by James Moore
Strack then bowed to thunderous applause and asked the partygoers on stage and the audience at large whether he should now play the Devil’s offering. A hush fell over the stage, as well as the audience, the fiddler’s presence a palpable thing, but at last came the nods. Yes, yes, the music had been heavenly, but all wished to hear the Devil’s offering and judge for themselves.
Strack’s features seemed to blaze alight, his eyes glowing, and Ilse thought for a second the Masquerade had been dropped entirely until she realized it was just the footlights and the red spot the lighting crew had put upon the violinist. Then Strack began the Devil’s tune, and Ilse was not so certain, for he laughed as he played, showing his fangs. The music was beautiful and chilling all at once, reaching into her breast and gripping her dead heart with iron claws, refusing to let go. A collective gasp went up from the audience, and one by one the partygoers of Prince Orlofsky’s New Year’s ball began to dance on stage, possessed by the music, and it was all Ilse could do to keep from throwing herself over the balcony to join them. Evidently the Viennese kept strictly to the standards of society and decorum, for not a soul moved in the audience below, Strack’s demonic performance going on and on until at last the air came to an end.
Every light in the house fell, plunging the theater into darkness. Then, slowly, the red spotlight returned, Strack
standing like the Devil himself, fangs bared, holding his fiddle in one hand and his bow in the other. “Sag’s mir!” he cried out. “Wer hat gesiegt!”
Tell me, Use translated. Who has won?
The vampire on stage stood frozen for a long moment, then put his head back and laughed and collapsed in a heap.
The red spot died in that instant, and the lights of the house went back up, the party guests on stage milling about in fright, afraid to go near the body, speculating whether or not the fiddler was dead. Then, as they were about to go up and check, Strack sprang to his feet and laughed, “Wir haben beide gesiegt! Der Teufel hat meine Seele, aber ich hapt seine M usik!”
We have both won! The Devil has my soul, but I have his music!
The party guests and the audience all laughed nervously, the fiddler at best just a brilliant musician, at worst, hopefully, just a muddled madman. He then launched into a spritely waltz tune, with none of the demonic overtones of the last, nor the heavenly voice of the first, which was the cue for some visiting ballet troupe to prance out, giving all a moment to pause and recover from what had gone before.
Kleist’s notebook was spattered with blood. He stubbed his fingers dry on his blotting paper, changed the page and went back to mere ink to record the dance of the ballet troupe.
“Well that was something, eh?” Carl asked and squeezed her hand.
Ilse squeezed back, chilled to her very soul by the implications of the Toreador’s performance. Looking in the calm light of the ballet, she could see that his soul had none of the black stains of Zho or Crowley, or even of Smudge, but the intensity was there and the swirl of divine or infernal madness, she couldn't tell which. Strack was a true artist, and in his performance, she had seen truth. After her meeting with Charnas, she knew that the fiddler’s fancy was indeed within the realm of possibility.
The second act ended, and the spell was broken, the audience parting like duckweed on a pond. Carl let go of her hand and got to his feet next to her.
“You must be Councilor Etrius. Thank you for your letter."
Ilse stood as the ancient vampire came up beside her, appearing as young as Paul when they’d first met. “You would be Carl." Etrius smiled, his accent faint but unplaceable. “Thanl^ you for coming so quickly."
Carl grinned. “The Master calls, you come. They taught us that back in the Order.”
Etrius laughed, a very human sound, and a claw as cold as ice grasped Ilse by the arm. “Come,” said Astrid, her words heavy with venom, “let us leave the men. They have much to talk on, and so do we.”
She dragged Ilse from the box with a strength that belied her delicate bone structure and pushed open the door across the hall, leading into the powder room intended for the women of the nobility. “Leave us!" Astrid hissed at the matron.
The woman did so without a word. After the door shut behind her, Astrid spat blood on the floor and traced a hex sign in the direction of the doorknob. A webwork of lines glowed around the brass, then faded into the wood. She then turned to Ilse, releasing her arm and gazing at her for a long moment.
Ilse was not expecting the slap, nor the force of it. She was knocked sprawling to the floor by a shattering blow, her neck almost snapped. The left side of her facc went numb with shock.
“That," said Astrid, “for looking at my man that way.” She bared her teeth at Ilse, fangs fully extended. “And I will kill you if I ever see you look at him that way again.”
