On a Darkling Plain (12 page)

Judy couldn’t bear to listen passively any longer. She grabbed the phone away from Lazio. Startled, recoiling involuntarily, the dresser gaped at her. Perhaps she’d used a bit of her supernatural strength or speed without even realizing it.

“Are you wounded?” demanded the former slave, speaking into the phone.

“Not badly,” Elliott replied. “Now that I’ve fed, I’ll be all right. But poor Rosalita—”

“Forget Rosalita!” Judy snapped, wishing that they were talking face to face. If she could have made eye contact, she might have been able to use a touch of her power to

Dominate to jolt him out of his funk. “There’s nothing you can do for her now. Did anyone follow you out of town?”

“I don’t think so.”

Judy scowled. “Did you check?”

“Yes.”

“Then hang up the phone and keep moving,” she said. “Switch cars if you can manage it. Watch the time; remember you have to find a safe refuge before the sun comes up. Catch a flight home tomorrow night. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it! Now!”

After a moment of silence, Elliott broke the connection. Judy handed the phone back to Lazio. The mortal’s face twisted as if he were trying not to cry. “Rosalita,” he said sadly. “Roger loved her like a daughter. Before he got sick, news of her death would have broken his heart. Now, I don’t suppose he’d even care.”

Judy scowled. She was dismayed by the present turn of events herself, but that was no reason to blubber about it. The proper Brujah reaction was to get angry. She began to pace around the room, fighting the urge to pick up some piece of bric-a-brac and smash it, or punch a hole in the wall. “Does Roger have any Nosferatu enemies?” she asked. Lazio shook his head. “None that 1 can think of.”

“I don’t know of anybody either.” And it was entirely possible that the Sewer Rats who’d waylaid Elliott had been acting on behalf of a non-Nosferatu master. Judy and her allies were no closer to unmasking their phantom nemesis than they’d been before. “Shit!” she snarled. “Shit, shit, shit!” She kicked the leg of a small, round, marble-topped table, snapping it. Toppling, the table spilled a green jade statuette of some Chinese goddess onto the Persian rug. Judy felt disappointed that the carving hadn’t broken, but managed to refrain from stamping and grinding it under her steel-toed boots.

Rounding on Lazio, she said, “Gunter and I both warned everyone that going after the art was a bad idea.”

Lazio sighed. “The Toreador had no choice but to go. You know that.”

“What I know,” she said, “is that Elliott can’t cut it as a leader or a fighter anymore. You heard him just now. He sounded like he was in shock.”

Lazio stared at her reproachfully. “How can you say that, after all that he’s accomplished in the past? I’m told that he once saved your life.”

Judy felt a pang of guilt. It was a weak, useless,
human
emotion, unworthy of a Brujah, and, scowling, she tried unsuccessfully to quash it. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said, resuming her pacing. “He was a good man once. He still is, in a way, and I still consider him my friend. But something inside him died along with Mary.” Remembering the mysterious tragedy, she sighed. “Did you guys ever find out any more about why it happened?”

“Not really,” Lazio said. “We tried for years, but considering that Elliott killed the murderers as soon as he caught them, and then we couldn’t identify them, we really didn’t have any leads. There were indications that the men belonged to the Society of Leopold.” The Society was a fanatical clandestine organization cognizant of the existence of vampires and dedicated to their extermination. “But we have no idea how they discovered Mary’s true nature, or why, out of all the Kindred in Sarasota, they chose to target her.

“You know,” Lazio continued, “Roger never lost faith in Elliott, and I hope you won’t either. In a crisis like the one we’re facing, the Toreador need a captain of their own blood to follow, and I can’t imagine Sky filling the bill. He’s actually brave and resourceful, but the way he flounces around, people don’t take him seriously.”

“You have a point,” Judy conceded, straightening her Union soldier’s cap. “And I don’t
want
to see Elliott pushed to the sidelines. But I’m not going to let him screw up the war effort, either. We’ll have to see what kind of shape he’s in when he gets back into town.”

Lazio’s phone buzzed. He lifted it to his ear and said, “Phillips residence.” After a moment, he looked at Judy. “It’s for you.”

