On a Darkling Plain (26 page)

Dan didn’t know if he was defenseless or not. Between the torment of his wounds and the rigidity in his limbs, it sure felt like it. But he was certain that his only chance of surviving this battle was to make Wyatt
believe
that he was already incapacitated. He tried to make it look as if he were still stunned, staring glassy-eyed and expressionless at nothing.

And Wyatt dropped to his knees beside him, set his smoking, blue-finished weapon on the floor, and bent over his intended prey.

Dan tried to seize the other Kindred. For an instant nothing happened, and then mobility surged back into his body with a sharp, rippling pain that-reminded him of a piece of paper tearing in two. Evidently the hypnotically induced paralysis could only freeze a victim for a little while. Grabbing Wyatt by the throat, he scrambled on top of him and started to pound his head against the floor. The homunculus emitted an earsplitting shriek, bounded off its master’s shoulder and raced away back toward Wyatt’s room.

His wounds notwithstanding, Dan was far stronger than Wyatt. He was certain that he could pound the magus insensible in a matter of seconds, or even tear him limb from limb. And then the bogus anarch’s fingers feebly clutched his wrist.

Fiery agony screamed through Dan’s flesh. The pain of a gunshot wound was a mere pinprick by comparison. His blood was boiling like the Samedi’s, scalding and cooking him from the inside out.

Wyatt broke Dan’s grip on his neck and started to squirm out from underneath him. Screaming, forcing his burning arms to move despite the anguish, Dan grabbed the Tremere again and smashed his head down on the linoleum. Wyatt’s skull crunched, and he went limp.

Unfortunately, victory in itself did nothing to relieve Dan’s pain. His flesh was still ablaze and the Hunger had him in its grip. He felt as if every drop of vitae in his system had changed into blistering steam. He threw himself down on Wyatt and ripped open his throat.

He guzzled frantically, and the Tremere’s rich, coppery vitae gradually extinguished the searing torment. The relief was a kind of ecstasy, nearly as sublime in its way as the joy of sucking Melpomene’s potent blood. Once lost in its embrace, he kept drinking long past the point of satiety, until Wyatt’s lifeless body began to stink and decay in his arms.

Still dazed with the savage pleasure of his gluttony, Dan lifted his head just,in time to see the homunculus laboriously dragging the muff gun into the hall. The tiny monster looked at the tableau before it. Its huge eyes widened as it evidently recognized that it had returned to the fray too late, that its creator was already dead. It screamed, abandoned the weapon, and ran in the opposite direction. In a moment it vanished into the shadows.

Now that the Beast, his inner demon, was back in its cage, Dan regretted killing Wyatt. And not merely because, despite everything that had happened, he still liked the Tremere, although that was part of it. Since the anarchs didn’t actually know anything about the conspiracy against the Kindred of Sarasota, and since their captain was now unavailable for interrogation, it was quite possible that Dan had just bungled his mission beyond any hope of recovery.

Once again he was tempted simply to abandon his errand. Maybe if he explained to Laurie, Felipe and Jimmy Ray that Wyatt hadn’t been what he seemed — but no, that was a bad idea. Though the anarchs had welcomed him into their midst, he’d been rebuffed, told there was something foul and untrustworthy about him, too many times to assume that he could convince them he’d had a valid reason for killing their beloved leader. But he could deny he was the person who’d destroyed the magus. Heck, if he could spirit the rotting corpse away, his new friends wouldn’t know that anyone had. They wouldn’t know what had happened to Wyatt.

And with their link to the shadow army assailling Sarasota broken, they’d be free, no longer a part of the ongoing struggle. Perhaps Dan could convince them to go away with him to some other part of the country where neither Wyatt’s colleagues nor Melpomene could find them. Maybe they could settle in California, where the
real
Anarch Movement was in power.

Dan sighed. It ail made for a pleasant fantasy, but he realized that he
wasn’t
going to abandon his mission. He still wanted to save the innocent humans targeted for destruction. And, though it might be a perverse way to think, he couldn’t see quitting now that he’d come this far. That would mean he’d killed Wyatt for nothing.

He went through the magus’ pockets. He found an eelskin wallet, a book of matches, a pack of Camels and an unfamiliar key — probably the one that opened the door to this building. He didn’t locate the key to the Haitian artist’s loft. He wondered if Wyatt had thrown it away, or if it had evaporated when its work was done.

