On a Darkling Plain (35 page)

He scowled. Evidently his quarry had vanished through a door, either one of the few between the storeroom and the intersection of the hallways or one of the several immediately ahead. But by the time Dan peeked through them all, the Kindred in the vest might well have disappeared for good through a second door or around another bend.

Which meant that it was time for a different approach. Time to put his new perceptual powers to work. Closing his eyes, trying to sharpen his sense of smell through sheer force of will, Dan inhaled deeply.

And after a moment, he smiled. Because the sweet scent of vitae, the faint odor that he’d detected emanating from the other Kindred, still hung in the dry, cool, climate-controlled air.

Its presence proved that Dan’s quarry had come as far as this intersection. Sniffing like a bloodhound, reflecting fleetingly that he probably looked pretty silly, the spy followed the scent down the branching passage.

But after a few moments he faltered, because the trail ended abruptly amid blank walls. Either his quarry had backtracked, which seemed unlikely, or he’d ducked through a
hidden
door.

Crouching, Dan sniffed the smooth gray concrete floor and then the painted off-white walls, trying to find the exact point where the other vampire had exited the hallway, or the spot where he’d pushed some hidden button. He couldn’t: even his nose had its limitations. Staring intently, straining now to sharpen his eyes, he began to give the site a visual inspection.

After a moment, peering at the wall, he began to see countless subtle shadings in what had seemed an even, monochromatic layer of paint. Simultaneously, he became acutely aware of the pockmarks in the surface of the concrete blocks. The bands of grayish white and the tiny cavities combined to form complex patterns, like fractal art generated by a computer.

Viewed properly, the designs were amazingly beautiful. So beautiful, he realized abruptly, that they were hypnotizing him like the murdered painter’s jungle scene. Snarling, Dan squinched his eyes shut and wrenched his head to the side.

He simply stood for a few seconds, trembling, imagining what might appen if some of the enemy discovered him standing paralyzed with fascination. Finally, when some indefinable change inside his head told him that he might be out of danger, he peeked at the wall through slitted eyes. Though he continued to see it more clearly than any mortal could, it was once more just a nondescript, indeed a rather homely, piece of masonry.

Monitoring himself, lest he fall under the same spell again, he kept looking around. And finally he spotted a pale gray shadow, five feet up the left-hand wall.

Or at any rate it looked like a shadow and not anything carved or painted on the concrete block beneath, but there was nothing hanging in front of the surface to cast it. It was a square encased in a circle, with a triangle jutting like an arrowhead from the upper right-hand side of the ring. The combination of the circle and triangle made it resemble the astrological symbol for Mars or maleness, but any Kindred, even a clanless, ostracized one like Dan, would have recognized its true significance. It was the emblem of the Tremere.

Even as he wondered why he hadn’t seen it earlier, it suddenly blinked out of view. He stared at the space it had occupied, and after a moment it wavered back into existence. Obviously non-Tremere weren’t
meant
to see it, but his superhuman vision had finally penetrated the magical screen masking it.

Okay,
thought Dan,
I found something. Now what1
The obvious move was to touch the symbol. He gingerly proceeded to do so and then, startled, snatched his hand back instantly. The shadow felt cold as ice.

Steeling himself to bear the chill, he pressed his palm firmly against the sigil. The section of wall behind it evaporated, revealing another hallway.

Except for considerably dimmer lighting, the new corridor didn’t appear much different from the one in which he was standing. But it smelled different. The musky scent of incense and a noxious odor that he associated with high-school chemistry hung in the air. And it
felt
different. The air seemed to buzz and crawl against his face, as if it were charged with electricity.

Apprehensive but curious as well — it was a rare Kindred who hadn’t wondered about the occult mysteries of the Tremere — he stepped through the opening. It sealed itself behind him like a vampire’s wound healing with unnatural speed. He made sure that there was a shadow-symbol on this side as well, that he had a way out, and then skulked deeper into the Warlock haven, resisting the impulse to take out his automatic. Displaying a gun would destroy whatever forlorn hope he might otherwise have of convincing one of the magi that he belonged here.

