On a Darkling Plain (39 page)

After one terrible moment, when nothing happened and he thought that his shapeshifting power had failed him, his nails grew into curved, razor-sharp claws which punched through the fingers of his gloves. Using every bit of his inhuman might, he clutched at the pavement again. His talons ripped into the asphalt like the spikes, on a mountaineer’s boots, holding him in place.

He yanked at his mask, which was fluttering madly in the wind, but couldn’t get the eye holes back in their proper positions. After a moment, more concerned about seeing what was happening than guarding himself from the light, he tore off the hood.

Hot pain flared across his forehead, cheeks and nose. Noting that Judy had stopped screaming, he looked around for her, then snarled with rage at what he saw.

The wind had pressed the Brujah against a Dumpster. Obviously she hadn’t been able to anchor herself as he had, and the gale had hurled her through some of the walls of flame. Now she lay motionless, burning, her lithe, lovely, whip-scarred body already blackened and shrivelled beyond recognition. Angus had no doubt that she’d died the true death.

His fangs bared, still using his claws to resist the tempest, he began to crawl toward Dracula. The top of his head felt sizzling hot, and he wondered if his hair was about to ignite.

The wind died abruptly. Perhaps Dracula had realized that it wasn’t going to keep him away from her, and had turned it off to create some other effect. Hoping to deny her sufficient time to do so, he leaped up and ran at her.

The emerald ring glowed, and then the world blazed white with glare. Only Angus’ dark glasses kept him from being completely blinded. Burning pain stabbed across every inch of his body, as if his clothing had become transparent.

He thought he understood what was happening. Dracula’s magic was collecting sunlight and focusing it on him like a magnifying glass. It was a good trick, but, staggering onward, he promised himself that it wasn’t going to be good enough.

Blisters swelled and burst on his face and hands, releasing blood that boiled away to steam. His skin blackened, crackled and flaked off. But now Dracula was only ten feet away. Grateful that she apparently couldn’t maintain this particular spell and retreat at the same time, he stretched out his arm to grab her. And then all the strength went out of his legs.

Angus collapsed. Sprawled on his belly, he struggled to drag himself forward, only to discover that suddenly his arms wouldn’t obey him either. Dracula tittered, a giddy sound that made him think she’d believed he was going to reach her. He wished she’d been right.

Something popped with a noise like a balloon breaking. Dracula gasped and clutched at her shoulder. The dazzling glare surrounding Angus died abruptly, and he saw that someone had shot her with a tranquilizer dart.

Lazio, of course. Because he’d been slow getting out of the Cadillac, Dracula’s first spell hadn’t targeted and disabled his rifle. And now Angus and Judy had detained the fleeing mage long enough for the kine to catch up and nail her.

Dracula swayed. The emerald in her ring flickered feebly for a moment, but no new miracle ensued as a result. Evidently the drugged dart had already muddled her sufficiently to keep her from using any more magic-

The cessation of her last devastating spell, and the sight of her helpless at last, lent Angus a final surge of strength to rear up and plunge his claws into her hip. Yanking her to the ground, he bit her in the throat and began to feed. Lost in the bliss of taking the nourishment he so desperately needed, he didn’t realize that Lazio had come up behind him until the mortal threw a coat over his smoldering head.

War, war is still the cry. “War even to the knife!”

— Lord Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”

When Elliott awoke, a dark figure was standing over him. In the blink of an eye he bolted upright and grabbed it by the throat, and then realized it was Lazio. Startled, probably frightened, the mortal quailed.

The Toreador felt the pulse beating in Lazio’s warm flesh. It had been three days since Elliott had fed, and the Beast murmured in the depths of his mind, telling him to rip the human open and drink his fill. Ignoring the impulse, he hastily released the dresser. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was having a nightmare.” It had been his usual one about Mary’s death, but he didn’t see any need to say so. Probably Lazio could guess as much anyway. “And I didn’t remember where 1 was.” He’d moved into one of the lavishly appointed guest rooms in Roger’s mansion for the duration of the crisis. After years of keeping to his own dark, silent, dusty home, it was disorienting to awaken anywhere else.

“That’s all right,” said Lazio, straightening his tie and shirt. His voice was an odd mixture of excitement and sadness. “I shouldn’t have come into your room uninvited.

