On a Darkling Plain

by Unknown Author

  He gave Sky’s belongings to the female Toreador, accepted the phone from her and, switching it on, raised it to his ear. “Hello, Palmer,” he said with all the unruffled charm he could muster. “It’s been what, twenty years?” “Nearly that,” the Ventrue replied. His; voice was a

  mellifluous bass that always reminded Elliott of Father Christmas and doting uncles in sentimental Victorian novels. The justicar invariably sounded genial and sympathetic, even when picking some malefactor apart with a scalpel. “Your young friend seemed a bit rattled once I told her who I was. I hope you aren’t teaching your childer to be skittish of other clans, or of those humble officials charged with the enforcement of the law.”

  “Perish the thought,” said Elliott, allowing a hint of irony to enter his voice. Guice would expect no less. “We teach them that we’re all one big happy family in the Camarilla.” Guice chuckled. “Oh, indeed, indeed! I’m glad you haven’t lost that sardonic wit. People told me — but people always gossip, don’t they, especially about charismatic entertainers embroiled in some lurid tragedy. Let’s not get off on that. How are things going down your way?”

  Elliott assumed that Guice knew about Roger’s illness. Since the prince had gone mad on stage, in front of an audience of his peers, the entire Camarilla must know. “Roger’s resting comfortably. Lionel Potter’s treating him, and we anticipate a full recovery.”

  “That’s splendid,” Guice said. “And what of your other problems?”

  Elliott wondered grimly just how much the justicar knew about those difficulties, and exactly how he knew it. “Everything’s under control.”

  “Of course it is,” said Guice. “With Kindred such as yourself at the helm, how could it be otherwise? Still, I trust you understand that you and your people don’t have to shoulder the burden alone. Your brothers and sisters stand ready to assist you.”

  “We appreciate that,” said Elliott, “but —”

  “I’m going to convene a Conclave in Sarasota,” Guice continued inexorably. “We’ll gather Kindred from across the South, perhaps the entire country, and discuss how best to ensure the security of your domain.”

  SIXTEEN: WYATT

  Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

  — Matthew 7:15

  Standing in a shadowy doorway, Dan peered up and down the ruined street. Nothing moved, nor did he hear any bipedal footsteps, just vermin scurrying and the dilapidated buildings creaking and groaning their way toward collapse. He waited another moment and then, sacrificing the invisibility his immobility had afforded him, stalked on down the cracked and broken sidewalk.

  Dan had discovered that Wyatt and the other anarchs had laid claim to an entire deserted block near the Port of Tampa. Despite overcrowding and the hordes of the homeless that increasingly choked their streets, many cities had such vacant sections: blighted areas where memories of ghastly tragedies, sinister rumors or merely an ominous vibe in the air served to drive the kine away. Sometimes indigenous vampires were the cause of the problem. Sometimes they weren’t, but settled in such places after the humans had cleared out, availing themselves of the privacy the isolation afforded.

  The anarchs spent much of their time together in the abandoned auto repair shop. Frequently they even slept there. But each one also had a private retreat. By keeping his eyes open, Dan had discovered which crumbling, gargoyle-encrusted, yellow-brick building housed Wyatt's personal refuge, and he meant to search the place tonight while his new friends were supposedly out hunting.

  Abruptly, sensing a presence peering down at him from above, he tensed. Reminding himself that he hadn’t done anything indisputably illicit yet, though his stealthy advance down the block might well have roused an observer’s suspicions, he looked up. A mangy calico cat with a ragged ear and a scabbed-over gash on its shoulder held his gaze for a moment, then spat, wheeled, and vanished through the shattered fourth-floor window of what had once been an office building. Smiling crookedly with relief, the vampire silently wished the other nocturnal predator good hunting, then continued on his way.

  Dan still didn’t feel right about betraying the anarchs, but after much soul-searching, he’d decided that he was even more disturbed about the pogrom being launched against the Toreador’s pet humans. He didn’t feel much of an emotional tie to mortals anymore; indeed, he’d drunk a few of them dry and managed to face himself in the mirror afterward. But he still had scruples of a sort, and the thought of such a calculated massacre, in the service of conquest rather than to assuage anyone’s Hunger, sickened him. As far as he was concerned, if Kindred wanted a war, they should fight each other and leave defenseless kine alone.

