the shell game

the shell game

part three: the shell game whose name has so long been carved upon my heart; you whose thoughts I know better than the reflection of my own face in the mirror. My greatest fear — which judging by your angry words and deeds of late, seems justified — is that you might mistake my intentions. You must know, though it seems you do not, that I value your messages purely as agents of verisimilitude, that through your words I might believe myself closer to your thoughts and, by extension, to your flesh. You must know, though you hurl your accusations at me, that it is the wolves at the door, not I, baying for more.

They even among your own esteemed lineage, are the ingrates, the feckless purveyors of incaution. You must know that I, above all others, wish to see you come to no harm at the hands of others.

Rest assured that I bear you no ill will despite to the injuries inflicted upon me and mine. Doubtless they arose from misunderstanding, for does not jealousy flourish when kindred hearts are separated? Know that I forgive your every transgression that I hold you still in as high esteem as any cherished friend or dear pet.

I find your city in good order and commend you or having left it so. There is no step I tread, no sight I behold, that does not usher thought of you to my mind. Fear not that you will lack reward for your sojourn among the infidels. Tho good deed goes unpunished, or so the wits are wont to say. For now, however, I languish in your absence, wishing only that I might lay hands upon you.

My dearest Lucius, How anxiously I await your every missive, you I remain your humble and gracious servant, — Vykos Friday, 5 November 1999, 11:24 PM Presidential Suite, Lord Baltimore Inn Baltimore, Maryland "Hmph." Theo handed the letter back to Jan. It was one of several in Vitel's briefcase that seemed to confirm that the deposed prince of Washington was not what he had appeared to be — as if Theo had any doubts after the struggle in the warehouse earlier that week, and after the extensive proof that Jan and Colchester had assembled before that.

"Doesn't look like he and Vykos get along very well — got along very well," Theo said. All the letters were in that same mocking tone of love-letter parody. Only a fool would mistake them for true affection, for anything less than pure spite.

"Not surprising," Jan said. "From all I know about Vykos, it doesn't exactly inspire intimacy."

"True. Apparently with good reason." This was as close as Jan had come to verbally acknowledging that he and his entire clan had been duped, that a pretender had ruled the American capital for thirty years in the name of Clan Ventrue. Of course, none of the Camarilla powers-that-be had sniffed out the truth — in fact, it had been a veritable cotillion of archons and a justicar that had handed power to Vitel in the late '60s. Such was the insular nature of princes and the "organization" of the Camarilla that in a city the sect "controlled" no one had suspected Vitel of treachery beyond the norm.

"How'd Lucinde take it?" Theo asked, unable to resist one more jibe.

Theo chuckled but didn't torment the Ventrue further. Then the archon grew serious once again. "Lines are pulled back as tight as we can make 'em. I think we're ready ... ready as we can be. Sabbat's hot on our heels. They're shifting west and north. Looks like the push, when it comes — I'd guess in the next few nights — will be from the west, just like I told Vitel was happening. Except this time it'll be for real."

Jan was looking over some of Theo's notes, a list of patrols. Several of the names were very recently crossed off. "What happened to these three?" Jan asked.

Jan was studying the list more closely, obviously tallying the numerous crossed-off names, and counting the few defenders that remained. Many of those marked out, Theo knew, had already fallen to the Sabbat. Some had likely seen an opportunity to save their own skins and stolen off into the night. Had a Kindred who didn't come back from patrol hightailed it out of the war zone, or been tagged by the Sabbat? It was impossible to know for sure.

Take Clyde and Maurice, for instance. Last seen near Green Haven. They didn't seem like the deserting type. But who knew if, in a few years, Theo might bump into them walking down the street somewhere. For their sakes, Theo hoped that the Sabbat had gotten them.

"It's going to be tight, isn't it," Jan said, still looking at the list.

"Yeah, well, we knew from the start that it would be." Theo reached for a cigarette. "Not a whole lot of room for error."

"You'd been planning on having Vitel available to help, hadn't you?" Jan asked.

Theo lit up, took in a deep, unfiltered breath, then shrugged. "Plans change," he said. "No Vitel, no Garlotte, no Victoria..." Victoria. They'd had not word from or about her since "Neither did Vitel."

"How are the defenses?" Jan quickly changed the subject.

"Caught during the day. Ghouls."

"Oh." she'd left for Atlanta, and that had been months ago. There'd been vague rumors about something unfortunate happening to a Sabbat Bishop Sebastian down there, but even if true, the reports might or might not have anything at all to do with Victoria.

"We'll do what we can," Theo said. "It's all about timing. How 'bout things on your end?"

Theo nodded solemnly. "Good." Because if things weren't ready ... well, there wasn't any point thinking about that.