Most of the doors along the passage were closed. From behind one came a faint, regular rasp, as if someone were honing a knife, and broken sobbing; a strange, arrhythmic chanting in a language Dan didn’t recognize droned through another.

Feeling horribly exposed in the open corridor, he nevertheless paused to ponder his next move. He couldn’t simply open doors and search rooms at random, not when the Tremere were manifestly all around him. He’d blunder in on somebody; and even if he didn’t, it would take too long. He needed to locate a command center, or the boss’ office. That was the kind of place where the enemy would store the information he needed. Wishing that the Warlocks had seen fit to supply a building directory complete with a you-are-here marker at the entrance, he stalked on.

Eventually the corridor opened out into a broad, gloomy, high-ceilinged chamber lit only by the wavering light of scattered candelabra. Covering one wall was a bookcase crammed with leather-bound volumes, many of which looked and smelled as ancient as the tome he’d found in Wyatt’s haven. The side of the room nearest the shelves was carpeted and furnished with armchairs; it looked like Dan’s notion of a Victorian gentlemen’s club. The other half of the hall was empty, and its bare concrete floor had a drain in the center. He suspected that the magi used the space when they had to draw large pentagrams for group rituals.

It occurred to him that the information he needed might conceivably be written in one of the books in the library, but he was sure that he didn’t have time to examine them all, not even just the modern-looking ones. It seemed smarter to search elsewhere and come back here only as a last resort. He started for one of the doorways in the far wall.

Inside the murky opening something shifted, and cloth rustled. Someone was walking toward him! He hastily stepped away from the doorway and crouched behind a high-backed chair in the shadow of a softly ticking grandfather clock, willing himself to blend with the darkness.

Ponderous footsteps carried the newcomer into the chamber. His heart thudded slowly, like a bass drum beating out the cadence of a funeral march, demonstrating that he wasn’t Kindred. Despite his lethargic tread and heartbeat, his flesh threw off heat like an open fire, as if he were burning up with fever. Even shielded by the armchair, Dan could feel the warmth ten feet away.

Cautiously, he risked a peek around the side of the seat, then stiffened in surprise. Superficially, the hulking figure standing in the middle of the room appeared human, but one close look was enough to dispel the impression. Its skin was too smooth, utterly unlined and unwrinkled, and subtly luminous, as if it were a thin-shelled mannequin with a lamp glowing inside it. Multicolored tattoos, cryptic hieroglyphs like the symbols in Wyatt’s grimoires, mottled its face and the backs of its hands. Lacking both iris and pupil, its eyes shone fiery orange.

Dan supposed that the creature
had
started out human. He wondered fleetingly if it was a magically transformed ghoul, some sort of zombie, or something stranger still. Then it abruptly turned to stare directly at him.

Dan nearly gave a violent start — nearly hurled himself at the creature, or made a grab for his pistol. But another, cooler part of his mind overrode those impulses, told him to remain motionless until he was absolutely certain that the tattooed figure truly did see him.
I’m not here,
he thought, silently chanting the phrase as if it were a mantra.
I’m not here.

And after a moment, the creature tilted its head as if it were puzzled. As if it had glimpsed something strange from the corner of its blazing eye but, when it lurched around, the oddity had disappeared. Shuffling, it turned in a circle, looking over the room, and then trudged out the doorway through which Dan had entered.

The vampire shuddered as the tension bled out of his muscles. Then he rose and skulked on, hoping that the library represented some sort of dividing line in the communal haven. Perhaps the rank-and-file Tremere occupied the rooms he’d just passed, while officer country was in the tunnels still ahead. He had no evidence that such a thing was true, but it seemed like a reasonable hunch. In any case, he had to start snooping
somewhere.

He started down the next hallway, a relatively short one with a black door at the end. For three paces he was all right, and then he felt a sudden jolt of alarm.

Thinking that the creature with the fiery eyes was sneaking up behind him, he spun around. Except for himself, the corridor was empty.

He grimaced. Maybe he was imagining things. God knew, all this cloak-and-dagger crap had scraped his nerves raw. But on the other hand, just because he didn’t see a threat didn’t mean there was nothing there. He hadn’t spotted Wyatt’s homunculus at first, either.

