by Eric Griffin
Maeve.
She forced the thought down and away. Far away. Back down into the furthest recesses of pain and loss.
But even this instinctive defense hurt her. In some inexplicable way, banishing the memory felt like banishing Maeve, herself. It was a betrayal. As she shoved the recollection back down into the well of memory, it was Maeve’s face that she forced down beneath the surface of the dark waters. She held it there until it stopped struggling.
After a few moments, the memory had sunk beneath the depths and Sturbridge again mastered herself. You would think that after all these years—all these lifetimes of training! Sturbridge raged against herself, against her own weakness, against her lack of discipline. It gave her focus. It was worth being angry at herself if only to have something concrete to be mad at. She could not rage against memories and regrets. There was no substance to push back against there. And, she realized, she was as helpless to prevent these onslaughts as she was powerless to strike back against them.
Still chastising herself for her frailties, Sturbridge turned her attentions back toward the door. There was something about the ancient wood, something in its slumbering pulse of life, that had reminded her of…that reminded her. Hesitantly, Sturbridge reached out for that something.
She wrapped her awareness tightly around the old wood and felt it slowly warm to her touch. She slipped between the bars of its grain. Her footfalls echoed deep within the labyrinth of wood fibers. The corridors and galleries were draped in dangling pulpy tendrils. She turned each damp coarse thread over in turn, separating, scrutinizing.
There. She pounced upon a single strand and held fast. Triumphantly, she squeezed down upon the tremulous pulse. A vein. A lifeline.
It tried to flee her, to escape deeper into the labyrinth. But Sturbridge only clung the tighter. She rode the dim pulse of life back to its source, to the very heart of the wood.
It was a fragile thing, the wood’s heart. A crystalline skein woven entirely of rope fibers. It was lustrous with life.
Sturbridge breathed deeply of the aroma of green growing things, of loam, of life. She drank in the delicate pattern ravenously. She traced every twisting, searching for the resonance of the living crystal, its still point, the very crux between its growing and its dying. She tapped once, her finger falling with the surety and grace of a jeweler’s hammer.
She felt the crystal crack, cleave. The fibers groaned, twisted and popped as the elaborate knot began to unravel violently.
Sturbridge retreated back up the coarse, fibrous corridors, fighting off the flailing and groping tendrils, each as big around as a ship’s anchor line. With a final heave, she broke free and staggered back a step away from the door.
A single bloody palmprint showed clearly on the ancient surface.
The wood creaked, buckled, split. New green shoots broke from the cracked surface. The entire doorframe seemed to shudder, to draw breath. The ancient wood festooned itself with new life.
Sturbridge took a step closer to the unfolding wonder. Reaching out gingerly, she felt the emerging knobs of new buds beneath her fingertips. The newborn shoots drew toward her instinctively, as toward sunlight. They coiled about her fingers, caressing, intertwining. Enrapt, Sturbridge watched as leaves appeared. They slithered forth from the living wood and unfolded like the mouths of serpents. Each gaping maw revealed veins of sickly red and black that pulsed slightly. The barbed leaves snapped at her fingertips as Sturbridge recoiled, tearing out a fistful of questing greenery in her hurry to free herself.
The shoots hardened into twigs and then quickly into wicked thorns that glistened wetly with some dark, viscous substance. As she staggered backwards, Sturbridge saw that a red, slightly phosphorescent fungus had already engulfed the upper portion of the door.
The entire surface creaked and writhed. It strained toward her, its creator, its life-giver, its mother. Her first reaction was to shrink back from it, to withdraw.
Maeve. Somewhere, not far away, (although whether separated by an intervening space of distance or time, she was not certain), she heard the cry of a child. Her child. To her shame, her first reaction had been to withdraw.
Her first reaction had always been to withdraw.
Damn it. Not again!
Sturbridge fought to force the rising tide of memory back down, to drown it in the black waters of oblivion. But it was stronger now. Fed by the strength of new life. New life given and new life scorned. She could feel its undeniable hunger, its need. It was overwhelming. It was dragging her upwards by the heels, toward the surface, toward the light of recollection.
