by Eric Griffin
Sturbridge was no legendary beauty, to compel suitors and rivals to overcome intervening oceans and generations. Her particular suitor, however, possessed an inhuman patience and persistence.
It was not the first time that Death had come to call upon her. On his last visit, he had robbed her of not only her mortal life, but also of her humanity, her art, and her only child.
She only hoped that, this time, he would not be inclined to linger.
Tuesday, July 27 1999, 5:04 AM
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
The rattle of the teletype broke in upon Sturbridge’s morbid reverie. She checked a start that nearly precipitated another avalanche of books and papers. From her perch atop the precarious throne of books, she could see the leading edge of the tickertape probe the air experimentally, like the tongue of an asp.
Even here, within her sanctum sanctorum, there were implicit perils and poisons. With exaggerated care, she descended. Despite her precautions, a small wave of papers and bindings broke in her wake. She seemed for the moment a classical figure emerging from the sea and shrugging off a mantle of foam. Before the cascade of papers had subsided, Sturbridge was struck with more than a vague premonition that the news was not good. From long habit, she braced herself for the worst.
It is Washington, she thought. Washington has fallen.
It was not the city itself she feared for. She knew it to be lost already, damned—a casualty of the ongoing massacre that raged the entire length of the eastern seaboard. The Sabbat was crashing over the bulkhead, as inevitable as the tide. There was hardly any point in denying that they were, even now, firmly in control of the nation’s capital.
It was not a reassuring thought.
The patter of the tickertape fell suddenly silent.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark, cold day.
Sturbridge placed one hand atop the smoky glass of the bell jar to steady it as she tore free the ribbon of parchment. A dim illumination played just below the surface of the arc of glass. It broiled like a distant thunderhead, pregnant with the promise of lightning. A smear of light and color stained the glass, spreading out from the point where her hand contacted the opaque surface.
Sturbridge resisted the temptation to delve more deeply into the play of images forming and dissolving within the bell jar. It was a humble, almost reflexive magic—this peering into crystal, this seeing through a glass darkly.
The art was her birthright, a legacy that had come down to her through generations of fortune tellers, wise women, hedge witches, oracles, scryers, diviners, priestesses and soothsayers. Sturbridge was the end product of several hundred, perhaps several thousand, years of occult experimentation, spiritual searching and fervent prayer.
The crystal responded eagerly to her familiar touch.
It would be very easy for Sturbridge to lose herself in the dance of light and form that beckoned from within the crystal. But it was an indulgence. And she could ill afford indulgences right now.
Instead, she turned her back upon the arcane device and turned her attention to the ominous scrap of tickertape. She read with growing agitation.
Begin
Baltimore comma 27 July 99
Period
To Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B period From Dorfman comma Pontifex comma WDC period Greetings etc period comma Disturbing news from Camarilla council period Xaviar comma Gangrel justicar comma storms out period Threatens to pull clan out of Camarilla period Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B to report to Baltimore immediately period Gather intelligence comma damage control period Briefing en route period
Keep your head down comma
Dorfman
end
Damn. Pull the Gangrel out of the Camarilla altogether? Could he do that? There must be some mistake. Perhaps the message meant to say that the justicar threatened to pull the Gangrel out of the defense council meetings in Baltimore. Surely that was it. Xaviar was undoubtedly one of the most prominent Gangrel warlords. But the members of his clan prided themselves on an almost rabid independence. Sturbridge doubted that even the respected justicar could presume to speak authoritatively for his entire clan.
She found herself wondering what offense might have been so grave as to drive the justicar not only out of the council in Baltimore, but perhaps out of the Camarilla entirely. It just didn’t add up.
Sturbridge read the note over a second time, scouring it for hidden meanings. Keep your head down. Sound advice. Things in Baltimore seemed to have taken a decidedly unhealthy turn of late.
Sturbridge’s thoughts kept returning to Maria Chin, her predecessor on the council. Chin was dead. Assassinated, she corrected herself. Sturbridge had run through the scenario over and over again in her mind, realizing how easily it might have been her instead of Chin on the receiving end of that garrote. Sturbridge tried to think who would have any reason for wanting Chin dead. She performed a quick mental calculation and sighed. As was all too often the case among her fellow Tremere, it would be far easier to answer instead the question, Who did not have a reason for wanting her dead?
Sturbridge would be the first to admit that she was an ambitious regent. One did not arrive at such a position without bloodying a few noses. And one certainly did not hold such a controversial posting for any length of time without attracting the unwanted attentions of a few equally ambitious rivals.
It was not only one’s peers that a regent had to take preemptive maneuvers against. There was a flicker of covetousness in the heart of even the most modest novice, and a dangerous flashfire of jealousy behind the cool exterior of even the most aloof superior.
Chin’s death might well have been politically motivated. Sturbridge knew very little of the details surrounding her fellow regent’s demise. The official reports had called it an “assassination,” which clearly implied politics. But this was no reason to assume that it meant clan politics.
