On a Darkling Plain (40 page)

Gunter chuckled. “She’s got you there, mortal.”

“I’d rather not debate the question of our ethical responsibilities to the human race,” Angus said dryly, “fascinating though the discussion might be. We have more immediate concerns.” He looked down at the prisoner. “What else can you tell us about the campaign against the Kindred of Sarasota?”

“Like I said,” Dracula replied, “nothing. I was hired to fake vampire murders, and I did. End of story.” Elliott surmised from the relatively stable patterns in her aura that she was telling the truth.

“Did you also drive our prince mad?” Lazio asked.

“No,” Dracula said. The dresser scowled in frustration. “What did you mean,” Angus asked, “when you said we might not have three nights to break you?”

Dracula swallowed. “It was a bluff,” she admitted, “to convince you to make a deal.” Turning her head, she looked beseechingly at Elliott. “And w
^r
e do have a deal, right? I kept my end.”

The Toreador felt both a surge of gloating cruelty and a pang of shame. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I lied to you. You killed my friend, you threatened this domain, and now you’re going to pay for it. We’ll hand you over to Judy’s progeny to deal with as they see fit.” He glanced around at his allies.

“Shall we continue this discussion in more congenial surroundings?”

For a moment the murderess simply stared at him, too horrified to speak. But as Elliott walked out the door she began to shout, begging him to come back, she had more information to trade, secrets that he desperately needed to hear. The sound of her pleas and curses followed him and his companions down the hall.

Gunter gave Elliott an admiring grin. “After all the years I’ve known you,” the Malkavian said, “I still believed that you meant to let her go.”

Feeling guiltier and less vengeful now, the Toreador shrugged. “I’m an actor. One with — how did you put it?— a bewitching voice. I didn’t want to make a promise I didn’t mean to keep, but I was afraid that, for whatever reason, she
would
resist the torture, and that we
might
need to know what she had to tell us without delay.”

Angus gripped his shoulder. “We’re at war,” he said. “We do what we have to. Don’t agonize over it. Unless I read you wrong, you’re prone to that kind of masochism. I suppose it’s a sign that you still have a fair measure of humanitas, but if a Kindred isn’t careful, over the centuries it can eat him alive.”

Gunter regarded his fellow undead, then clucked'and shook his head. Clearly he had no idea why Elliott felt ashamed. “You did well,” he said to the Toreador, “though I have to admit 1 was looking forward to taking the bitch apart.”

Elliott did his best to mask his distaste. Gunter was Gunter, and it would be pointless, if not counterproductive, to annoy him by reproaching him for his sadism. Besides, having just experienced the same impulse in his own heart, the Toreador would have felt hypocritical decrying it in someone else. “The Brujah will probably let you sit in on the execution. I imagine they’ll do their best to make her suffer.”

The group entered Roger’s study. Elliott sat down behind the desk; the other Kindred settled in two of the leather seats in front of it and Lazio took up his customary position standing by the door. “Are we sure she told us the truth, and that she told us everything?” the mortal asked fretfully.

“I am,” Elliott said. He explained how he knew.

“But it’s not
enough!”
the dresser exclaimed.

“It certainly isn’t everything we’d hoped for,” Angus said. Reaching into his navy pinstriped suit coat, he produced a cigar and a box of matches. Despite the claws which he had, perhaps absentmindedly, retained, he lit the long, black Lonsdale dexterously. “Our chief adversary has done a first-rate job of making it difficult for us to trace him through his agents. I imagine that Wesley Shue is at best only a lieutenant himself, and that when we inquire in Calgary we won’t find him at home. He may well be lurking here in Sarasota, or somewhere nearby. Still, his identity could ultimately provide the key to this entire situation. You never know just how far a clue will take you.”

“Meanwhile,” said Elliott wearily, “the vandalism of the art and the assault on our financial holdings will continue.” And then a square shadow about three inches across shimmered into existence on the desktop.

Startled, the Toreador jerked his hand away from it, then warily touched it. His fingertip went right through the square

— it wasn’t solid — but he felt a vibration that somehow suggested it was in the process of
becoming
solid. He pulled back his hand and sure enough, over the course of the next fifteen seconds, the dark form became fully opaque, with sharply defined edges. Now he could see it was a computer disk.

“What the hell is going on?” Gunter growled. The cellular phone in Lazio’s sweater pocket buzzed.

