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said. “He wasn’t going to try to help Roger if he could get out of it.”
“Because he’s baffled,” said Elliott somberly. He felt the momentary passion that his clash of wills with Potter had engendered ebbing, and the accustomed deadness stealing back into his soul. “And it won’t do his reputation any good if he actually tries to cure Roger and fails.”
“If he doesn’t know what to do,” said Lazio, “maybe we should get somebody else.”
“There scarcely is anyone else,” Elliott replied. “And even if we could find another qualified doctor, the chances of him knowing any tricks that Potter doesn’t are remote. The problem is that, until very recently, nobody was even trying to use modern science to study vampire physiology. Now that they are, their efforts are hampered by the fact that the Kindred are supernatural entities, whose very existence violates natural law. The upshot is that even the most knowledgeable of us, like Potter, comprehends the disease process in vampires about as well as Galen understood the analogous phenomenon in his fellow humans.”
Lazio nodded, though Elliott could see that some of what he’d said had gone over the human’s head. But the aging valet understood the essential point: “You’re saying there isn’t any hope, aren’t you?”
“No,” said Elliott quickly, although that was precisely what he feared. “Potter has cured some Kindred. He saved Pierre Delacroix in Marseilles six years ago, when everyone else had given the old monster up for dead. And you know how resilient Roger is. He might shake off the madness all by himself. So promise me you won’t despair.”
Lazio nodded, encouraged either by Elliott’s arguments or by the unnatural force of personality which, the vampire now realized, he’d just exerted without even intending to. “I won’t,” the dresser said.
“Good man.” Elliott squeezed the mortal’s shoulder. “I’m going home. Call me if there are any developments.” He began to turn away.
“Wait!” Lazio cried. Elliott turned back around. “You can’t go! They need you downstairs!”
Like the residences of most monarchs, vampire or mortal, throughout history, Roger’s haven was more or less a public place, where affairs of state were conducted and some of his subjects could be found hanging about at any given hour of any night. At the moment Elliott could hear at least two dozen of them, babbling and pacing anxiously.
“Are the rest of the primogen here?” the actor asked. Lazio grimaced. “Yes.”
“Then you don’t need me,” Elliott said reasonably, striving to project the power of his charisma again.
But this time, for some reason, Lazio was scarcely affected. He gave his head a shake as if to clear it, then said, “We do! You haven’t listened to them. I have. They’re afraid, and they can’t agree on anything. But they’ll listen to you.” Elliott sighed. “You don’t know that.”
“I do,” said the human, scowling stubbornly. “You’re the oldest, and the one Roger valued” — his mouth twisted — “values most.”
“Once,” said Elliott, “that may have been true, but I’m sure that if Roger were in his right mind he’d tell you that it isn’t anymore.”
“That’s bullshit!” Lazio said.
Elliott felt a flash of anger, a shameful, unaccustomed desire to strike the impudent, importunate human down. Instead, turning away, he said, “Watch this.”
Two paces farther down the hallway sat a small, round, cherrywood William Morris table and, atop it, a beautiful twelve-inch marble statue of a nude woman. Elliott recalled Roger telling him that the sculpture had been unearthed by archaeologists digging in Pompeii.
The gray-haired Toreador picked up the statue by its head, swung it into the air and slammed it down against the edge of the table. The blow splintered the wood and echoed down the corridor, but it didn’t break the stone figure. He had to smash it against its stand again before it shattered.
He set the base back down and then, dusting marble dust off his hands, turned back around. Lazio was goggling at him in horror. “Do you understand now?” the vampire asked, feeling vaguely ashamed. “No Toreador should be able to desecrate a beautiful work of art. But I can do it easily, because I’m broken inside. I can’t feel the things I used to feel, or care about the things I once cared about. Now do you understand why I’m unfit even to sit among the primogen?”
“No,” Lazio said. “You’re an actor, aren’t you? If you don’t feel confident and ready to lead, fake it! Snap the other Kindred out of their funk and get them organized. Don’t you think your wife would want you to?”
