On a Darkling Plain (47 page)

Tithonys snapped at him, too, shredding Elliott’s shirt and the pale throat and shoulder beneath. At the same time his hands clutched at the Toreador’s body, searing and dissolving whatever flesh they touched. Abruptly he bulled Elliott backward. Feeling one of the crenellations slam into his back, the maddened actor realized dimly that his opponent was about to throw him off the roof. He struggled again to break the Methuselah’s grip, but to no avail.

Then Tithonys fell onto the rooftop, dragging Elliott down with him. Reeking of charred flesh and hair, his hide a patchwork of burn marks, Angus savaged the Methuselah; evidently he’d charged up behind his ancient enemy and tom his legs out from under him.

Elliott and the Justicar ripped at Tithonys for another second and then, with one convulsive, blindingly fast movement, the Methuselah grabbed each of them by the throat. The Toreador struggled frantically, but couldn’t break his opponent’s grip; he could see that Angus wasn’t faring any better. As Tithonys’ fingers ate their way into his flesh, he realized that in less than a minute they were going to burn his head off.

Unable to match the primordial vampire’s strength, Elliott glared at him, exerting his charismatic powers, trying to jolt Tithonys with a spasm of fear, praying that it would startle him into loosening his grip. That didn’t work either.

Dan appeared above the thrashing combatants. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to find the bullets he’d dropped, because the little gun was nowhere in sight. Instead, he had Elliott’s stake, and now, grasping it in both hands, moving in slow motion compared to the other three preternaturally agile Kindred, he swung it over his head.

Elliott felt Tithonys tense, preparing to wrench himself from beneath the attack.
No!
the Toreador thought. Now ignoring both his agony and the prospect of his imminent destruction, he clutched at the Methuselah, struggling to immobilize him.

The stake hurtled down and punched into the center of Tithonys’ chest. Dan’s gargantuan strength buried nearly the entire length of the shaft in the ancient vampire’s body. Elliott suspected that it had nailed its target to the roof.

Tithonys screamed, and his magical mask dissolved. His hands jerked away from Angus’ and Elliott’s ravaged necks. But impossibly, in defiance of everything the Toreador believed he knew about his own undead race, even a piece of wood through the heart didn’t paralyze the Methuselah. Instead, he gripped it and began to pull it out.

Elliott grabbed Tithonys’ arms and strained to wrestle his hands away from the stake. An instant later Dan did the same. Meanwhile, Angus’ lupine jaws ripped at the ancient Kindred’s neck.

Despite all that Elliott and Dan could do, the stake lurched upward, an inch at a time. Then Angus flowed back into the form of a bearded giant with talons and flaming eyes. On one knee, he sank his claws into the sides of Tithonys’ head, then wrenched at it. Already weakened by the wounds the Gangrel had inflicted in wolf form, Tithonys’ neck and spinal column simply couldn’t take the punishment. Showering vitae, his head tore away from his shoulders.

Elliott glimpsed movement overhead and looked upw'ard frantically, fearing some new threat. He beheld a gauzy form resembling Tithonys hanging in the darkness. It was only visible for a second. Then the phantoms summoned by the ritual streaked at it, swarmed over it hissing, cackling, clawing and biting, those who were unable to reach it mauling their fellows to clear a path. The Methuselah’s spirit screamed, and then he, his tormentors and the structure of light his magic had erected all blinked out of sight at once.

“I’ve got a hunch,” said Dan, an icy satisfaction in his voice, “that the son of a bitch won’t come back
this
time.”

Angus and Elliott slumped down on the roof and willed themselves to heal. Because their injuries were of supernatural origin, the process was slow and grueling. The Toreador’s wounds were more agonizing than ever now that he didn’t have the desperate fury of battle to counteract the pain, but his heart was full of the savage joy of vengeance. He wondered vaguely why he hadn’t felt this exhilaration years ago, when he’d butchered the witch hunters. Perhaps, somehow, he’d sensed even then that the mortal fanatics were only pawns.

Even as the vampires’ flesh repaired itself, Tithonys’ perfect body decayed, more rapidly than any Kindred corpse Elliott had ever seen. After a few moments the stake slumped sideways, because there was no material in the Methuselah’s crumbling chest sufficiently solid to hold it upright. Soon nothing remained but a shapeless mound of dust, sifting away in the cool night breeze.