The dresser pulled it out and said, ’’Hello.” After listening briefly, he frowned and handed the instrument to Angus. “It’s the woman who called before to tell Judy and me that there were enemies prowling around near the Tropical Gardens. She wants to talk to you, Justicar.”

Angus raised the phone to his ear and then, a moment later, gave it back. Elliott heard the drone of a dial tone; the person on the other end had hung up. “She said the password is Scorpio,” the bearded vampire said. “The password to open the disk, I assume.”

“Who
says?” Elliott demanded. “You know who she is, don’t you?”

“She’s on our side,” the Gangrel replied. “Let’s leave it at that.”

“The hell you say!” Gunter snarled. “We want to know what you know, and right now!”

Angus smiled. “You just
think
you want to know. I guarantee that the knowledge would only depress you.”

“Vee haff vays of making you talk,” said Gunter, his voice a caricature of a movie Nazi’s. Leering, fangs extending, he sprang to his feet.

Elliott understood the Malkavian’s frustration. He
hated
the feeling of groping in the dark, of being forced to grapple with phantom opponents and to rely on equally elusive allies in a game whose rules he didn’t understand; the notion that one of his own comrades was withholding information was particularly galling. Yet he trusted Angus: after the way the Gangrel had helped him in Conclave and tracked down Dracula, how could he not? And so, projecting his Toreador charisma, he shouted,
“Stop!"

Gunter jerked around to face him. Angus, in the process of rising, slumped back down onto his chair.

“I don’t like all the mystery, either,” Elliott said tp. Gunter. “But I daresay that each of us has his own closely guarded secrets, and Angus has proved himself a friend.” Gunter glared at his fellow member of the primogen for a moment, then sighed. “All right, I’ll let it go for the moment.”

“Thank you for your forbearance,” said Angus dryly. He turned to Lazio. “I assume you have a computer somewhere in this palace.”

“Of course,” the dresser replied. Though his voice was nearly as steady as usual, Elliott sensed how relieved he was that the Gangrel and the Malkavian hadn’t come to blows. “Several, including one in my own office.” He tucked the phone back in his pocket. “Shall we go there?”

As the four men strode through the house, Elliott realized that he’d never seen Lazio’s office. It turned out to be a spacious, well-lit room furnished with the eclectic mix of antiques and exquisite modern pieces characteristic of the house as a whole. A faint scent of fine cognac hung in the air — evidently the mortal had had a drink in here within the last day or so ■— and framed circus posters from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries adorned the walls.

Lazio sat down at his desk and turned on his computer, which chimed and began to hum. As the screen lit up, he inserted the disk in a slot in the side of the machine, waited for the image on the monitor to change, and then typed
Scorpio.

The screen altered again, to display paragraphs of text. Crouching, peering intently, the three Kindred spent the next half-hour reading over Lazio’s shoulder.

Finally, feeling giddy, his body light and vibrant with elation, Elliott said, “We’ve got it. There are gaps — it’s not entirely clear why Durrell picked on us — but still, everything we truly needed to know is here.”

“Not quite,” Lazio said. “He doesn’t explain how he and his accomplices made Roger sick. He alludes to it, but he doesn’t go into details.”

“Don’t worry,” said Elliott, straightening up and gripping the valet’s shoulder. “We’ll make them tell us.”

“Assuming that the information is legitimate,” Gunter said.

Cocking his head, Elliott regarded the Malkavian quizzically. “You have doubts?”

Gunter shrugged. “If someone wanted to ruin the Kindred of Sarasota, he might try to trick them into taking hostile action against other, innocent members of the Camarilla. Imagine how that could be made to look in Conclave.” “But obviously, my acquaintance on the phone sent this intelligence,” Angus said, “and as I told you, she’s on our side.”

“I agreed that I wouldn’t try to force your secrets out of you,” Gunter replied dourly. “But on the other hand, you can’t expect Elliott and me to make vital decisions on the basis of your unsupported word.”

