Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Stewart Wieck

  Once the helicopter was past and committed to strafing the Anarchs’ position in the gutted steel mill, the courier hefted the bike back up with a herculean tug of his left arm. His speed had reduced to perhaps only thirty miles per hour or so, but after he landed back in the saddle, he quickly accelerated beyond that meager pace. He fell in behind the lead copter, but ahead of the other two yet swooping in.

  The bike was in sorry shape and it wanted to go to the right, but the courier tugged with his left arm to keep the wheel pointed straight ahead.

  He watched as the black helicopter dove past the wall of brick and steel. Its forward guns demolished a section of the wall, and the courier saw the figure of one of his Kindred friends fall with the mass of debris.

  The helicopter looped around to take another pass, and it was likely to be joined in its next attack by the two police vehicles.

  Additionally, the courier was able to see the left-branching I-75 split from the downtown artery to his left, and a long line of streaking cars with flashing blue lights dotted the highway.

  He cursed again and coaxed what speed he could from his damaged bike. He let the bike’s rightward tendency assert itself and he circled around the wall to seek shelter behind it with his doomed comrades. He wondered briefly if it was any different facing Final Death than the mere mortal’s death that stared him down. He might be a ghoul with Kindred blood in his veins, but he would still die in all the normal ways. How would the police handle his friends who wouldn’t fall to a hail of gunfire?

  It seemed to the courier that the Prince carelessly toyed with breaking the Masquerade by sending his police after the Anarchs.

  So much passed through his mind in these final moments. The kind of thoughts the courier had never had before, and would never have again.

  Safe for a moment behind the walls and under a fragment of what might have been the second story’s ceiling, the courier killed the motorcycle engine and hopped off the bike. His decimated right arm flopped at his side.

  He saw Thelonious and hurried to the mighty Brujah. The man seemed unruffled in his fine business suit. He cradled a cell phone to his ear, but hung up just as the ghoul neared.

  Thelonious looked too mild-mannered to be a Brujah, especially one so sought by the Prince that these hordes of police were called into the fray, but the young and congenial black man could be ferocious when required. In fact, he was one of the few individuals—Kindred or Kine—to face Prince Benison in battle and survive. Of course, the Prince survived too, or else the war between the Prince’s elders and Thelonious’s Anarchs would not be raging.

  The ghoul said, “I’m sorry, master. I led them right to you. Once we beat them back or escape, I will submit to your punishment.”

  Thelonious seemed to not hear the ghoul at first, but then the Brujah said, “Don’t be a fool, Thomas. This attack was underway before you arrived. They found us by some other means. A spy perhaps. One of us interested in the profoundly arrogant and demeaning society the Prince has established in our city.”

  “If that’s so, then I’ll kill the traitor.”

  “I’ve already taken care of that,” Thelonious said, holding a bloody palm toward the courier. Then he continued, “As for the police, perhaps we can frighten them off, or at least buy ourselves a little time.”

  At that, Thelonious raised his hand. Though the ghoul could only catch brief views of the black helicopter through broken windows and holes in the building as it whirled toward the edifice again, he could see that it was making another approach.

  The guns began to tear at the bricks again, and Thomas flinched. But then two great whistling noises sounded, and a pair of fiery streaks blazed through the air. One streak whistled out of sight, but the other intercepted the helicopter and a tremendous explosion shook the air and earth.

  A cheer went up among the Anarchs, and Thomas saw that Thelonious smiled too.

  “Let’s see if that makes them think again,” said the Brujah.

  Indeed, the two police helicopters, which were also ready to make strafing runs, quickly gained altitude instead and shot high over the old steel mill.

  The Brujah said, “Now’s our chance.”

  Thelonious let loose a piercing whistle and waved both his arms. The bulk of the Anarchs on the ramparts immediately abandoned their positions and climbed or jumped to the ground. A couple, however, remained for a moment longer. They readied another missile, and Thomas watched as one of Kindred, a tough Brujah named Trevor, leveled the weapon at the receding helicopters.

