Clan Novel Ventrue: Book 5 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Gherbod Fleming

  The solution to a puzzle that had dogged him for weeks might very well be revealing itself to him, but at what price?

  Sunday, 8 August 1999, 11:59 PM

  Pendulum Avenue

  Baltimore, Maryland

  “Is there anything I may do for you, Ms. Ash?”

  “Yes, Langford. You may go away.”

  Normally Gainesmil’s butler would slip silently from the room, but tonight with every step he crushed fragments of glass beneath the soles of his painstakingly polished shoes. Only when she heard the door click shut did Victoria open her eyes. She couldn’t face anyone. Not tonight. She couldn’t stand the thought of someone looking at her. She couldn’t face even her own eyes. And she wouldn’t have to. Not now. Every mirror, every vase with a reflective surface, every glass face from the pictures on the wall lay shattered on the floor. The drapes were pulled, the lights smashed.

  Her right hand traced the line of her jaw, brushed over the tiny scar shaped like a serpent swallowing its own tail. Then her fingers strayed to her neck, where the golden chain and locket no longer rested. She’d given them back to Garlotte, and with them the memento of her time with Elford, the Tzimisce fiend. Aside from the snake, the injuries to her body were healed.

  Aside from the snake.

  She had consumed massive quantities of blood since arriving in Baltimore, and the physical infirmities—protrusions of bone, skin stretched and fused—had become things of the past. But even as the heinous degradations of the fiends had receded, something far worse—far worse than her beauty marred!—had taken hold of her. She’d thrown herself recklessly into the petty games of politics, a vain attempt to hold her demons at bay, but after Xaviar’s words two nights ago, she could no longer deny her panic. No fewer than three of her plots had come close to fruition in the past nights, and with all three, she’d missed her opportunity. Already a schism had begun to form between Prince Garlotte and Jan, yet she had failed to drive home the wedge. Then, irony of ironies, Garlotte himself had demanded a conclave, and she’d let the chance slip away. And then poor, gullible Fin had dared defy his sire. The prince had been embarrassed, no doubt, but had Victoria backed the childe’s claim, merely spoken on his behalf—Is this true, Alexander, that the girl has Embraced, not once but twice?—the occasion could have been so much more.

  But she had huddled in fear. Paralyzed by words that haunted her still.

  Slaves of the Antediluvians.

  Victoria felt a hand clutching her heart. Elford had violated her. Vykos had scarred her. But this was far more pervasive, more insidious. She placed her hand on her breast, felt for the heart that no longer beat. The fingers of her other hand traced the pattern of the finely embroidered divan beneath her, and she tried in vain to keep from trembling.

  “I am not my own master,” she whispered to the darkness.

  Despite her fanatical quest to examine her every action, she felt the horrifying certainty that all freedom was illusory, nothing more than ignorance. Like the blood within her undead body, her soul was not her own.

  Slaves of the Antediluvians.

  The Final Nights are at hand.

  Monday, 16 August 1999, 3:55 AM

  Presidential Suite, Lord Baltimore Inn

  Baltimore, Maryland

  The knock of this particular hand against his door was a sound Jan had not heard before but, nonetheless, he knew the identity of his caller before Hans van Pel announced the guest.

  “Mr. Bell to see you, sir.”

  “Show him in, of course.”

  A moment later, Bell filled the doorway. To the Sabbat, he was a dark angel of death; for Jan, the Brujah might yet prove the staunchest of allies. While Victoria could be outmaneuvered, and Garlotte usually prodded in the direction Jan wanted the prince to go, the Brujah was one to be dealt with forthrightly. Thankfully, that suited Jan’s purposes, for he and Bell were unswerving in their loyalty to their masters—though it was common knowledge that the archon despised Justicar Pascek—and they had both been assigned the same task: turn back the Sabbat tide.

  “Bad news,” Bell said without preamble. “Buffalo is gone.”

  Jan received the shock silently

  “Lladislas was okay with the plan. He’d delegated the Embracing to some nobodies and caught the last train out of town. I was more surprised than he was when the Sabbat actually attacked.”