Elliott realized that she would indeed. He shrugged uncomfortably.
“Don’t you think you owe it to Roger to support him in his hour of need?” Lazio continued relentlessly. “Come to think of it, don’t you think you owe it to me? Or are you going to urge me to hang in here with the prince come hell or high water — using your damn powers on me too, I’ll bet
— and then run out on us yourself?”
Elliott held up his hand. “Enough!" he said, scowling. Then, to his surprise, the situation began to seem obscurely funny, and his frown quirked into a wry smile. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that the Kindred are savage, amoral predators, utterly incapable of guilt?”
“Are you going to help?” Lazio persisted.
“You can’t push me into standing in for Roger,” said Elliott. “I’m truly not up to the job. I’d make a botch of it. But I will meet with the others now and try to help them pull themselves together. Will that satisfy you?”
“It’ll do for a start,” Lazio said.
THREEiT H E METHUSELAH
so
ELEVENtTHE HUNT BEGINS
SIXTEEN: WYATT
NINETEEN:TH E ORDEAL
TWENTY-THREE: DEDUCT10 N
TWENTY-MIME: REVELATIONS
EPILOGUE? PARTINGS
THREEiT H E METHUSELAH
The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what vie call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.
— T. H. Huxley, “A Liberal Education”
Startled, Dan turned. Behind him, her form blurred by the darkness and his still-impaired vision, stood a pale, slender woman. Her white, gauzy gown and long black hair stirred in the sea breeze.
A kind of confused awe flowered inside him, supplanting the blood lust that had filled him only a moment before. Some instinct insisted that the newcomer was a ghost, or an angel, even though she was manifestly as solid as he was; a patina of sand clung to her dainty, naked feet, and she’d left a trail of tracks in her silent progress across the beach.
“Please stand away from her,” said the stranger, nodding at the motionless form of the vampire Dan had battered unconscious. “I need her more than you do, and I promise to provide you with something else to drink.”
Dan rose and stepped away from his erstwhile attacker. It was only when the stranger broke eye contact, knelt over the defeated Kindred and sank her own fangs into the
woman’s neck that the feeling of awe began to fade and he realized that he’d had a choice about whether to obey her command.
The newcomer, evidently another undead and a diabolist to boot, sucked her victim’s vitae for what seemed a long while. Meanwhile, torn between anxiety, annoyance and curiosity, his body throbbing as broken bones mended and shredded flesh repaired itself, Dan peered up and down the beach. He was concerned that someone might have heard the shots and called the police, but there was no sign that the cops were on their way. Perhaps, as was more and more frequently the case in these final, decadent years of the twentieth century, no one who had heard the commotion had cared enough that some poor soul might be in trouble to pick up a phone.
Finally the vampire in the white gown flowed to her feet. Licking herself as unselfconsciously as a cat, she ran her pale tongue over her lips, cleaning the residue of vitae off them. Dan realized that if he’d still been morta
l he would have found the sight erotic.
Determined not to allow the newcomer to cow him again, he glowered at her. “It’s dangerous for one animal to try to steal another animal’s kill,” he said.
The newcomer smiled at him. “I see the intimidation has worn off already. Good. That, no less than your victory a minute ago, is a mark of strength. I’m called Melpomene, after the muse of tragedy.” She sighed. “A name of good or evil omen, depending on how you look at it.”
“I’m Dan Murdock,” he said.
“I know. I’ve been looking for you.”
He frowned, his emotions still an untidy jumble of interest and apprehension. “I guess it’s finally my night to be popular. What do you want with me?"
“Let’s talk as we stroll by the water. It’s been too long since I visited the sea.”
He looked down at Prince Roger’s unconscious flunky.
Blood was still oozing sluggishly from the twin punctures in her neck. “Is she dead?”
“No,” Melpomene replied.
“You didn’t lick the bite closed,” he observed. “Are you the murderer she was worried about?” He paused, groping in his memory for the details. “The one who killed the mortals at the aquarium?”
