, so there’s no great honor in the discovery. But never mind. I had discerned this truth as well and became concerned with my own mortality. Oh, not with dying, mind you — I’d done that many times before and remembered every one of them. No, it was rather the tedious business of birth and childhood and remembering what I’d been doing before so I could pick up where I left off.”
Crowley turned about, pacing back the other way. “I then did research, as did your own Tremere, and ascertained the immortality of the Damned, then learned of Tremere's gambit before me and of his cowardly mistake.
“Do you hear me, Miss Decameron? Tremere was a fool, a cowardly fool. Climb down any sewer and bring a rat and you’ll find an ugly vampire willing to tell you the story in exchange for a nip of its neck. Really a very common story; not even worth a rat unless well-told. I’m sure you already know the whole sordid affair — Tremere lusting after the power of the Antediluvians, the third generation from Caine, finally tracking one down and committing diablerie, that most unthinkable of acts, drinking the elder’s heart-blood and devouring his soul. And for what? Power. Pure, sweet, power.”