Use felt the blood rush to her face, wanting to heal the crimson handprint that was no doubt outlined across her cheek, but she forced it to hold back. It was with cold certainty that she knew that this woman would take it as an affront to see her handiwork so quickly undone. Astrid was a tigress, her eyes blazing with an inner light, and even if Ilse could summon forth the force of will to oppose her, she knew it would be a foolish thing to do. So Ilse turned to the only defense she had left — she sat down and cried.
Astrid gave her a look she had last seen on Crowley, one of abject loathing and hate. “Angstlich!" she spat.
Coward. The word was like poison in Use’s ears. In the next moment, Astrid stormed from the room, the door slamming behind her.
Ilse wept for a long moment before the knob turned again. In horror at being discovered in such a state, she pushed against the door with all the force of her mind. The door shut, then pushed back against her, the knob twisting as if in inquiry. Then the door moved straight open, shattering her telekinetic force, and Cassandra came into the room, shutting the door behind her and renewing Astrid’s spell with a casual flick of the wrist, but without the spitting of blood.
“I should have warned you," she said, her voice deep and matronly. “However, I see that Astrid has already done that in her own inimitable fashion.”
Ilse willed herself to stop crying and for the blood to flow into her cheek and heal the crushed skin and cracked bone. Cassandra came and offered her a hand up, along with a large white handkerchief edged in lace, at the touch of which the blood on Ilse's hands transmuted to salty tears. The Magus did not explain, only helped Ilse to wipe the blood-tears from her cheeks. “Astrid is a dangerous one to cross, as you’ve already discovered.”
“I have,” Ilse snuffled around Cassandra's enchanted handkerchief, then blew her nose to find mucus instead of blood in her hands. She folded the white linen quickly, but Cassandra held up her hand, not wanting it back.
“I may have to do the same for Astrid before this affair is done," the Magus sighed. “This is a game of high stakes we enter into and a desperate business. Astrid fears she will suffer a reversal of fortunes, losing what she has gained — her power, her position, her magic — in exchange for the mere mortality she left behind." The older woman’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “One might even question her loyalties."
Use thought she understood. “She fears losing Etrius.” “And more,” the woman said. “None dare oppose Astrid in public and few in private, but even she cannot control the Councilor...at least, not in this one thing he wants so very much — life itself.” She grimaced. “They call me Cassandra for good reason, but please, I would ask you to watch Astrid carefully, if just for your own sake.”
She paused, going over to the mirror and checking her make-up, taking a moment to retouch her lipstick. “Tell me, Ilse, have you heard anything of the Comte de St. Germain?” Ilse wiped at her tears with the handkerchief. “Yes," she managed. “Aleister Crowley told me to tell Dr. Dee that the Comte was opposed to his schemes."
Cassandra paused, then finished applying her pale coral lipstick. “And what did the Doctor say when you told him?"
> Ilse thought back. “He said that the Comte was a trouble worth countenancing."
Cassandra twisted the gold tube shut and slipped it back in her evening bag, pressing her lips together once and then checking the effect in the mirror. “The Doctor is a master of understatement.”
The sound of music filtered through the walls of the powder room. Cassandra shut her purse and put an arm about Use’s shoulders, steering her towards the door. “Come. The third act is about to begin.”
“Thank you," Ilse said softly.
“Think nothing of it. But if I were you, I wouldn’t discuss this with anyone else.”
Cassandra opened the door, shepherding Ilse back to the Tremere box, and Ilse realized she was not going to be told anything more.
Die Fledermaus ended and with it the “Revenge of the Bat," as Elliot Sinclair put it, the maid hitting it off with the Governor of the jail, her sister with the boyfriend, the boyfriend released, the husband arrested, the musical pocketwatch returned, and Herr von Eisenstein and Frau von Eisenstein reconciled to their mutual infidelity. It was all very silly, and all Ilse wanted to do by the time everything was over was go back to the Chantry, sit down with a cup of blood, and quietly talk things over with Carl. But duty called. A group had been assembled from the Tremere box, other boxes and the stage, and Councilor Etrius wished to regale them all with the Viennese tradition of after-opera coffee. Ilse could only assume that Etrius’ excursion to the coffeehouse was similar in effect to Lady Sarah’s tea parties.