Jan nodded. "Everything is prepared."

Wednesday, 10 November 1999, 2:56 AM Western Baltimore, Maryland Jasmine pressed her back against the side of the car. Her legs were cramping from squatting, but she wasn't about to get up. Not while she could remain out of sight — and maybe relatively safe — among the clunkers on this used-car lot.

Had Borris made it this far? She wasn't sure. The others she was sure about. She'd seen them go down, seen them ripped to shreds by... No. She wasn't going to think about that.

She couldn't right now, not if she hoped to somehow get away.

She almost jumped up and fled. She wanted to, even though it wouldn't be the smartest thing to do. But now that she'd stopped, she didn't know if she could make her legs do what she wanted anymore. She just wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about anything anymore.

Had she heard something, something nearby? Nothing sounded right. There wasn't too much noise, she realized. There wasn't enough. The normal sounds were all out there: a car zipping by on the main road, the buzzing of the cheap street lamps that didn't really light the car lot that well. What was missing were the sounds that she should have made, that she would have made if she were still a normal human being: She wasn't breathing hard after running all that way; her heart wasn't pounding from exertion and fear. Not that she wasn't afraid — she was. Terrified. But none of her body's normal responses confirmed that anything unusual was happening to her.

She felt dead. And if the Sabbat had anything to do with it... No. She pushed that thought back where it came from, closed her mind to it.

A normal patrol. That's what Theo had said. Bullshit! Jasmine bit down on her lip to keep from cursing aloud at the arrogant, all-powerful archon. She was convinced that he'd done this all on purpose, intentionally put her in harm's way. A normal patrol. He'd said it in that deep, expressionless way he said everything, but she knew — she could feel the snide vibrations; she could tell he was sneering when she wasn't looking. He'd found out that she hadn't been going out every night; she hadn't given in to the oppression of the system — like he had. And he resented her. He hated her for it. She had the courage that he didn't, and he couldn't stand that.

It hadn't been a normal patrol. She and her three partners had run into at least five other patrols — that was way more than would usually be in one area. That was at least fifteen or twenty Kindred on the western edge of the city, and she had seen what had happened to many of them when the Sabbat struck....

Jasmine looked down at the gun that she clutched in her hand like salvation. They'd just thrust it upon her at the beginning of the night. A something cen-timeter or millimeter or something. She hadn't fired a shot. Not yet. As she looked down, she noticed for the first time that her bell bottoms were torn. Her mouth grew dry as she saw the blood along the tear — her blood. She became aware of the throbbing, of the gash along her left calf. A weak, mournful cry escaped her lips.

She flinched, banged her head against the car door, cursed silently at herself for the noise.

Was it Borris's voice? Could it be? Jasmine fought the idea of running again. She wasn't sure how serious her injury was, how long her leg would hold up. She wasn't sure what exactly was out there — What was that?

"Jasmine?"

"Jasmine?"

That wasn't true. Not completely. She'd seen enough to guess. The Sabbat had swarmed into the city. They'd come speeding in what seemed like dozens of cars, jumping out when they saw anyone, Kindred or kine, doing awful things.... The patrols that hadn't been swept away by the first wave had responded, and then the police had showed up. From then on, it had been a hundred different small running fights-for jasmine, mostly running.

She wasn't sure exactly where she was now-just hiding among the cars.

"Jasmine?" Closer now. He sounded desperate, maybe hurt.

She heard movement, very close now, just on the other side of the car, at the rear of the car. And then he peeked around and over the trunk. Jasmine could tell from the pained expression on his face and the awkward way he held himself that Borris had to be injured.

"Borris..." she said quietly, relieved just the slightest bit for the first time this long, long night. Her relief was short-lived.

As he stepped around the car, Borris was not alone. He was not holding himself awkwardly, he was being held. And the sight of the creature holding him turned Jasmine's blood to ice.

A bony ridge — once a nose? — ran down the center of its face from forehead to upper lip.

On either side, the brow and cheeks fell away at a smooth, sharp angle. The jaw was recessed, not seeming to fit the rest of the sleek face, and instead of hair there were sickly white follicles of skin braided and draped over the creature's shoulder.

"Jasmine..." Borris said, his eyes almost rolling up into his head from pain. Edging around the car, he and the fiend turned just enough that Jasmine could see the Tzimisce was not, in fact, holding Borris up by the collar as she'd thought. The thing's hand and forearm were plunged through Borris's skin, into his back. It looked as if its fingers were gripping his very spine, manipulating him like some demonic puppet.

Jasmine couldn't stand the sight of it. For a moment, her fear fled her. With a defiant cry, she stood, raised her pistol at the fiend, pulled the trigger — and nothing happened.