  Deep in thought, Jan sat at the nearby cherrywood table. He gestured for Theo to join him. For as large a man as he was, the Brujah was surprisingly graceful in his movements. He was anything but the bull in a china shop as he eased into a seat among the exquisite trappings of Garlotte’s personal suite.

  Jan had been planning for this eventuality—that Buffalo would fall. But it had happened so soon. He’d been figuring in terms of weeks, not nights. “They didn’t divert forces from Washington,” Jan commented.

  “They didn’t need to. Those were babies with fangs they were facing.”

  “But they shouldn’t have known that.”

  “I know.”

  The hard gazes of the Ventrue and the Brujah met and held steady for several seconds.

  “Could it have been a raid that got lucky?” Jan asked.

  “Too big for a raid. Too small for an all-out assault—unless they knew what to expect.” Bell took off his baseball cap and tossed it onto the table. His jacket creaked with the movement of his arm. “I…I should have stayed. I could have stopped it.”

  “You had no way to know. And we need you more here.” Jan’s comment, though calculated for effect, was true enough. “If only I’d convinced Garlotte to let us send at least a few squads….”

  “He wasn’t about to let us take anything from here,” Bell said. “If you’d given him an ultimatum, he’d have sent you packing. He knew your hands were tied. You couldn’t go back to Hardestadt empty-handed.”

  Jan had to agree. Hardestadt would have been…displeased, to say the least. Jan also found himself surprised by Bell’s insight. Perhaps I’ve been underestimating him, Jan thought. And perhaps that insight could be brought to bear on other matters.

  “Too big for a raid,” Jan repeated Theo’s words from a minute before. “Too small for an all-out assault—unless they knew what to expect.”

  “That’s how it looked to me.” Theo crossed his arms. He sat straight as an oak.

  “Which means…?”

  “They knew.” Those two words from Theo carried the impact of certainty. He’d obviously been pondering this very question since leaving Buffalo.

  The Brujah’s conviction strengthened the suspicion that Jan had been harboring for some time now, since the night of the attack on his unlife. Something that Blaine had said that night, a comment that hadn’t really made sense at the time but which Jan had been too busy trying to survive to give much thought to, came back to him: They know what you know. Remembering those words, and hearing Theo give voice to what Jan was already thinking, made it that much easier to believe. Only one question remained?

  “Who?”

  Theo took his time thinking about that.

  “Could it have been someone on the ground in Buffalo?” Jan asked.

  “Maybe. But we ran a pretty tight damn ship,” Theo said. “Nobody but me and Lladislas knew everything. I guess somebody could’ve figured it out.”

  “Possible,” said Jan. “Who else…on this end?”

  “Anybody who was there the night we decided,” Theo answered right away this time.

  Jan pictured the scarred conference table in his mind and began listing the participants from that night: “Garlotte, Gainesmil, Roughneck, yourself, me, Victoria, Vitel, Colchester, and Malachi.”

  “Colchester wasn’t there that night,” Theo corrected him. Jan raised an eyebrow. Theo sighed. “You’re right,” said the Brujah. “He wasn’t at the table, but so what? Okay. Colchester. Fin came in too. He could’ve heard.”

  “That’s a formidable list.”

  “Hold on,” Theo said. �
��You’re not done yet. Then add anybody that any of those folks might have talked to. That gives us, what…maybe a hundred possible spies?”

  “Gainesmil has proven himself to be opportunistic,” Jan suggested.

  Theo shrugged. “So? Roughneck’s crazy, and Victoria’s a bitch. Don’t prove nothing.”

  Jan didn’t know much about Roughneck, but Victoria could not be dismissed so lightly. “Victoria was captured by the Sabbat in Atlanta. She may have been…tampered with. She could have arranged the Maria Chin assassination and sold us out on Buffalo. Garlotte could have been trying to make sure there was no competition for Camarilla resources,” Jan continued. “He’s made it clear he wants everything and everyone he can get here to protect his city. Vitel?”

  Theo seemed reluctant to hazard a guess, even after hearing Jan speculate about possible treachery from a fellow Ventrue. The Brujah archon shrugged at last. “Trying to get hold of Baltimore?” He shook his head. “But I don’t know how Buffalo going down would do him any good. Maybe same as Garlotte, except instead of wanting everybody to protect Baltimore, Vitel wants an army to retake D.C.”