  Moreover, he was worried that Wyatt wasn’t what he seemed. Dan didn’t want to suspect the vampire with the mohawk. The guy had saved his life. But the more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that Wyatt hadn’t just happened to possess a key that fit the Haitian painter’s door. He’d manufactured one out of thin air. And while it was true that a given vampire’s supernatural abilities were sometimes unique and unpredictable, neither the creation of useful objects by sheer force of will nor the ability to boil an enemy’s blood with a touch were characteristic talents of the Ventrue.

  If Wyatt had lied about his bloodline, what else might he have lied about? It was conceivable that the anarch captain had a secret agenda, something that would appall Laurie, Felipe and Jimmy Ray if they knew about it.

  But Dan actually hoped not. He hoped that Wyatt was the friendly, trustworthy idealist he seemed. That he could search the rebel leader’s haven and find the name of his contacts in the Movement without anyone ever realizing what he’d done. And that when he relayed his discoveries to Melpomene, who would presumably pass them along to Prince Roger’s people, the Kindred of Sarasota would be content to strike at the generals commanding the offensive against them and leave small-fry like his new friends alone.

  Dan took a final look around. As far as he could tell, no one was watching him. Pulling on the yellow work gloves he’d purchased in a hardware store, he strode to the front door of a derelict five-story building. Three floors up, a huge pair of spectacles — an optician’s sign projecting from the sooty brick wall at a right angle — groaned as it swung in the almost nonexistent breeze. Above that the owl carved on the cornice, which the sculptor had chosen to depict with talons outstretched and wings slightly furled as if it were diving, glared down at its seeming prey on the ground.

  Dan twisted the doorknob and found that the entrance was locked. He wasn’t surprised. Had he possessed the power to materialize keys at will, he himself would have kept the door to any haven in which he happened to be squatting secured.

  Stalking around the building, he checked the windows, whitewashed like cataract-afflicted eyes, and the side and back doors. They were locked, too.

  He supposed that somewhere along the line he should have taken the trouble to learn to pick locks, it would be easy enough to break a window, but that would mean abandoning any realistic hope of keeping his intrusion a secret.

  Fortunately, a rusty wrought-iron fire escape snaked down the back wall of the building, terminating about ten feet above the alley. He could have jumped that high even before Melpomene permitted him to drink her vitae. He flexed his knees, leaped, and grabbed the guard rail.

  The sudden addition of his weight made the fire escape squeal and shudder. For a moment he was afraid that it would tear away from its moorings, dumping him back on the ground and crashing down on top of him, but it didn’t. He swarmed over the rail and began to move along the walkways, testing the upper-story doors and windows.

  They were all locked, too. Finally, impatient, knowing that he needed to finish his work before Wyatt returned, and reasoning that the rebel captain would be less likely to notice signs of forcible entry above the ground floor, he drew back his fist and punched a window.

  The glass shattered. In the midst of
all this stillness, the crash was loud enough to make him wince. He hastily swept the remaining shards out of the window frame and clambered through.

  He found himself in what had once been a dentist’s office. Most of the fixtures and fittings were gone, but the chair with its chipped and discolored attached sink remained. Pale rectangles on the dingy walls indicated the spots where the doctor’s diplomas and professional credentials had probably hung.

  Dan had always hated going to the dentist, hated the whine and the hot smell of the drilling, the spitting out of the grit, and the Novocain-induced numbness in his mouth hours afterwards.. Reflecting wryly that whatever else he disliked about being a vampire, at least his regenerative powers spared him any more of that particular ordeal, he skulked deeper into the building.

  Once he moved a few paces away from the painted windows, there was hardly any light. Even his newly sharpened vision was barely sufficient to allow him to grope his way along. The darkness smelled of rats, rot and dampness. Somewhere in the building, the rain had been leaking in.