Moving stiffly, his eyes no longer red, Angus retracted his claws. Reaching under the singed and bloody remnants of his beard, he gingerly fingered his neck. Evidently deciding that it had healed sufficiently for speech, he looked at Dan and rasped, “You should’ve told us that you had magic bullets. It might have helped our morale.”

“I didn’t know they were magic,” the Caitiff replied. “I just hoped they were. There are a lot of things I didn’t have time to tell you.”

Angus grinned. “I’ll bet.”

Elliott heard shots in the distance, a reminder that the war wasn’t over even now. He wished he could simply lie on the rooftop and rest, recover, revel in the fact of his revenge, but it was out of the question. He had to tend to his command. His throat raw and aching, partly from his burns and partly from renewed Hunger, his own voice a broken whisper like Angus’, he said, “We should go feed. And then wrap this operation up.”

“I’m not going to help you kill any more Kindred,” Dan said somberly. “I’m sick of it. But I can tell you where Tithonys buried his voodoo doll or whatever it is he used to make Prince Roger crazy. Maybe if you destroy it he’ll get well.”

EPILOGUE?
PARTINGS

Life’s too short for chess.

— Henry James Byron,
Our Boys

The moon and stars shone brightly from a black, cloudless sky. The hissing waves gleamed as they crumbled into foam. Nature was beautiful tonight, more beautiful than Dan could have imagined before Melpomene’s vitae had opened his eyes. Yet he found his gaze drawn, not to the heavens or the Gulf, but to the mortals on the beach: to the round-shouldered, shuffling old man walking a runny-eyed dachshund; the pair of giggling teenagers necking on a blanket; the three big-bellied anglers lumbering toward the end of the fishing pier.

After their victory over the rogue Tremere, the Kindred of Sarasota had forged and planted evidence implicating one of Durrell’s captured ghouls in the Dracula murders. Forcing the unfortunate prisoner to write a confession in the form of a suicide note, they had hanged him in his apartment. Now the local humans were venturing out at night again, and ridiculing anyone who’d dared to suggest that there were

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any such things as vampires. Dan rather wished he had the luxury of sharing their disbelief.

He wondered if Melpomene truly had summoned him here tonight. Shortly after sunset he’d
thought
he sensed a psychic call, but he supposed it could have been his imagination. At any rate, he’d know soon enough. He walked on down the beach, away from the mortals and toward the unfinished condominium and the spot where he and the Methuselah had consummated their bargain.

Her pale figure emerged from the darkness abruptly, as if she’d stepped through a doorway in the air, but he could tell that she was present in body as well as spirit. He could smell the sweet, exotic scent of her flesh, and her long, black hair and gauzy gown stirred with the salty breeze gusting in from the sea.

As usual Dan felt the tug of her supernatural grace and charm, but tonight the sensation was superficial; it didn’t reach into his heart. He was acutely conscious of the cold, hard weight of Wyatt’s little gun weighing down his pocket. After the fight with Tithonys he’d recovered the two remaining magic bullets, but now that the opportunity to use them was at hand, he realized he wasn’t going to do it. Not merely because he knew that, without Elliott and Angus to back him up, his chances of destroying a second Methuselah were pretty close to zip. Angry as he was, he was sick of fighting.

“I suppose you’d like an apology,” Melpomene said softly, “and an explanation.”

He snorted. “For when you Embraced, cursed and abandoned me thirty years ago, or for when you took the disk and left me to die the other night?”

“Both, I suppose,” she replied, “but let’s begin with the latter. It would have taken me several minutes to transport an object as large as you into my presence if, indeed, it could have been managed at all, and during that time my spirit

would have been vulnerable to an enemy’s magic. When I touched your prize, my clairvoyance revealed that Durrell was working for Tithonys, and that my ancient foe was nearby. After that, I was simply too terrified to take the risk. I’m sorry. I can see that you despise me now, and I don’t blame you.” Her lower lip trembled, and a crimson tear slid from her lustrous eye.

She looked so ashamed, so wretched, that Dan felt an urge to forgive her, but the impulse withered in an instant. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “1 mean, I think that even if you
hadn’t
sensed Tithonys’ presence, you still would have left me behind.”

