The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what vie call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.
— T. H. Huxley, “A Liberal Education”
Startled, Dan turned. Behind him, her form blurred by the darkness and his still-impaired vision, stood a pale, slender woman. Her white, gauzy gown and long black hair stirred in the sea breeze.
A kind of confused awe flowered inside him, supplanting the blood lust that had filled him only a moment before. Some instinct insisted that the newcomer was a ghost, or an angel, even though she was manifestly as solid as he was; a patina of sand clung to her dainty, naked feet, and she’d left a trail of tracks in her silent progress across the beach.
“Please stand away from her,” said the stranger, nodding at the motionless form of the vampire Dan had battered unconscious. “I need her more than you do, and I promise to provide you with something else to drink.”
Dan rose and stepped away from his erstwhile attacker. It was only when the stranger broke eye contact, knelt over the defeated Kindred and sank her own fangs into the
woman’s neck that the feeling of awe began to fade and he realized that he’d had a choice about whether to obey her command.
The newcomer, evidently another undead and a diabolist to boot, sucked her victim’s vitae for what seemed a long while. Meanwhile, torn between anxiety, annoyance and curiosity, his body throbbing as broken bones mended and shredded flesh repaired itself, Dan peered up and down the beach. He was concerned that someone might have heard the shots and called the police, but there was no sign that the cops were on their way. Perhaps, as was more and more frequently the case in these final, decadent years of the twentieth century, no one who had heard the commotion had cared enough that some poor soul might be in trouble to pick up a phone.
Finally the vampire in the white gown flowed to her feet. Licking herself as unselfconsciously as a cat, she ran her pale tongue over her lips, cleaning the residue of vitae off them. Dan realized that if he’d still been mortal he would have found the sight erotic.
Determined not to allow the newcomer to cow him again, he glowered at her. “It’s dangerous for one animal to try to steal another animal’s kill,” he said.
The newcomer smiled at him. “I see the intimidation has worn off already. Good. That, no less than your victory a minute ago, is a mark of strength. I’m called Melpomene, after the muse of tragedy.” She sighed. “A name of good or evil omen, depending on how you look at it.”
“I’m Dan Murdock,” he said.
“I know. I’ve been looking for you.”
He frowned, his emotions still an untidy jumble of interest and apprehension. “I guess it’s finally my night to be popular. What do you want with me?"
“Let’s talk as we stroll by the water. It’s been too long since I visited the sea.”
He looked down at Prince Roger’s unconscious flunky.
Blood was still oozing sluggishly from the twin punctures in her neck. “Is she dead?”
“No,” Melpomene replied.
“You didn’t lick the bite closed,” he observed. “Are you the murderer she was worried about?” He paused, groping in his memory for the details. “The one who killed the mortals at the aquarium?”
“No,” Melpomene said. “The humans have been safe from me for a long time.” She held out her white hand. “Come.”
Either because of her palpable charisma or his own loneliness, he wanted to take her hand, but caution held him back. Nodding at Prince Roger’s subject, he said, “This bitch never even saw you, did she? If she wakes up a quart low, she’ll blame me.”
“I know,” said Melpomene. “We want her to. Trust me, and everything will be all right.”
Dan didn’t trust her. Over the last thirty years, he’d learned the hard way not to trust anyone. But he yearned for her to prove herself a friend. And he didn’t care all that much if Prince Roger’s vassal crawled back to her master believing the worst of him. He hadn’t exactly been chummy with the other undead denizens of Sarasota as it was. If their ruler declared a Blood Hunt against him, he’d simply run away to some other town. The perpetually feuding lords of the Camarilla were unlikely to exert themselves unduly to help one of their peers track down a fugitive.
And so, gingerly, irrationally half-afraid that his touch would disgust her, Dan took Melpomene’s hand. Her grip was firm yet gentle, her skin cool, smooth and soft. The contact reminded him yet again of the days when he’d burned for the embrace of lovely women.
They strolled toward the susurrant surf. She took a deep breath, perhaps savoring the salty tang in the air. “Well?” Dan said.
Melpomene shook her head. “The impatience of youth.
But in this case, justified. My capacity for urgency dwindled away a long time ago. Now I have to revivify it.”
They reached the water’s edge. When the first sheet of cool white foam washed over her feet, Melpomene quivered as if a lover had caressed her. The two undead turned and headed south, away from the site of Dan’s battle.
As his vision finally sharpened into perfect focus, Dan said, “Okay, then get urgent. Tell me what you want with me.”
“Very well,” Melpomene said. For a moment, her eyes strayed to an elaborate sand castle, its turrets end crenellated battlements now crumbling in the incoming tide. “Do you know what a Methuselah is?”
“A very old vampire,” he said, “living in hiding or sleeping the centuries away. Or at least that’s what the legends say.” He peered at her skeptically. “Are you telling me that you are one?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Do you believe me?”
He felt another twinge of the instinctive awe that had overwhelmed him when he’d first turned and beheld her. “Maybe,” he said, although suddenly he was sure she was speaking the truth.
Seemingly satisfied with his answer, she said, “We live apart from you, our descendants, for two good reasons. One is that we require vampire vitae to survive.” He tensed, and she gave him a reassuring smile. “I promise I’m not after yours. Remember, I just fed.”
The blood thirst smoldered in his throat, reminding him that he had yet to do likewise. The craving was so inexorable that not even the fascination of an encounter with a virtual demigoddess of the undead could take his mind off it for long. “Okay,” he said, “I believe that. If you wanted more vitae, you could have sucked Butch back there dry. Or jumped me before my wounds healed, when I was easier pickings.”
“Exactly,” Melpomene said. “As I was saying, we hide from you because, comprehending our need to prey on you as you batten on mortals, you’d destroy us if you could. But even more importantly, we hide from one another. Do the legends with which you are familiar speak of the Jyhad?”
He frowned, not quite sure what she was getting at. “A jyhad is a war among Kindred, isn’t it?” He’d fought in one such conflict as a kind of mercenary when some of the elders of Baton Rouge had rebelled against their prince. He’d hoped that his efforts on their behalf would win him a place in the new social order they established; but after their victory they’d paid him off and made it clear they’d prefer he leave the city.
“Is that how the term is used these days?” she asked wryly. “The true Jyhad is the war among us ancients. It’s been going on for thousands of years, and for all I know, it will continue until there’s only one of us left. Or until the Antediluvians, our sires, awaken from their sleep of millennia and destroy all younger vampires to satisfy their hunger.”
