by Eric Griffin
“Yes. It seems Foley had that effect on people.”
They sat in silence for a time, each pursuing her own memories of their fallen comrade.
“Which people?” It was Eva that broke the silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, ‘Which people?’ He had that effect on which people?”
“Oh I see. Yes. Well, just about everyone, I imagine.”
“You?”
Sturbridge smiled. “Certainly. But I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. I suppose not. Things won’t be any easier around here. Now that the secundus is gone. And Aaron. And with Jacqueline…” she broke off.
“I haven’t decided what to do about Jacqueline yet. Even if she is innocent of any wrongdoing in this matter—and I remain unconvinced on that point—she still let this ill-considered ritual go way too far. That’s irresponsible. And I won’t tolerate that. Can’t tolerate it. Damn it, there’s too much at stake here.”
“It’s the petty intrigues,” Eva replied after a pause. “I mean, that’s what it all comes down to in the end, isn’t it? Sure it’s hard to see it when you’re right up close to it, face to face. You’re holding the body in your arms and all you can see are the bullet holes; your head is full of the smell of blood and spent powder. And you think, chalk up another one for the Sabbat.”
Three nights of shock and horror continued to tumble from her lips. “Only it wasn’t the Sabbat, if you follow me. Sure, some Tzimisce shovel-head pulled the trigger, but you’ve been shot before. I’ve been shot before. Why are we still here when folks like Foley are gone? Because it wasn’t the Sabbat that got him. It wasn’t the bullet that killed him either. It was the damn intrigues.
“Foley gets himself killed in some damn fool high-risk ritual. Jacqueline is supposed to be assisting him. Only she doesn’t assist him. She doesn’t stop him. I don’t know why. But I can make a guess. How about resentment? Foley’s been gloating about his latest little conquest for a week. And Foley wouldn’t have had any new apprentice to gloat over except that Jacqueline saddled him with that obligation of service. And Jacqueline wouldn’t have been backed into making that stupid choice if she hadn’t been trying to draw attention to Foley’s little sideline project by failing to return to the stalking ritual. And it just keeps going like that. Layer upon layer. It is all so absolutely senseless and self-destructive and hateful. I hate it. I just hate it.”
Sturbridge put a hand on the novice’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Eva. It will be all right.”
She gazed down at her newest novice. Her young protégée. She was their best hope. Sturbridge’s features drew taut. Yet she was unmistakably a product of this house. She bore the signs already—this young woman who was more afraid of her own sisters than of the Sabbat.
“Jacqueline did not kill Foley,” Sturbridge said. The phrase seemed incongruous, but at the moment, it was the most comforting thing she could think to say. “No one here killed him. Do you understand?”
Eva wiped her eyes and nodded.
“We failed him. There’s no denying that. We all failed him. But we don’t kill our own.”
Sturbridge trailed off. Her thoughts were not on Foley, but on Jacqueline, who still awaited judgment for her role in this unpleasant affair.
“We do not kill our own.”
“Oh Regentia. I am sorry. It’s all just so…”
“I know, child. I know.”
“Jacqueline told me she tried to warn him, to make him stop, but he only…” she pushed the details of the unsettling encounter aside. “He wouldn’t listen to her. You know how he was when he had gotten his mind set on something. He’d just assume anything you said was an attempt to sabotage him. It was like that with that box of his. Obsessive. Wouldn’t let anyone else near it. Why, one night he found it lying open and he had three novices flogged to within an inch of…”
“I am aware of the incident in question.” Sturbridge’s disapproval was evident in her tone.
“Oh, Regentia. You should have just taken that box back from him. You should have…”
Sturbridge turned the novice to face her. Eva’s eyes went wide.
“Forgive me, Regentia! I did not mean to imply that this was all your fault. I only meant that I wished…”
“You don’t know what was in the chest,” Sturbridge realized aloud. Eva looked confused.
