On a Darkling Plain

by Unknown Author

  In any case he had no desire to let it take a potshot at him. Dropping the other objects in his hands, he skimmed the ancient book of magic at it.

  Fast and nimble as the monkey it somewhat resembled, the diminutive monster abandoned the gun, leaped to the floor and scurried toward the door. The grimoire thumped against the shelf and broke apart, scattering a blizzard of brittle pages, jarred loose from their moorings, candles toppled.

  Dan dived after the fleeing creature, but his clutching fingers missed it by an inch. It raced into the hall, and, lurching up into a crouch, he scrambled after it.

  He faltered when he saw Wyatt. The vampire with the mohawk was standing a few paces down the hall, his boyish face grim and his new shotgun leveled. Though he’d tried hard to clean his long white coat, the garment still had a few faint bloodstains around the bullet holes.

  The little creature darted to Wyatt, hugged his ankle and then, clutching at his clothing, climbed up his body to his shoulder. Without taking his eyes off Dan the anarch captain used his free hand to tickle the little creature behind the ear. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “The wicked man won’t hurt you now.”

  “How did it call you back?” asked Dan. “Dial a beeper number?”

  “He didn’t have to do anything,” Wyatt replied. “We’re linked mind to mind. He’s my homunculus, blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh.” Toying with the hairs of the anarch’s goatee — grooming him, Dan decided — the creature chittered in seeming agreement.

  “I did notice the family resemblance,” said Dan. He wondered if he could ease his hand toward his automatic without Wyatt shooting him instantly. He decided not to chance it, at least not yet. Maybe he could talk his way out of this. “I wasn’t going to hurt him, even though he tried to put a bullet in me. I was just curious. I wanted a closer look at him.”

  “Uh'huh,” said Wyatt skeptically. “And what’s the idea of going through my stuff?”

  “I was curious about you, too,” said Dan, trying to sound sheepish. “Something about you didn’t add up, and I’m the kind of guy that looks in other people’s closets and medicine cabinets. I always have been, and I guess I always will be. For what it’s worth, I apologize.”

  To Dan’s surprise, the anarch smiled. “Apology accepted. I’ve been known to do the same thing. And what do you think you’ve found out about me?”

  “Obviously, that you lied about your lineage,” Dan answered. “You’re not Ventrue, you’re Tremere. Not just an ordinary vampire, but a member of the wizard clan. I wondered what you actually expected to find on your ‘scouting mission’ into Sarasota. Until I saw your map, the whole thing seemed pretty pointless. You were doing something occult, weren’t you?”

  Wyatt nodded. “I was doing geomancy. Finding pressure points in the web of forces that girdle the earth. I need to know where they are in order to lay a curse on all of Prince Roger’s flunkies at once.” He hesitated. “Can you understand why I lied? The Tremere have a terrible reputation for deceit and intrigue, and they’ve always been at the forefront of any effort to crush the Movement. I was afraid that if I claimed to have defected from a chantry, no one would trust me.” Dan made a wry face. “Believe me, I do understand. I know what it’s like to be on the outside looking in. To be rejected by people you care about. I promise that your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thank you,” said Wyatt. “In that case, I guess everything’s all right.” The two vampires looked one another in the eye for a moment, and then both smiled ruefully.

  “Well, so much for that little tap dance,” Dan said. “I don’t believe a word you’re saying, and I can tell that you don’t believe me.”

  “The problem is that we’re two of a kind,” said Wyatt. The homunculus began picking at his mohawk. “Both too damn smart for our own good. What gave me away? I’d hate to think that I was losing my talent for lying.”

  “I don’t know anything about magic,” Dan replied. “But heck, you make keys out of nothing. You boil the Samedi’s blood. You create a living creature, like Baron Frankenstein. It’s obvious even to me that you’ve learned too many Tremere secrets to be a dropout. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were some kind of junior vice-president. And I wonder if even a hot-shot magician —”

  “Magus,” Wyatt interjected.

