As the two Kindred neared their destination, Elliott saw that the pale, boxlike tower rose in the center of an open plaza. There was no structure of comparable height, from which he and Dan might have sniped at Tithonys, anywhere nearby. Even if the actor hadn’t yearned to confront the architect of Mary’s murder face to face, he wouldn’t have had another choice.
Elliott reached the entrance several strides ahead of his companion, only to discover it locked. He knew from Judy’s account just how strong Dan was. It would have made sense to let him break the door down. But the Toreador was too impatient; the Beast was snarling and pacing in his soul. He whirled, lashing out with a spinning back kick, and the panel burst open with a crash. .
Beyond the threshold was a large, dimly lit chamber hung with heraldic banners and filled with steel railings which defined a path running back and forth and ultimately through an arch in the far wall. A sign posted halfway along the twisting aisle read, Forty-five Minute Wait from this Point. The air had a distinctive hot-metal smell that Elliott associated with trains and other vehicles that ran on tracks.
Across the room, separated from the path by one of the railings, was an unobtrusive door. Elliott dashed to it and
pushed it. It wouldn’t move. He kicked it, but failed to break the bolt.
Dan pounded up behind him. “Let me,” the younger Kindred said. He punched the door with the heel of his hand and it flew open. The boom echoed hollowly through the spaces beyond.
The service hallway on the other side of the doorway led to a stairwell. In all likelihood there was an elevator somewhere as well, but Elliott didn’t feel inclined to take the time to search for it. As the two Kindred hurried up the steps, he began to hear a faint, discordant chanting in an ugly language he didn’t recognize. Or perhaps hear wasn’t the right word. The sound had a peculiar quality which made him wonder if it wasn’t somehow entering his mind directly, without passing through his ears. It also incorporated lengthy periods of silence, reminding him of plainsong, of some vile choir croaking and gibbering responses to the inaudible recitation of a priest.
The resemblance jolted him. “Can you hear that?” he said, instinctively lowering his voice.
“I think so,” Dan replied. He hesitated. “Is it demons?”
“I suspect it’s demons chanting ritual responses to Tithonys’ incantation,” Elliott replied grimly. “He’s already working the spell. Come on!” No longer concerned about leaving his ally behind, only about interrupting the magic before it reached its conclusion, the Toreador charged on up the steps.
Above him, wavering luminous figures and faces, even dimmer than the masses of light he’d seen floating against the sky, began to shimmer in and out of view. They hurt his eyes, too, for reasons that had nothing to do with their gross deformities, and the stench of rotten flesh and brimstone hung in the air around them. He readied his AR-18, but soon realized that the shapes couldn’t harm him, though some tried: snapping at him, lashing their tentacles at him, or scrabbling at his face with three-inch claws. It was as if they
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hadn’t quite emerged into the mundane world from whatever hell they normally inhabited. But the Toreador had a nasty suspicion that, if Tithonys concluded his ritual, they would. Doing his best to ignore the horrors, he quickened his pace yet again.
The stairs terminated in another corridor, which led in turn to a ladder. Now Elliott could hear both the infernal chorus and, murmuring down through the ceiling, the masculine voice, beautiful even when framing the grating syllables of the unknown language to which the spirits were responding. He scrambled up the steel rungs and tested the trapdoor above them. It was unlocked.
Despite the urgency of his mission, Elliott paused for one more instant to think of Mary, thus fanning his rage to a white-hot blaze. Then, drawing on every bit of his supernatural speed and agility, he surged out onto the roof and started shooting.
The naked, golden-skinned Adonis in the center of the structure of light was facing away from Elliott. He stood with his arms upraised, chanting to the ranks of phantasmal faces and shapes now blemishing the sky. The Toreador’s bullets neither knocked him off balance nor marked his shoulders and back.
Tithonys completed the phrase he was intoning, then turned without apparent haste. He gave Elliott a radiant smile, half-pitying and half-amused, the kind of smile a god might give a petty sinner. A pang of trepidation stabbed through the actor’s rage. He hadn’t wanted to believe that the Methuselah was as powerful as Dan and Angus claimed, but now, despite his fury, he was discerning the reality firsthand.