The Brujah frowned in puzzlement. She’d stopped in at the prince’s haven on impulse, without telling anyone where she was going; no one should have known where to call her. She held out her slender, delicate-looking hand, and Lazio put the phone in it. Raising the instrument to her mouth, she grunted, “Yeah?”

“Good evening,” said the musical contralto voice on the other end of the line.

Judy felt a thrill sing down her nerves. Some quality in the speaker’s tone was both captivating and intimidating. The Brujah had spent enough time around Toreador and Ventrue, many of whom possessed uncanny powers of personal magnetism, to recognize that she was falling under the sway of some Kindred’s supernatural charisma. But such an ability, like her own talent for coercion, didn’t normally work when the target couldn’t see the face of the vampire employing it.

She struggled to shake off the fascination she was feeling, and was partially successful. “Who is this?” she demanded.

“A friend,” the other woman said.

“That doesn’t cut it,” Judy said, wishing that she had the means in place to trace the call. But of course she and her allies had had no way of knowing that they might need to do such a thing. Even the Kindred, for whom a moderate level of paranoia was not a sign of derangement but of sound survival instincts, couldn’t be prepared for every contingency.

“My identity isn’t important,” the other vampire said. “I’m calling to guide you to four of your enemies. They’re in Sarasota now, prowling the streets around the Tropical Gardens.”

“Why?” Judy asked.

“They’re scouting. And if they happen to find one of your people alone, they’ll kill him. They’ll be leaving your territory soon, to beat the dawn, but if you hurry you can catch them.”

“Who
are
these bastards?” Judy asked. “Why are they out to get us?”

The other vampire hung up.

Frustrated but excited as well, Judy tossed the phone onto the couch. “Our first break,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Lazio asked.

“We’ve got an anonymous informant, maybe a traitor in the enemy camp who just gave us a present. She told me that we can catch some of the bad guys near the Tropical Gardens.”

“What if she isn’t really a friend?” Lazio asked, his forehead creased with worry. “What if she’s leading you into another trap, no different from the ones the enemy set for the Toreador?”

It might have been the lingering influence of the unknown vampire’s charisma, but Judy doubted that she’d been gulled; in any case, she was too eager to come to grips with the foe to worry about the possibility. “If it’s a setup, we’ll just have to turn the tables on them,” she said. “I’ll round up some of my people on my way to the party. You see who you can scare up on the phone.”

Too impatient to discuss the matter further, she wheeled and marched away, her pace accelerating with every stride. By the time she reached the foyer, she was running.

SEVENtTHE RESCUE

People must help one another; it is nature’s law.

— Jean de La Fontaine, “L’Ane et le Chien”

The Sarasota Tropical Gardens, a ten-acre artificial jungle housing lemurs, alligators, otters, monkeys, wallabies and numerous other animals, was a tourist attraction, and the businesses on the other side of Bayshore Road catered to vacationers and day-trippers as well. The four vampires from out of town sauntered past T-shirt shops, fast-food franchises, bars and souvenir stands, all silent and dark in the final hours before dawn.

Dan had been stalking the strangers since just after midnight, hanging about half a block back. At first it had been a nerve-wracking experience, but gradually he’d concluded that, as long as he was careful, they wouldn’t spot him. One of the new talents that Melpomene’s vitae had instilled in him would see to that. When he stood motionless in shadow or behind some piece of cover, no matter how inadequate it seemed, he became virtually invisible.

The Methuselah’s magic had also made his muscles even stronger than before, as well as intermittently sharpening his senses. He could smell the stale odors of cooking grease, smoke and beer wafting from the establishments along the strip; the sweet perfume of flowers and the musky scent of animals drifting from the Gardens across the street; the ozone tang of the storm brewing overhead. At certain moments, when his worn, faded jeans and soft denim work shirt seemed to chafe unbearably, his newly heightened perception became a nuisance. He hoped that he’d learn to filter out the unwanted side effects in time.

To his annoyance, despite his enhanced hearing, he couldn’t quite make out what the other Kindred were murmuring to each other, so he still had no idea what they were doing wandering around town. He suspected that they were on a scouting mission, not that it mattered. What was important was that Melpomene had supposedly arranged for some of Prince Roger’s flunkies to attack them. When they did, Dan was going to jump into the fray and save the intruders’ butts.