  “Excuse me, magus, could put a spell on a whole domain all by himself. I’m guessing that you plan to team up with a bunch of other Warlocks for that particular piece of voodoo.” Wyatt sighed. “Too damn smart,” he repeated. “Look, before you hooked up with us, you didn’t care about the Movement. What if I tell you that I truly do like Laurie, Felipe and Jimmy Ray? Even though I’m tricking them, using them for my own purposes, convincing them that they’re fighting for the anarchs when they’re really serving a different cause altogether, I mean to look out for them as well. When the battle’s won, they’ll be rewarded for their efforts. You can be, too, if you’ll play along.”

  Dan no longer trusted Wyatt enough to be tempted even momentarily by such an offer, but he figured that he had nothing to lose by trying one more lie. “Maybe we can work something out. Rewarded how?”

  Wyatt sighed. “Sorry, I can still see through you. What is it they say? ‘Never kid a kidder?’ You know, I truly like you. Hell, you’ve saved my life twice. This whole situation stinks.”

  The Tremere sounded sincere, and to his dismay, Dan felt a keen, reciprocal pang of friendship. “I know what you mean.”

  “I wonder if you really just wandered up here out of curiosity, or if someone told you to infiltrate our little group. Would you care to enlighten me?”

  “It was just curiosity,” said Dan.

  “Then it was rotten luck for both of us,” said Wyatt. “Good-bye.”

  Dan made a grab for his automatic. Just as it cleared the holster, Wyatt fired. The boom was deafening in the cramped confines of the hall. .33-caliber pellets tore into Dan’s belly, staggering him. The pistol tumbled from his suddenly spasming fingers.

  Wyatt could blow him apart if he paused to pick up the automatic. Struggling to ignore the pain blazing in his midsection, the wounded vampire lunged at the Tremere, intent on grabbing the scatter-gun and tearing it from his grasp.

  Wyatt’s eyes bored into his. “Stop!” the magus cried.

  Dan felt his muscles seizing up like an overheated engine. He managed to keep lurching forward, but now his progress was as slow and clumsy as a paralytic’s. Stepping casually back to avoid the injured Kindred’s outthrust hands, Wyatt pumped another shell into the breech and shot Dan in the knees.

  Dan collapsed on his side. Staring down at his face, Wyatt repeated, “Stop.” Dan’s treacherous muscles strained, obeying the command, clenching themselves as hard and useless as chunks of stone.

  Wyatt shot Dan in the chest. This time the burst of agony was so intense that, for an instant, the spy blacked out. When the world swam back into partial focus, Wyatt, his fangs now extruded, was staring down at him as if trying to

  off

  determine whether he was truly helpless. Whether he needed any more holes in him to allow precious vitae to run out and go to waste. The homunculus bobbed and chattered in excitement.

  Dan didn’t know if he was defenseless or not. Between the torment of his wounds and the rigidity in his limbs, it sure felt like it. But he was certain that his only chance of surviving this battle was to make Wyatt believe that he was already incapacitated. He tried to make it look as if he were still stunned, staring glassy-eyed and expressionless at nothing.

  And Wyatt dropped to his knees beside him, set his smoking, blue-finished weapon on the floor, and bent over his intended prey.

  Dan tried to seize the other Kindred. For an instant nothing happened, and then mobility surged back into his body with a sharp, rippling pain that-reminded him of a piece of paper tearing in two. Evidently the hypnotically induced paralysis could only freeze a victim for a little while. Grabbing Wyatt by the throat, he scrambled on top of
him and started to pound his head against the floor. The homunculus emitted an earsplitting shriek, bounded off its master’s shoulder and raced away back toward Wyatt’s room.

  His wounds notwithstanding, Dan was far stronger than Wyatt. He was certain that he could pound the magus insensible in a matter of seconds, or even tear him limb from limb. And then the bogus anarch’s fingers feebly clutched his wrist.

  Fiery agony screamed through Dan’s flesh. The pain of a gunshot wound was a mere pinprick by comparison. His blood was boiling like the Samedi’s, scalding and cooking him from the inside out.

  Wyatt broke Dan’s grip on his neck and started to squirm out from underneath him. Screaming, forcing his burning arms to move despite the anguish, Dan grabbed the Tremere again and smashed his head down on the linoleum. Wyatt’s skull crunched, and he went limp.