Peering about, still seeing nothing, he hesitated for a moment, then decided that he might as well go on. Now glancing backward even more frequently than he had been, he proceeded toward the dully gleaming ebon door.

Without warning, agony throbbed through his chest and knee. He stumbled as his leg nearly gave way underneath him. The magical wounds the Samedi had given him had healed long ago, but now, evidently, they’d burst open again and were as rotten as before. He could smell the decay, feel the deliquescent flesh slipping away from his bones.

Terrified, he fumbled out his .38. He almost started blasting at shadows, for all that he knew the noise might bring every Tremere in the place down on his head. Instead, struggling against the impulse and the fright that had produced it, he blundered back out of the corridor into the library. Perhaps his tormentor was hiding there.

As he exited the hall, the pain and stink of his injuries vanished. At the same moment, panic loosened its grip on him.

Looking around, he failed to see any sign of an attacker. With shaking hands he tore open his denim work shirt, showering blue plastic buttons on the carpet. His chest was unmarked.

Even a Kindred couldn’t heal that fast. Dan began to suspect that he hadn’t really been injured in the first place. Perhaps someone had woven a kind of illusory magic in the hall that would fill an intruder’s mind with terror, to keep unauthorized personnel from passing through the black door. If so, then that was probably exactly where Dan needed to go. Holstering his gun again — the weapon couldn’t help him against the intangible — he ran,through the doorway, intent on passing through the torture zone as quickly as possible.

Fresh pain ripped through his torso and leg, staggering him. After another stride, a wave of terrible weakness flowed through his muscles and his eyes went dim. He could feel his internal organs swelling and bursting like balloons. He experienced a sensation he’d half-forgotten, the desperate need to gasp in a breath, but he couldn’t make his petrified lungs inflate.

And suddenly he understood what it meant. Thirty years ago, drugged and delirious, his veins and arteries emptied and his heart falling silent, he’d cheated death by becoming a vampire. Now Nature was taking its due. The alternate reality of human science and common sense was rending the immortality out of his body, transforming him into the shriveled, decay-ridden corpse that it had always intended he should be.

No/ he told himself desperately.
I’m
not
dying! What I’m feeling isn’t real!
Somehow holding total, crippling dread at bay, he lurched on, finally reeling against the black door.

He tried to grip the knob, but he couldn’t make his stiff, aching fingers close around it. He stumbled back a step, then hurled himself at the raven panel.

Weak as he felt, perhaps he actually still possessed inhuman strength: when his shoulder hit the door, it flew open and struck the wall with a boom. Now completely off balance, he collapsed across the threshold onto the floor.

After a few seconds his head cleared, and his accustomed strength came flowing back. Profoundly grateful, he sprang to his feet.

Had anyone been alarmed by the sound of the door crashing open? There was no way to know. He’d just have close it again and hope for the best. He hastily proceeded to do so and then turned to examine his surroundings.

He was standing in a living room stuffed with dark, massive furniture, much of it upholstered in red velvet. A white marble statue of a Kindred in medieval clothing touching a kneeling woman’s brow — a tableau that reminded Dan of Jesus healing the sick — stood in one corner, while a companion piece, the same vampire with his fangs buried in a struggling man’s throat, occupied another.

Musty-smelling tapestries, depicting scenes of knightly battles, a stag hunt and courtly love, adorned the walls. Surrounded by such antiques, the big-screen TV and the stereo system were jarringly out of place.

Dan listened. He didn’t hear anyone stirring, so he crept on, into a formal dining room. The places around the long table were set with embroidered linen napkins and a variety of gold and crystal goblets, but no plates or flatware. Beyond that chamber was a hallway, and as he glided into it a faint odor tickled his nose. It was like the smell of old, crumbling paper mixed with exotic spices.

Warily he peeked through the next doorway he came to. On the other side was a spacious office, with a drawerless, glass-topped desk on which sat a PC, a phone, a disk caddie, an open ebony box of Turkish cigarettes, and a jade ashtray. The source of the peculiar odor was in the corner: a table on which lay a child-sized, brown, withered, motionless figure. Someone had stripped the brittle bandages away from its head to reveal the sunken, eyeless, noseless, long-dead countenance beneath.