A chill crept up Dan’s spine. What a cheery prospect, he thought. “What are you guys fighting about?” he asked.
“Everything and nothing,” Melpomene said wearily. “Some of us want to rule the world. Others, to stave off boredom. Still others, to pursue ancient quarrels.” Her lovely mouth twisted. “We are, after all, not only killers by nature but also children of the earth’s savage dawn, when vengefulness was a virtue and forgiveness, contemptible weakness. Still other Methuselahs have surrendered to the Beast or gone mad, their reason crumbling under the weight of ages of loss and remorse, and they lash out at those who were once closest to them as the murderously insane so often do.”
Suddenly she seemed so full of bitterness and selfloathing that, to his surprise, Dan felt an urge to comfort her. “You don’t seem vicious or crazy to me,” he said.
She arched an eyebrow. “Don’t I? Look deeper. But thank you for your kind words.”
The Hunger seared Dan’s mouth again. His stomach ached. If he didn’t hunt soon he was likely to fly into a frenzy when he did find prey, and drink so deeply that he left the unfortunate mortal dead. “You still haven’t told you what you want with me,” he said. He heard a soft splash: a fish had jumped.
“First I have to explain more about the Jyhad, and my position within it,” she said. “Because we spend our lives in hiding, we Methuselahs are rarely afforded the opportunity to strike at one another directly. But each of us controls, by various means, certain factions in vampire society, just as Kindred elders direct the destinies of the mortals dwelling in their domains. And we mobilize our minions to strike at our enemies’ chattels. When victorious, we impair a foe’s ability to exert power, and injure his pride. If we succeed in destroying some servant or possession he truly cherishes, we can cause him actual pain. And once in a great while, our efforts are so successful that we force him into the open, at which point we can attempt to annihilate him.”
“Are you telling me,” said Dan, frowning, “that whenever the Kindred plot and fight against each other, it’s because you old vamps are pulling our strings?”
“Not always,” Melpomene replied, “but frequently. Rebuke me if you like. I know it’s cruel of us to manipulate you into strife and risk of ruin. That’s why I tried to opt out of the game.” The black, angular form of a half-constructed condominium loomed out of the darkness ahead.
“You can do that?” asked Dan.
The woman in the white gown sighed. “I thought I could. One night about four hundred years ago, after the Armada but before the founding of Jamestown, I slew the last of my special enemies, by which I mean the last of the Methuselahs who were actively striving against me. I was weary and heartsick from centuries of bloodshed and intrigue, and it occurred to me that if I hid myself even more thoroughly than before, if I refrained from making any moves against the remainder of my peers, they might leave me alone to live in peace. After all, each of them had rivals who were actual threats to worry about.
“And for a while my plan seemed to work. As my confidence grew, I let some of my minions pass from my control altogether and loosened the reins on the rest. When my Toreador, my descendants, contrived to live in peace here in Sarasota, I permitted it gladly. I was no longer sufficiently wary to worry that a placid existence would blunt their fighting edge, or that their refusal to join in military alliances might leave them friendless in some future hour of need.”
As they neared the unfinished condominium, the breeze sighed through the empty windows. Noticing the absence of any construction equipment, and the obscene graffiti on the concrete-block walls, Dan realized that the project had been abandoned. Perhaps the builder had run out of money. “And now it is their ‘hour of need,’” he guessed.
“Yes,” said Melpomene somberly. Her head turned as if she were tracking the motion of something through the air. Dan squinted, but he still couldn’t see whatever it was that she was looking at. “I spent most of the last century asleep. It’s something we ancients do to refresh ourselves when existence begins to seem too burdensome. But my dreams provided a window on the waking world, and in one of them I saw that a wonderful painting, a work by an artist my Toreador and-I had nurtured and cherished, had been destroyed. I roused myself and found that the vision was true.”
“And you figure that was the opening shot in a new war,” said Dan.
“It was,” Melpomene replied* “I felt it instantly, and subsequent events have proved me right. Other works in whose creation I played some role have been destroyed — you would have seen the reports if you followed the news
— and, though they may not fully realize it themselves as yet, the Kindred of this domain are under siege.”
Gosh, Dan thought sardonically, and I didn’t even know anything was wrong. Maybe there were advantages to being an outcast, if it kept you out of the line of fire. “You know," he said, “just because somebody’s calling you out, that doesn’t mean you have to go out in the alley and fight. You could just keep lying low.”
“No,” Melpomene said grimly, “my opponent knows how to compel me. Even if I could bear to abandon those of my own lineage, the art must not be lost! It’s my legacy to the world!” Her voice grew softer. “Perhaps it’s my atonement for all the evil I’ve done.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Dan. Sand crunched beneath his sneakers. “March into Prince Roger’s stronghold and take charge?” ,
“No,” the ancient vampire said. “That’s what the enemy would like, to flush me into the open.”
In other words, Dan thought, the art is precious, but not precious enough for you actually to risk your own neck. To his surprise, he felt a little disappointed in her.
“By and large,” Melpomene continued, “I’ll have to trust my Toreador to direct the defense themselves. What I am going to do is plant a spy in the enemy camp.”
Cocking his head, Dan gave her an incredulous smile. “Me?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’ve been out of touch too long. 1 have no idea which of my peers is assailing me, nor even who his principal minions are. Some occult force is shielding them from my psychic abilities. However, I have managed to sense one small contingent, no doubt the most ignorant and least significant, of my enemy’s forces. But it’s a place to begin. A clever agent could infiltrate them and begin working his way up the ladder of command, amassing intelligence as he went.”
“Swell, but why me?” Dan said.
“I saw you in my dreams, too,” she said, “before I even realized what bond would bring us together. Despite your youth, you’re strong. You’ve proved it many times in the course of your wanderings. And you’re a Caitiff, with no ties to Prince Roger, the Toreador of Sarasota, those elders kindly disposed toward them, or anyone else I might be thought to control. Indeed, in the wake of your altercation tonight, the Kindred of the domain should soon be crying for your head. That should keep anyone from suspecting you when you join the other side.”
A pang of self-pity stabbed through his chest. Struggling to quash the feeling, he said, “I wouldn’t count on them letting me join, even so. If your dreams showed you very much of my life, you know that I’m not exactly good at winning friends and influencing people, not when the people in question are vampires.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “The enemy will encounter you in circumstances that will make your acceptance inevitable.”
“If you say so,” he said dubiously. “Now for the big question: Considering that Prince Roger and his gang are no friends of mine, why should I risk my neck to help you? What’s in it for me?”