  Jan couldn’t fault that suggestion. “That leaves Malachi—revenge for the Gangrel?”

  “And maybe Colchester,” Theo added. “Who the hell knows?” He was clearly frustrated by the wide range of possibilities.

  And you, Jan thought. After all, Theo had been in the know about Buffalo, and he’d been on the docks the night of the assassination attempt on Jan. Coincidence? But why would he have saved me from Blaine…? Unless he had more to gain by me trusting him. There was no way, at present, to know for sure. But Jan would have to find out, so he hardened himself to the tasks that lay ahead.

  “It was bound to happen,” he said, steering the conversation back toward Buffalo, “but a few more weeks would have been nice.” Jan paused and regarded the Brujah for several seconds. Theo’s face was expressionless again, inscrutable as ever. “I have several ideas about how we should proceed,” Jan said. “I’d like your opinion.”

  Theo shrugged. “I got nowhere to be.”

  Tuesday, 24 August 1999, 11:48 PM

  Cherry Hill

  Baltimore, Maryland

  “Where the hell is Katrina?” Jazz yelled.

  Tarika answered from downstairs: “She had to go talk to her daddy!”

  “Hmph.” Her daddy, the high-and-mighty prince of vampires. “She oughta tell that old man to go kiss his own ass, instead of getting her to do it all the time,” Jazz muttered to herself. She sighed as she pulled on her pants. The upstairs of the house was too stuffy—no wonder, with the shutters nailed shut and covered with tar paper. Katrina had been talking about boarding up the downstairs windows too. Jazz wasn’t sure why. The bars kept out intruders—the curious, criminal, and stupid—and since she, Katrina, and Tarika were never downstairs during the day, the sunlight didn’t really matter.

  “Whatever.”

  Katrina would do what she wanted to, whether Jazz and Tarika liked it or not. Jazz briefly considered making the king-sized bed where the three of them spent their days, and was on the verge of deciding it would be too much trouble, when she heard some kind of crash from downstairs.

  “Tarika?” Jazz started downstairs to see what the noise was. “Girl, what the hell you doing down here?”

  The living room and the Naugahyde sofa were empty, but through the doorway to the kitchen Jazz could see the naked lightbulb that hung over the table swinging back and forth. She walked into the kitchen and tripped.

  Several details registered in Jazz’s mind at once: Tarika’s head, which Jazz had tripped on and that now bounced across the floor; the open window and bent bars; the recognizable hairy face of Malachi, one of the prince’s thugs; and the bloody machete he was swinging at her.

  Wednesday, 25 August 1999, 12:05 AM

  U.S.S. Apollo, the Inner Harbor

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Garlotte sat and brooded. His three childer stood before him. The gently swaying lantern that usually soothed him was, tonight, merely another source of aggravation. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his high-backed wooden chair—the action was partially an indulgence of habit, partially calculated to irritate his audience. He knew them well, though often he saw them as he wished them to be rather than as they actually were. No more.

  “Did you want something?” Katrina finally asked, after only an hour and a half of waiting.

  Garlotte smiled. He’d known she would be the first to challenge him, but he’d hoped she might hold out longer. “Ah, Katrina, are you in such a hurry, with eternity stretching out before you?” The prince gestured toward Isaac. “You should be more like your elder brother.”

  Katrina sneered. “What, a pussy?”

  The sheriff, to his credit, didn’t respond to her taunt. Reluctantly, Garlotte rose from his seat and pulled his flowing, regal robe close to him. It was the type of attire that was useful when he wished to emphasize his authority. He stepped toward his childer and stood directly in front of Katrina, who was in the center, but when he raised his hand, it was on Isaac’s left shoulder that it came to rest.

  Staring intently at the girl but squeezing Isaac’s shoulder, Garlotte said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” Well pleased was somewhat of an exaggeration, but the prince had already left out beloved, and he hated to carry poetic license too far. Isaac was solid, if uninspiring, and he would continue to grow into the role of sheriff over the years.