The wallet contained seven hundred dollars, several credit cards, including Diner’s Club and an American Express Platinum, a driver’s license with an Orlando address, and a blood-red key card bearing an embossed drawing of a plumed and visored helmet with the similarly elevated word
Camelot
in Gothic script on one side and a magnetic stripe on the other.

Taken all in all, it didn’t seem like Dan had discovered very much. But at least he now had some excuse for a lead. Pocketing the wallet, he rose, located his .38 — and then an idea struck him.

The muff gun barely seemed capable of inconveniencing a mortal. Against a Kindred, such a weapon ought to be a joke. And yet Wyatt had considered it worth leaving with the homunculus, and even though the shot would reveal its presence, the tiny creature had been hell-bent on firing the pistol at Dan. Was it possible that the firearm, or its ammunition, was magical?

Dan decided that he had nothing to lose by taking them with him. He grabbed them and then, his heart heavy, wondering if he’d ever see Laurie, Jimmy Ray and Felipe again, and whether they’d try to kill him if he did, he trudged toward the stairs.

SEVENTEEN?
REPORTING IN

l will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgment.

— Juvenal,
Satires

Now dressed in the new, unperforated, unbloodied jeans, T-shirt and denim jacket he’d burgled from a second-hand shop — he hadn’t wanted to return to the cache of clothes in the auto repair shop and risk running into any of the anarchs — Dan found a pay phone outside a grubby little bar on the fringes of Ybor City, Tampa’s historic Latin quarter. Living in Sarasota, he’d heard vaguely that the area was undergoing a revitalization, filling up with trendy nightclubs, restaurants, boutiques and art galleries; but if so, the process of renewal hadn’t reached this shadowy corner of the district yet. Most of the streetlights were broken, and many of the shops were boarded up. Discarded paper cups, beer cans and the stinking body of a dachshund, its legs stiff with rigor mortis and its flanks pocked with stab wounds, filled the gutters. Through the wall of the tavern sounded a dirgelike death-metal anthem: “Kill, kill, kill the children, generation
last
-—”

Glumly reflecting that the tone, if not the lyrics, of the song suited his mood, Dan dropped a quarter in the public phone’s coin slot and punched in the digits Melpomene had bade him memorize. The phone whirred and clicked repeatedly, and he imagined his call being routed from one dummy number to the next, making it more difficult to trace.

The phone went dead. Frowning in puzzlement and annoyance, Dan wondered if he should hold on or hang up and dial again. Then a soft white light flowered behind him.

Startled, his hand jerking reflexively toward his .38, he spun around. Melpomene was standing on the cracked, uneven sidewalk behind him. Something about her looked strange, and after a moment he realized what it was. Though the air was still, strands of her dark hair were stirring as if a breeze were blowing, leading him to suspect that she was only present in spirit.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to appear to me,” he growled, hoping that she hadn’t noticed how he’d jumped. “I thought we were just going to talk on the phone.”

“So did I,” Melpomene said. “But I like to see a person’s face when I converse with him. And I can discern that no other Kindred are nearby. So why shouldn’t I come to you, particularly when I can sense that you’re in distress?” She gave him a sympathetic smile.

Even if she weren’t physically present, her charm was no less potent than it had been during their previous encounter. Abruptly he felt grateful for her show of concern, and ashamed that he’d greeted her rudely. Struggling to suppress those responses, he said, “Yeah, I am upset. I’m not cut out for this spy stuff.”

She caressed his cheek with her slim white fingers. He couldn’t feel the touch, but, remembering the silky smoothness of her skin, he imagined it, and that was enough to wring another outpouring of affection from his soul. “Why do you say that?” she asked gently.

“I just killed someone,” he replied heavily. “The guy was a liar, a con artist, but hell, so am I. Maybe all vamps are.

Anyway, even though he wanted to trick me and use me, he was my friend, too. And now I’m turning my back on three other people that I liked.” He smiled grimly. “Oh, yeah, and I’m worried that working for you is driving me crazy. After all the hard times I’ve been through over the past thirty years, I would’ve thought that I was too tough to go nuts. But
something’s
happening to me.”

“Tell me everything,” Melpomene said.