“Power,” she said. “If you agree to help me, I’ll enhance your abilities.”
His eyes narrowed in consideration. Many vampires aspired to improve their existing supernatural talents or to master the exotic arts practiced by Kindred of other bloodlines, and he was no exception. “It’s a tempting offer,” he said slowly. “I just don’t know if it’s tempting enough for me to take on what could turn out to be a suicide mission. After all, you’re asking me to snoop into the secrets of a bad-ass just as powerful as you.”
“But you haven’t heard my complete offer,” she said. 1 lie cool breeze gusted, pasting her thin dress to her slender body. Even in the darkness he could see her nipples through the gauze. “After the war is over, I’ll exert whatever influence is required to gain you the acceptance of your fellow Kindred. You’ll finally have a place in the world. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”
“Yes,” he admitted, pondering the deal. He supposed that a lot of people would think he was crazy even to consider jumping into a deadly feud that was really none of his business. But Melpomene was right, he was tough: in the perilous years since he’d submitted to his unknown sire’s Embrace, delirious on the hallucinogen someone had slipped into his drink, he’d learned to trust in both his strength and his ingenuity. And if they proved inadequate to the challenge this time, well, he didn’t have to be as old as Melpomene and her rivals to feel that his current existence was becoming wearisome. “Okay, what the hell. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent,” the ancient vampire said, her dark eyes shining.
“What do we do first?” Dan asked.
“You do what you’ve been wanting to do,” she answered softly, releasing his hand and raising her own. He hadn’t seen her cut herself, but blood began to flow from a gash in the fleshy base of her palm. “You quench your thirst.”
A feeling of awe came over him again. Hesitantly, half-suspecting that this was a test of his respect and good judgment and that she’d strike him down for his temerity, he took hold of her wrist and pressed his mouth against the cut.
At his first taste of her vitae, a lightning bolt of pleasure blazed through his body. Drinking blood had never filled him with such euphoria, not even when he’d been starving or berserk. The sensation transcended the ecstasy he normally felt when feeding as far as that exhilaration surpassed human orgasm. He lifted his becrimsoned face and howled with delight, then frantically kissed the cut again.
The rapture of guzzling her life so possessed him that he was nearly incapable of sensing anything else. Yet, dimly, his eyes closed, he felt a cool fingertip tracing a design on his forehead. The touch left a tingling trail on his skin. Then Melpomene laid her free hand on his brow and shoved him suddenly and hard, like a faith healer thrusting the power of God into one of his flock.
Another blast of energy crashed through Dan’s body. This one was painful, but he was so lost in the bliss of consuming Melpomene’s vitae that the hurt didn’t matter. The world began to spin, and his knees buckled. Still clinging to the ancient’s arm, he collapsed onto the sand. She flowed down to the ground with him and covered his shuddering form with her own.
You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together — what do you get?
The sum of their fears.
— Winston Churchill, The Blast of War
Elliott paused at the foot of the stairs to run a comb through his hair, straighten his tie and vest, adjust his cuffs and make sure his handkerchief was protruding from his breast pocket properly. At the same time, he reflected again on Henry V, Shakespeare’s most heroic and charismatic king, trying to cloak his own despondent apathy in the role’s dynamism. Gradually his back straightened, and his jaw set in bogus resolution. When he felt as ready as he imagined he could be for the ordeal to come, he strode on into the room that Roger humorously referred to as the arena.
With its vast expanse of gleaming hardwood floor, its high ceiling and its glittering crystal chandelier, the arena would have made a satisfactory ballroom. Indeed, on occasion Roger had moved the furniture out and used it for precisely that purpose. Currently, however, the chamber was full of comfortable antique sofas and easy chairs grouped into conversation pits in a manner that reminded Elliott of a posh hotel lobby or a gentlemen’s private club. Holbein’s portrait of Roger hung above the ornately carved fireplace where someone, heedless of the warmth of the evening, had kindled a crackling yellow blaze.
Many of the Kindred of Sarasota had assembled in the room. Some were lounging with an enviable display of poise, but others were sitting on the edges of their seats or nervously prowling about. A pungent blue haze of tobacco smoke hung in the air.
To better assess the mood of the crowd, Elliott invoked a perceptual power he hadn’t bothered to use in a long time. The pale auras of his fellow vampires shimmered into view. As he’d suspected, most of the envelopes of light were tinged with orange, the color of fear.
Judith Morgan, a Brujah elder, was sitting on a maroon leather sofa talking to the rest of the primogen. Judy was as tall and thin as a fashion model, with skin the color of cafe au lait. She was dressed in ragged jeans, a black leather halter, a choke-chain necklace and a blue Union infantry soldier’s cap. Long scars crisscrossed her naked shoulders and back. When breathing, Judy had been a slave. She’d been transformed into a vampire in the early 1830s and released from her sire’s supervision in 1861, just in time to help the North win the Civil War. Sensing Elliott’s presence, she turned and beckoned to him urgently.
As Elliott started toward her, his remaining peers twisted in their seats to look at him. Schuyller Madison, a fellow Toreador, gave him a welcoming smile. Sky was a poet and a patron of human poets whose delicate-looking frame, soulful, wounded eyes and languid, abstracted demeanor made him a caricature of the dreamy, oh-so-sensitive aesthete. Even Elliott, who’d grappled with more than one crisis at the versifier’s side, had difficulty remembering just how misleading this appearance could sometimes be.
Gunter Schmidt, the remaining elder, gave Elliott a hostile glower. The actor had never understood why the burly, piggy-eyed Malkavian, whose face was always as strangely ruddy as if he were constantly sipping blood to replenish the glow, disliked him so. Perhaps it was a part of his insanity. Supposedly all members of the Malkavian clan were mad in one way or another, although Gunter never displayed any obvious signs of derangement.
“How kind of you to honor us with your presence,” Gunter said snidely. “How fortunate that the petty problems of the domain have finally kindled your interest.”
Elliott supposed that, since he was here to urge everyone to stay calm and work together, he ought to adopt a conciliatory tone. “1 have been dilatory,” he admitted. “I apologize.” Gunter’s beady, bright-blue eyes blinked in surprise. “What have the three of you decided?”
“Nothing yet,” said Sky with a fluttering, helpless gesture of his long-fingered hand. “We’re just going back and forth.” In the midst of the youngsters, Elliott thought sourly, allowing them to eavesdrop on your uncertainty. Feeding their fear. It was the worst possible way for the elders to palaver. Judy, Sky and Gunter must be far more shaken than they appeared; otherwise, they would never have forgotten such an elementary principle of leadership.