  The vehicles didn’t perform their escape quickly enough and the missile launched from high on the old wall shot directly at them. The missile quickly outpaced one of the helicopters, and the pilot was not a vet skilled in dogfighting, so it too was snuffed in a crackle and thump.

  “Here,” said Thelonious, drawing the ghoul’s attention back to his leader.

  When the ghoul turned, he saw that the Anarch leader was stripping off his clothes. The black skin of his magnificently sculpted body glistened in the moonlight. Then Thelonious thrust his forearm toward the courier’s face.

  “Take some blood. Without it that wound will be the death of you and you’ll never survive the flight we’re about to take.”

  The ghoul was astonished, but he did not delay. He grasped the Brujah’s arms and thrust his greedy face full upon it. He knew he was fed on the authority of his leader, but he’d never actually tasted the blood of Thelonious, only his underlings. Therefore, the ghoul had never before tasted blood so fine, so aromatic, so full of life and power.

  When the blood flooded into his body, the ghoul felt it go to work immediately. In an instant, it knitted his pulped arm and even restored some flexibility and strength. Kindred blood was amazing, he thought. Especially the blood of a Brujah primogen. Well a former Brujah primogen. In the wake of the Anarch revolt, the position was no longer official.

  Suddenly, the delicious sustenance was gone. A dribble of blood slithered down the Brujah’s arm, but the bleeding itself stopped as soon as the ghoul’s mouth was removed.

  Then Thelonious pushed the ghoul so that he started to jog and then run under cover of night. The entire pack of eight other Anarchs ranged behind the two of them. Five of those were Kindred, and three were ghouls like Thomas. Thelonious had promised the ghouls they would be Embraced as full vampires if this war was won.

  As the ragged group ran across the debris-littered grounds of the old steel mill, Thelonious looked at Thomas and inquired, “Do you bring a message, or were you simply returning to HQ?”

  Thomas could not so easily speak and run at such a demanding pace, but he managed to say, “I…do…have…a…message.”

  “Then give it to me,” commanded the Brujah leader.

  Thomas pulled a sealed envelope from his waist and thrust it clumsily toward Thelonious. The Brujah deftly grasped it and tore it open as they ran. How Thelonious then managed to read it while remaining cognizant of the terrain and maintaining his speed, Thomas didn’t know, but it made him wish to become Kindred even more than ever.

  “It’s from Benjamin,” the Brujah revealed.

  Thomas was growing weary, but he felt the flush of the last of his leader’s blood course through him, and he regained his breath. “Benjamin?” he asked.

  “The Ventrue,” explained Thelonious. Then the Brujah looked away as if revealing the content of the message only to a part of himself. “He says I should attend the party tomorrow night. Benison will be there….” His words trailed off, but his feet flew furiously and he stormed ahead of the others.

  His voice echoed back to the group, “Meet at the next safehouse in two nights.” Then the seemingly polished surface of his skin refused to reflect any more moonlight, and as he disappeared into the pitch black of the night, Thelonious wondered if Benjamin’s price was too high. Why should the Brujah trade one Prince for another?

  Monday, 21 June 1999, 1:50 AM

  Piedmont Avenue

  Atl
anta, Georgia

  Leopold was instantly fully alert and conscious. This particular period of having let go was not marked by the confusion and sluggishness that sometimes greeted him when he reawakened.

  He was momentarily confused by the shackles he imagined his hands were encased within, but he soon understood that his digits and palms were simply caked with dried clay. When he flexed his fingers with a slight bit of strength, the dried clay cracked and fell to the dusty floor in shards.

  It was this dirty floor of his work area upon which Leopold reclined. His body was covered in the debris of many previous projects, as he was motivated to clean the space only when it accumulated in piles over which he might trip, and that meant once every six months or so.

  He looked up at the ceiling, and for a moment imagined that he saw himself floating there. Now it would be the sculptor looking up at the Muse. All he saw, though, were the heavy wooden beams that had supported the ground-level floor for a hundred years and would do so for a hundred more. They appeared indomitable and immune to the passage of time. If only one of his sculptures—just one of them!—would stand up so well to the test of generations of Kindred and Kine.