Jasmine was not aware of what a safety did. No one had thought to tell her. And so her moment of fearlessness passed in futility. Borris and the fiend were not alone. The other Sabbat creatures swarmed over her, knocked her to the ground, tore the gun from her grasp...

"Borris, is that you?" she whispered.

Tzimisce. Fiend. The name fit only too well.

Wednesday, 10 November 1999,4:07 AM Friendship Park Anne Arundel County, Maryland The hell with this, Lydia decided. She stood from behind the trashcan, scanned the darkness for movement, saw it, and fired her last two shots. "Motherfuckers." She knelt back down, ejected the empty clip from her Desert Eagle, and began refilling it and her two spares from the loose cartridges in her jacket pocket. The trashcan in its wooden container made good enough cover. The motherfuckers most likely wouldn't have found her for several minutes more had she not given away her position by firing, but now they'd zero in on the muzzle flashes and head this way. But that was okay. Lydia was tired of playing hide and seek.

She glanced where she'd last seen Frankie and Christoph, but they were out of sight now.

She and Frankie were pretty much in the same boat, except he wasn't as fast as she was.

For all the shit she'd given Christoph about his oversized switchblade, he seemed to be having the most luck. Hard to argue with good old-fashioned dismemberment.

The park had seemed like the last chance to hold the line. The running battle in the car had gotten out of hand really fast. Just too damn many Sabbat swarming all over the fucking place. This was no raid. This was the shit, and Lydia and her boys were caught between it and the fan.

A little hot. "Kiss my ass, you black bastard," Lydia muttered. A little hot — yeah, and the sun might make me a little uncomfortable too.

She slipped in a refilled clip and listened for the footsteps she knew she'd hear. The motherfuckers might be big and damn near invulnerable, but stealthy they were not.

There. She heard the plodding footsteps. Maybe they were quick for being that big, but they weren't going to keep up with her. She gauged the distance of the footsteps, then jumped up.

The thing was maybe twenty yards away, lumbering toward her. Tzimisce war ghoul. Big, ugly, spiked, partially covered with chitinous bone armor. Lydia had heard lots of stories, but she'd never faced one of these things before tonight.

She unloaded on it. Seven .44 magnum slugs square in its chest from fifteen yards.

Nothing. Maybe she cracked the armor a little. Maybe. She popped out the empty clip, slammed in a full one. She wasn't sure if the war ghoul actually could smile — the face seemed to be immutable armor too — but it looked to Lydia like it was smiling as it came closer.

She opened up on it again. Seven shots right in the face. This time it staggered, stumbled a step, hesitated, but kept coming. Lydia could see cracks in its hard face, patches where the armor had crumbled away, even if the thing didn't have more than a headache. What bothered Lydia the most was that it still looked like it was smiling.

She held her ground, ejected that clip, and slammed in her last one. Seven more shots into the face from closer than ten yards. The head exploded. Bone and ragged flesh sprayed into the air and landed all around like grotesque rain on the heels of the Desert Eagle's So much for the Friendship in Friendship Park.

Things might get a little hot, Theo had' said.

"Oh yeah? Well, fuck you, buddy."

"You like that, motherfucker? You want some more?" thunder. The war ghoul continued on for three more laborious steps, stopped as if thinking the matter over, then toppled forward like a fallen tree.

Lydia savored her success for a full three seconds before seeing the similarly mammoth shapes emerging from the darkness, from the same direction her smiling, headless war ghoul had just come.

Lydia whirled and leveled her gun — at Theo. He wasn't smiling — he almost never smiled — but just like with the war ghoul, there was something about him, his manner, that suggested a smile.

Theo tapped the Desert Eagle, still aimed at him. "I wouldn't bother pointin' that since you just fired all your shots." He nodded toward the war ghoul's disintegrating carcass, then added, "If you're tryin' to lure 'em all to you, you're doin' a good job."

Lydia didn't say anything to him; she didn't know what to say. Not because she was in awe of him, though she was still to some extent, but because she was angry. Angry about how brusque he'd been about Baldur's death. Theo had told her to get over it, and then hadn't said anything else about it, just gone on like nothing had happened, like Baldur hadn't been doing his job and standing up for all of them. Well, then fuck Theo, she'd decided.

And now here he was again, in his black leather jacket and Yankees cap, pretending nothing much was going on. It pissed off Lydia all over again, like they were all in the warehouse again and what used to be Baldur was lying just over there. But this wasn't the place to bring it up. There wasn't time, with the other war ghouls closing in, so Lydia said the first thing that came to her mind: Theo cocked his head. "You lose money on the Braves or something?"

