On a Darkling Plain (18 page)

Then at last he glimpsed an evanescent smear of motion behind the harpsichord. He suspected that Gunter had permitted him to spot it, to lead him in that direction and set him up for another attack. Pretending that he’d seen nothing, he halted and said, “Come on. Let’s move this along before the audience gets bored.”

After a moment, he thought he heard a footfall beside the harpsichord. He was tempted to charge at the noise, but he was still afraid that Gunter was setting him up, or that the Malkavian would be able to get out of the way. Better to stick to the plan, force his opponent to initiate the next flurry of action, even if it cost him another wound.

For a few more seconds nothing happened. Then, suddenly, he sensed a punch speeding at the side of his head, a blow that could fracture his skull or rip out an eye. Frantically, he sidestepped and blocked. The parry lashed through the air without catching Gunter’s arm, but the Malkavian’s spiked fist didn’t connect, either.

This time Elliott didn’t attempt to strike back with his bare hands. He grabbed one of the musicians’ chairs and, spinning, swept it around in a circle, as if it were his partner in some madly athletic dance.

Gunter was a good fighter, skillful at making the most of his invisibility. Ordinarily he could sneak up, attack and retreat back out of striking range before even an inhumanly agile opponent like Elliott could get a fix on him and retaliate. But the chair extended the Toreador’s reach. Gunter didn’t move far enough fast enough.

The chair crashed into an unseen obstacle; the impact stung Elliott’s hands. Becoming gray and translucent, half-visible, Gunter reeled against the harpsichord. Elliott sprang after him and battered him about the head and shoulders with the remains of the shattered seat.

Becoming completely visible, Gunter tried to shield himself with his arms, but to little avail. He couldn’t block as quickly as Elliott could swing. After a few moments, his scalp streaming fragrant vitae, he collapsed to one knee.

Elliott yearned to throw himself on the Malkavian and sink his fangs into his throat. Repressing the impulse, he snapped a rod out of what was left of the back of the chair, grabbed Gunter, jerked him to his feet, and pressed the jagged point of the makeshift wooden stake against his adversary’s chest. “Do you surrender?” he said.

Gunter’s furious blue eyes bored into his. “Back off!” the blond vampire said. “Back, back, back!”

For a second, Elliott’s head swam and his knees felt rubbery, but Gunter’s hypnotic powers failed to overcome his will. Perhaps his near-frenzy rendered him less susceptible. In any event, he yanked the Malkavian up on tiptoe and jabbed the stake an inch into his chest. “Surrender! Do you think I won’t ram this through your heart and take your head? You’ve been asking for it for more than a century!”

The threat was a bluff. Furious as he was, Elliott still had sufficient presence of mind to grasp that he mustn’t risk alienating the Malkavians by slaughtering their leader, not when every hand was needed for the common defense. But, perhaps influenced by the actor’s charismatic talents, or simply cowed by the beating he’d received, Gunter evidently didn’t realize it. For an instant his angry glower slipped, and he looked afraid.

“All right,” the flaxen-haired elder said, retracting his fangs. “I surrender. I withdraw my suggestion that we appoint a deputy prince. And despite your previous lapses, I concede your right to participate in all deliberations of the primogen.”

“Thank you,” Elliott said dryly. He let Gunter go and stepped away from him. The audience whistled, clapped and cheered. Some of them surged out of their seats and clustered around the victor, babbling congratulations.

“I didn’t think you still had it in you,” Judy said. “Welcome back, El. You’ve been gone too long.”

Elliott’s anger faded, supplanted by a feeling of unreality. How, he wondered, could he have entered this chamber intent on disengaging himself from the present crisis and ended up fighting for the right to command the defense? But of course he knew the answer; the Beast was to blame. Once roused, it wasn’t inclined to suffer slights from anyone. Perhaps Lazio had been counting on that when he spat in his face and slapped him.

All right, mortal,
Elliott thought grimly,
you’ve finally got me where you wanted me. I just hope 1 don’t give you cause to regret it.

From across the room, the gashes in his scalp and forehead already healing, Gunter glared at him. His expression promised Elliott that, no matter what public concessions the Toreador had wrung out of him, the conflict between them wasn’t over.