  He’d already thought about where to begin his search. His intuition, and his sense of Wyatt’s personality, suggested that the vampire with the mohawk would have chosen to reside on the top floor. Prowling down a corridor, he spotted a pair of elevators which, even if Wyatt had bothered to restore power to the building, might well be unsafe. Across from them was a set of stairs. As he set his foot on the flight leading upward, he thought he heard a faint, indefinable stirring in the gloom above him.

  Drawing his new pistol, a Herculean Firearms .38 Paladin —- he reflected fleetingly that, since beginning his mission, he’d been running through guns like a kid gobbling M&Ms

  — he peered up the staircase. He didn’t see anything lurking in the shadows, not between his position and the landing. Of course, it was possible that someone had just now slipped around the bend in the ascent.

  Dan dashed up the risers, turned, and pointed his automatic up the next flight of steps. There was nothing to shoot; the space was empty.

  He supposed that he’d probably heard a rat, or that his nerves were playing tricks on him. He hoped not the latter; after the inexplicable fascination he’d felt for the Haitian painter’s pictures, he was already a little worried that he might be cracking up. Scowling, his senses still probing the darkness, he climbed on.

  For an instant, just as he emerged onto the top floor, he caught an aromatic whiff of vampire vitae. Startled, gun leveled, he swivelled back and forth.

  Once again, there was nothing to see. He supposed that he’d merely smelled a lingering trace of Wyatt’s blood, left behind when, his bullet wounds still not completely healed, the anarch had returned here after the trip to Miami. Commanding himself to get over his jitters, he began to examine the various chambers and suites.

  Fortunately, the internal doors weren’t locked. And behind the sixth one he tried, he found the former office that must now be Wyatt’s haven. An air mattress and a sleeping bag sat on a section of floor no sunlight leaking through the painted windows could reach. Ivory-colored candles, glued down with their own wax, lined the built-in bookshelves like a row of severed fingers. Among them reposed an assortment of the anarch’s personal belongings, while a white leather backpack and shotgun case leaned in the corner.

  As Dan began to enter the room, he heard a tiny, stealthy pattering. This time the noise was coming from behind him. He spun around and peered down the tenebrous corridor.

  He didn’t see anything.

  A rat, he told himself, it’s just a damn rat. But he wasn’t quite sure that he believed it. Since Melpomene’s vitae had honed his senses, he’d heard his share of rodents scuttling through walls and heaps of trash, and it seemed to him that the noise he’d just caught had been slightly different. But perhaps that was only his imagination.

  He decided he’d better finish his snooping and get out of here before he wigged out completely. He strode on into Wyatt’s refuge and over to the shelves. For a moment he was tempted to light some of the candles, but then realized that Wyatt might smell the smoke when he returned. Better to risk a little eyestrain and poke around in the gloom.

  Among the tapers lay a disposable plastic lighter, a handful of pennies, nickels and dimes, and Wyatt’s battery-powered razor. There was also a dainty single-shot pistol covered with ornate scroll work — the kind of weapon ladies had once concealed in their muffs — the kit to oil and clean it, and two hullets. Dan wondered what the rebel, who carried a combat shotgun everywhere and wielded it onehanded, wanted with such a tiny, antiquated weapon. Perhaps it was a memento from his exploits in the previous century.

  Beside the gun sat a long, thin, bone-handled knife, a box of colored sidewalk chalk, several rags and a plastic spray bottle of green all-purpose household cleaner. To Dan, the presence of the chalk seemed even stranger than that of the muff pistol. What the heck did Wyatt need with that? He peered about, but couldn’t see any chalk marks anywhere in the room.

  Prompted by a sudden hunch, he spritzed a bit of the cleanser into the air. He noted the sharp, astringent smell of the mist, then prowled around, sniffing, searching for another trace of the same odor.

  His nose led him to a patch of floor less dirty than the grubby linoleum surrounding it. It was conceivable that Wyatt had been writing or drawing there, then washing away his work when he was through.