“But I thought the box was the… It was very old and very beautiful. And it had a strong resonance about it—a sense of history. But not a pleasant history, I think. If it is all the same to you, I would prefer not to have to handle it again.”
That was an interesting impression. Sturbridge filed it away for later consideration.
“There was a stone, a gemstone. Small, spherical. Cloudy red with black spirals about the poles. It wasn’t there when we found the body. I know, because I looked for it. I had assumed you would know what to look for, too. Never mind, I need you to think carefully. Have you come across such a stone, anytime in the last three days? Not just in Foley’s quarters, anywhere.”
Eva considered. “No, I think I should have remembered anything like that.”
Sturbridge cursed herself. If she were overlooking such obvious details, what else might have slipped by her?
“All right. Let’s go over the obvious. The body intact? All parts present and accounted for?”
Eva wrinkled her nose. “Yes.”
“The box. I’ve got a pretty clear recollection of this one, but let’s check it against yours. Nearby?”
“On the floor. Beside the worktable.”
“Open or closed?”
“Lying open, and face down. As if it had fallen.”
“Any contents?”
“Empty. The lining was black felt. It was singed.”
“Cause?”
“The fire around the base of table. Some candles overturned. Seven candles. A scattering of papers were burned, damaged or destroyed. Incidental damage to floor and table legs.”
“Well, we seem to have papers aplenty. But so far, nothing that looks like notes, preparations, formulae, description or transcription of the actual ritual in progress.”
“Chalk that up to his blasted memory.”
“So nothing from his papers, books. We’ve been over all that. At great length.” Sturbridge looked ruefully at the small mountain of books they had not yet gone through.
“Did he have a pen out? A quill? A stylus, anything?”
“A quill, yes. On the worktable. It was broken in two.”
“Where?”
“Sorry?”
“The quill, it was broken where? Midway? At the tip?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘midway’. About an inch from the tip. Why?”
“Right at the point where he would have been bearing down on it. It suggests he was writing something sometime during that ritual. If he were just breaking a quill as some ceremonial act, he would have broken it in half, in the middle. How about an inkwell?”
Eva paused and thought a moment.
“Yes,” she replied uncertainly. “There was an inkwell. On the floor, not too far from the box, I think.”
“Another fall from the worktable. Was it broken?”
“No. It was overturned, though. It must have been nearly empty. I don’t recall any ink stain on the floor.”
“Inconclusive. It might have overturned before falling to the floor. Or it may have fallen onto one of the scattered sheets of paper.”
“More missing papers.”
“What do you mean?”
Eva took a moment before replying. “I mean, if the ink spilled onto a piece of paper, where’s the paper? Sure, it could have been one of the ones that burned, but how about whatever it was that Foley was writing? You said he had to have been writing something. Was he signing his name to some dark compact? Transcribing the formulae to a forbidden rite? Trying desperately to leave us a warning? A confession? A suicide note? Where’s the mis
sing paper?”
“It’s not in the room. We’ve been over the room.”
“Maybe the murderer took the evidence with him.”
Sturbridge shook her head. “No, that’s still no good. We haven’t got a murderer. All we have is a victim.”
“No.” Eva’s voice was steady, confident, despite her rising excitement. “All we have is two victims.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sturbridge was on her feet and pulling the novice after her.
“Probably.”
Sturbridge, in the doorway, half turned but then thought better of it. Eva caught only the briefest glimpse of a smile. “If there is one thing I cannot abide in a novice, Ms. FitzGerald…”
Eva quickly fell in behind her mistress, matching her long, purposeful stride only with some effort. “Yes, Regentia. Familiarity.”
Sunday, 1 August 1999, 10:15 PM
The Mausoleum, Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
“No really. It wouldn’t be any trouble. I don’t mind searching his room.” Eva’s voice faltered. The rough-hewn walls snatched it away from her, hopelessly muddling her words with the distant plish of falling water and gruffly passing the result from hand to hand down the tangle of winding tunnels.