“Then let’s turn this into a proper meeting,” Elliott said briskly, “and include everyone in the discussion.” He nodded toward the rest of the Kindred in the room.
Gunter’s mouth twisted. “What insights can these childer offer us?” he demanded.
“Conceivably some very useful ones,” Elliott replied. “That they can’t match our level of power doesn’t mean they aren’t bright. I would hope that their sires chose them to Embrace partly because they are intelligent. And in any case, they’re in a funk. If we talk with them, perhaps we can calm them down.”
“A true elder doesn’t care how his brood feels,” said Gunter contemptuously, “only that they obey.” He looked to Judy and Sky for support and then, discerning from their faces that they agreed with Elliott, made a spitting sound.
“But all right. Invite them all to jabber if you think it will do any good.”
“Thank you,” Elliott said, hoping he didn’t sound sarcastic.
He walked to the midpoint of one of the walls — one of the natural visual focal points of the parlor — where a semicircle of four straight-backed chairs and music stands, set up, perhaps, for some string quartet, sat beside a harpsichord that had once belonged to Bach. He clapped his hands together.
The drone of conversation ebbed. Everyone turned to peer at him. For an instant his stomach felt queasy, just as it always did when he first confronted an audience, even after all these centuries.
Drawing on his charismatic powers, reminding himself to be the magnificent King Henry and not a useless, disconsolate widower, he said, “May I have your attention, please? We all know the domain is facing a crisis. I think we should discuss the situation and decide on the appropriate measures to set things right. Make yourselves comfortable and we’ll begin.”
Wood squealed on wood as the vampires shifted their seats around to face him.
“Thank you,” Elliott said. “As I see it, we have four problems.” He raised his hand to count them off on his fingers. “One: Our prince has mysteriously fallen ill. Two: our financial holdings are under attack. Suddenly people are launching hostile takeovers against our companies, filing suits and seeking injunctions against them, and manipulating stock and bond markets to our detriment. Three: we have a rogue Kindred stalking our territory, feeding wantonly and jeopardizing the Masquerade. And four: someone is roaming the world systematically vandalizing works of art which we created, or which were created by mortals under our patronage.”
Judy raised her hand. Elliott acknowledged her with a nod. “It can’t be a coincidence that all these things are happening at once,” she said. “Somebody’s pursuing a comprehensive strategy to destroy us.”
“I agree,” said Elliott. Many of the onlookers began to babble. The actor raised his hand and the noise subsided. “Does anyone have any idea who the enemy might be?” The assembled Kindred looked at each other uncertainly. Apparently no one had any specific candidate. In point of fact it could be anyone, any powerful vampire seeking to extend his power, to settle an old score that the offending party had forgotten all about, or torelieve the boredom of centuries by playing a vicious game. Insulated in their pleasant little kingdom, some of the undead of Sarasota had probably forgotten the ruthless machinations in which many of their fellows delighted; but they were remembering how.
“I can’t think of a candidate either,” said Elliott wryly. “So we’ll have to maintain a defensive posture until we can ferret out more information. Now, why don’t we discuss the four aspects of our problem in turn and determine what to do about each one. First, of course, and very dear to all our hearts, is Roger.”
“How is he?” a male voice cried from the back of the room.
“Not good,” Elliott admitted. “But at least, though his reason is impaired, his body is still strong. It’s not as if he were dying. We’ve brought in Lionel Potter to attend him, so he’s getting the best care possible. We have every reason for hope, and we can do two things to help him: we can stand guard over this haven, so no enemy can attack him in his hour of weakness; and, much as I know you want to visit him, those of you who don’t belong to the primogen can stay away from him. Don’t give him a chance to trick you into releasing him from his restraints.”
Gunter rose from his couch. “At the moment, Roger can’t lead,” he said flatly. “Who will?”
Not you, Elliott thought, not if I have anything to say about it. Gunter was powerful enough to dominate most assemblages of Kindred, but in the Toreador’s opinion, the perpetually flushed, flaxen-haired Malkavian was neither concerned with anything beyond self-aggrandizement nor particularly bright.
“I trust that for the time being we can make decisions by consensus, with the primogen providing direction as needed,” Elliott replied smoothly.
Gunter stared into Elliott’s eyes. The Toreador felt he was receiving a message as clearly as if his fellow lieutenant were speaking it aloud: If anyone succeeds Prince Roger, it will be me. If you try to steal the throne, I’ll kill you.
“All right,” Gunter said. “We’ll do it that way for the time being.”
Elliott turned, reestablishing eye contact with the rest of the crowd, or at least giving them the impression that he’d done so. “Now, about our finances,” he said. “We employ some of the best executives, financial planners and lawyers in the world. I’m confident that with their assistance our little investment cartel will weather the present storm. As a matter of fact, I’m glad our enemy has made this move. By investigating his front men, his puppet investors and litigators, we may be able to determine his identity.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Karen, a pretty brunette vampire in amber-tinted glasses. “I can’t believe this. Every penny I have is in that fund.” Some of the other Kindred muttered similar sentiments.
“Fools!” Judy cried in a voice like the crack of a whip. Many of the audience flinched.
The Brujah sprang out of her seat and stalked to Elliott’s position center stage. “Do you think money is important?” she asked the crowd. “Money is nothing! You can wring it out of the kine whenever you choose. Strength and courage are what matter! If you’ve grown so soft that you’ve forgotten that, perhaps you deserve to be destroyed!”
“Damn straight!” one of her clanmates cried. Throughout the audience, people, shamed by her scorn, were visibly trying to conceal their trepidation. Judy quirked an eyebrow at Elliott and he gave her an infinitesimal nod, complimenting her on her performance.
“Are we agreed on the proper way to handle our financial difficulties?” Elliott asked. Members of the audience nodded or mumbled in affirmation. “Good. Then let’s talk about the killer. Does anyone have any idea who that might be?” “There are one or two Kindred in town who never swore allegiance to the prince,” Gunter said. “I always said they should be destroyed or driven out, but certain others” — he glowered at his fellow members of the primogen — “felt differently.”
“You may be on to something,” Elliott said, thinking <jf one outsider in particular: a sullen blond man named Murdock. There was something subtly disquieting, even repellent, about him, though the Toreador had never quite been able to put his finger on what it was, “We should certainly look into their recent activities.”