ELEVENtTHE HUNT BEGINS

Happy is the hare at morning, for she cannot read

The Hunter’s waking thoughts.

— W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
Dog Beneath the Skin

As he pushed through the door that separated the lobby of the old hotel from the dark, narrow side street beyond, Angus took a moment to savor the evening air, balmy and warm even in the dead of winter. Though largely immune to the cold, he still had to admit that, after the subzero temperatures at the Arctic circle, the Florida climate made for a pleasant change.

He was less enamored of his new gray suit, white dress shirt, maroon tie and black oxfords. He knew it was just his imagination — purchased at a big-and-tall-men's shop, the clothes fit well enough — but the outfit made him feel constricted. The older he grew, the more he hated all but the loosest and most comfortable garments. It was as if, though he still felt thoroughly at home in human shape, he were losing patience with the senseless constraints and inconveniences of human civilization.

But if he was going to track a quarry through Sarasota, conventional white-collar attire would open more doors than his stained, ratty wilderness clothes. He was tempted to cut his long mane of hair and shave his beard as well, except that, due to his powers of regeneration, they’d regrow so quickly that it scarcely seemed worth the trouble. A vampire’s form clung to the appearance it had worn in life, even in trivial respects.

Angus glanced up and down the sidewalk, checking to see if any mortals were watching him. None were. Downtown Sarasota seemed all but deserted, as if the kine, terrified of Dracula, had barricaded themselves in their homes.

Patience,
the Gangrel told them silently.
Deliverance is at hand.
Then he grinned at his own cockiness.
I hope so, anyway.

He spread his arms and invoked the unique gift of his people. Instantly he felt his irksome new clothing melt away and silky- fur sprouting to take its place. His huge frame shrank. His legs shortened drastically in proportion to his torso, while his ears expanded and moved to the top of his head. Extending, his arms grew membranes which linked them to his sides.

In the blink of an eye, he’d become a large black bat. A beat of his wings sent him spiraling upward toward the crescent moon.

As usual, for a moment he couldn’t resist surrendering himself to the delights of his new body, the exhilaration of riding the sea breeze and the wonder of his altered perception. As a bat, he could detect a universe of sounds beyond the range of human hearing. When his own high-pitched cries echoed back to him, he could hear
shapes.

Angus wasn’t thirsty. He’d fed last night. And thus he felt a familiar urge to forsake both Kindred and kine, to live the primal existence of an animal until the imminence of dawn sent him retreating to his lair. Resisting the impulse, reminding himself that he’d promised to catch Melpomene’s rogue vampire and that, with any luck, the undertaking might actually be fun, he began to fly back and forth over the streets and rooftops, crisscrossing the city. Above him shone the stars. It pleased him that they burned brighter here than in many other, more smog-ridden cities. He wondered if it was the influence of the now-stricken Roger Phillips and his beauty-loving Toreador that had kept Sarasota from becoming as polluted, filthy and decayed as many other urban centers of the modern world.

After a few minutes he sighted a pale, slender, frecklefaced young woman, dressed in sandals, jeans and a black Metallica T-shirt with the sleeves chopped off, slinking through a seedy apartment complex. Though the world abounded in thin, fair-complexioned kine, he was instantly all but certain that the stranger was undead. Over the course of centuries, he had developed an instinct for recognizing his own kind. He wheeled above her unnoticed, studying her, ears straining. Sure enough, she wasn’t breathing, nor was her heart beating.

Angus wondered if, by some incredible stroke of luck, he’d stumbled on Dracula minutes after beginning the hunt. He watched the other Kindred for a while to see if she was looking for prey, and if she’d take it in a way that left it dead and drained with holes in its throat, or otherwise endanger the Masquerade. Before long, noting the manner in which she crept along, scrutinizing every shadow, ignoring the noises of human occupancy, the murmur of conversation and the jangle of TV and stereos that sounded from the apartments, he decided that, far from being Dracula, she might well be hunting the outlaw herself. Melpomene had informed him that the Toreador and their allies were conducting their own frantic search.