Chin was among the founding members of the impromptu Camarilla council that had convened in Baltimore. In some respects, calling the gathering a “council” was something of a euphemism. It was more like a natural puddling in the stream of refugees fleeing the devastation in the Southeast as Atlanta, Charleston, Raleigh, Richmond, Washington and who-knew-what other traditional Camarilla strongholds fell in rapid succession to the ravages of the Sabbat. Sturbridge could not begin to imagine what strange alliances of convenience Chin might have run afoul of among the floodtide of refugees.
And all these speculations ignored perhaps the most obvious suspect—the slavering horde of Sabbat that had surrounded, cut off and besieged Chin’s chantry in Washington, D.C. The Sabbat certainly ^ would not mind seeing one of the D.C. chantry’s major players carried bodily from the field. That the plot had succeeded boded ill for the D.C. chantry—the last knot of Camarilla resistance within the nation’s capital. The pattern was unambiguous and none too reassuring. Sturbridge could not help but notice that every Tremere who had dared lift her head up above the trenches of late, had had it summarily removed for her trouble.
And now this summons. She had quite enough to worry about at present without being dragged away to Baltimore. Didn’t they know there was a war on, right here in the streets of New York? She could not coordinate the defense of even her own chantry from Baltimore—much less the defense of the city or the region. The most recent reports hinted at a stepped-up Sabbat presence upstate. And she couldn’t even spare the manpower to preempt that little incursion at present.
Damn it. This could not have come at a worse possible time. But it appeared that all had already been decided from further up the chain of command. She had no choice but to shore up the defenses as best she could here, and jet down to Baltimore to size up the situation.
There was always opportunity in such high-profile assignments. The trick was, of course, to avoid an equally high-profile demise.
Damn them. “Keep your head do
wn.” She snorted indignantly.
Laying both hands upon the bell jar, she made a few languid, prescribed passes and began to dictate:
Begin
New York comma 27 July 99 period
To Dorfman comma Pontifex comma WDC period From Sturbridge comma Regentia comma C5B period Dorfman comma Dire omens indeed period Will be honored to serve period Looking forward to seeing you upon arrival etc period comma
Sturbridge
end
Sunday, 25 July 1999, 9:00 PM
Cape May, New Jersey
It would have been smarter just to go to ground. Nickolai let the feeling of self-reproach crash over him like a wave. To give up, to go down. He felt himself borne under, felt acutely the weight of water upon him. It was the sheer enormity of the past that held him under—the voracious flood that had already swallowed three-fourths of the earth’s surface and still was not sated.
Nickolai knew from personal experience that this flood could never be sated. Not until it had encompassed the entire world. Its pull was unrelenting and, in the end, irresistible. Already, the deep had claimed the unlives of his entire people. It had singled them out, marked them, stalked them, tapped them. It had gathered them in and now he was the last. By default, he had become the embodiment, the end product, of the Great Experiment. He was the sole receptacle of the accumulated knowledge, ambitions, lore, strivings, rites, disappointments, schemes, hungers, ideals, tragedy, devotion and pathos of a proud people. Of all those that bore the name of House Goratrix, he was the last.
And he was little more than a drowning man.
No, far better just to let the waters close above him and rest. Finally, to rest.
There was something seductive in the watery embrace of the past, in its oblivion. It would have been very easy to surrender himself to that floodtide. Even if it were to mean being brought face-to-face with all the indiscretions of a lifetime, or more precisely, of several lifetimes.
Nickolai was strong. He knew he could bear the accumulated indiscretions, even the inhumanity, that had been his constant companions these many nights.
He turned the new recrimination over on his tongue. Inhumanity. It had a more wicked edge to it than his original thought, indiscretion. The salt water stung his throat, but he swallowed it. Yes, he could endure even the renewed acquaintance with inhumanity.
But new images were rising toward him through the murky waters. They worried away at his rationalizations, eroding them, carrying them away upon the tide. The images spoke to him of a greater reckoning. They tugged at the gauzy concept he was sheltering behind, this “inhumanity,” and tore it away, exposing the red, raw skin beneath. They left him with a far less comforting reproach to cling to. Bloodshed.
The waters ran red about him. In blood, there is life. In blood, there is magic. In blood, there is power.
Nickolai knew himself to be a creature, a construct of the blood—a flashing dynamo distilling energy from vitae. It was blood that gave him his longevity. It was blood that gave him his power over the mortal world. It was blood that fueled the rites and rituals of his people.
If there were a single common element to the seemingly endless procession of nights, it was the insatiable need for blood. There was no advantage in contesting the fact. He resigned himself to this latest condemnation. He inhaled deeply and allowed his lungs to fill with the blood which surrounded him and sought to drown him.
His body was racked with sudden screaming pain. Where Nickolai had thought to swallow only his bloodshed, he found himself filled with a far harsher realization. It was not mere bloodshed on his lips, but killings. Murder.
