On a Darkling Plain (32 page)

Fighting panic, he closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. Eventually the image of a derelict garage formed inside his mind. Of course, the anarchs’ communal haven! It was just down the street!

Its proximity infused him with a final bit of febrile energy. Panting reflexively though he had no need for air, tripping repeatedly over the bumps and declivities in the ground, he tottered out to the desolate street, then onward toward his goal.

Until something hissed at him.

Nearly losing his balance, Malagigi jerked around to see a crouching calico tomcat with a ragged ear and a stinking, pustulant gash on its shoulder regarding him from the shadows. Its tail twitched, then it slunk forward.

The homunculus knew he couldn’t defeat it in a fight. He couldn’t have bested a second rodent. But he also knew that the animal could run him down effortlessly. So he shrieked and lunged at it, gnashing his oversized fangs and waving his gore-encrusted hands.

The cat halted in its advance, backed up a step, then wheeled and raced away. No doubt the fact that it had never seen a creature like Malagigi before had served to make his aggressive display more intimidating. Perhaps the feline had even belatedly sensed that it was facing a supernatural entity.

In too much distress to feel even a momentary flush of triumph, Malagigi staggered on. Blessedly, the door to one of the garage’s service bays hung a few inches above the concrete floor: perhaps someone had left it open for ventilation. When the homunculus slipped under it and skulked on past Wyatt’s green van, he saw that the door leading into the office area was ajar as well. Voices murmured from the dimly lit hallway beyond.

He crept down the corridor and peeked through a doorway into what had once been a waiting room. Three glum-looking Kindred — one in sunglasses, one with a thin black mustache and gleaming gold chains around his neck, and a brunette girl in bellbottoms and a fringed buckskin jacket — were seated inside. For a moment, Malagigi knew their faces but not their names, and then those came back to him. Jimmy Ray, Felipe, and Laurie. Still intent on fulfilling Wyatt’s last wishes, yet, despite himself, wary of people whom his master had considered a potential threat as well as allies, the homunculus paused to study them.

“I’m not going to spend my whole life hanging around in this dump, waiting for some honcho from the Movement to contact us,” Jimmy Ray said. Irritation made the country twang in his voice more pronounced.

“Don’t you care about liberation anymore?” Laurie asked, glaring at him. “Don’t you care that Wyatt’s dead and Dan’s disappeared?”

Slumped in a chair in the corner, using a coffee table heaped with old magazines for a footstool, Felipe hefted the object that had been resting in his lap. It was Wyatt’s ancient grimoire; the pages that had broken free of the binding had been carelessly stuck back inside. “Wyatt was a Tremere,” the Hispanic vampire said.

oTaTdarIoIn^TRTn

“You don’t know that,” Laurie said. “You can’t read that book. You don’t know what it means.”

Felipe rolled his eyes. “Give me a break. Doesn’t it look like a book of magic to you?” He set it down and picked up Wyatt’s notebook. “And this is more of the same, in our fearless leader’s own handwriting.”

Laurie grimaced. “All right, maybe he was a Tremere. A Warlock
could
defect to the Movement, couldn’t he?”

Jimmy Ray shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that he lied to us.”

“Because,” she replied, “he knew that if he told you the truth, you wouldn’t trust him.”

“And maybe that would have been pretty smart on my part,” said Jimmy Ray. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to think bad stuff about Wyatt. I liked him. I care that he’s dead, and if Dan didn’t just run out on us, 1 care that something’s happened to him, too. But I’ll be damned if I know what to do about any of it.”

If, despite their suspicions, the anarchs still cared about Wyatt, then they were indeed his one hope for revenge. Malagigi tried to walk into the room.

Suddenly going numb, his leg gave way beneath him, dumping him on the floor. Though he was now sprawled in the doorway, the three Kindred talked on, oblivious to his presence. In the gloom, he was too small for them to notice.

He tried to drag himself to his feet, but discovered that he lacked the strength. His thoughts and memories were crumbling into confusion again. Black spots swam at the corners of his vision, and he could feel death sucking at him like a whirlpool, relentlessly striving to pull him down.