“No,” Melpomene said. “The humans have been safe from me for a long time.” She held out her white hand. “Come.”
Either because of her palpable charisma or his own loneliness, he wanted to take her hand, but caution held him back. Nodding at Prince Roger’s subject, he said, “This bitch never even saw you, did she? If she wakes up a quart low, she’ll blame me.”
“I know,” said Melpomene. “We want her to. Trust me, and everything will be all right.”
Dan didn’t trust her. Over the last thirty years, he’d learned the hard way not to trust anyone. But he yearned for her to prove herself a friend. And he didn’t care all that much if Prince Roger’s vassal crawled back to her master believing the worst of him. He hadn’t exactly been chummy with the other undead denizens of Sarasota as it was. If their ruler declared a Blood Hunt against him, he’d simply run away to some other town. The perpetually feuding lords of the Camarilla were unlikely to exert themselves unduly to help one of their peers track down a fugitive.
And so, gingerly, irrationally half-afraid that his touch would disgust her, Dan took Melpomene’s hand. Her grip was firm yet gentle, her skin cool, smooth and soft. The contact reminded him yet again of the days when he’d burned for the embrace of lovely women.
They strolled toward the susurrant surf. She took a deep breath, perhaps savoring the salty tang in the air. “Well?” Dan said.
Melpomene shook her head. “The impatience of youth.
But in this case, justified. My capacity for urgency dwindled away a long time ago. Now I have to revivify it.”
They reached the water’s edge. When the first sheet of cool white foam washed over her feet, Melpomene quivered as if a lover had caressed her. The two undead turned and headed south, away from the site of Dan’s battle.
As his vision finally sharpened into perfect focus, Dan said, “Okay, then get urgent. Tell me what you want with me.”
“Very well,” Melpomene said. For a moment, her eyes strayed to an elaborate sand castle, its turrets end crenellated battlements now crumbling in the incoming tide. “Do you know what a Methuselah is?”
“A very old vampire,” he said, “living in hiding or sleeping the centuries away. Or at least that’s what the legends say.” He peered at her skeptically. “Are you telling me that you are one?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Do you believe me?”
He felt another twinge of the instinctive awe that had overwhelmed him when he’d first turned and beheld her. “Maybe,” he said, although suddenly he was sure she was speaking the truth.
Seemingly satisfied with his answer, she said, “We live apart from you, our descendants, for two good reasons. One is that we require vampire vitae to survive.” He tensed, and she gave him a reassuring smile. “I promise I’m not after yours. Remember, I just fed.”
The blood thirst smoldered in his throat, reminding him that he had yet to do likewise. The craving was so inexorable that not even the fascination of an encounter with a virtual demigoddess of the undead could take his mind off it for long. “Okay,” he said, “I believe that. If you wanted more vitae, you could have sucked Butch back there dry. Or jumped me before my wounds healed, when I was easier pickings.”
“Exactly,” Melpomene said. “As I was saying, we hide from you because, comprehending our need to prey on you as you batten on mortals, you’d destroy us if you could. But even more importantly, we hide from one another. Do the legends with which you are familiar speak of the Jyhad?”
He frowned, not quite sure what she was getting at. “A jyhad is a war among Kindred, isn’t it?” He’d fought in one such conflict as a kind of mercenary when some of the elders of Baton Rouge had rebelled against their prince. He’d hoped that his efforts on their behalf would win him a place in the new social order they established; but after their victory they’d paid him off and made it clear they’d prefer he leave the city.
“Is that how the term is used these days?” she asked wryly. “The true Jyhad is the war among us ancients. It’s been going on for thousands of years, and for all I know, it will continue until there’s only one of us left. Or until the Antediluvians, our sires, awaken from their sleep of millennia and destroy all younger vampires to satisfy their hunger.”
A chill crept up Dan’s spine. What a cheery prospect, he thought. “What are you guys fighting about?” he asked.