He just hoped that he was up to the job. Melpomene’s blood had made him more powerful than before, but he knew damn well that he still wasn’t Supervamp. The ancient undead had given him an ace in the hole to employ in this particular situation, but he had no way of knowing how well it was going to work. Like everything else about his new boss, he was taking it on faith..

Engines rumbled in the night. After a moment, Dan could tell that they were drawing nearer.

He assumed that the noise was the prince’s troops approaching. Until recently, Sarasota had been a hedonistic artists’ colony, beach resort and college town, where people partied through the night. But in the days since the mysterious killer the news media were calling Dracula had begun his reign of terror, the kine had begun cowering in their homes. After twelve, the dark streets were empty except for the undead.

Still, Dan didn’t
know
that Roger’s goons were on their way. He’d better hold off using Melpomene’s gift until he was sure. Once the stuff was gone, it was gone for good.

One of the foreign vampires, whom Dan had tentatively identified as the leader, was a tall, teenage-looking guy with bleached white eyebrows, mohawk and goatee. He was wearing white leather gloves with steel studs on the back, a voluminous white leather overcoat with an intricate pattern of rivets on the back and shoulders, a torn white tank top, camo'patterned parachute pants, and high-top sneakers. He spoke to his companions, and all four of them retreated into the narrow gap separating two of the shops.

Dan frowned. He hoped that the strangers wouldn’t conceal themselves so well that the prince’s searchers would fail to spot them. If that happened, Melpomene’s scheme would fall apart. Dan guessed that, at that point, his only option would be simply to reveal himself to the intruders and try to win their trust; he knew from long and bitter experience just how well
that
ploy was likely to work.

Wearily, he wondered for the millionth time just why his fellow Kindred disliked him so. He’d always been popular when he was a kid, had always been in the thick of things, playing varsity football and basketball, organizing a school computer club, a welcome guest at everybody’s parties. His fellow soldiers had liked him, too. After his transformation, the universal loathing with which even other Caitiff regarded him had come as almost as much of a shock as the Hunger itself.

Wind gusted, lightning flared, thunder boomed; the storm was drawing closer. An instant later, five motorcycles and a Mustang convertible turned onto Bayshore. Dan imagined that the bikers at least were Brujah; many of Judith Morgan’s progeny shared her enthusiasm for Harleys. The headlights momentarily dazzled his newly sensitive eyes.

As he’d feared, for a moment it looked as if Prince Roger’s search party would speed right past the strangers’ hiding place. But then the driver of the Mustang blew a blast on his horn, and everyone braked sharply. The convertible’s tires squealed, and the bikes spun in tight arcs as their riders turned them around.

Dan took the tarnished silver vial Melpomene had given him out of his pocket, hastily unscrewed the cap and tossed the contents down his throat.

The Methuselah had told him the liquid was giants’ blood, the vitae of actual jack-and-the-Beanstalk-style ogres vvho’d walked the earth at the dawn of history. He couldn’t help doubting that such creatures had ever existed, even though his new patron swore that she’d seen them with her own eyes. At any rate, whatever the liquid was, he’d been rather hoping it would give him a flash of ecstasy comparable to what he’d experienced when drinking Melpomene’s blood.

It didn’t. The elixir tasted so bitter that he nearly retched it back up. An instant later, a burst of agony racked his stomach. As his knees buckled, sprawling him on the sidewalk, he wondered if Melpomene had poisoned him, betraying him for some mad, inscrutable reason. She
had
warned him that she was neither as kindly nor as sane as she appeared.

Up ahead, Judy Morgan herself, dressed provocatively as usual in her Civil War cap, a skimpy halter, skintight jeans, and boots, pulled a machine pistol from her saddlebag and gunned her Harley toward the narrow space into which the strangers had disappeared. The other bikers readied their own weapons and followed her, of necessity going single file. The convertible shot forward, its tires squealing; no doubt the driver intended to circle the block.

The cramping in Dan’s gut eased, though a foul aftertaste lingered in his mouth. Heat tingled through his muscles and he imagined that he could feel his body swelling larger. Suddenly he was so full of energy that the thought of remaining still for another second was utterly intolerable. He surged to his feet, then bounded lightly onto the roof of the ice-cream shop beside which he’d been hiding.