It mustn’t end this way! He had to fulfill his master’s last request, and that meant that somehow, he had to fend off annihilation for at least a few more minutes. He had to replenish his strength, and he could only think of one even remotely possible means of doing so.

He tried to chitter to attract the anarchs’ attention, but

found that pain and weakness had clogged his throat. And thus he had no recourse but to crawl, leaving a trail of vitae like the track of a snail.

He blacked out twice on his way across the waiting room, terrified each time that he’d never wake up. But he did, and finally he made it to Laurie’s foot. Clutching at her sneaker, he hauled his upper body high enough to bite her on the ankle.

As soon as his fangs pricked her, she squealed and kicked. The sudden motion hurled him two feet away. He slammed down on his back and lay inert, now too feeble to stir at all.

The vampires approached and knelt around him, peering down. “Damn,” said Felipe, curiosity and loathing mingled in his voice, “what
is
it?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmy Ray answered, “but it’s sure nasty-looking, and torn to shit to boot.”

Gingerly, as though afraid Malagigi might try to bite her again, Laurie nudged him with her fingertips. The homunculus’ head lolled in her direction, and she gasped. “It has
Wyatt’s
face!” she exclaimed.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Jimmy Ray.

“Just look at it,” she said. “It must have been his what-do-you-call'it, his
familiar.
And I think it needs vitae, just like we do.”

Felipe shrugged. “T. S. for it.”

“No,” said Laurie, “Wyatt.wouldn’t want us to let it die.” She extended her fangs and ripped a gash in the heel of her hand. Aromatic vampire blood welled out.

“I know that you loved Wyatt,” said Felipe, “but what you’re about to do is just plain nuts. You don’t know where that creature has been or what kind of magic cooties it’s carrying.” Ignoring him, she picked up Malagigi and pressed his face against her self-inflicted wound. Her companions cringed in disgust.

At first the homunculus was too weak even to suck the flowing blood, but a little trickled into his mouth anyway. And gradually, new strength began to seep into his tortured limbs.

It wasn’t like the vitality he’d derived from Wyatt’s vitae, nor was it accompanied by any sense of well-being. His flesh felt fiery hot, vibrant, as if he were shaking violently on the inside. Yet despite its toxic qualities, Laurie’s blood was far more akin to his master’s vitae than that of the rat had been. He was able to keep it down, and, like an overdose of amphetamines, it was giving him a final burst of energy before it killed him.

When he’d gulped his fill, he looked up at his benefactress, and a sudden wave of panic swept over him. Now that he was here, how was he supposed to communicate with her? For a moment he had no idea at all.

Then he recalled that Wyatt had said that everything he’d ever learned had left an echo somewhere in Malagigi’s brain. The homunculus just had to tap into it. He concentrated, straining, and after a few seconds the answer came to him.

Gazing beseechingly at Laurie, Malagigi pointed at the floor. She got the idea and set him down. Felipe and Jimmy Ray shifted their feet, evidently poising themselves to stamp on him if he did anything they didn’t like.

Malagigi stuck his finger into one of the open wounds on his chest. Ignoring the resultant jab of pain, he crouched and began to scrawl crude block capital letters on the floor with his own blood.

He prayed that he was writing coherently. He’d never tried before. It had never occurred to him that he could. When he finished and Laurie read, “Dan kill,” he felt a swell of joy.

“Somebody killed Dan?” asked Felipe, frowning. The homunculus impatiently shook his head.

“Dan killed Wyatt?” asked Laurie. Malagigi nodded violently, and the petite brown-haired vampire looked stricken. “My God! He was our
friend!
Why would he do that?”

Even if the homunculus had been capable of explaining, a sudden paroxysm of agony alerted him that he didn’t have time. When the pain eased, he dipped his finger in his own blood once again and then wrote ten numbers.

As soon as he’d inscribed the final character, he collapsed beside his handiwork. Finally releasing his hold on his little life, he soared into the dark to seek his father.

TWENTY-TWO: MIS G IV
INGS

Care

Sat on his faded cheek.

— John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Sebastian Durrell peered up and down the length of nondescript concrete-block corridor and then, seeing no one, reached for the invisible door. As usual, he hesitated just before he touched it.