But I have news, and I didn’t want to wait to tell you. We caught Dracula!”

Elliott felt a thrill of elation, alloyed by a certain wariness. “But I gather there’s bad news, as well.”

Lazio sighed. “Yes. Dracula’s a mage, and she destroyed Judy before we got her.”

The actor stared at him in horror. “Oh, God, no. Not Judy, too. I should have been there! I should have insisted on coming along!”

“It wasn’t your part of the fight,” Lazio replied. “Even Judy and the Justicar could barely function in the daylight. There wouldn’t have been anything you could have done, except possibly lose your own life, too.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” said Lazio firmly. “I was there.”

Elliott decided that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Looking away, he said, “All right. I’m sure that Gunter, Angus and the others want to confer with me as soon as possible. Just give me one moment alone and then HI be down.”

Frowning, the human cocked his head. “You’ll be all right?”

“Yes,” said Elliott resisting the impulse to snap at him. “Just go. Please.” Eyes narrowed, Lazio studied him for another moment, then withdrew.

Elliott’s face twisted, and red tears ran down his cheeks. He wanted to throw himself back down on the ornately carved bed, pull the covers over his head and hide from the world, sobbing his heart out like some anguished mortal child.

Judy was gone. Since Mary’s death, he’d shut the Brujah out, just as he had Sky; now he’d never get a chance to make it up to her, either, to show her just how much he’d treasured her friendship. For a moment his grief and regret were almost insupportable. Somehow emblematic of all his other guilts and sorrows, they started to drag him down into his familiar despair.

But then a flash of realism, of disgust and sheer boredom with the old, crippled Elliott obsessively wallowing in his personal tragedies, cut through his self-flagellation. Judy’s death was a calamity. He was certain that he’d never stop missing her, not even if he survived until the end of the world. But it
wasn’t
his fault, and the last thing she would have wanted was for him to sit around crying about it. She’d want him to carry on the fight.

Rising, he strode into the bathroom and washed, then dressed and combed his hair with his customary care. Though he’d told Lazio he’d hurry, he was sure that the evening’s business could wait another few minutes. Performer that he was, he understood that the appearance of haste in a leader could arouse his subordinates’ anxieties. And in the wake of Judy’s demise, no doubt that was the last thing any of his fellow Kindred needed.

When he was certain he looked his best, he sauntered downstairs, sighing when one of Roger’s shrieks resounded through the house. As he’d expected, he found Lazio, Gunter, Angus and the mortal prisoner in one of the cells at the rear of the house.

The huge Gangrel’s skin was red and peeling, presumably not quite healed from its exposure to the sun. Elliott noticed with fleeting amusement that, at the moment, the Justicar and the burly, perpetually ruddy-faced Gunter looked a bit alike. Nude, trembling, eyes wide, seemingly unharmed except for a telltale pastiness and scabby puncture wounds on her throat and hip, Dracula lay strapped down on an operating table with an IV drip in her arm.

“Allow me to introduce the terror of Sarasota,” Angus said. He gave the prisoner a leer, lengthening his fangs slightly. She flinched.

“Thank you for catching her,” Elliott said. “I’m glad that you two came through all right.” He looked at Lazio. “And I’m sorry I didn’t say so before.”

The mortal smiled. “That’s all right.”

Angus raised his raw, flaking, hairy hand. He’d jammed an emerald ring halfway down his little finger, which appeared to be as far as it would go. “She used this bauble to work her sorcery.” He gave Dracula another malevolent smile. “She doesn’t seem very magical without it, do you, little one? At least not with my special recipe flowing into your veins.” He rooted in his pocket and produced a steel apparatus resembling an oversized staple-puller with two long, white, pointed teeth for the upper prongs, “She must have used this to simulate a vampire bite; I wouldn’t be surprised if the points are genuine Kindred fangs. And I imagine she employed a spell to evaporate the missing blood.”

“How clever,” Gunter boomed jovially. “And now let’s slice some answers out of her.’*

“Exactly what I had in mind,” said Angus. The nails on his right hand lengthened and thickened into pointed claws. Dracula jerked helplessly in her restraints.