It was. The coffeehouse was revealed to be nothing less than the famous Sacher Hotel at the top of the Karntnerstrasse, just in back of the opera house, and the coffee was just that, coffee, though when Ilse raised it to her lips, it changed to blood as it entered her mouth.
Carl seemed to have no similar experience, or else had somehow suddenly acquired a taste for blood, as had the one other mortal guest, the man opposite him, introduced as Aries Michaels.
Michaels appeared to be in his fifties, and, apart from the black tuxedo, he looked like a sobered-up version of Hemingway, with neatly trimmed gray beard and hair and a seal ring on his ring finger that matched Carl’s. His aura was also mage-bright, but Ilse hardly had to look at it, for to her right sat Dieter Kleist, who was already sketching it in with a set of colored pencils, a swirl of the dark blues, Prussian to cornflower, the colors of intellect, sparked here and there with ruby asterisks denoting magical power. A mage of the Order of Hermes, and a powerful one at that.
“So,” Michaels said, leaning forward and looking Carl in the eye. “How are the Tremere treating you?” His accent was American, but beyond being obviously well-educated, Ilse couldn’t place it.
“Can’t complain." Carl sat to her left and added a spoonful of sugar to his coffee, just like Paul used to do. “And you?” "Things could be better. I had to make several sacrifices to arrange matters." He took a sip of coffee. “They'll all be worth it if we pull this off. Melsinde has listened to reason, and that’s the important thing."
Carl raised his colorless eyebrows. “The Melsinde?” Michaels nodded. “The very one,” he said. He offered no further explanation.
Carl sat to the right of Etrius, Astrid thankfully on the far side of the Councilor, while opposite Use was Cassandra. Ulugh Beg sat to the Magus' left, and co his left was a distinguished, if slightly Mephistophelian, gentleman Use recognized as Lazarus, Proctor of the Miami chantry and the Tremere with the greatest influence throughout Florida and the Caribbean. What business he had in Vienna, Use was uncertain, but it undoubtedly had something to do with the Kindred sitting opposite Ulugh Beg, a handsome man with long brown hair, a heavy mustache, and a fierce expression only surpassed by his aura.
“Coffee?" he demanded in English, holding his cup as if it were a urine specimen. “You get me kicked out of Miami, and you offer me coffee?"
Lazarus inclined his head and stroked his devilishly pointed black beard. “There’s Sachertorte as well, but I don’t think you’d care for it.”
The man snarled, and Ilse glanced down at Kleist’s notebook, which continued to provide liner notes. Anvil, the legend read beneath the sketch, and she only had to note the red rage in his aura to tell that the man was Brujah.
“The coffee is actually pretty good, if you’re in the mood.” The speaker sat at the end of the table, leaning back in his chair with a cigarette held flippantly in one hand, much more comfortable in his black tuxedo than either Anvil or the pale, balding, white-haired man with the nose- and lip-rings who sat between them, opposite Lazarus, eyes invisible behind mirror shades. “If you’re in the mood.”
The man with the cigarette turned his head to Ilse and smiled, eyes narrowing appreciatively. “Hector Sosa," he introduced himself, switching back to German, Viennese accent plain, “Would you care for a cigarette? I couldn't help but notice." He gestured with his own, and Ilse realized she’d been staring.
He displayed great social charm for a Brujah — for that was what Ilse guessed he was from the angry aura, earring, lip-ring, and spade-shaped red goatee — but she was not about to refuse. “Yes, please." The only other ready source of cigarettes was Merrill — down with Astrid, Master Harry and all of the Toreador contingent save Kleist — and Use did not wish to ask the Andalusian.
Sosa extended a pack, and Ilse took one, along with his lighter, nodding. “Ilse Decameron.” She lit the cigarette, closing her eyes against the glare, then handed the lighter back, taking a drag and trying not to choke. The Brujah’s smokes were much stronger than what she was used to, but good, and what she needed right now.
“You’re welcome, Frau Decameron," Sosa said, and the lighter and cigarettes vanished back into his jacket
“Goddammit, did I join a bunch of fucking Ventrue?” Anvil demanded, still in English. “This is worse bullshit than we had back in Miami.”