On occasion, he’d tried to find some humor in the security arrangements of his secret partner, Timothy Baxter. Durrell and his clanmates had a complex tunnel system underlying the amusement park, to which only they and their kine servants were granted access. Concealed in the middle of that was a Tremere communal haven, the chantry in which he was presently standing. And beneath
that
was the hidden lair of whose existence only he and its occupant were aware, a warren created in an instant by sorceries that Durrell didn’t pretend to understand. Secrets nested in secrets like a chain of Chinese boxes. It ought to have seemed absurd, a droll comment on the paranoia generated by the Kindred way of life.

Yet try as he might, Durrell couldn’t summon even a flicker of amusement. The shadows in the catacombs he was about to enter were too black even for a vampire’s liking, the dank air too vibrant with spells and forces that set even a Tremere’s teeth on edge, particularly now that the plan seemed to be going awry. And yet, for that very reason, he didn’t feel he could put his visit off. Grimacing, he pressed his palm against the surface before him.

What appeared to be and felt like a cold, solid, off-white wall crawled under his hand like the hide of a horse. According to Timothy, the entrance was
tasting
him and so confirming his identity. A thin outline of green light shone around the door, and the Tremere elder pushed it open.

Beyond the threshold, a splintery, rickety wooden staircase descended into a different world: a maze of tunnels so roughly excavated that they looked almost natural, smelling of loam and illuminated by a sourceless viridian phosphorescence. Somewhere in the midst of it water dripped, the echoing
plink
a reminder that the warren shouldn’t exist. The water table was too high in the Florida peninsula for anyone to carve out passages underground unless he had access to modern construction techniques or the ancient secrets of the Nosferatu. Durrell occasionally wondered if the place existed in a dream, or on another level of reality. It felt like it.

He hurried down the steps and onward. After ten strides his patent-leather loafers were encrusted with muck. A small creature, something he couldn’t see clearly despite his inhumanly keen vision, scuttled out of his path and squirmed through a narrow crevice in the wall.

After Durrell had made the first couple of turns, the nagging suspicion that he’d lost his way began to plague him. He firmly reminded himself that he had felt that way every time he ventured down here, and it had never turned out to be so.

The dripping sound grew louder, and now he could tell that the source was ahead of him. Suddenly he caught the rich scent of human vitae, and, though he’d fed only last night, for a moment he quivered and his fangs ached in their sockets. Perhaps he wasn’t hearing falling
water
after all.

Rounding a final corner, he beheld the cavernous chamber which, as near as he could make out, was the only part of the complex in which Timothy spent any time. Why the Methuselah had bothered to create the rest of it was only one of the many mysteries that surrounded him. In the exact center of the room floated the pudgy, sunburned corpse of a tourist clad in a garish Hawaiian shirt, tan Dockers, brown sandals and black socks, dangling head-down like a slaughtered hog. A few last drops of vitae were seeping from the gash in his throat. No doubt Timothy had seized the kine in the theme park. The manner in which he departed and returned to his catacombs without seeming to traverse the tunnel system above was also an enigma to Durrell.

Timothy was kneeling beside the drying pool of gore beneath his victim. His nude, muscular form looked as inhumanly perfect as ever, with golden skin utterly unlike the alabaster pallor of the average Kindred. Though ordinarily little affected by the glamors spun by his fellow vampires, Durrell had had to learn not to gaze directly at the Methuselah for too long, lest he start to tremble with adoration and terror

Timothy flowed to his feet. “A waste of time,” he grumbled, his bass voice musical despite his irritation.

“What was?” Durrell asked.

“The divination,” Timothy said. He nodded at the pool of blood, and Durrell realized he’d been using it to scry. “I didn’t learn anything that 1 really wanted to know.” He waved his hand and, behind him, both the vitae and the levitated cadaver vanished in a burst of azure flame. The ancient vampire was standing less than a yard away from the blast, but it didn’t appear to bother him, even though

Durrell could feel the flare of heat all the way across the chamber.

Durrell took a deep breath to steady himself. “The Conclave didn’t work out,” he said, walking nearer. “It wound up confirming Sinclair’s right to serve as Phillips’ regent, at least for the moment.”