  When he focused his sight nearer the floor, Leopold found that he rested with his head near the pedestal upon which he’d worked the clay bust. A sense of failure still consumed him. And frustration. And foolishness too. How could he have truly imagined that his past held any odd surprises? Was this the dementia of eternal life that some Kindred claimed afflicted the minds of the elders? Leopold had not even scratched the surface of the mortal years allotted to some Kine, and already he was cracking. He imagined himself being served up as an example of the weak-willed Toreador—a poseur sculptor who could not even last four score and seven or whatever it was the Bible promised.

  Though clear-headed and strong of limb, Leopold felt no motivation to move. His vantage from the floor provided him as much of a view of his clay bust as his remaining confidence allowed: a slight nose poked out over full and perhaps parted lips.

  And there he remained for a good length of time, lost in thoughts that led to little and amounted to nothing. Finally, the grit of the floor and enough of a desire for some sustenance urged him to his feet.

  He stood and trod slowly toward the wooden staircase. His hand clutching the railing, he took slow steps up. Then, just as his eyes were going to disappear from the basement over the threshold of the floor above, he looked back at the bust.

  An astonishingly lovely woman stared back at him, her head tilted to one side and her neck stretched outward. This was not a piece lost halfway to completion. It was a realized work, something of beauty, and Leopold cracked his head on the ceiling as he started and raced back down the stairs and across his studio to stand before the bust.

  The woman’s shoulders were bare and slim and smooth, so he imagined her either naked or in a low-cut dress that a woman with such lovely features might favor. Bones easily made themselves known beneath the clay skin of the woman, but something in how the shoulders were arranged or held square indicated strength or at least confidence.

  The face was lit by a slight smile, but it was the woman’s other features that gave dimension to this expression. This came mostly from the eyes, which seemed slightly Asian in their bent. There was amusement in them, though it was somewhat hidden within the shadow of their long shape and the fact that they were partially closed. The cheeks were full but tapered to a narrow chin. Above, a single lock of hair fell across her forehead. The remainder of the hair was more controlled, as it was short and slightly curly.

  What Leopold failed to note, as he’d not even thought to look for them, or perhaps because he saw them so often now that they did not seem out of the ordinary, were the woman’s fangs. They weren’t obvious, but the slightly parted mouth revealed the narrow tips of both upper teeth.

  That was out of the ordinary, and Leopold steadied himself on the pedestal, leaning forward with both palms pressed on the surface that also supported the bust and his legs spread a long pace behind him as if he were about to be frisked by policemen. His head dropped between his arms and hung like a motionless pendulum from his torso.

  The teeth not only meant that he had sculpted a Kindred, but it was the particular Kindred he sculpted that disturbed and excited him even though it was not the beauty from the Embrace he remembered.

  He couldn’t believe what he’d done, nor could he believe he hadn’t recognized her immediately.

  He raised his head and looked the woman squarely in her dark clay but lifelike eyes. This was Victoria Ash, primogen of Atlanta Toreador. Her lush, pre-Raphaelite sumptuousness was the epitome of beauty in Leopold’s sculptor’s eyes, though there was enough slenderness in her face to balance it and bring it closer to modern opinions of loveliness. The armless Venus held nothing over her as metaphor for timeless beauty.

  He gazed at her for a long time, wondering what this told of his circumstances, his past. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the past but was an augury of the future. Maybe Leopold would be doomed to know more of his future than his past. However, if Victoria was significant in his future, then Leopold decided he could forgive a lost past.

  Then, Leopold slowly stepped away and gave himself the advantage of distance to look again and make certain. It just a moment though. The tapered face, the slightly Asian cast, graceful neck. It was definitely her.

  Leopold stepped forward again and bent down a bit. Methodically, as the Toreador savored each moment, he pressed his lips fully against the clay of the bust and held the kiss as he diligently worked his tongue into the clay of Victoria’s open and smiling mouth.