Angus had considered revealing his presence to the local vampires and taking charge of their manhunt, but had decided against it. It was entirely possible that Dracula was some trusted member of their own community. If so, the Gangrel might have to shadow the indigenous Kindred to unmask him, and it would be easier to do that if the rest of Sarasota’s undead didn’t know of his existence. Besides, there were others to whom he could turn for aid.

He decided that he’d flown around enough to orient himself to the city. Wheeling, he headed west. In a minute, unaffected by the baseless superstitions that forbade his kind passage across open water, he was winging his way over the placid black waters of Sarasota Bay toward the narrow island called Longboat Key.

The aquarium, a four-story slab of a building, loomed out of the night just where Angus’ tourist map had said it would be. The Gangrel dived toward the ground. With the ease of long practice, and confident that his vampire body’s resilience would protect him from any injury, he began to change shape even before he touched down in the middle of a cluster of sheltering palm trees. His powerful human legs soaked up the impact.

Angus peered through the trees. As far as he could tell, no one else was around. Utterly silent despite his height and bulk, he slunk to what appeared to be the aquarium’s staff entrance.

Someone had installed two shiny new stainless-steel locks in the door, a perfect example of closing up the barn after the horse was gone. Lacking the proper tools, Angus doubted that he could pick them, but fortunately, he didn’t need to. He began to change form again.

His body and clothes turned pearly gray and then began to steam. Over the course of fifteen seconds, he melted into a roiling mass of faintly phosphorescent vapor.

In one respect, turning one’s body to mist was rather the opposite of becoming a bat or a wolf. When he put on the guise of a beast, his senses grew sharper, but when he was fog, he had no eyes, ears, or nose, and his perceptions dimmed to a murky psychic awareness of shape and position.

That, however, was sufficient to guide him to the crack beneath the bottom of the door. He flowed through it and reverted to human shape in the dark hallway on the other side.

Angus honed his vision, and the shapes of the doors lining the corridor swam out of the dimness. His eyes now shining with a spectral crimson light, he headed for the exhibits.

He had little doubt that some of the fish had seen Dracula. According to the accounts in the media, the murderer had dumped a little girl’s corpse in one of their tanks. But such creatures were nearly mindless. They couldn’t possibly remember the encounter days later.

Warm-blooded animals, on the other hand, conceivably might, and so Angus made his way to- the manatee exhibition where the two police officers had died.

Inside their tank, the massive, neckless, slate-colored animals floated, some motionless, possibly sleeping, and others swimming, their flukes sweeping smoothly up and down. Their forms reminded Angus of the seals and walruses he’d seen in the frozen north. He positioned himself in front of one of the observation windows, stared into it, and willed the manatees to commune with him. Two points of red light, the reflections of his eyes, gleamed on the surface of the glass.

One by one the six sea cows swam to the window. Their round, placid faces gazed out at him. Now linked to their minds, he could feel their friendly curiosity.

As was proper, he introduced himself, not giving his name, which would have been meaningless to them, but radiating a sense of his identity. No one, kine or Kindred, who lacked the power to converse with beasts could have understood the process, because no human language possessed the words to describe it. The manatees answered in kind, and then he asked them about the murders.

At first the animals conveyed incomprehension. They saw the two-legged shapes that moved beyond the windows, but ordinarily they didn’t pay any attention to them. There was no reason to.

With a patience that sometimes eluded him in his dealings with humans and vampires, Angus kept talking, trying to stimulate the manatees’ memories. Though the animals had little concept of either time or number, he managed to communicate that the killings had happened several nights ago. One of the men who’d died had accidentally broken a window.

The smallest manatee, an immature female with the indented white groove of a propeller scar on top of her head, exclaimed in recognition. The hole! They didn’t know' anything about any killing, but of course they remembered the hole.

The animals projected a jumble of remembered impressions so intense that for a moment Angus nearly believed that he was one of them, his heavy, rounded body suspended in cool, soothing water. It had been a night like any other, and then, suddenly, they’d heard a sharp crack and felt a shock. An instant later they’d sensed a new current in the tank, flowing not to the drains but somewhere else. Following it, they’d discovered the hole in the window’.