“I’m afraid that ordinary bullets and blades don’t inconvenience me anymore,” Tithonys said gently. “I’ve grown beyond that.”
Elliott dropped the AR-18 and snatched out the wooden stake sheathed at his belt. He meant to stalk forward, but the Methuselah laughed when he brandished his new weapon, and despite himself, he faltered. At that moment Dan scrambled through the trapdoor.
“Well, well,” Tithonys said, “the gang’s all here, all of my former darling’s principal slaves. Even Angus, fluttering round and round the tower, no doubt hoping to take me by surprise. You might as well come join the party, old friend.”
Angus swooped over the crenellated rampart, changing form while still in the air. By the time his paws touched the roof, he’d become an immense gray wolf with crimson eyes.
“Give it up,” said Dan to Tithonys, a subtle tremor in his voice. “Since you didn’t break me, you can’t use me to get at Melpomene. So there’s no point in killing all those people.”
Elliott felt a surge of impatience. He didn’t want Dan to persuade Tithonys to halt his sorcery. He wanted to destroy the Methuselah! And yet, for a moment, unnerved despite his hatred, he wondered if the situation could be resolved without a battle.
Tithonys grinned at Dan. “It’s obvious you’re no magus. I’ve rung the dinner bell, and all these spirits” — he waved a perfectly formed golden hand at the specters massing in the sky — “to say nothing of their master, my patron, would be quite upset with me if I didn’t put food on the table. Besides which, you haven’t spoiled my plans. I know countless ways to break you, fledgling. Nor, now that I’ve tasted your vitae, would I have any difficulty locating you, even if your companions managed to detain me while you fled.”
Without warning, moving faster than Elliott had ever seen a Kindred move, Angus charged. Drawing on his own inhuman speed, the Toreador elder plunged after him.
The Methuselah snapped his fingers, and his handsome countenance became a gruesome mask of ridged, decaying flesh sporting a leprous snout, a lopsided slash of a mouth full of stained, jagged tusks, and the bulbous, faceted eyes of an insect. Most horribly of all, it was on fire: surrounded
by a corona of crackling blue and yellow flame.
It was, quite simply, the most terrifying sight Elliott had ever seen. The fear he’d already been experiencing exploding into outright panic, he floundered to a halt and then recoiled. Angus did the same. They wound up cringing beside the equally frightened Dan, next to one of the ramparts. Obviously convinced that he’d rendered his would-be attackers harmless, Tithonys turned away. Lifting his arms, he resumed his incantations.
Shuddering, eyes averted from the ancient vampire, Dan tried repeatedly to edge toward the trapdoor. But he couldn’t proceed in that direction without moving toward Tithonys, too, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d shift his foot an inch, then snatch it back. Meanwhile, the flesh beneath Angus’ gray fur flowed and bulged. It looked as if he were trying to change shape, perhaps to become a bat and fly away, but was so frightened that it was interfering with his powers.
Elliott was equally terrified, but somehow he found the strength to fight it. The bastard murdered Mary! he told himself. As a ploy to get at somebody neither of us had ever even heard of! He has to pay! And the fear isn’t real, just a souped-up version of a trick I can do myself. And gradually his trembling, and his panic
, abated.
Peering about, he saw that Dan was now staring at the rampart as if nerving himself for a leap over the side. Angus was flopping and writhing on the rooftop, his ears batlike and his forelegs transformed into misshapen wings, but otherwise still trapped in the body of a wolf.
Elliott grabbed Dan and jerked him off his feet: then, crouching, he seized Angus by the neck. Forcing both of his comrades to look him in the face, straining to exert every bit of his charismatic powers, he said, “You don’t have to be afraid. Tithonys is playing with your minds. Snap out of it! ”
For a moment, as they stared back at him, wild-eyed and
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shivering, he was certain it hadn’t worked, that his own influence wasn’t potent enough to counteract the Methuselah’s. Then the dread in Dan’s face gave way to a furious, fang-baring snarl. Angus’ useless wings began to turn back into serviceable legs. Elliott released his companions, sprang up and ran at Tithonys.
Turning swiftly, the Methuselah waved his hand.