“But it isn’t unsupported,” Elliott said reasonably. “By every indication, the journal is the real thing. Look at all the corroborative detail. And remember, it was Durrell who tried to drive me mad in the Assembly — Durrell who just happened to be prepared to work the requisite magic without a moment’s delay.” He shoved away a tiny, nagging doubt that the Tremere could be the satanic demigod Sky had described. Possessing charismatic powers himself, he understood how a Kindred could cloak himself in a semblance of terrible glory; his friend, after all, had been more or less insane. “I’m- as paranoid, as worried about making a wrong move, as you are, Gunter, but if this document isn’t proof enough to spur us into action, I despair of ever collecting enough before the enemy ruins us.”

Gunter scowled, pondering, and then slowly smiled. “You’re nowhere near as paranoid as I am,” he said. “I’m a Malkavian. A trained professional. But all right. I admit that, ninety-nine chances out of a hundred, the disk is for real. What are we going to do about it?”

“You can convene another Assembly,” said Lazio, swivelling his chair to face them. “This time,
you
take the offensive and denounce Durrell and his henchmen.”

“We could,” said Elliott, “but that would give them advance warning that we’re on to them, and the chance to flee. Or to mobilize allies like Palmer Guice to subvert the cause of justice.”

Lazio looked up at Angus. “Then you could take the matter directly to the Inner Circle.”

The huge Gangrel shook his head. The gold ring in his ear gleamed against his shaggy brown mane. “As I told Elliott, you don’t want to involve my masters in your problems. They have their own perspectives, their own rivalries and their own agendas. They might do something that would appall you, for reasons you wouldn’t even comprehend.”

Elliott sensed that Angus had spoken honestly, but that he also had another, personal reason for not wanting to appeal to the overlords of the seven clans. Perhaps he didn’t want them to find out about his affiliation with the woman who’d sent the disk. But since the Justicar was advocating Elliott’s own point of view, the Toreador could see no advantage in confronting him about his motives.

“Since we know that Durrell is holed up in Camelot,” the actor said, “I propose a sneak attack.
Afterward,
if anyone challenges us about it, we’ll present the evidence that the Warlock was our foe. Neither Guice nor anyone else will pursue the matter further, not on behalf of a man and a scheme we’ve already destroyed.”

Gunter nodded. “I like it. Revenge
should
be personal.” Elliott silently agreed with him. He genuinely believed that he had sound tactical reasons for the course he’d recommended, but inwardly he couldn’t deny that a yearning for vengeance, for Judy, Sky, Rosalita and all the rest of the fallen, was motivating him as well.

Lazio grimaced. “If you fight, of course I’ll fight with you. A part of me is eager to. But the domain has taken too many losses already. Sneak attack or no, there are bound to be more.”

“I know,” Elliott said somberly. “But if Durrell disappears, any hope of curing Roger may go with him.”

The mortal sighed. “Okay. When you put it like that.” Elliott turned to Angus. “I understand that you came to Sarasota to apprehend Dracula, and you have. You never said that you intended to march into battle against our other enemies —”

The Justicar snorted. “Oh, I’ll tag along, Toreador, for various reasons. A Kindred in my lofty position” — his rough bass voice dripped sarcasm — “might overlook Durrell and Shue plotting against Roger Phillips and his subjects, but I can’t tolerate them deliberately endangering the Masquerade to do it. Shall we go rally the troops? Maybe your friends Cobb, Jones, McNamara and their broods would like to join the party. McNamara could lead our Brujah....”

TWENTY-MIME:
REVELATIONS

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.

— II Timothy 3:13

Dan awoke to the intoxicating scent of mortal vitae, the feel of the warm liquid splashing against his upturned face, and the burning throat and cramped stomach that the Hunger always produced if denied too long. He frantically gulped at the cascade.

Half-delirious with the ecstasy of feeding, he felt the blood begin to wash away a hundred aches and pains. Halfhealed injuries — he dimly remembered being shot, although as yet he couldn’t summon up the details -— resumed the process of regeneration. And then the stream of vitae stopped pouring down.

His eyes flew open. He seemed to be lying on a surface about a yard above the floor, although, strangely, he couldn’t exactly feel the solid length of it pressing against his back. The only light was a sourceless green phosphorescence, illuminating the rough dirt walls of a cave or tunnel. Above him towered a nude man, his skin golden, his musculature and face as perfect as those of a masterpiece of classical sculpture, clasping a chubby, unconscious woman with long brown hair in his arms. She had a wound in her throat, and Dan imagined the golden man effortlessly holding her above his prisoner’s mouth, squeezing out her blood as if she were a wineskin.