“No, Herr Calloway," Sosa responded, switching to English with a heavy Viennese accent. “You've joined a bunch of Europeans. Things are done a bit differently here, that’s all." He took a long drag, then blew the smoke in Anvil’s direction. “And Yuri here speaks worse English than you speak German, so unless you wish to alienate your only other clan ally, I suggest you — what’s the phrase? — get with the program.
You may be the new primogen, but I’m you're native guide, and I’m telling you that you won’t last five minutes here unless you take my advice.”
“All right," Anvil growled, switching to German — his accent even worse than Use’s, “but at least can we get something better to drink than this Scheifie?"
He slammed the cup down in the saucer, and coffee — perfectly ordinary-looking coffee — sloshed out onto the white tablecloth, staining it brown.
“Is there a problem, Herr Anvil?” Ulugh Beg smiled, his teeth very white against his dark skin. He was having his coffee in the Turkish style, sweetened with cardamom and ambergris.
“Yes," Anvil said. “Is there anywhere you can hunt in this city?”
“No.” Ulugh Beg continued to smile. “We consider all of Vienna to be Elysium and keep the Masquerade enforced. Strictly.” He nodded, then picked up his cup and took a sip. “But as all the coffeehouses carry Herr Professor’s Special Blend, it should hardly cause a problem unless you are a Ventrue.” He paused, looking at Anvil over the rim. “Or Salubri. Do you belong to either of those clans, Herr Anvil?"
They gazed at one another, eyes locked. Soft waltz music played in the background, something by one of the Strausses, quiet enough not to intrude on conversation, but loud enough to cover up the sound of diners at other tables. It was with subtle horror that Ilse recognized the tune as the “Viennese Blood."
“Ulugh, please.” Cassandra placed her hand atop the Turk’s. “Allow the man at least a moment to be overwhelmed by the differences from his homeland.” She looked to the new Brujah primogen. “Councilor Etrius’ blend is very popular. Ulugh and I helped design it, and people drink it throughout Vienna night and day."
U
se sipped her coffee, tasting the rich blood that, while fresh as it would come from the neck, seemed to come from many different sources at once. She didn’t have a sophisticated Ventrue palate to tell from where, but the special emphasis the Magus had given her last two words allowed Use to form a supposition: The beans were drunk by Kindred and mortal alike, both sipping from the same cup as it were, and thereby linked by sympathy. The vampire would drink while the mortal bled, sip by sip and drop by drop. The Ventrue, with their finicky tastes, and the Salubri — the soul-suckers who could only drink from willing victims — would both be at a distinct loss in a city where all Kindred drank magically blended blood. It was an elegant and effective foil against the enemies of the Tremere.
Anvil still stared at Ulugh, on the brink of a Brujah frenzy, until Yuri put his hand on his arm and said, “The hunting is much better to the south, in Bruck and Graz. When we want some action, we go down there.”
The Brujah primogen appeared slightly appeased by this, but still glared at Lazarus. “You promised me that we’d get a prince, a Brujah prince, for one of the world’s major cities. Then you weaseled out at the voting.”
Lazarus picked up his serpent-headed cane and regarded its eyes. “We were already outvoted, Anvil. The Nosferatu Justicar turned the tide, and if he hadn’t, Natasha Volfchek would have switched from abstention to siding with her clan, who were backing the Malkavians — as was patently obvious from the presence of the German Archon.” The Tremere elder lowered his cane and gave his regard to Anvil. “It was merely prudent to give up on a lost cause, thereby saving face and power. And Mr. Crusher was your choice, not mine. Next time check more carefully for skeletons in the closet before you chose to back someone.”
“You think I didn’t? How the hell was I to know he offed a couple Sewer Rats?”
Lazarus stroked the serpent-head of his canc, eloquent as a shrug. “Next time, pay them a visit — and bring cash. I’m certain that’s what the Ventrue did, and if the Nosferatu can’t sell you any dirt on someone, then at the very least they can’t sell it to your enemies.” He paused for a moment, gazing blandly at the Brujah primogen. “But the ledger still stands, and while Appolonius was unsuccessful in his bid for London, there’s no reason that he — or anyone we both deem fit — couldn’t take the throne from Lady Anne.” He smiled pleasantly. “Even yourself, if that’s what you want."