Dmitri, a handsome, muscular ballet dancer Roger had Embraced twenty-five years ago, raised his hand. “Yes?” “What does killer matter?” asked Dmitri in his faltering, heavily accented English. “No matter what he does, humans will not believe in us. They will think he is just crazy man who believes he is Count Dracula.”
“I hope you’re right,” Elliott said, “but we don’t dare depend on it. On occasion, in other domains, the Masquerade has been breached, and only reestablished by the most desperate, ruthless measures imaginable.”
“Maybe the killer is just a mortal psycho,” said Scott, one of Gunter’s brood, a baby-faced vampire as blond and Nordic as his sire.
“I’ve read the police reports,” Judy said, which meant that she’d broken into police headquarters, or into their computer system. Unlike the Kindred of some cities, the vampires of Sarasota didn’t actually control the municipal government. Roger had preferred to guide the affairs of the mortal community by subtler means. “And I wouldn’t bet the rent on the guy being human. There are indications that the murderer can turn invisible, melt through locked doors and do other tricks that no kine can manage. Which means that the cops couldn’t catch him even if we wanted them to. We have to nail him, and we will. By patrolling the city and conducting our own investigation.” She grinned at the audience. “Who’s up for a little game of hide-and-seek!”
A number of vampires, many of them her fellow Brujah, yelled that they were.
“Fine,” Elliott said, “we know what we’re doing about the killer. The remaining problem is the preservation of our art.”
“You’re speaking incorrectly,” Gunter said.
Turning toward him, Elliott arched an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“It isn’t our art,” Gunter said. “It’s your art. The Toreador’s art.”
No, it isn’t mine, Elliott thought, not anymore. He felt a pang of grief, , and asserted his will to keep the emotion out of his expression. “You’re splitting hairs,” he said. “It’s an irreplaceable treasure created by members of our community. Somehow our enemy has identified all the masterpieces which have passed from our possession, and now they’re under attack. I suggest that we retrieve them for safekeeping.”
The Toreador in the audience babbled in agreement.
“Your paintings and statues may be irreplaceable,” Gunter said, rising to address the crowd better, “but in a time of war they’re not essential. I oppose diverting manpower from critical tasks to collect a set of trinkets,’’
The Malkavian’s brood clamored in support of his position.
Judy grimaced. “I know the art is more than trinkets,’’ she said to Elliott, “but I have to admit Gunter’s got a point.”
Sky flowed to his feet. “You don’t understand,” he said to the Brujah and Malkavians in the room. “A Toreador’s art defines him. He invests his soul in it. We could no more turn our back on the beauty we’ve brought into the world than you Brujah could renounce the wild, free spirit that makes you what you are, or than a Malkavian could restrict himself to” — he paused, obviously trying to think of a tactful way to express himself — “conventional modes of thought.” A crimson tear slid down his cheek
“Maybe,” said Philo, a Brujah slouched in an easy chair, his cowboy hat tilted down over his eyes, “but you can’t expect the rest of us to give a damn about your personal problems.”
Alice, a stunning redheaded Toreador in a blue silk minidress glared at the Brujah. She’d been brought into the clan because she was beautiful, not because she could create beauty, but she professed her bloodline’s aesthetic ideals as ardently as any of her fellows. “You’ll care if we tell you to,” she said. “This is our domain. The prince is a Toreador, and there are more of us than the rest of you put together, so you’d better do as we say if you want to live here.”
Philo surged to his feet. His hand, tattooed with a picture of a hornet, shot inside his voluminous black leather coat, obviously reaching for a weapon. Baring her fangs, Alice leaped up from her seat and crouched to spring at him.
Moving at superhuman speed, Elliott lunged between the would-be combatants. “No!” he cried. “This is a conference, not a brawl. Save your aggression for our foes!”
Angry as she was, but accustomed to obeying her clan elders, Alice backed down at once. Shuddering on the brink of a true frenzy, Philo glared at Elliott, willing him to stand aside. Elliott could feel the other vampire’s coercive power pounding at his mind like a hammer.
Straining to resist the domination and to project his own subtler influence, Elliott gave the Brujah an amused, confident smile. After a few seconds, the younger Kindred began to feel what the Toreador elder wanted him to feel: namely, that Elliott was manifestly far more formidable than he was. Retracting his fangs, Philo averted his gaze.
The Brujah were a proud warrior clan. Elliott didn’t want any of them to go away from the meeting feeling that they’d been humiliated, particularly now that the domain needed their loyal support so desperately. He gripped the younger vampire’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said warmly. “Thank you for your forbearance.” He turned to Alice. “Please apologize at once.”
She stared at him, flabbergasted. “What? Why?” “Because you insulted him and all the rest of our friends who don’t share our lineage. Sarasota is not a Toreador domain. It belongs in equal measure to every Kindred whose fealty our prince has chosen to accept. If your sire never taught you as much, I’m certain Roger did.”
The redhead made a face. “All right,” she muttered, “I’m sorry.”
Philo shrugged contemptuously and dropped back into his chair.
Elliott felt himself relax. If he hadn’t defused the situation, in another moment the entire room might have been fighting. Vampires were like that; frenzy could leap from one to the next like wildfire, and the Brujah in particular were notorious for their hair-triggers.
The actor returned to the front of the room and surveyed his audience. “All right,” he said, “I understand that those of you belonging to other clans don’t see the urgency of protecting the art. I hope that you in turn comprehend that the matter is of compelling importance to us. Accordingly, I propose that we Toreador will retrieve the art ourselves, without anyone else’s help, while also assisting in the resolution of the domain’s common problems. Is that acceptable to everyone?”
Judy sighed. “We’d rather have you guys working on the other issues full-time,” she said, “but yeah, I guess that’s a
reasonable compromise.”
Eiliott turned to Gunter. “Do you agree?” he asked. Gunter shrugged. “I suppose. I doubt that your people would be much use on the front lines anyway. Especially it you were pining for your baubles.”
“Do you actually know where all the art is?” Judy said to Elliott.
“We know where a lot of it is,” the actor replied, “and we can find the rest. Sky wasn’t speaking figuratively: a portion of our collective soul does reside in it, and it calls to us. A couple of us can find it psychically. A more interesting question is, how are our enemies striking at the art so unerringly? How do they know what we created, and where it wound up?”
“Someone has been watching us and preparing this strike for a long time,” Sky said soberly, his silvery, vitae-stained handkerchief dangling from his hand.
“I think so, too,” Elliott replied with a grim smile. “Imagine how upset they’re going to be when we make the plan blow up in their faces.”