The first touch burned like the noonday sun. Sturbridge screamed.
Behind her a child was crying, an infant. Before her the works of Aesclepius lay open amidst a clutter of candles, chalk diagrams, elemental regalia. She tried to ignore the crying. The hunger, the incessant need. She tried to focus on the discipline of the Great Work, on the calm grandeur of the Mysteries.
Sturbridge could feel her flesh begin to blacken and crack beneath the relentless sun. Blood began to well from the split skin.
Angrily, she slammed the book shut and snatched the child from its cradle.
A beautiful little girl. My Maeve. My beautiful little angel.
The evaporating blood felt cool upon the surface of her parched skin. Slowly, tortuously, the life-giving liquid boiled away into the parched air. Rippling waves of rising heat drifted lazily skyward before her eyes. It would not be long now.
She bounced the baby up and down gently, in a distracted attempt to calm it. “Mom-my’s. Lit-tle. Angel. Mom-my’s. Lit-tle. An-gel.” This only seemed to increase the wailing.
It’s the blood. Sturbridge heard her own voice as if from a great distance. The sun, it doesn’t want me, it just wants the blood. Once that is gone, it will leave me alone. Leave me in peace. Soon now. Peace.
“All right, all right. Hush. Mommy knows what you want.” She returned to her worktable, swept aside the trappings of the arcane and sat down, putting the baby to her breast. It latched on readily and a contented silence descended once more over the tiny garret.
Sturbridge came to herself before the heavy oak-paneled door that stood vigil before her suite at the Lord Baltimore. One hand rested gently against the cracked, weathered surface. She felt its grain, its warmth, its solidity. The coarse red fungus beneath her hand did not disconcert her. Nor did the sting of the thorns cause her to draw back. Nor did the pricking of the ravenous leaves make her withdraw the flow of life-giving blood.
All around her, digging through the walls and furnishings of the suite just beyond, tendriling roots were spreading, searching, taking hold.
She could see them, follow the intricacies of their twistings and turnings. She could see where the latch of one shutter had been recently forced. She could see the listening devices concealed in the chandelier and in the vase of flowers on the nightstand. She could see an envelope that had been hastily pushed under the door.
The snaking tendrils started to retrieve the letter for her, but she dismissed their concern. There would be time enough—for reading, for letters, for plots and intrigues, for veiled threats and promises—later.
Thursday, 29 July 1999, 12:30 AM
The Plaza Hotel
New York City, New York
Nickolai held the beaten copper bowl before him at arm’s length. The severed digit drifted lazily atop the coagulating liquid. He squinted one eye and sighted along the line of the finger’s point. North by northeast. Deeper into the mountains.
Like a hawk catching sight of its prey, Nickolai dove headfirst into the questing. The luxurious hotel room fell away forgotten behind him. The spurting pain in his hand—the rhythmic backbone of the ritual—was all that anchored him to his physical form.
So far, he had little to show for his efforts. A series of frustrating attempts to reestablish contact with his own kind had led him here, to New York City. It was like starting over from scratch. House Goratrix
was an insular order; Nickolai had few close ties outside his brethren. He knew that attempting to contact anyone who knew him too well might quickly turn into a death sentence for everyone concerned.
In the end, he had called an old business partner, someone who could be persuaded to help him. But afterward, Benito Giovanni, too, had gone missing. Nickolai should have been able to find him, but the trail had grown suddenly and ominously cold. Nickolai feared the worst. The very possibility that the enemy might have taken Benito made it absolutely imperative that Nickolai find the one Kindred who bound them together.
He must be close now. The blood did not lie. He slipped deeper into vision. The very light on this remote mountainside had taken on an unhealthy aspect. It was far too white, too glaring for the reflected glow of moonlight. It reminded Nickolai of the piercing white of hospital or sanitarium—an obvious and futile attempt to hold back the encroaching darkness of death and madness.