  Monday, 21 June 1999, 2:02 AM

  The Skyline Hotel

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Benjamin stood on the top floor of his downtown hotel overlooking the beautiful nighttime skyline of Atlanta. One of his dozens of dummy corporations or shell companies—or some combination thereof that even he couldn’t precisely quote—owned the building, and this top floor was officially full of equipment and only partially completed because the company’s funds had run low before its design could be finalized.

  In truth, it was only partially completed because Benjamin preferred it that way. He could afford great luxury, and he indulged himself with it at many of his other havens, but when he wanted to think, he required more spartan furnishings. A computer on a desk. A small side table. A large map table with ten flat drawers to store documents. A trap door for a quick escape.

  Benjamin gazed north of downtown, past the high-rises. He wished he’d been watching when the missiles were launched. His perch would have afforded a fine view of the battle even though it took place two miles north of this haven. The Ventrue adjusted his glasses. It was a nervous habit from his years as a mortal. Otherwise, he appeared relaxed in his black and white crewneck shirt and black slacks. If not for the crossweaves of white in the shirt, Benjamin, a handsome black-skinned man, might have disappeared in the low light of the room. He would as soon disappear when in the midst of deep-thinking, but something about all black didn’t appeal to the Ventrue. Too trendy. Too rebellious. And he was neither Toreador nor Brujah. He’d leave such things to them.

  Except he did have to intrude in their matters tonight. At least in the business of the Brujah and whatever other clans might be represented in the group of Anarchs Thelonious led. Perhaps a Gangrel or two, but Benjamin’s information pointed to a handful of Brujah and probably a couple of ghouls. And Thelonious, of course. It was a sad army, but the Blood Curse had reduced their ranks terribly, and Thelonious seemed against Embracing others simply to provide shock troops—a tactic preferred by the Sabbat, who cared little for the future of such allies.

  No, the war Thelonious fought was a legitimate one, and the Brujah was too scrupulous to stoop to tactics that, if implemented, would risk a long-term victory to achieve a short-term one. Which meant that the Brujah’s message must have a longer-term benefit that the Ventrue was presently o
verlooking.

  Benjamin was a little more pragmatic. He’d consider the shock troops if they would guarantee victory that would afterwards give the opportunity to more than make up for that wrong.

  Of course, Benjamin’s grudge against Atlanta’s establishment was of a more personal nature, whereas Thelonious fought an ideological battle against Prince Benison. Benjamin fought for an ideology too, but he admitted to himself that the defeat of the Prince and his damned wife Eleanor—his bitch of a sire who would exert control over him if she thought he might never return to her of his own free will—dramatically affected the methods he might employ.

  Did Thelonious understand the subtleties of the decision Benjamin was about to make?

  The Ventrue walked away from the window and returned the map table. All the intelligence his agents had gathered the prior day was spread across the flat surface. Benjamin had read through it many hours ago and found little of interest.

  His hand drifted to a single sheet of paper, which he picked up and read again. Upon it was written, “Now is the time to take steps to block Benison. I know your secret, Benjamin, and Benison could learn of it at tomorrow night’s affair.”

  It was signed, “Thelonious.”

  The message had arrived via a motorcycle-riding courier about an hour ago. It was enclosed in the letterhead envelope of a non-existent contracting company, and the courier who delivered it had told the front desk it was a work order that should go the top floor. This strange request had naturally gained the attention of Benjamin’s ghoul, August Riley, a sharp young woman who managed the hotel and used the blood he granted her to stay on her feet twenty-four hours a day. Benjamin had used to work so tirelessly too, but that was before he’d become Kindred and could not remain active in sunlight.

  He now accepted that it could be to Thelonious’s benefit to reveal the Ventrue’s secret at the Summer Solstice party this coming night. Anything the Brujah could do to divert the Prince’s attacks and attention might grant Thelonious time to regroup for possible counterattacks. But that still seemed awfully short-term. Still, short-term survival was a necessity for long-term victory.