“Here’s a tactical question for you,” Judy said. “You can’t retrieve the art without visiting other domains. Are you going to ask the permission of their princes?”
“I suppose we must,” said Sky. “The Fifth Tradition requires it.” Some of the assembled Brujah hooted derisively. The Toreador poet blinked as if puzzled by their reaction, or as if he were in danger of weeping again.
“The problem is,” Elliott said, “that we don’t know who the enemy is. Any prince we contact could be an adversary who’ll use his knowledge of our movements against us.” “On the other hand,” said Judy, scratching absently at one of the long-healed welts on her shoulder, “if they catch you guys on their turf without permission, there could be hell to pay.”
“Unless someone objects” — Elliott glanced around the room, but none of his fellow Toreador called out or raised a hand — “I think we’ll risk it. It’s a big world, and Kindred are thin on the ground. We really should be able to sneak in and out of the average city without being noticed.”
Judy nodded approvingly. “That’s what a Brujah would do.” She turned toward the crowd. “Okay, kids, it all sounds like a plan to me. Let’s figure out who’s going to tackle what job. Why don’t the Toreador go off in a corner and decide how to get the art, and the rest of us will start working out everything else.”
“That sounds all right,” said Elliott. He and his clanmates gathered at one end of the chamber, beside a display case full of gray stone and gleaming gold artifacts plundered from a pharaoh’s tomb.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” said Karen nervously. “I hope I do all right.”
“Sure you will,” said Glenn, a sculptor with a salt-and-pepper beard and red clay under his fingernails. “If you can steal a mortal’s blood, you can certainly steal an object from his house. It’ll be fun!”
Rosalita, one of Roger’s brood, a short, bosomy, curly-haired Hispanic singer wearing a necklace of tiny jade skulls, gave Elliott a diffident tap on the shoulder. “If we’re going in teams,” she murmured, “I’d like to go with you.”
Elliott opened his mouth to explain that that wouldn’t be possible, then realized that he did indeed have to go.
When he’d entered the room, his fellow undead had been on the brink of panic. Through common sense, oratorical technique and a dash of his preternatural stage presence, he’d calmed them down and gotten them organized. So far, so good, but now they needed him to lead by example. If he withdrew into his accustomed seclusion instead of helping to further the strategy that he himself had advocated, everyone else was likely to lose faith in it.
One mission, he thought grimly. I’ll run one errand, to get them started, hut then somebody else will have to run the show. God damn you, Lazio.
To save your world you asked this man to die:
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
— W. H. Auden, “Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier”
A cold winter wind moaned through the streets of downtown Columbus, Ohio, where, according to a Toreador sensitive, one of the clan treasures awaited. The chill didn’t bother Elliott but, remembering how uncomfortable it might have made him when he was mortal, he had to repress a reflexive shiver anyway. Striding along at his side with a rolled-up piece of canvas under her arm, shooting nervous glances in all directions, Rosalita clutched the collar of her lightweight topcoat shut.
The homeless were everywhere, wrapped in blankets of newspaper, huddled twitching, moaning and shivering in doorways, on grates, or inside cardboard boxes, but at three in the morning no one else was about. No one but the ranks of sooty gargoyles peering down from the upper stories of all the office buildings.
For a moment, Elliott felt a thrill of excitement. It had been a long time since he’d embarked on a clandestine, potentially dangerous errand. Once upon a time he would have relished the challenge.
Then he remembered that on his previous adventures it had been willowy, blond, blue-eyed Mary pacing at his side, and his instant of pleasure died in a spasm of grief.
Rosalita clutched his arm. “I think that man is staring at us,” she murmured.
Striving to shrug off his misery, Elliott looked where his companion was looking, at a hulking man with a long, tangled beard sitting with his back against a graffiti-scarred brick wall. Sharpening his senses, the Toreador elder heard the thump of the mortal’s heart and the rasp of his breathing, smelled his fetid body odor and saw the red, brown and silver aura flickering around him.
“He may be watching us,” Elliott conceded, “and if so, judging from the crimson in his aura, he doesn’t like us very much. But he’s human, and by all indications a genuine homeless person, so I doubt that he poses any threat.”
“Then maybe it wasn't him that I sensed,” Rosalita said, peering about again.
Elliott felt impatient with her, yet sympathetic as well. She was young and had never done this kind of thing before. Sheltered in Roger’s hitherto placid domain, she’d probably thought that being a vampire was easy, a never-ending round of feeding on unwitting or even acquiescent mortals, making music, and attending parties. She had no real concept of the perils that stalked her world of perpetual night, of the ordeals a Kindred must sometimes endure to preserve his endless life.
“Please,” he told her, smiling confidently, exerting his charismatic powers, “calm down. I’ve done this kind of thing many times before. I promise you that we’ll get through it.” Rosalita smiled ruefully. “I know we will, with you calling the shots. I’m sorry I’m so jumpy.”
“It’s all right,” Elliott said. “You should have seen how timid I was the first time I got caught up in a struggle among Kindred.” The two undead walked past a bookstore and what, before it went out of business, had been a boutique. Perhaps Elliott had caught a mild case of his companion’s jitters, because he imagined that one of the bald, naked mannequins in the window turned its head slightly when they went by. He repressed the impulse to look back and see if it really had.
“Here we are,” Rosalita said.
The door of the office building they intended to enter had an electronic lock requiring both a magnetized plastic key card and the proper combination to open. Earlier that night Elliott had intercepted a secretary who’d been working late as she exited the place. He’d charmed her, spirited her away to a nearby bar for a drink, teased the combination out of her without her quite realizing that he’d done so, and stolen the key from her handbag. Now he inserted the card in the proper slot and entered the numbers she’d given him on the keypad. One of the four heavy plate-glass doors clicked open, and he and Rosalita slipped into the lobby.
In the middle of the marble foyer was a semicircular desk with a rack of black-and-white video monitors linked to the building’s security cameras situated behind it. Elliott had expected a guard to be stationed here, watching the screens and signing after-hours visitors in and out. He’d been prepared to talk his way past the mortal or subdue him if necessary. But, though the monitors were live, no one was on duty.
“Nobody home,” Rosalita said, frowning. “That’s funny.”
“Perhaps the guard’s patrolling,” Elliott said, “or using the restroom, or catching a nap somewhere. In any case, it’s one fewer obstacle for us to worry about, provided we can make it in and out before he comes back.”
As they hurried to the elevators, their footsteps tapping on the slick, newly polished floor, Elliott studied the images on the monitors. All they showed him were vacant expanses of dimly lit corridor.