Some instinct warned Elliott that he was in immediate peril. He dodged to one side, and a dazzling burst of azure flame exploded in the space through which he’d been about to run.
Clamping down on his reflexive dread of fire, he charged Tithonys again. With a flick of his fingers, the Methuselah conjured another blast. As before, only Elliott’s superhuman agility saved him from incineration. At the same instant, Angus rushed the ancient vampire, who, whirling, gestured with his other hand. The Gangrel sprang to the side, but not far enough. The new explosion caught him in midair, turning into his leap into a helpless tumble and setting his coat ablaze.
From the corner of his eye, Elliott saw Dan pointing a tiny antique pistol, and felt a surge of disgust. Evidently the clanless idiot hadn’t heard Tithonys say that metal weapons couldn’t hurt him. Elliott wished he could shout the information, but there was no time for that or anything but trying to dart into striking range of his foe.
The Toreador lunged. Moving almost as quickly, Tithonys wheeled back in his attacker’s direction. Now that Angus was out of the fight, both of the Methuselah’s hands were poised to hurl fire at Elliott, who realized to his horror that it would likely be nearly impossible to dodge two blasts at once.
Dan’s pistol coughed. Tithonys staggered and clasped his shoulder. Waves of darkness like concentric ripples created by a stone tossed into inky water pulsed from the wound
through the rest of his body. Exulting, taking full advantage of the Methuselah’s distraction, Elliott sprang at him and thrust the stake at his heart.
Despite his distress, Tithonys managed to twist his body aside. Instead of plunging deep into his chest, Elliott’s weapon gouged a long, shallow furrow. He started to yank it back for another try, but the vampire in the illusory mask
— up this close, Elliott could feel that the flames shrouding his enemy’s head shed no heat — slapped it out of his hand. The stake rolled clattering across the roof.
No problem, Elliott thought savagely. My teeth and hands will do just as well. Kicking and striking, he threw himself at Tithonys. Behind the Methuselah he glimpsed Angus rolling over and over in an effort to extinguish his burning pelt, and Dan fumbling with the pistol, trying to reload it.
Tithonys blocked Elliott’s first punch with one arm and gestured at Dan with the other. Fortunately, either because of the dark energy streaming through his flesh or because the Toreador was distracting him, his aim was off. The blue fireball exploded six feet to the side of Dan, not right on top of him. Nevertheless it staggered him, and two bullets flew from his hands.
Elliott kicked Tithonys in the knee without so much as knocking him off balance, then thrust his stiffened fingers at the Methuselah’s eyes, or rather at where he believed the true eyes behind the fiery mask should be. He was high by perhaps an inch, feeling his fingertips glance along the ancient Kindred’s brow. Then Tithonys grabbed him by the wrist.
The shadowy ripples now fading from his flesh, the Methuselah squeezed Elliott’s arm with bone-crushing force. An excruciating pain burned into the Toreador’s flesh as if Tithonys’ fingers were white hot, or sweating nitric acid.
Screaming, Elliott tried to twist his arm free, but he couldn’t break Tithonys’ grip. And so, lapsing at last into utter frenzy, his agony fueling his rage, he grappled with the other vampire, biting madly at his golden skin.
Tithonys snapped at him, too, shredding Elliott’s shirt and the pale throat and shoulder beneath. At the same time his hands clutched at the Toreador’s body, searing and dissolving whatever flesh they touched. Abruptly he bulled Elliott backward. Feeling one of the crenellations slam into his back, the maddened actor realized dimly that his opponent was about to throw him off the roof. He struggled again to break the Methuselah’s grip, but to no avail.
Then Tithonys fell onto the rooftop, dragging Elliott down with him. Reeking of charred flesh and hair, his hide a patchwork of burn marks, Angus savaged the Methuselah; evidently he’d charged up behind his ancient enemy and tom his legs out from under him.
Elliott and the Justicar ripped at Tithonys for another second and then, with one convulsive, blindingly fast movement, the Methuselah grabbed each of them by the throat. The Toreador struggled frantically, but couldn’t break his opponent’s grip; he could see that Angus wasn’t faring any better. As Tithonys’ fingers ate their way into his flesh, he realized that in less than a minute they were going to burn his head off.