  Unfortunately, victory in itself did nothing to relieve Dan’s pain. His flesh was still ablaze and the Hunger had him in its grip. He felt as if every drop of vitae in his system had changed into blistering steam. He threw himself down on Wyatt and ripped open his throat.

  He guzzled frantically, and the Tremere’s rich, coppery vitae gradually extinguished the searing torment. The relief was a kind of ecstasy, nearly as sublime in its way as the joy of sucking Melpomene’s potent blood. Once lost in its embrace, he kept drinking long past the point of satiety, until Wyatt’s lifeless body began to stink and decay in his arms.

  Still dazed with the savage pleasure of his gluttony, Dan lifted his head just,in time to see the homunculus laboriously dragging the muff gun into the hall. The tiny monster looked at the tableau before it. Its huge eyes widened as it evidently recognized that it had returned to the fray too late, that its creator was already dead. It screamed, abandoned the weapon, and ran in the opposite direction. In a moment it vanished into the shadows.

  Now that the Beast, his inner demon, was back in its cage, Dan regretted killing Wyatt. And not merely because, despite everything that had happened, he still liked the Tremere, although that was part of it. Since the anarchs didn’t actually know anything about the conspiracy against the Kindred of Sarasota, and since their captain was now unavailable for interrogation, it was quite possible that Dan had just bungled his mission beyond any hope of recovery.

  Once again he was tempted simply to abandon his errand. Maybe if he explained to Laurie, Felipe and Jimmy Ray that Wyatt hadn’t been what he seemed — but no, that was a bad idea. Though the anarchs had welcomed him into their midst, he’d been rebuffed, told there was something foul and untrustworthy about him, too many times to assume that he could convince them he’d had a valid reason for killing their beloved leader. But he could deny he was the person who’d destroyed the magus. Heck, if he could spirit the rotting corpse away, his new friends wouldn’t know that anyone had. They wouldn’t know what had happened to Wyatt.

  And with their link to the shadow army assailling Sarasota broken, they’d be free, no longer a part of the ongoing struggle. Perhaps Dan could convince them to go away with him to some other part of the country where neither Wyatt’s colleagues nor Melpomene could find them. Maybe they could settle in California, where the real Anarch Movement was in power.

  Dan sighed. It ail made for a pleasant fantasy, but he realized that he wasn’t going to abandon his mission. He still wanted to save the innocent humans targeted for destruction. And, though it might be a perverse way to think, he couldn’t see quitting now that he’d come this far. That would mean he’d killed Wyatt for nothing.

  He went through the magus’ pockets. He found an eelskin wallet, a book of matches, a pack of Camels and an unfamiliar key — probably the one that opened the door to this building. He didn’t locate the key to the Haitian artist’s loft. He wondered if Wyatt had thrown it away, or if it had evaporated when its work was done.

  The wallet contained seven hundred dollars, several credit cards, including Diner’s Club and an American Express Platinum, a driver’s license with an Orlando address, and a blood-red key card bearing an embossed drawing of a plumed and visored helmet with the similarly elevated word Camelot in Gothic script on one side and a magnetic stripe on the other.

  Taken all in all, it didn’t seem like Dan had discovered very much. But at least he now had some excuse for a lead. Pocketing the wallet, he rose, located his .38 — and then an idea struck him.

  The muff gun barely seemed capable of inconveniencing a mortal. Against a Kindred, such a weapon ought to be a joke. And yet Wyatt had considered it worth leaving with the homunculus, and even though the shot would reveal its presence, the tiny creature had been hell-bent on firing the pistol at Dan. Was it possible that the firearm, or its ammunition, was magical?

  Dan decided that he had nothing to lose by taking them with him. He grabbed them and then, his heart heavy, wondering if he’d ever see Laurie, Jimmy Ray and Felipe again, and whether they’d try to kill him if he did, he trudged toward the stairs.

  SEVENTEEN? REPORTING IN

  l will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgment.