  Garlotte released his grip on Isaac. “And you, Fin,” he said, still staring directly at Katrina. “When last we spoke, you claimed the right to Embrace your mortal girl. Though I was pleased to see you assert yourself this once, your choice of venue for that conversation was…ill-considered. Who prodded you in this decision?”

  Fin hesitated, but only briefly. “Ms. Ash. She suggested….” His words trailed off quickly.

  “Do you see now,” asked Garlotte, “that she had motives other than your best interest? Though I have no doubt she was persuasive. Do you see it?”

  Fin nodded meekly. His voice was barely audible. “I do.”

  “Good.”

  With blinding speed, Garlotte’s right hand shot free of his robe and slammed a stake into the chest of his youngest childe. Before either of the others could even react, Fin staggered and collapsed to the floor.

  “I reclaim this blood,” said Garlotte. Not once had his eyes strayed from Katrina’s face. She was struggling not to glance down at Garlotte’s robe, to try to see if another weapon lurked beneath the folds, perhaps a stake meant for her.

  But the prince turned from her, at last, and took three deliberate steps back to his throne. He settled himself comfortably before again taking notice of his two remaining childer. Garlotte gestured toward Fin. “His mortal is dead. I instructed Malachi to be sure she felt no pain.” The prince pressed his fingertips together, making a child’s steeple. “I gave him no such injunction in dealing with your…playthings, Katrina.”

  Her eyes grew wide with surprise and fear.

  She’ll hate herself for that slip, Garlotte thought. And she’ll hate me.

  “Go to them,” he said, and as if his words released her from a spell, Katrina broke for the door in a dead run. A few seconds, and her footsteps receded into nothingness.

  Friday, 27 August 1999, 11:52 PM

  McHenry Auditorium, Lord Baltimore Inn

  Baltimore, Maryland

  “What in the nine hells are you thinking?” Prince Lladislas and his entourage, most recently of Buffalo, had been in Baltimore for just over a week. Some of that time, the deposed prince had been a quite gracious guest, but not most of the time. And not tonight. “Since Embracing a bunch of know-nothing neonates worked so damned well in Buffalo, you’re going to do it again in Hartford? What’s the matter with you, Garlotte? Letting these boys run wild? And Theo—”

  The Brujah archon calmly and gently placed a restraining hand on Lladislas’s wrist. The Brujah
prince abandoned his tirade. He seemed to regard Theo with the highest esteem.

  Thank God, thought Jan. Otherwise, Lladislas would be unbearable.

  Theo’s intervention calmed but couldn’t cow Lladislas. “I’m sure you like pulling all the homeless Kindred down here so you have a strong city,” he said to Garlotte. “Wouldn’t have minded doing that myself—rather than abandoning my city.”

  Jan wanted to cover his eyes. He prayed that Garlotte would exercise restraint and not say something like, We can’t waste our resources in inferior cities, Prince Lladislas.

  This once, Jan’s prayer was granted. “The decision has been made for the present, Prince Lladislas. If you would like to discuss the matter with Mr. Pieterzoon, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Gainesmil—at a later date…”

  Lladislas tossed up his hands. He was still, Jan knew, adjusting to the role of prince-in-exile. It was a tricky thing—judging how far to press one’s case when a guest in the domain of another prince, especially if there was no home to go home to. Aggravating as he could be, Lladislas’s disgruntlement was promising in one sense—it meant that Theo had not let his fellow Brujah in on the plan to which the defense of Hartford was only the beginning. Gainesmil, too, though he’d had a hand in the strategizing, knew only so much. Secrecy was everything at this stage.

  “…And you have brought information for us, Regent Sturbridge,” Prince Garlotte was saying.

  Sturbridge rose easily to her feet, almost without Jan realizing that she was moving. She nodded to the principals on the council: “Prince Garlotte, Archon Bell, Prince Vitel, Prince Lladislas, Mr. Pieterzoon.”

  The Tremere regent had spent most of the past weeks at her chantry in New York City, where she apparently felt her presence was most needed. The Camarilla portion of that city was under perpetual siege by the Sabbat, so she might well have been correct.

  After the assassination of Maria Chin here in Baltimore, in this very inn, Sturbridge might have felt safer in New York as well as most needed, though if Colchester’s information were accurate, the chantry was not exactly a safe haven.