  For a moment Dan felt a thrill of accomplishment, but the sensation faded when he realized that this particular stab at playing detective had taken him about as far as it could. It was intriguing to know that Wyatt had been writing on the floor, and that he’d been scrupulously careful to erase his handiwork afterward, but it wasn’t useful, not unless one also knew what he’d been writing. And Dan couldn’t see any way to discover that.

  Smiling ruefully, he turned toward the leather pack, a handsome article studded with the same cryptic patterns of rivets that decorated Wyatt’s coat. He reached for it, then faltered, his skin crawling. Suddenly he was certain that he felt eyes glaring malevolently at his back.

  He whirled. And saw nothing. He almost heard a peal of nasty, mocking laughter, but he knew that that, at least, really was only his imagination.

  Even prior to his brush with the Samedi, Dan had had some experience with invisible Kindred. Heck, he was learning how to be invisible himself. But he hadn’t seen any indication that any of the anarchs possessed such powers, and he couldn’t imagine who else would be lurking in Wyatt’s haven. Furthermore, given his superhuman senses of hearing and smell, it was hard to believe that even an invisible man could remain entirely undetectable in the cramped confines of the office. Besides, if an enemy was present, what was he waiting for? Why hadn’t he attacked Dan when his back was turned?

  You’re alone, fool, the vampire told himself firmly. But just in case he wasn’t, he meant to finish his search and get out of the building as rapidly as possible.

  Reluctantly reholstering the .38 to free up both hands, his fingers trembling slightly, Dan fumbled open the knapsack. It occurred to him that it, the shotgun case, and Wyatt’s coat might be custom-made, and that the label might provide a clue to the revolutionary’s secrets. But it only bore the name of the manufacturer, Podolak, a name that meant nothing to Dan.

  Scowling, he reached into the pack and pulled out four items: a plastic pack of felt-tipped pens, each filled with a different color of ink; an ancient-looking and -smelling leather-bound tome with tarnished brass hinges and ragged-edged parchment pages; a three-ring notebook; and a neatly folded map.

  When Dan carefully opened the crackling antique book, half expecting it to fall apart in his hands, he caught a second scent, mingled with the musty odor of the paper. Time had nearly effaced the aroma, but unless he were mistaken, the flaking brown ink on the pages was human vitae.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t decipher the crabbed handwriting. He had a hunch that he was looking at some archaic form of Latin, as incomprehensible as Martian to him. But from the c
omplex geometric forms — they were called pentagrams, weren’t they? — and the drawings of hideous, demonic creatures, he suspected that he was looking at a sorcerer’s journal. For a moment one of the pictures, a portrait of a voluptuous nude woman with eyes where her nipples should have been and a crown made of entwined serpents, threatened to entrance him the way the immigrant’s paintings had. Dismayed, snarling, he wrenched his gaze away.

  Even edgier now, he closed the ancient volume, then opened the notebook. It was more of the same, except that the text and sketches were in various shades of ordinary ink. They looked like the notes of a modern wizard attempting to build on the secret wisdom of his predecessor, one who probably used the sidewalk chalk to draw pentagrams on the floor.

  Unfolding the remaining item, Dan saw that it was a map of Sarasota, spotted with mysterious symbols written in black and red. Some of the icons marked locations that the anarchs had visited just before Judy Morgan’s Brujah attacked them.

  Behind him, something softly clicked.

  Even as he pivoted, Dan thought, This’ll be just like the other times; there won’t be anything there. And at first it didn’t appear that there was. Half-disgusted at his own jumpiness and half-relieved at the absence of any threat, he began to return to his inspection of the map. But then he glimpsed a white flicker of motion on one of the shelves where Wyatt’s belongings lay.

  He squinted and then felt an impulse to blink his eyes in disbelief. A pale creature, no larger than a rat but shaped more like a monkey, had cocked the muff pistol and was endeavoring to point it at him. Except for the disproportionately large eyes and the twin fangs that extended all the way to the bottom of its chin, its face was a dead ringer for Wyatt’s. A stray bit of dried blood encrusted the left corner of its mouth. Dan surmised that the creature had been tailing him since he’d entered the building and that he’d missed spotting it because of its tiny stature.