Dan did tell her most of it. Midway through his recital, a dilapidated, exhaust-belching, zebra-striped Cadillac full of black teenagers roared down the street. He wondered what they’d make of the pale, beautiful woman clad only in a gauzy gown, but they didn’t even slow down to ogle her. Maybe they couldn’t see her.

When he finished describing his clash with Wyatt, Melpomene said, “The long and the short of it is, you killed in self-defense. The magus was trying to murder you.”

Dan smiled crookedly. “When you put it that way, the guilt and the sadness I’m feeling don’t make a lot of sense, do they? But I feel them anyway.”

“Oh, they make perfect sense to me,” Melpomene said. “I remember when my fellow Methuselahs and I were young and still cherished one another. Do you think that our hearts didn’t ache when the wills of our sires and our own ambitions and grievances turned us against one another?” “Evidently they didn’t ache enough to keep you from fighting,” Dan observed.

The ancient vampire sighed. “No. No, they didn’t. Perhaps the greatest devotion a Kindred can experience is a debased and tainted thing compared to the love of mortals. 1 don’t know; after all these centuries, I’m not certain that I remember how it felt to be human. In any event, love is scarcely the force that makes our benighted world go around. The thirsts for blood and power do that.”

“Some of us just want to get by and have somebody to hang around with.”

“Some of you are very young,” Melpomene said, “and must either harden or perish as the centuries creep by. Still, I’m sorry that it grieves you to part from the anarchs. But after I reward you, you won’t lack for companionship.” Considering the way that his fellow undead had always shunned him, Dan wondered if even Melpomene could convince other vampires to befriend him the way Wyatt, Laurie and the others had. He guessed that at this point he could only hope so. “I’ll hold you to that. Now, what’s the deal with the art? Why did it hypnotize me?”

Melpomene hesitated, then said, “I assure you, you aren’t going mad. I could tell from your aura if you were.”

“Good,” Dan said, “but what
is
happening? I can’t see
your
aura, but I’m pretty sure you know.”

Melpomene’s exquisite lips twisted. “I imagine that my vitae is responsible. You know that I belong to the same bloodline as Roger Phillips’ Toreador. All those who share that heritage are enthralled by beauty, a fascination that occasionally freezes us dead in our tracks. When I allowed you to drink from me, I only meant to share some of my powers, not one of my weaknesses. I apologize.”

After a moment’s consideration, Dan shrugged. “Well, I guess the trade-off is worth it. Heck, what I saw in those paintings was pretty wonderful. If I’m going to keep seeing it, it could brighten up my life.” He snorted. “If it doesn’t get me killed. Anyway, it’s nice to know that I’m not any crazier now than I was before I met you.”

“I’m glad I could ease your mind,” Melpomene said. “Then we’re still friends?”

With her unnatural charm tugging at his affections, he wanted to say yes, of course; but he knew that he couldn’t fully trust the emotions she inspired in him, and he hadn’t completely forgiven her for leading him to betray Wyatt and the anarchs. “I’ll keep working for you,” he said. “Let’s leave it at that.”

She smiled sadly, as if he’d wounded her feelings. “If only for the sake of the poor kine destined for slaughter,” she said, a hint of irony in her musical contralto voice. “In that case, we’ll talk about the war. Let’s think: what do we actually know’ now that we didn’t before?”

“That the Tremere are behind the attack on Sarasota,” Dan replied. Somewhere far to the north, someone fired three shots and a child began to wail. “By sending out agents posing as honchos of the Anarch Movement, they’ve recruited a bunch of stooges to do their dirty work for them.” “I wouldn’t assume that
all
of their front-line troops are would-be anarchs,” Melpomene said. “Elliott Sinclair clashed with a band of Nosferatu, and Kindred of that lineage join Garcia’s Movement about as infrequently as the Tremere themselves. But you’ve articulated the basic principle. I imagine that many members of their army were recruited under one pretext or another, and have no notion for whom they’re actually fighting. A precaution to keep the architects of the assault from being called to account for their actions if the scheme goes awry.”

Dan frowned as an idea struck him. “What if the Tremere aren’t at the top of the ladder?” he said. “What if we have another bunch of enemies positioned above them, pulling
their
strings? And, as long as we’re speculating, why not even
another
gang, controlling the Warlocks’ bosses? For all we know, there could be a
hundred
levels of plotters between people like Laurie and the enemy Methuselah.”