"Hey," said Frankie who was jogging up with Christoph right then, "is it true that Greg Maddux is one of us?"

"How the hell would he pitch day games, you moron?" Lydia snapped.

"Uh..." Christoph was perplexed by their conversation. "Does anyone else see what I see coming this way?"

Lydia looked back over her shoulder. The approaching war ghouls were indeed much closer now, their hulking silhouettes clearly visible despite the darkness. She started filling her clips again; she only had enough cartridges left to fill one and a half.

"Yeah, we get the idea," Theo said. "Look. You guys are the last patrol out. I came to bring you in myself. We don't have much time."

"Last patrol?" Lydia thought she'd heard him wrong. "What the fuck you talkin' about?"

He glared at her — maybe there was a little impatience there, a little urgency, but it was hard to say. "I say we take out these three, then we're outta here. You guys take the one off to the right. Got it?"

Lydia and Christoph nodded. Frankie couldn't exactly nod anymore, just like he couldn't quite stand up straight. Something to do with how his neck had healed, but Lydia guessed "Motherfuckers."

"Watch your mouth, kid."

"Yankees suck shit, man."

"Sunblock?"

"They're all over the place," Frankie said, "like stink on —" that having a permanent crick in his neck was better than being permanently dead.

"What about the other two?" Frankie wanted to know, but Theo was already gone, swinging around wide to the left. His left.

"Come on." Lydia broke toward the war ghoul that was separated from the other two.

Christoph kept pace with her, Frankie lagged behind. When they got within a few yards, Lydia circled to the side while Christoph continued to close. The creature had no neck. Its jaw was embedded in its torso several inches below the top of its massive shoulders. Its arms weren't elongated like those of many of the war ghouls ... but it had six, which made up somewhat for the shorter reach. The arms were well-armored too. The ghoul skillfully blocked Christoph's slashes, one after another, and seemed about to grab the Brujah's sword arm after every thrust, but Christoph managed to strike and then evade the grasping hands.

Lydia took up an angle to the side, clear of Christoph, and took potshots at the ghoul's head. She was conservative with her fire, not wanting to hit Christoph or use up all her ammo. Frankie caught up with her and joined in the target practice with his H&K 9mm.

Their shots didn't do a lot of damage to the war ghoul, but they did irritate it. More and more it used one of its hands to try to shield its face from their bullets, and that hurt its coordination against Christoph. He struck more telling blows, chipping away armor, and even drawing blood once or twice.

Finally the beast had enough of the harassment from afar — not that far really. It broke away from Christoph and charged Lydia and Frankie. They weren't expecting the move, but it didn't matter. Christoph, seeing what happened, swooped in behind the war ghoul and struck tender flesh behind each knee. The ghoul, hamstrung, screeched a surprisingly highpitched wail, and dropped to its knees. It twisted from the waist, trying to fight off both Christoph and the bullets.

Christoph had the definite edge now. He worked quickly and relentlessly, taking advantage of every opening. His blade found chinks in the armor, ripped entire bone plates from the creature's flesh. He began to pare down the number of limbs he had to contend against: One arm hung useless at the ghoul's side; two hands were sliced completely or mostly off, and then a third.

At last, Lydia and Frankie closed in. Christoph stepped back as those two poured enough concentrated firepower into the beast's face that its exo-cranium cracked and shattered like an egg. The three Brujah stood in silent triumph around the monstrous carcass.

"Okay," said Theo from very close behind them. "If you guys are finished, let's get the hell outta here."

The other three Brujah looked at him. There he was again, standing like nothing had happened, like the park, the city, wasn't crawling with Sabbat war ghouls. Lydia thought for a moment. She couldn't remember hearing his shotgun go off, but she'd been absorbed in her own fight.... Then she looked more closely and saw the blood on his hands. Not blood dripping. His own blood, around his knuckles, and white patches of his own bone showing through. In the darkness beyond him, she could just barely make out the two mounds that, a few minutes before, must have been war ghouls.

"Their right or our right?" Frankie asked.

"Our right."

Wednesday, 10 November 1999, 4:32 AM Lexington Street Metro stop Baltimore, Maryland Cardinal Francisco Domingo de Polonia stood beneath the city that was the newest addition to his diocese. The Metro trains were still idle for the night. Their idleness would continue into the day and likely beyond. Some destructive band of vandals had demolished several portions of track, damage that would take the Metro authority quite some time to repair.