“The papers aren’t in his room.” Sturbridge explained patiently. “The papers are on the body.”
“Yes. Well. Not meaning to introduce any unnecessary complications, but how are we supposed to find the body?”
“What could be easier than finding a body in a mausoleum? Watch your step.”
Without warning, the space to Eva’s right suddenly opened out onto abyss. She hastily scrambled back from the edge, dislodging a fistful of knucklebones that clattered over the precipice.
“All these old galleries,” Sturbridge continued as if nothing untoward had happened, “wind about that central well. You only occasionally catch a glimpse of it, but you always know it’s there. You can tell the walls that back up onto the abyss because they are cooler, and damp.”
“What’s at the bottom?”
Sturbridge shrugged. “More bones. At least one of my predecessors was so averse to the place that he was in the habit of making more room in the upper corridors by sweeping the previous tenants over the edge.”
Eva quickly changed the subject. “You didn’t answer my question. How are we supposed to find the body we are looking for? As opposed to say, that one. Or that one. Or…”
“Those are just decoration, dear. Here we are.” She drew to a halt in front of a niche carved into the wall. It was identical, so far as Eva could determine, to any of a hundred others they had passed already.
Sturbridge began rummaging around in the dark recess. Her efforts were accompanied by the occasionally musical sound of bone clattering over bone.
At last, she extracted a carefully folded robe from the niche. It was covered with a powdery white dust. “Can’t imagine why they should have put this in first,” Sturbridge complained, shaking out the robe.
Eva recognized the markings of a novice of the seventh and final circle. Almost free, she thought.
“Let’s see what we have here. Pockets, empty. Cuffs. Lining. Carefully now. We don’t want to tear it.”
She drew a fingernail down across the seam and the material parted without resistance.
“Now let’s see what Foley wanted us to know, and Aaron did not.”
Sturbridge extracted a single sheet of parchment. She studied the page a moment, the curious illustrations, the enigmatic inscriptions. She clucked her tongue in disapproval and passed the sheet to Eva.
“Shall we go? Something about the air down here, it always puts me in mind of someplace else I should be.”
Friday, 27 August 1999, 9:12 PM
Dulles Airport
Washington, D.C.
“Professor…Professor Sturbridge!”
A flicker of surprise or annoyance crossed Sturbridge’s features as she turned. She tried to pick out the source of the voice from amidst the press of—distractingly warm—bodies. Angrily, she forced such thoughts aside. There would be time enough to feed later, once she had reached the relative safety of Baltimore. Here, at the very doorstep of Sabbat-torn Washington, she was vulnerable, exposed.
She must remain vigilant not only against overt threats—and a fifteen-foot-tall, gibbering Tzimisce war ghoul was not entirely outside the realm of possibility here, she reminded herself ruefully—but especially against the more subtle dangers: impatience, indulgence, indiscretion. These three deadly sisters would kill as surely, if not as swiftly, as any fiend.
The surge of human bodies parted midstream, breaking against her rock-sharp gaze. Falling back, the river of humanity regrouped and then swept around her on both sides. Sturbridge could not seem to focus on the individual faces streaming past, no more than she could pick out the individual heartbeats. But someone in this crowd had recognized her, or worse, anticipated her.
She needed to find that person and quickly.
Sturbridge’s first reaction had been to wheel and confront this unknown presence head-on. As she scanned the crowd, however, she began to gain an appreciation for just how many dangers this sea of blood might conceal. Cautiously, she retreated a step, hoping it was not already too late, and allowed herself to be borne slowly backwards by the crowd.
An arm clutching a mass-market paperback thrust into view above the throng. It waved back and forth in an exaggerated manner, pages fanning and flapping. “Professor Sturbridge!”