  — Juvenal, Satires

  Now dressed in the new, unperforated, unbloodied jeans, T-shirt and denim jacket he’d burgled from a second-hand shop — he hadn’t wanted to return to the cache of clothes in the auto repair shop and risk running into any of the anarchs — Dan found a pay phone outside a grubby little bar on the fringes of Ybor City, Tampa’s historic Latin quarter. Living in Sarasota, he’d heard vaguely that the area was undergoing a revitalization, filling up with trendy nightclubs, restaurants, boutiques and art galleries; but if so, the process of renewal hadn’t reached this shadowy corner of the district yet. Most of the streetlights were broken, and many of the shops were boarded up. Discarded paper cups, beer cans and the stinking body of a dachshund, its legs stiff with rigor mortis and its flanks pocked with stab wounds, filled the gutters. Through the wall of the tavern sounded a dirgelike death-metal anthem: “Kill, kill, kill the children, generation last-—”

  Glumly reflecting that the tone, if not the lyrics, of the song suited his mood, Dan dropped a quarter in the public phone’s coin slot and punched in the digits Melpomene had bade him memorize. The phone whirred and clicked repeatedly, and he imagined his call being routed from one dummy number to the next, making it more difficult to trace.

  The phone went dead. Frowning in puzzlement and annoyance, Dan wondered if he should hold on or hang up and dial again. Then a soft white light flowered behind him.

  Startled, his hand jerking reflexively toward his .38, he spun around. Melpomene was standing on the cracked, uneven sidewalk behind him. Something about her looked strange, and after a moment he realized what it was. Though the air was still, strands of her dark hair were stirring as if a breeze were blowing, leading him to suspect that she was only present in spirit.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to appear to me,” he growled, hoping that she hadn’t noticed how he’d jumped. “I thought we were just going to talk on the phone.”

  “So did I,” Melpomene said. “But I like to see a person’s face when I converse with him. And I can discern that no other Kindred are nearby. So why shouldn’t I come to you, particularly when I can sense that you’re in distress?” She gave him a sympathetic smile.

  Even if she weren’t physically present, her charm was no less potent than it had been during their previous encounter. Abruptly he felt grateful for her show of concern, and ashamed that he’d greeted her rudely. Struggling to suppress those responses, he said, “Yeah, I am upset. I’m not cut out for this spy stuff.”

  She caressed his cheek with her slim white fingers. He couldn’t feel the touch, but, remembering the silky smoothness of her skin, he imagined it, and that was enough to wring another outpouring of affection from his soul. “Why do you say that?” she asked gently.

  “I just killed someone,” he replied heavily. “The guy was a liar, a con artist, but hell, so am I. Maybe all vamps are.

  Anyway, e
ven though he wanted to trick me and use me, he was my friend, too. And now I’m turning my back on three other people that I liked.” He smiled grimly. “Oh, yeah, and I’m worried that working for you is driving me crazy. After all the hard times I’ve been through over the past thirty years, I would’ve thought that I was too tough to go nuts. But something’s happening to me.”

  “Tell me everything,” Melpomene said.

  Dan did tell her most of it. Midway through his recital, a dilapidated, exhaust-belching, zebra-striped Cadillac full of black teenagers roared down the street. He wondered what they’d make of the pale, beautiful woman clad only in a gauzy gown, but they didn’t even slow down to ogle her. Maybe they couldn’t see her.

  When he finished describing his clash with Wyatt, Melpomene said, “The long and the short of it is, you killed in self-defense. The magus was trying to murder you.”

  Dan smiled crookedly. “When you put it that way, the guilt and the sadness I’m feeling don’t make a lot of sense, do they? But I feel them anyway.”

  “Oh, they make perfect sense to me,” Melpomene said. “I remember when my fellow Methuselahs and I were young and still cherished one another. Do you think that our hearts didn’t ache when the wills of our sires and our own ambitions and grievances turned us against one another?” “Evidently they didn’t ache enough to keep you from fighting,” Dan observed.

  The ancient vampire sighed. “No. No, they didn’t. Perhaps the greatest devotion a Kindred can experience is a debased and tainted thing compared to the love of mortals. 1 don’t know; after all these centuries, I’m not certain that I remember how it felt to be human. In any event, love is scarcely the force that makes our benighted world go around. The thirsts for blood and power do that.”

  “Some of us just want to get by and have somebody to hang around with.”