The bronze-colored elevator door opened as soon as Rosalita pushed the call button, and the two vampires stepped aboard. The Latin singer flinched when the panels rumbled shut again. Elliott suspected that, edgy as she was, being inside the car made her feel trapped.
The elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor. The doors opened. Emerging, Elliott smelled a hint of rot in the air. Frowning, he sniffed, but the odor was gone. Probably he’d caught the stink of someone’s unwanted lunch rotting in a wastebasket.
The two Kindred skulked down the shadowy hall to one of the doors. The gilt lettering on the frosted-glass window read NICOLL, HAWKE, SOMMERS & ANTCZAK, ATTORNE YS AT LAW. According to Elliott’s information, the firm was one of the most prosperous law partnerships in the Midwest, and Nicoll, the senior partner, had a painting by Thomas Fouquet, a brilliant nineteenth-century landscape artist and a Toreador protege, hanging on his office wall to prove it.
The door had a mechanical lock. “Now,” said Elliott, removing a black leather satchel of locksmith’s tools from the pocket of his long cashmere overcoat, “we’ll find out if I still remember what my burglar tutors taught me.” He selected a gleaming pick, inserted it in the keyhole, and set to work.
He found that he hadn’t lost the knack. His keen sense of touch still made opening the average lock a snap. He defeated this one so quickly that an observer watching from a distance might well have believed that he’d opened it with a key. He twisted the brass knob and swung the door open, revealing a receptionist’s desk and a waiting room. A vase of roses, ghostly white in the gloom, sat on a table, suffusing the air with their perfume. -
“Come on,” he said, entering. Rosalita took a last wary look up and down the corridor, then followed him.
He led her on into the interior of the building, past an open area occupied by file cabinets, desks with computers on them, a photocopier, piled boxes of office supplies, and a kitchenette. “Do you know where you’re going?” Rosalita whispered.
“I think so,” Elliott replied. “I’d give twenty-to-one that Nicoll has the corner office, and, unless my sense of direction is on the fritz, that’s this one.” He twisted a doorknob; this time the door was unlocked. Beyond it was a large room with a row of windows running along the back and right-hand walls. A handful of the slumbering city’s lights glowed in the darkness beyond the glass. On the left-hand wall, behind Nicoll’s drawerless, glass-topped table of a desk and between floor-to-ceiling shelves of leather-bound law books, hung Fouquet’s painting. The canvas depicted a view of a weathered covered bridge spanning a peaceful river, with oaks and maples, their leaves ablaze with autumn, growing all around. Rosalita, who, like Elliott, could see the picture clearly despite the dimness, gasped at its beauty.
Momentarily jealous of her rapture, Elliott moved to the painting and lifted it off the wall. “Don’t just stand there,” he said gruffly, “give me the cover.”
Blinking, Rosalita gave her head a shake and unrolled her piece of canvas. The two vampires wrapped it around Fouquet’s picture and tied it in place with a length of rope.
Elliott tucked the landscape under his arm and turned toward the door. Then he caught a whiff of the foul odor he had smelled before, and heard a faint, scuffing sound. “Hold it,” he whispered, raising his hand. “Did you hear that? Or smell it?”
“No,” she replied uncertainly. He grimaced. It would have been nice to have confirmation, but the fact that she hadn’t sensed what he had didn’t necessarily mean he’d been imagining things. Her perceptions, though more acute than any mortal’s, weren’t as sharp as his.
“I think somebody’s out there,” he said, nodding to the rest of the suite and other rooms and corridors beyond.
“Do you think they followed us?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I would have sworn that nobody was tailing us out on the street. I wonder if it could be the vandal, come to destroy the Fouquet. It would be a hell of a coincidence if we all went after the same picture at the same time, but stranger things have happened.” Almost despite himself, exhilaration like that he’d experienced on the street began to infuse his spirit. His errand had just become considerably more interesting. “If it is our culprit, we’re going to catch him. Wait here while I scout around.”
Elliott leaned the Fouquet against the wall, drew his Beretta 92F automatic from its shoulder holster and then, crouching, stalked silently out the door. His senses probed the gloom, seeking a flicker of motion or aura, noise, or the stink of decay.
After several seconds, darkness stirred at the periphery of his vision. Whirling, he aimed the gun, then saw that he had no target. Outside the window at the end of the corridor a cloud had swallowed the moon, dimming the wan light seeping through the glass.
Before long, he was convinced that no one but himself and Rosalita was lurking in the office. That left the hallway outside. He prowled to the exterior door, started to twist the knob, then froze.
Frequently his enhanced perception enabled him to detect sights, sounds and aromas that another person would have missed. More rarely, it kindled his intuition, as it did now. Though he didn’t actually see or hear anything to indicate he was in danger, he felt that it could be fatal to stick his head outside.
Hoping the bolt wouldn’t make an audible click, he locked the door, then braced one of the waiting-room chairs under the knob. Such a flimsy barrier wouldn’t hold back vampires for long, but it might buy him and Rosalita a vital second. Pointing the Beretta at the door, he backed out of the waiting room and on through the suite.
When he reached NicolPs office, Rosalita said, “Did you find anything?”
“There’s an ambush waiting for us in the hall,” he said. “As soon as we step outside, they’ll catch us in a crossfire.”
Her lustrous brown eyes focused on him in shock. “Are you sure?”
Actually, he wasn’t. The trouble with relying on his hunches was that even a Toreador elder’s intuition occasionally played him false. But it would be a mistake to betray any uncertainty to a nervous subordinate. “Yes,” he said.
Rosalita gave a jerky nod, reached inside her own coat, and brought out her Sig Sauer Pistole 75. “Then I guess we’ll have to shoot our way out,” she said.
Elliott felt proud of her. She might be jittery, but she was game. Roger had made a good choice when he’d Embraced her; better, perhaps, than when he’d transformed Elliott himself. “No,” the actor said.
She frowned. “But if it’s just one or two guys, or if they’re human, they shouldn’t pose all that much of a threat.”
“But I don’t think that’s how it is,” Elliott replied. “I think that up until now your instincts have been sharper than mine. The enemy has been lying in wait for us here. We were in trouble from the moment we climbed out of the car. Perhaps from the moment we arrived in town. And I think our best hope is to find another way out of the building.” He strode past her into Nicoll’s office. Crossing to the windows, he raised one and looked down.