Unable to match the primordial vampire’s strength, Elliott glared at him, exerting his charismatic powers, trying to jolt Tithonys with a spasm of fear, praying that it would startle him into loosening his grip. That didn’t work either.
Dan appeared above the thrashing combatants. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to find the bullets he’d dropped, because the little gun was nowhere in sight. Instead, he had Elliott’s stake, and now, grasping it in both hands, moving in slow motion compared to the other three preternaturally agile Kindred, he swung it over his head.
Elliott felt Tithonys tense, preparing to wrench himself from beneath the attack. No! the Toreador thought. Now ignoring both his agony and the prospect of his imminent destruction, he clutched at the Methuselah, struggling to immobilize him.
The stake hurtled down and punched into the center of Tithonys’ chest. Dan’s gargantuan strength buried nearly the entire length of the shaft in the ancient vampire’s body. Elliott suspected that it had nailed its target to the roof.
Tithonys screamed, and his magical mask dissolved. His hands jerked away from Angus’ and Elliott’s ravaged necks. But impossibly, in defiance of everything the Toreador believed he knew about his own undead race, even a piece of wood through the heart didn’t paralyze the Methuselah. Instead, he gripped it and began to pull it out.
Elliott grabbed Tithonys’ arms and strained to wrestle his hands away from the stake. An instant later Dan did the same. Meanwhile, Angus’ lupine jaws ripped at the ancient Kindred’s neck.
Despite all that Elliott and Dan could do, the stake lurched upward, an inch at a time. Then Angus flowed back into the form of a bearded giant with talons and flaming eyes. On one knee, he sank his claws into the sides of Tithonys’ head, then wrenched at it. Already weakened by the wounds the Gangrel had inflicted in wolf form, Tithonys’ neck and spinal column simply couldn’t take the punishment. Showering vitae, his head tore away from his shoulders.
Elliott glimpsed movement overhead and looked upw'ard frantically, fearing some new threat. He beheld a gauzy form resembling Tithonys hanging in the darkness. It was only visible for a second. Then the phantoms summoned by the ritual streaked at it, swarmed over it hissing, cackling, clawing and biting, those who were unable to reach it mauling their fellows to clear a path. The Methuselah’s spirit screamed, and then he, his tormentors and the structure of light his magic had erected all blinked out of sight at once.
“I’ve got a hunch,” said Dan, an icy satisfaction in his voice, “that the son of
a bitch won’t come back this time.”
Angus and Elliott slumped down on the roof and willed themselves to heal. Because their injuries were of supernatural origin, the process was slow and grueling. The Toreador’s wounds were more agonizing than ever now that he didn’t have the desperate fury of battle to counteract the pain, but his heart was full of the savage joy of vengeance. He wondered vaguely why he hadn’t felt this exhilaration years ago, when he’d butchered the witch hunters. Perhaps, somehow, he’d sensed even then that the mortal fanatics were only pawns.
Even as the vampires’ flesh repaired itself, Tithonys’ perfect body decayed, more rapidly than any Kindred corpse Elliott had ever seen. After a few moments the stake slumped sideways, because there was no material in the Methuselah’s crumbling chest sufficiently solid to hold it upright. Soon nothing remained but a shapeless mound of dust, sifting away in the cool night breeze.
Moving stiffly, his eyes no longer red, Angus retracted his claws. Reaching under the singed and bloody remnants of his beard, he gingerly fingered his neck. Evidently deciding that it had healed sufficiently for speech, he looked at Dan and rasped, “You should’ve told us that you had magic bullets. It might have helped our morale.”
“I didn’t know they were magic,” the Caitiff replied. “I just hoped they were. There are a lot of things I didn’t have time to tell you.”
Angus grinned. “I’ll bet.”
Elliott heard shots in the distance, a reminder that the war wasn’t over even now. He wished he could simply lie on the rooftop and rest, recover, revel in the fact of his revenge, but it was out of the question. He had to tend to his command. His throat raw and aching, partly from his burns and partly from renewed Hunger, his own voice a broken whisper like Angus’, he said, “We should go feed. And then wrap this operation up.”
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