The arm seemed to be attached to a baggy gray sweatshirt (proclaiming, “GEORGETOWN”) and a headlight-white grin. Shifting pocketbook and paperback to the same hand, a slight young lady plowed forward. She clasped Sturbridge’s hand and squeezed. She shook hands with her whole body, straight-armed, from the shoulder, pumping up and down repeatedly as if for emphasis.
“Professor, I am so delighted to finally meet you.” Again, the beaming smile eclipsed her entire face. “Francesca Lyon, anthro department, call me Chessie. I am a major fan.”
“Miss Lyon,” Sturbridge replied, holding the girl’s hand at arm’s length. She regarded the newcomer skeptically.
She was in her early twenties, slight, her dark hair unkempt. Her glasses were probably the main perpetrators in giving her the air of being somewhat bookish. Her jeans, however, were muddy about the knees. To all appearances, Sturbridge’s accoster was exactly what she presented herself to be—a grad student dropped by to pick up a visiting professor at the airport.
Sturbridge’s suspicions, however, were not allayed. Perhaps because, for starters, she knew just how deadly a mistake it would be to assume that she, herself, was merely a “visiting professor.”
But there was something more disturbing here. Sturbridge had gone to some pains not to advertise her itinerary. She was not certain who (if anyone) outside the Tremere hierarchy might know of her new “appointment” to the ad hoc Camarilla council in Baltimore. Reflexively, she ran down the possible suspects in her mind.
Pieterzoon would know to expect her, of course. As de facto leader of the council, he would have been informed that she was to serve as the new Tremere representative. He might even have a rough idea of when to expect her.
But he could not have anticipated that she would come from the south, from war-torn D.C., from the very heart of the Sabbat threat. Sturbridge had relied upon that particular piece of misdirection—and willingly submitted herself to the additional risks—to buy her safe passage into Baltimore.
From the moment she had first heard that voice calling her name, however, Sturbridge had known that her safe conduct had been summarily cancelled. She was now alone, on the ground, in enemy territory.
For all Sturbridge knew, Pieterzoon might have announced her pending arrival to his fellow councilors. He might have been so incautious as to speak of it before a full assembly—including not only all the Baltimore Kindred but the uncounted swarm of refugees fleeing the Sabbat occupati
on in the South.
Too many people, she concluded. Too damned many people. Too many damned people.
Chessie’s voice broke in upon her calculations. “Dr. Dorfman was so sorry he could not be here to meet you in person. But he’s still out of the country. Vienna! Lucky bastard, couldn’t you just kill him?”
“There is no need to apologize.” Sturbridge’s gaze bore into the girl, trying to wrestle her meaning from behind the screen of ambiguous commentary and that infuriating grin.
Dorfman. That was something concrete. Pontifex Peter Dorfman. In Tremere circles, that was a name to conjure with. The mere mention of that name would throw open doors against which the last three centuries most concerted advances of money, power and privilege had availed nothing. Dorfman was what the novices back at the Chantry of the Five Boroughs unguardedly referred to as a “Ramses”—a major figure in the Tremere Pyramid.
It was no secret that Dorfman headed up the clan’s political operations on the North American continent. Nor was it any surprise that he made his base of operations in Washington, D.C. Outside of these two critical bits of trivia, however, there was very little obvious about Peter Dorfman.
Dorfman had taken the Tremere proclivity for casual subterfuges and intrigues and turned it into an art as precise, beautiful and deadly as a clockwork cobra. He was a da Vinci of deadly machinations.
He was also the man responsible for drafting her to this ambiguous honor—representing the Tremere to the besieged Camarilla forces in Baltimore. The thought did little to comfort her.
It was not a glamorous assignment. Her fellow councilors would, no doubt, want to know when they could expect some concrete assistance from the Tremere. By “concrete” they would mean “arcane.” By “arcane” they would mean something along the lines of raining fire down upon the Sabbat war parties or psychically assassinating their leaders, or perhaps merely reversing the flow of time so that their homes had never been sacked, plundered, razed in the first place.