He could feel the weight of that light pressing down upon him, slowing his ascent up the mountainside. It was like walking underwater. The membrane of light shifted to anticipate and resist his every movement.
Still he struggled up the exposed rockface. He tried to keep to the infrequent trees, if only for the brief moments of shade and respite they offered. But the light seemed to come at him from all directions at once, as if the mountain were blanketed in a luminescent fog. It seemed to Nickolai that the glare brightened near the mountain’s peak. There was no hint of the ruddy glow of sunrise catching the summit. Rather, the light grew paler, harsher, white-hot. Nickolai found himself thinking of the desert wastes near the Mexican border, of shallow roadside graves, of moonlight on bleached bones.
Nickolai stumbled but retained his balance. The ground here was broken, craggy. Jagged shards of rock seemed to rise up suddenly to block his path. He gingerly picked his way over and around these obstacles, wondering at the cataclysmic forces that had, in ages past, so violently thrown these mountains heavenwards. Judging from the jumble of boulders littering the rock face, many of these throws must have fallen a bit short of their mark.
Perhaps it was a trick of this infuriating light, but as he struggled toward the summit, Nickolai began to think that the tumble of granite was taking on more recognizable shapes. Here was surely a great obelisk toppled from its pedestal. There, a collapsed bridge spanned a dizzying fall into the luminous mist below. There again, a great flat table of granite, large enough to feast several score of guests.
Nickolai found himself absently wondering where the guests had rushed off to in such a hurry and why they were so long away from their feast. Many of their seats were overturned and their food had grown stone cold.
As he progressed, the tumble of rock littering the mountainside seemed to grow more regular, as if some hidden pattern were struggling to assert itself over the landscape. Nickolai could not help noticing and then admiring the artful arrangement of the stones. There was a hand at work here, an artistic eye. He could plainly read the devotion of some unseen groundskeeper.
Without any hint of apprehension or distaste, Nickolai now realized he was among the precisely ordered headstones of some forgotten cemetery. He paused, head cocked to one side, listening for the telltale whispers among the tombstones—the litany of the dead, repeating to themselves endlessly their same discourse: names, dates, deeds.
But the stones were strangely silent. They held their peace.
Saturday, 28 August 1999, 1:52 AM
Lord Baltimore Inn
Baltimore, Maryland
Sturbridge secured the door with a casual gesture. Gnarled tendrils of blackened wood snaked down from the overgrown network of vines that hid the ceiling from view. They lovingly embraced the ancient portal, bolstering it, reinforcing it. Sturbridge nodded her approval. Anyone foolish enough to attempt to force entry would have better luck tearing through the wall. That would delay them a few moments. Time enough to muster her defenses.
Satisfied, she crossed to the roll-top desk at the room’s center. A latticed arbor rose up behind her chair without visible means of support. It craned over her shoulder, forming a makeshift canopy over the desk.
She clicked on the banker’s lamp and picked up the first envelope. The engraved golden letters read, “Councilor Aisling Sturbridge.” She flipped the envelope over and sliced it open with a single motion. A card, similarly engraved in gold, fell to the desk—an invitation to dine privately with Prince Garlotte that very evening.
The invitation was concluded with Garlotte’s seal, the three ships riding at anchor beneath the crossed Keys of the Kingdom.
Sturbridge held the invitation at arm’s length, as if clutching an asp. She was far from convinced that the prince was the doting old gentleman he represented himself to be. She had seen some of the other councilors, Ms. Ash in particular, buy into that persona. It struck Sturbridge as a particularly dangerous miscalculation.
Her thoughts kept returning to Maria Chin, her unfortunate predecessor on this council. If the prince wanted to remove the Tremere presence from the gathering, or even from his entire city, nothing would have been easier. Chin had been his guest; she had placed herself entirely in Garlotte’s hands. Like all the other councilors (not to mention the horde of refugees), she had submitted to his rules, his curfews. She spent her days—her time of greatest vulnerability—under his roof. At night, Garlotte’s feeding restrictions dictated exactly when and where each of his “subjects” could hunt.