Surrounding Polonia was a small group of his hand-picked staff, each completely loyal — each to his own personal agenda of cruelty and ambition. They followed Polonia because he was strong. God had obviously smiled upon the newly anointed cardinal, unlike so many of the other Sabbat notables: Monçada, attempting to spread his reach across the broad Atlantic was destroyed; Borges, having prevailed in Miami after years of struggle, was slain; his protégé Sebastian was fallen in a bizarre combat. The conquest of the U.S. East Coast truly had become the glorious accomplishment of Polonia. He would install his own archbishops and bishops, removing the compromise candidates Borges or Vykos had earlier insisted upon. Vykos was another whose meteoric rise was checked; the Tzimisce's star was certainly descending, though the freakish archbishop seemed hardly to notice. Originally Monçada's legate in this matter, Vykos had been more intent on seizing power than on exercising it. Now, without Monçada's backing, the creature had grown distant and aloof, grossly ignoring the necessities of administration and politics entailed in ruling a city the magnitude of Washington, D.C. For reasons unexplained, Vykos had neither consolidated its power base, conducted the siege of the Tremere chantry with any energy, nor appointed bishops to oversee the affairs of the city in which the archbishop seemed so disinterested. The Tzimisce mind was a mystery to Polonia. If he could not fathom Vykos's motivations, he could — and would — at least soon deal with the shortcomings and be rid of the archbishop. Once Baltimore was completely in his grasp and the Camarilla defenders rounded up and staked for the sun, there would be no more need for Vykos's spy — the only factor that had stayed Polonia's hand thus far from moving against the Tzimisce.

And the city would be his very soon, was practically his already, if the reports streaming in were accurate — not always a safe assumption. But even if half the updates of strategic point after strategic point secured were true, the Sabbat had won a victory more sweeping and complete than even the sacking of Atlanta at the outset of the campaign. There had been minimal resistance on the western edge of the city, and heavier fighting to the south, south of the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. But the Sabbat column — in the loosest sense of the term — that had swept in from the west had quickly cut off the airport from the city itself. What difference did it make if the few Camarilla around the airport held out, if other Kindred from the city could not flee there to escape? According to Vykos's spy, some of the Camarilla dregs might try to flee northward on the ground, and so a significant force had circled to the north to prevent any mass escape in that direction.

This would not be merely the capture of a city; it was to be the final scouring of the East Coast, the total annihilation of Camarilla resistance, and the establishment of Polonia's unquestioned dominance.

Waiting for more news, the cardinal surveyed the members of his surrounding staff: Costello, long-time lieutenant who had followed in Polonia's wake to the height of power; Hardin, nomad warchief who had swung securely into Polonia's camp once it was clear which way power was flowing in the Sabbat high command; Bolon, Tzimisce commander of war ghouls, as resolute as he was massive, most physically impressive of the bunch but the least dangerous to Polonia. Significant also were those who were absent. Vykos had not participated directly in the attack but would be along shortly, Polonia was sure, to bask in the glow of victory. Vallejo, too, was gone. The legionnaire had returned to Madrid after the news of Monçada's demise, and as far as Polonia was concerned it was good riddance.

If Vykos was unpredictable, Vallejo was too disciplined, too unwavering in his loyalty to Monçada. It was a quality with which Polonia was uncomfortable, even in his own supporters. Armando Mendes, Polonia's ablest lieutenant, had remained in New York where, Polonia was quite aware, he had been maneuvering to usurp the rule of that fine city. That had been before Polonia had been elevated to the post of cardinal. Polonia planned to reward Armando by giving him the city — and then holding him to impossibly high standards of pacification, while at the same time shackling the new archbishop with debilitating tithe demands in both manpower and financial resources.

Yes, Polonia's underlings kept him on his toes, like a man walking upon a line of razors. It was his lieutenants, however, if they crossed him, who would find the blade at their own throats.

"Yes, Your Eminence." The Tzimisce knelt but even on one knee was almost as tall as Polonia. Large spikes of bone protruded from much of the commander: his shoulders, elbows, knuckles, knees, and along the crest of the bone helmet that, evidently, was actually part of his head. "The airport is secured. We've disabled the radar, so even if Cammies get in, they're not going anywhere. The losses we took earlier-"

Polonia was pleased by this. Those casualties south of the city were the only relatively heavy losses his forces had suffered all night. "Good. Continue."

"Those losses," Bolon stated, "were largely attributed to Theo Bell."

Bell. Damnable Brujah archons. First Julius in Atlanta cutting a swath through the battalion of war ghouls, now Bell blazing a path of destruction near Baltimore. Shouldn't they be in North Africa trying to excavate Carthage or something? Polonia wondered. But it didn't matter. The area was secure now.

Bolon paused. "No, Your Eminence. I have no such report."