Melpomene sighed, and her face assumed a more genuine expression. She still looked regretful, but composed now as well. “You’re right,” she admitted. “Either I’m not as adept a liar as 1 believed, or you’ve inherited my intuition. I never had any intention of bringing you to me. I was never willing to linger in enemy territory for as long as the operation would take. Besides which, if I
had
summoned you, you would have found yourself in my most secret haven. No one but me will ever enter there.” Out in the water, a fish jumped.

Dan shook his head. “You’re a real piece of work,
Mom.”
Melpomene’s lovely mouth twisted. “Have you judged me, then? Have you ever considered how you’d answer if someone presumed to do the same to you? How would you justify yourself if an unsympathetic soul reproached you for all the mortal lives you’ve taken?”

“1 wouldn’t,” the younger vampire replied. “Sometimes 1 can’t help killing, because, thanks to you, I need blood to survive. But I don’t try to con myself into believing that it isn’t wrong.”

“But it
isn’t,”
Melpomene said earnestly. “You’re free to use humans as you see fit, because you’re more
real
than they are. Your immortality makes you so. Mortals are born, live and die so quickly that they can hardly be considered to exist at all. But creatures like you
endure.”

“Oh, I get it,” he said dryly. “And since you Methuselahs are so much older than the average Kindred,
we’re
not real compared to
you.
You’re as free to jerk us around as we are to mistreat the kine.”

“Ultimately,” Melpomene replied, the wind spilling a lock of her raven hair across her alabaster brow, “in a certain sense, yes, that
is
what I mean. It’s not that I’m cruel, or incapable of compassion, or that I think anyone should be. You know that 1 cherish my Toreador. But not because they’re the same manner of being as myself. My
peers
are the ocean, the mountains and the first-growth forests, the great tales, songs and paintings that live forever. Manifestly, my desires, my happiness, my survival, are more important than those of more ephemeral creatures.” She peered at Dan appraisingly, then sighed once more. “You just can’t comprehend, can you?”

“No. I guess the problem is that I feel pretty damn real to myself. Maybe you should check back with me when I turn five thousand.”

“I’d like to,” she said.

“Come again?”

“If I care for Roger Phillips and Elliott Sinclair,” Melpomene said, “think how much more I must love you, who are not merely my descendant but my progeny, the only childe I’ve made in hundreds of years. With the threat of Tithonys hanging over my head, I had no choice but to use you harshly. But now I’ve decided to make it up to you. Abide with me, Dan. Let me share my secrets with you. Most Kindred never
become
real. They never fathom the deepest mysteries of the world or of their own natures either, and in consequence, eventually, they perish. But
you
can live forever.”

“I guess it gets lonely, being the only honest-to-God person in a world of mayflies.”

“It does indeed,” Melpomene said.

“Well, get used to the feeling,” Dan said coldly, “just like I had to. I
would
like to learn what you have to teach, but how could I ever trust you? I’d never be anything more to you than a tool, a toy, or a pet. You just told me as much yourself.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Hell, if I
did
get to five thousand, I’ll bet you’d tell me that only ten-thousand-year-old vamps are
really
real.”

The ancient Kindred studied his face for a moment and then murmured, “So be it. And if you wished to revenge yourself, know that you’ve grieved me.” Her lips quirked upward in a sad little smile. “Despite your scorn, I’m glad that you’ll part from me possessing the reward you coveted. True friends, and a place of honor in the Camarilla. Prince Roger and his followers dote on you now.”

“I kind of got used to them, too,” Dan said, “but I’m not staying in Sarasota. I’m going to wander for a while and see where I end up. I’ll hit the road tomorrow night.”

“But why?” Melpomene asked, sounding genuinely bewildered.

“For one reason: if I stuck around and got to be Roger’s asshole buddy, it would mean that I took payment for killing Wyatt and Laurie, to help you win your stupid feud. And I don’t want to do that. Now that I don’t have magic B.O. anymore, maybe I can make friends someplace else, the way normal people do.”

“You’re being foolish and quixotic.”

Dan shrugged.

“You must want
some
reward,” Melpomene insisted. “At least let me purge the effects of my tampering from your mind. You want to recover your empathy for the humans, don’t you? I can see from your aura that you do.”