Below him was an expanse of grimy, weathered stone wall riddled with cracks and pockmarks, decorated with gargoyles and other bits of decorative carving, and transected by the occasional narrow ledge. Along the bottom ran a narrow side street, where bits of windblown trash scudded along the broken pavement. More of the homeless were huddled in the shadows, but Elliott didn’t see anyone who looked like a sentry; not that that meant much, peering from such a distance. Even his vision had its limits.
He was willing to bet his life that he could climb down the outside of the building. He was, after all, more agile than any human, and his enhanced perception gave him an exquisite sense of balance. Rosalita possessed the same abilities, though to a lesser degree. He gave her a smile. “Not afraid of heights, are you?” he asked.
She stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s our best option.”
“Can we just go a little ways and then climb back through another window?”
“We could,” Elliott said, “but then we'd still be stuck inside the building, and I suspect that by now there are people watching the exits. I’d rather climb all the way to the ground if you think you can make it.”
“All right,” she said, returning her pistol to the holster on her belt, “I can do it if I have to.”
“Good girl.” He put away his own gun, discarded his topcoat, suit coat and vest, and tied the rope securing the Fouquet to the back of his belt. The painting bumped against his butt and legs whenever he moved. “Have you ever done any climbing?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Take your time,” he said, “and think before you move. Test your handholds before you trust your weight to them, Don’t hug the wall and don’t look down. I’m going to go out first and stay right underneath you, so I’ll be there to help if you get into trouble. You close the window when you get outside. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’m going to get,” she said.
He eased himself out into the darkness. The cold wind gusted, riffling his hair and clothing, batting at the painting dangling from his waist. Quickly but methodically testing the hand- and toeholds afforded by the cavities in the eroding stone, he descended ten feet to a gargoyle with the fangs of a sabertooth tiger and the curling horns of a ram. He peered up at Rosalita’s pretty, heart-shaped face. “Come on,” he said.
The younger Kindred lowered herself from the window and pulled it shut, hanging from the sill for a moment. Then she started down. Almost at once, stone cracked. She yelped and began to drop. Elliott stretched out his arm to catch her, but she grabbed a handhold and arrested her fall. Bits of rock clattered down the wall to smash on the sidewalk below.
“I thought I put my hands exactly where you did,” Rosalita said, a tremor in her voice.
“You have to test the stone for yourself,” Elliott said. “But that’s all right, no harm done. Climb on down.”
For a moment she didn’t move. He was afraid that she was too rattled to continue, but then she resumed her descent. Releasing the wall, balancing as confidently as a tightrope walker, he backed a step away from the side of the building on the gargoyle’s narrow granite spine, making room for his companion to alight.
When she did, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” she said. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t want just to hang here in midair and think about what comes next.”
He studied her aura. It was tinged with the orange of fear, but not ablaze with it. He didn’t think that she was in any danger of panicking. Satisfied, he said, “All right,” and lowered himself from the stone monster. Hanging by one hand, he grabbed a jagged crack in the wall with the other, then continued his descent. Rosalita followed him.
To his relief she didn’t slip again, though occasionally she couldn’t find a place to put her groping feet and he had to climb back up and guide them for her. After a few minutes she said, “I wouldn’t have believed it, but this is starting to be fun.”
He decided that she was right. Long ago, he’d enjoyed climbing, swimming, riding, fencing and the martial arts, but in recent years he’d nearly forgotten the pleasure of pitting himself against a physical challenge. Or the joy of outwitting a band of enemies, leaving them bewildered and humiliated.
He began to smile, then heard a muffled crash overhead. The would-be ambushers had gotten tired of waiting for the Toreador to emerge from the office and had broken in to find them. Hoping that, with all the windows closed, the enemy wouldn’t realize where he and Rosalita had gone, Elliott said, “If you’re getting the hang of mountaineering, now would be a good time to pick up the pace.”
“I’ll try,” Rosalita said grimly. She began to move faster. Then one of Nicoll’s office windows opened. A creature stuck its head out.
The newcomer’s countenance was as hideous and asymmetrical as a visage encountered in a nightmare. Framed by oversized, pointed ears, the face had two eyes, positioned one above the other, on the right side, and one, milky as if sealed with a cataract, on the left. Half its scalp was bald, while the other half sprouted stiff gray spines resembling a porcupine’s quills. Its broad, flat nose had three nostrils, and crooked tusks jutted from its diagonal slash of a mouth. Trails of dark drool streaked its chin.
When Elliott saw it he realized why he hadn’t detected the enemy sooner. The thing was surely a Nosferatu, a member of the loathsome Camarilla clan whose members were monstrously deformed. Many of the bloodline possessed powers of invisibility so effective that even a Kindred with heightened senses had difficulty penetrating them.
For one more instant, Elliott dared to hope that the Nosferatu wouldn’t see him or Rosalita in the gloom. Then, its three eyes widening, the freakish Kindred screamed, “They’re down here!” in a high, female voice.
Several other windows shattered as the hideous vampire’s companions smashed them. Shards of glass showered on
Rosalita and Elliott, nearly knocking them from their perches, and crashed on the street below. Other Nosferatu, their features altogether different but just as misshapen as those of the first one, leaned out into the night and aimed their guns at the Toreador. The weapons flashed, barked and chattered, and bullets ricocheted whining off the wall.
Elliott looked down. He and Rosalita were still about forty feet above the street. A fall that far onto hard pavement would kill or at least cripple a mortal, but two preternaturally agile vampires might survive it intact. Certainly it seemed preferable to leap now, of their own volition, rather than wait a moment for the enemy to shoot them off the wall. Clambering out from under Rosalita to keep her from landing on top of him, he yelled, “Jump!” and thrust himself into space.
Though he knew the fall could only be taking a second, he seemed to plummet for a long time. Then, abruptly, his feet slammed down on the sidewalk midway between an overturned trash barrel and a graffiti-covered newspaper box. He tumbled into a roll to soak up the shock of impact, and emerged from it scraped and bleeding but essentially unharmed. Ragged, grubby mortals, already in the process of fleeing the barrage of gunfire hammering the street, gaped at him in amazement.
A split second later, Rosalita smashed down on the pavement. Elliott heard a sharp crack, and then she pitched forward on her face.
“Are you all right?” he asked, crouching over her.
“My leg’s broken,” she whimpered, breathless with pain. “Something’s hurting in my chest and back, too.”
Since she’d survived the moment of impact, her injuries couldn’t kill or permanently incapacitate her. She’d recuperate in a matter of minutes or hours. But for the moment she wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to get away. Stifling a curse, moving with superhuman speed, he tore the Fouquet off his belt. The canvas bundle wjas now shapeless