Polonia was not surprised; neither was he pleased. He turned to Hardin, the fellow Lasombra who had commanded the column from the west. The cardinal had accompanied Hardin's column on tonight's assault, so as to reach the center of the city more quickly and establish a strong presence and command center there. Polonia had forced himself merely to observe initially. How else to gauge Hardin's mettle? And Hardin had performed well, though resistance was light. The Sabbat forces had skillfully enveloped and destroyed the defenders on the western edge of the city, and then had struck decisively for the heart of Baltimore — where there was no resistance to speak of. Polonia, growing less patient with the disappointing enemy body count, ordered Hardin's force to disperse, to scour the city for pockets of resistance. There had been fear in those first hours of a breakout, but then encouraging word had filtered in from other quadrants: The airport was cut off from the city; Gregorio's flanking expedition was in place to the north, and was squeezing southward. There would be no breakout. Now all that was left for Polonia to do was receive word as the enemy was tracked down and destroyed. If he was fortunate, one or more of the Camarilla worthies might fall into his grasp: Bell, Pieterzoon, Vitel. At the very least, however, the city would be Polonia's.

"Commander Bolon," Polonia said. "Your latest reports."

"How heavy?" Polonia demanded.

"Significant, but not beyond the acceptable range."

"And Bell's destruction has been confirmed?"

"Southern half of the city's in good shape, little or no resistance. Inner Harbor's quiet, except for the Lord Baltimore inn, which is burning to the ground as we speak. My people are spreadin' north. Most of the Camarilla must have taken off that way. They should run smack into Gregorio."

"Not so!" said a new voice, another opportunistic nomad warchief who'd risen from pack leader to prominence over the course of the war. Gregorio, newly arrived, wore a white smock that blended almost seamlessly with the albino's alabaster skin. His shiny pate was as smooth and pale as a porcelain doll. "My men have worked their way south to the city limits and not seen the first retreating defender. They are not fleeing that direction."

Gregorio seemed genuinely saddened. Furrows of disappointment creased the Tzimisce's brow. "Yes, I was afraid Hardin would fill the harbor with heads before I'd seen the first Camarilla hair — but all seems quiet here as well."

That fact was far from lost upon Cardinal Polonia. No significant resistance within the city.

Secure perimeters established. The airport sealed. No armada of ships escaping the harbor.

Decisive action, that was what these men, these treacherous lieutenants hovering like vultures, respected, and that was what Polonia would give them. This was what he most hated about high command, the fog of war. He was forced to rely upon information provided by his subordinates. They were his ears and eyes, he their mind. He much preferred to be leading the charge, observing everything firsthand, as he had for most of his existence; but leadership carried a price as well as reward. His commanders from all fronts needed to be able to find him; he had to learn what they knew, interpret the situation from the details they provided, even if they themselves did not fully understand the implications of what they said.

"They've gone to ground," Polonia said. "They're hiding, waiting for us to grow overconfident, then they'll counterattack." That had to be the explanation. It had to be.

"See that your men find shelter," he said to his commanders as a whole. "It's late. First thing tonight, we'll root them out. We'll find them if we have to bum the whole city."

"And your latest?" the cardinal asked Hardin.

"Impossible," Polonia said.

And Polonia was prepared to do exactly that.

Wednesday, 10 November 1999, 4:45 AM Eurofreight jet cargo hold BaltimoreWashington International Airport Theo was, relatively speaking, in a good mood, perhaps even approaching what, for him, passed as the zenith of his mood spectrum: guardedly optimistic. He was ignoring for the moment the fact that his boss had confided in a Ventrue rather than him. He didn't really care that Lydia was pissed at him. He wasn't even too bothered that the Sabbat was marching practically uncontested into Baltimore. That, at least, was part of the plan. He and Jan had lured the Sabbat for weeks, drawn them closer and closer to Baltimore, fed doctored information through Vitel about a non-existent last stand, and then hustled most of the Camarilla defenders out of the city. The Sabbat leaders would have thought that they'd cut off the airport from the rest of the city and denied that avenue of escape. In fact, two out of three Kindred in the city had been gathered there and many were already in the air before the attack fell.

Theo's sense of satisfaction was tempered by the reality of heavy — read: total — losses among the patrols on the western edge of the city. That fact that the casualties had been anticipated, like Buffalo, like Hartford, did little to ease the archon's mind. Neither did the knowledge that he'd chosen Kindred specifically for the suicide mission. He hadn't been willing to jeopardize secrecy by calling for volunteers, by willing other Kindred to determine their own fate. Instead, he'd purposefully winnowed the chaff, assigning to that part of the city most of those who hadn't been pulling their weight, those he wouldn't have been able to depend on in the nights ahead — because even the ambitious maneuver of extracting Camarilla personnel from Baltimore was merely part of the plan. More lay ahead, and it wasn't going to get easier.