“Everything and nothing,” Melpomene said wearily. “Some of us want to rule the world. Others, to stave off boredom. Still others, to pursue ancient quarrels.” Her lovely mouth twisted. “We are, after all, not only killers by nature but also children of the earth’s savage dawn, when vengefulness was a virtue and forgiveness, contemptible weakness. Still other Methuselahs have surrendered to the Beast or gone mad, their reason crumbling under the weight of ages of loss and remorse, and they lash out at those who were once closest to them as the murderously insane so often do.”
Suddenly she seemed so full of bitterness and selfloathing that, to his surprise, Dan felt an urge to comfort her. “You don’t seem vicious or crazy to me,” he said.
She arched an eyebrow. “Don’t I? Look deeper. But thank you for your kind words.”
The Hunger seared Dan’s mouth again. His stomach ached. If he didn’t hunt soon he was likely to fly into a frenzy when he did find prey, and drink so deeply that he left the unfortunate mortal dead. “You still haven’t told you what you want with me,” he said. He heard a soft splash: a fish had jumped.
“First I have to explain more about the Jyhad, and my position within it,” she said. “Because we spend our lives in hiding, we Methuselahs are rarely afforded the opportunity to strike at one another directly. But each of us controls, by various means, certain factions in vampire society, just as Kindred elders direct the destinies of the mortals dwelling in their domains. And we mobilize our minions to strike at our enemies’ chattels. When victorious, we impair a foe’s ability to exert power, and injure his pride. If we succeed in destroying some servant or possession he truly cherishes, we can cause him actual pain. And once in a great while, our efforts are so successful that we force him into the open, at which point we can attempt to annihilate him.”
“Are you telling me,” said Dan, frowning, “that whenever the Kindred plot and fight against each other, it’s because you old vamps are pulling our strings?”
“Not always,” Melpomene replied, “but frequently. Rebuke me if you like. I know it’s cruel of us to manipulate you into strife and risk of ruin. That’s why I tried to opt out of the game.” The black, angular form of a half-constructed condominium loomed out of the darkness ahead.
“You can do that?” asked Dan.
The woman in the white gown sighed. “I thought I could. One night about fo
ur hundred years ago, after the Armada but before the founding of Jamestown, I slew the last of my special enemies, by which I mean the last of the Methuselahs who were actively striving against me. I was weary and heartsick from centuries of bloodshed and intrigue, and it occurred to me that if I hid myself even more thoroughly than before, if I refrained from making any moves against the remainder of my peers, they might leave me alone to live in peace. After all, each of them had rivals who were actual threats to worry about.
“And for a while my plan seemed to work. As my confidence grew, I let some of my minions pass from my control altogether and loosened the reins on the rest. When my Toreador, my descendants, contrived to live in peace here in Sarasota, I permitted it gladly. I was no longer sufficiently wary to worry that a placid existence would blunt their fighting edge, or that their refusal to join in military alliances might leave them friendless in some future hour of need.”
As they neared the unfinished condominium, the breeze sighed through the empty windows. Noticing the absence of any construction equipment, and the obscene graffiti on the concrete-block walls, Dan realized that the project had been abandoned. Perhaps the builder had run out of money. “And now it is their ‘hour of need,’” he guessed.
“Yes,” said Melpomene somberly. Her head turned as if she were tracking the motion of something through the air. Dan squinted, but he still couldn’t see whatever it was that she was looking at. “I spent most of the last century asleep. It’s something we ancients do to refresh ourselves when existence begins to seem too burdensome. But my dreams provided a window on the waking world, and in one of them I saw that a wonderful painting, a work by an artist my Toreador and-I had nurtured and cherished, had been destroyed. I roused myself and found that the vision was true.”
“And you figure that was the opening shot in a new war,” said Dan.
“It was,” Melpomene replied* “I felt it instantly, and subsequent events have proved me right. Other works in whose creation I played some role have been destroyed — you would have seen the reports if you followed the news
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