As a general rule Elliott disliked the use of torture. In the case of Judy’s killer it wouldn’t particularly bother him, but he had a hunch that it might actually be more efficient to conduct the interrogation by other means. He walked to the operating table and gazed down at the helpless mortal. “You see how it is,” he said. “What we have in store for you.” Dracula made a visible effort to pull herself together. Though still trembling, she managed to hold his gaze. “It won’t work,” she said with the slightest quaver in her voice. “I’m a mage, disciplined in mind and body. Neither torture nor drugs can break me.”

Gunter chuckled. “You have no idea what a mind
is,
or how fragile the cramped little prison you call sanity is. But I’d enjoy showing you.”

“We
can
break you,” Elliott said, beginning to draw on his charismatic powers, making himself appear as intimidating as possible. Nearly as susceptible to the effect as Dracula, Lazio caught his breath. “If all else fails, by compelling you to drink our blood. No sorcerer’s trick will protect you from that. Three nights, three swallows, and you become a helpless slave for the rest of your life.”

Veins of orange, the color of fear, writhed through Dracula’s aura, a cloud of light flecked with the countless sparks characteristic of magic use. But she still managed to look Elliott in the face. “Maybe you don’t have three nights. Maybe you need to know what I can tell you right now.” “You sound,” said the Toreador, “as if you think you can make a deal.”

“I do,” Dracula replied. “My life and freedom in exchange for answers to your questions.”

Gunter made a spitting sound. Elliott altered the pitch of the psychic vibration he was projecting. He still wanted the prisoner to perceive him as menacing, but trustworthy now as well, a man of honor who’d keep his word once given. He pretended to ponder Dracula’s proposal, then shrugged and said, “All right, it’s a bargain.”

“What?”
Gunter exploded. “That’s ridicu—”

Elliott wheeled and shot him a glare. The flaxen-haired Malkavian lurched back a step and fell silent.

Dracula studied the Toreador for a moment, obviously-trying to judge if he was sincere. Then she said, “How do I know I can trust you?”

“I suppose you don’t,” Elliott answered. “But I’m through dickering with you. Take the deal,
now,
or my friends will go to work on you.”

The mage hesitated, then her mouth tightened with resolution. “Okay. You seem... decent, for a vampire. What do you want to know?”

“May I?” Angus rumbled. Since the Gangrel was presumably a skilled interrogator, Elliott nodded and stepped back, permitting him to take over. The actor would keep scrutinizing Dracula’s aura, monitoring it for any indication that she was lying.

Angus approached the table and rested his massive hand on the edge where the mage could see it. His talons were still very much in evidence. “What’s your real name?” he asked.

“Ellen Dunn,” she said.

“Where’s your chantry?” the Justicar said. Elliott knew very little about mages, but he had heard the term Angus had just used. Supposedly it referred to a coven of sorcerers, often consisting of a teacher and his disciples, perhaps the rough equivalent of a Kindred clan elder and his brood.

Dracula — after weeks of thinking of the murderess by that alias, Elliott continued to do so even after hearing her true name — shook her head. “I don’t have one anymore,” she said. “They kicked me out.”

“What was the point of the murders?” Angus asked.

“I sell my services,” Dracula said. “For money usually, and occult lore when 1 can get it. A vampire 1 know, a guy with wealth to burn and mystical secrets to trade, hired me to make it look like an undead was running amok killing people openly in Sarasota. He warned me that there were real vampires in the city and that I’d need to operate just after dawn to keep out of your way.” She shook her head. “I never dreamed you could jump me in the daylight.”

“We’re full of surprises,’’.said the Gangrel ironically. “Who
is
your client?”

She hesitated for a heartbeat, then said, “Wesley Shue. A Tremere.” Elliott reflected that that made sense; the Warlocks seemed far more likely than other Kindred to have ties to mortal sorcerers. “He lives in Calgary.”

Angus glanced around at his associates, who all shrugged. Evidently none of them knew Shue. “Why did he want you to do what you did?” the Justicar said, turning back to Dracula.

“I have no idea,” the captive said. “He didn’t want to tell, and the pay was good enough that I didn’t push him.” “No,” said Lazio, scowling, loathing in his voice, “you just butchered forty-seven people without even understanding what it was for.”

Dracula curled her lip contemptuously. “They were only sleepers, or as your masters call them, kine. A resource for superior beings to use, and use up, as they see fit. Hell, throughout history the Kindred have slaughtered them by the thousands, often just for fun, and never given it a second thought.”