So Theo's guarded optimism leaned heavily to the guarded, but the only immediate hurdle he faced was making sure the cargo plane got in the air. He'd already herded the last defenders south of the city, Lydia, Christoph, and Frankie, away from their increasingly hopeless stand at Friendship Park and to this last aircraft of Pieterzoon's that was waiting on the runway. They were on board and situated comfortably — again, relatively speaking — in the cargo hold. The engines were humming gently. After months of constant toil and strain, Theo was almost ready to relax, even if just for a few hours.

That was when the pilot buzzed the hold. "Radar's out at control," came the static-riddled voice over the intercom. "We're denied clearance from the tower. We can't take off."

Theo's fleeting optimism quickly reverted to his general rule number one — anything that can fuck up, and most things that "can't," will. He jabbed the intercom button. "Take off.

Now."

"I heard you. That means nobody else will be landin', right?"

"Sir, there are other planes in holding patterns ... circling, waiting to land."

"If you don't take off now, there will be people here, probably in less than two minutes, who will blow this whole plane — and you and me with it — to Kingdom Come." There was a pause. "Don't make me come up there," Theo added.

But to add insult to potential injury, the pilot wasn't listening to Theo. The Brujah in the hold heard the distracted pilot over the intercom, however: "What in the world? Who are "Sir?"

"Take ...off... now."

"We don't have clearance."

Theo heard the gunshots in stereo-over the intercom and outside the plane. So did the others.

"Get this plane movin'!" Theo had to force himself not to punch the intercom button too hard and break it. There were no windows. He couldn't see what was going on out there.

"Go! Go!" Theo yelled. If the Sabbat blocked the runway, he and the others were trapped.

"Go!"

The plane lurched forward suddenly. Theo stumbled, slapped at the wall for support.

Bullets punched through the fuselage just a few feet away. Were the Sabbat in cars? Were they blocking the runway? He couldn't hear over the plane's engines. He couldn't see anything.

The pilot was gasping and sobbing over the intercom: "Jesus-Jesus-Jesus ...!"

"Holy fuckin' shit!" Lydia, Frankie, and Christoph dove for cover.

"Get us up!" Theo roared at the intercom as he regained his balance. "Go!"

For a few sickening seconds, the gunshots seemed to get louder. Theo kept expecting the plane to screech to a halt, or to hear the pilot get his head blown off. That would ground them just as effectively. Theo prayed the plane didn't explode. He almost welcomed the thought of being boarded. At least then he could do something! He wouldn't be completely dependent on the pilot getting them off the ground, on the plane holding together. He was jittering like crazy in this forced inaction.

But finally the gunfire began to grow more distant, and shortly it was drowned out completely by the engines. The plane's speed pressed Theo back. He felt the instant when the wheels lost contact with the tarmac.

"Secure cargo bay for take-off," the pilot's voice quavered belatedly over the intercom. He was obviously shaken, whimpering quietly to himself, seeking relief in checklists, protocol, routine.

The cargo plane didn't hit any of the holding planes. The pilot kept to low altitude, probably breaking several hundred FAA regulations, until they were beyond the immediate periphery of the airport. Theo swallowed. His ears kept popping. He and the others settled in the best they could.

Christoph, now that the excitement was over, was trying not to let on that being in an airplane scared him shitless. As soon as the shooting had stopped, he'd strapped himself down, and every few minutes he unobtrusively added another knot to the nylon straps that held him down. He had enough slack left for two or three more knots. Theo wondered what Christoph would do after that. The archon had seen this kind of thing before; it wasn't that uncommon with Kindred who predated air travel. Christoph, one of those who preferred a sword to modem firearms, would seem to be a prime example.

Frankie was doing well enough — considering that he'd had his head nearly ripped off a week and a half ago. He'd recovered physically, more or less, but there had been some nerve or structural damage or something like that. Not too surprising since Theo and all the others, by all rights, shouldn't be walking around anyway. Undead physiology was not those folks on the —? Hey!"

"What the hell?" Lydia was shouting, ducking from reflex.

"Mary, mother of God!" the pilot was shrieking.

They were in the air. always predictable. For Frankie, though, the physical trauma of having his neck broken, or maybe the emotional blow of losing his friend Baldur, had left him scarred. In the past, he'd always been fairly even-tempered for a Brujah. He'd been predictable and reliable, if not the sharpest nail in the coffin. Now, however, in the cargo hold, he had squeezed himself between two stacks of crates and gone practically catatonic. He wasn't curled into fetal position or anything like that, but he was far from aware of anything that was going on around him. Theo figured he could shoot Frankie in the foot and the other Malkavian probably wouldn't notice for a few hours. It came and went, this detachment from reality.