An unending maelstrom of murder. The sheer monstrosity of his crimes—of not only what he had done, but what he had become—surged through him. It tore at him from the inside. He bent double, vomited up blood. Years of blood. It streamed from his eyes, his nose, his ears. Nickolai could feel himself withering away at the extremities. His fingers dried, cracked, curled. His arms withered, wrists and elbows drawn in at improbable angles. He felt his cheeks draw taut and then part, exposing bone. A hint of laughing skull.
No!
I am the last.
Nickolai flung the credo into the face of the voracious past. A howl of pure self against its inevitable ravages.
I am the last. I will endure.
He could feel the wave break and begin to roll back before him, retreating. Leaving him gasping for the life-giving present.
I am the last. Though the entire world be drowned beneath this flood, I will remain.
Nickolai spat the last of the mingled blood and bile and salt water from his mouth. He was a mountain rising from the sea.
Perhaps I am the last of only a race of monsters, a people of depredations.
The mountain contorted, revealing twisted crags, cruel sea cliffs.
Perhaps I am a creature of blood and death, murder and cruelty, unholy rites and blasphemous hungers.
The mountaintop shook, crumbled, slid away into the waiting sea below. At the mountain’s summit all that remained was a blasted jumble of rock and desolation.
Perhaps my very existence is a continual curse upon the earth.
Stunted black trees sprang up, dotting the mountainside. Dark shapes slipped through the undergrowth.
But I will stand firm against the oblivion.
The sea gathered its might, surged against the palisade of sea cliffs, and was thrown back in disarray.
I will build myself a monument, a lasting remembrance of my people.
A dark cloud passed over the summit like the hand of an angry god. In its shadow, something was gathering, rolling stormlike beneath it.
A thing of terror and of beauty. And all who look upon it will tremble and remember.
Far below him, the waves scratched tentatively at the foot of the cliffs. Yes, in time, they would have their way. Of that there could be little doubt.
Soon the waters of the past would cover the entire earth. In those final days, the only remaining line of retreat would be inward—to sink into the very heart of the earth.
To give up, to go down.
To go down. Soon, now. Patience.
Already Nickolai could hear the madness of the lapping waters against that Final Shore.
Sunday, 1 August 1999, 9:05 PM
Regent’s Sanctum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Eva noisily deposited another armload of books upon the floor. Already it was getting difficult to see Sturbridge, half-buried as she was amidst the tumble of the dead man’s books and papers. She was oblivious to the clamor of falling books, barely glancing up from the text she was scrutinizing as Eva muttered her hasty apologies.
The formulae that the present tome described had something to do with an ink made from an extract of owl’s blood. Eva’s sticky note that marked the page read:
There were at least fifty books just like it already patiently awaiting Sturbridge’s attention. Many of them boasted no fewer than a dozen tell-tale pink sticky notes peeking surreptitiously from the edges of their pages. Sturbridge closed the book with a sigh of resignation. This was exaggerated by the sudden inrush of air as the book sealed itself, as if from old habit. The simple enchantment was oblivious to the fact that its master no longer required its services.
Something was bothering Sturbridge. She pushed herself slowly to her feet, rising from the clutter of Foley’s books and papers. She braced herself against the numbing tingle of circulation returning to her cramped legs and then chided herself for her foolishness.
Another senseless old habit refusing to acknowledge the death of its master. It had been several lifetimes since Sturbridge had needed to concern herself with such distracting biological inconveniences as circulation.
This line of inquiry was getting them nowhere.
“All right. Three nights of cataloguing Foley’s books, papers, curiosities, and we’ve got no clearer picture of the events of that night than when
we started. Perhaps we’re on the wrong track.”
Eva, glad for the reprieve, flopped down on the floor beside her. “The secundus was such a packrat—if you’ll excuse my saying so, Regentia; I intended no disrespect to the deceased—it would be easier to compile a list of things he hadn’t crammed into that study.”
“Fair enough,” Sturbridge replied, playing along, “What wasn’t in Foley’s sanctum? Or, more precisely, what was missing from the room?”
“Oh, that’s easy enough. How about a slavering demon? Or maybe a Sabbat raiding party. At this point, I would even settle for a shadowy assassin lurking in the corner….”
“It just doesn’t sit right with me,” Sturbridge mused. “I keep thinking the answer must be here, among his papers. I know Foley. I knew Foley. Whatever he was up to, he wrote it down somewhere. He was never quite at ease without pen and paper in front of him. Look at all these scribblings, the lists, the marginalia. It’s obsessive.”
“I don’t know why he ever bothered,” the overwhelmed novice replied. “To write anything down, I mean. It’s not like he ever forgot anything. Do you remember my first day here, at the chantry? I was so flustered I can only remember a few scattered impressions—the tiny savage faces etched into the fountain in the Grande Foyer, the singing of the bolts on this door when it opened to admit me for my first audience, the unexpected weight of the novice’s robes, their coarseness. It’s silly, really, the things you remember.
“But the secundus, he could recite the exact details. He could tell you who was there when you arrived, where they stood, what they said. He could call to mind each of the small cruelties, the platitudes, the seemingly friendly overtures and the subtle strings attached. It was uncanny. It was uncomfortable.”