Sturbridge had been briefed on these “precautionary measures” on the way up to her suite. The bellhop had been both thorough and polite. Sturbridge was already getting a feel for the peculiar political climate in the besieged city.
Yes, it would be a simple gesture for Garlotte to reach out and pluck the unlife from any within his domain. He knew precisely when and where each of them would be when her defenses were down.
Sturbridge cautiously returned the invitation to its envelope. Withdrawing a sheet of stationary and a fountain pen from the desk, she dashed off a quick and elegant apology. She had no intention of spending a single day within this city. Baltimore was a city under siege—not only from the Sabbat forces slavering at the gates, but also from within. An entire city of kindred placed under siege by its prince.
Sturbridge could see that already many powerful players had fallen into the labyrinth that was Baltimore, this city of dead ends and false turnings—this elaborate trap. Jan Pieterzoon. Marcus Vitel. Theo Bell. All powers to be reckoned with in their own right. But each of them had been uprooted from his native soil and hastily transplanted here, to feed and serve the doomed city. Already, their roots were lost among the city’s roots. And, when the time came, the city would sacrifice them, willingly, readily, to preserve itself.
Sturbridge was not entirely sure that she herself would be allowed to walk away from this tangled city. But she would make the attempt this very evening. By morning she would either be safely back within the walls of her own chantry, or Garlotte would be explaining the latest calamity to a rather unsympathetic Tremere pontifex.
To lose one Tremere ambassador might be considered a tragedy; to lose two smacked of carelessness.
Saturday, 28 August 1999, 1:00 AM
Chantry of the Five Boroughs
New York City, New York
Jacqueline closed her eyes, counted to three, and tentatively pushed open the little door.
Nothing. The room beyond was silent and pitch dark. From the tiny square of her field of vision, her eyes—long accustomed to nocturnal hunting—could pick out the shadowy outline of some of the room’s more dominant furnishings. She quickly identified the leonine supports of the ponderous worktable, the lower drawers of two overfull file cabinets, the gangly legs of a stuffed ibis, and a number of books, curiosities and other obstacles scattered haphazardly about the floor. There was a stillness hanging over these objects, a stagnation that was more than simply the musty air of a room that had been closed off for several weeks.
/> Jacqueline crawled forward on all fours, ducking her head to avoid hitting it on the lip of the cupboard. As she emerged, breaking the plane of the low doorway, the vertigo slammed into her like a physical blow to the pit of her stomach. Both of her ears popped at once and she felt a tiny trickle of blood begin to trail down her left cheek. The floor lurched up at her and was only narrowly warded off by a sharp, if unintended, blow from her forehead. It was probably as well that she had not been standing. Jacqueline shook her head to clear the ringing pain and crawled fully from the low cupboard into Foley’s sanctum.
She did not close the little door behind her, lest she sever the link back to the vestry—the tenuous connection that she had so painstakingly constructed over the past two weeks. She was discovering that the actual use of this particular ritual was more taxing than its preparation.
Master Ynnis, her former mentor, had made it all seem so effortless. She vividly recalled the first time she had seen him absently fumble open a drawer of his rolltop desk and extract a cleaver—one she knew very well to be in the stainless steel drawer just below the washbasin in the refectory. (Jacqueline was more than casually acquainted with a wide range of mundane tasks necessary to the maintaining of the chantry.) The blade had still had drops of water clinging to it.
Ynnis was an undisputed master of translocation. He could work the trick on just about anything that opened and closed. He maintained a regular correspondence with an associate in the London chantry by means of an ornate bamboo bird cage and a particularly threadbare stuffed carrier pigeon. She had seen him drive Foley into an apoplectic rage by “accidentally” removing papers from the secunduss jealously guarded file cabinets and then apologetically returning them to him. There was always a feeling of trepidation when putting your hand to a door handle in his presence. One was never quite certain where an ordinarily reliable door might lead.