At times, Frankie was his old self, but at others...

Another body, Theo thought. That was all he could count on Frankie to be. Another of the walking dead. But then again, that was all of them. Maybe Frankie had just slipped one step closer to what was in store for all of them eventually. Less a person, more the walking dead.

And if that wasn't enough to make a cheerful bunch, there was Lydia. As the plane bumped through light turbulence, she was glaring daggers at Theo. She wasn't rattled by the shooting anymore, now that they were in the air. Just pissed. No big deal. Let her stare all she wanted. Didn't bother him. She'd either get over it, in which case she'd probably get along okay, or she wouldn't. If not, if she allowed herself to be distracted by things that she couldn't control, by things that happened all too often over the course of a century or two, then she would probably get her head blown off sooner or later. Theo would just have to make sure that she didn't do something that got his head blown off. But he had a lot of experience with that sort of thing. This takeoff excluded, it wasn't often that he put himself in a situation where his ass was on the line if somebody else fucked up.

Maybe that was what had bothered him about the whole thing with Jan — not knowing about the spy, not knowing if that other end of the plan was covered or if all of Theo's own work was going to go for nothing. In a way, it wasn't that different from what Lydia faced — that had been stuff that Theo could only affect so much, so he'd gone on with his own job, done it well, and things had mostly worked out. So far.

Theo glanced at his watch. A few hours. They should arrive just after dawn. Pieterzoon would take care of them — this was the type of thing that Theo more or less trusted Jan with, that the Ventrue was well-practiced with: logistics, receiving four roughly humansized crates, and getting them to a safe haven. And then the real fun would start.

Theo closed his eyes and looked forward to an hour or two of relaxation-not having to think about anything-before he needed to climb into one of the crates.

Lydia took it for as long as she could, but the droning, deafening hum of the engines didn't soothe her. If anything, the constant vibration served only to agitate her further. And there was Theo, sitting across the hold from her, ignoring her. He even closed his eyes and leaned his head back — like he was asleep, like he would ever sleep again ... at night!

Almost before she realized, Lydia was on her feet, making her way across the hold. She was standing over Theo. This time, this one time, she was looking down at him. He knew she was there. She could feel that he did. But he didn't open his eyes, didn't do anything, didn't say anything.

Lydia stood there, looking down at him, feeling the engines through her feet and her legs.

A few weeks ago, she'd been completely in awe of Theo — hell, she was still in awe of him.

Even tonight, out there in the park, she'd seen what he could do, what he was capable of.

But something had changed. Over those weeks of patrolling, of finding Sabbat vampires and blowing their fucking brains out, something had changed. It didn't seem to be Theo; he was as steady, as inflappable as ever. He never even had to raise his voice. He didn't have to shoot at jasmine in some shithole bar. He didn't have to take crap from anybody.

Maybe, Lydia decided, it was her that had changed.

Very slowly, he opened his eyes. He looked at her with that cool, not-pissed-but-not-happyeither look, his normal look, as if he'd just met her on the street, as if nobody had been shooting at them, as if she hadn't just kicked him. So she kicked him again.

"What?" was all he said. His voice was deep, barely audible above the engine noise, but that one word carried the obvious message: Do that again and you'll wish you hadn't.

So she did it again. She kicked him — kicked at him, at least. Theo caught her foot. Or Lydia, picking herself up after crashing against the far wall, figured he must have. She was back on her feet in a second — the ringing in her ears blended in with the engine noise quickly enough — ready for anything. Theo was still sitting in the same spot. He hadn't bothered to get up.

"Don't you do it!" she yelled at him. "Don't you pretend I'm not here, you fuckin' bastard!

Don't you dare close your eyes again!"

Nearby, Frankie didn't stir from whatever he was experiencing in his own little world.

Christoph, like a puzzled Houdini, looked on but didn't move. Theo, too, looked at her. He wasn't pissed, he wasn't amused. He was just ... Theo. Grim, angry just below the surface.

He was calm, and that enraged Lydia more than anything.

"Fuck you!" She spat in his direction. She was pacing now — she vaguely realized that she was — a few steps back and forth, like a caged animal. Her hands were shaking.

Theo watched her from where he sat. "What's on your mind?" he asked, his voice calm but not soothing, patient only in that he hadn't gotten up and bashed her head in.

What's on your mind? As if he didn't damned well know. It was a simple enough question ... seemed like a simple enough question, but Lydia couldn't quite form the words to answer him. Her thoughts wouldn't hold still. She couldn't grab them; they were swirl-ing, violent, like the rushing air that buffeted the plane.

"You know," she said finally. "You been pretendin' it didn't happen, but it did!"

Baldur. He'd met his Final Death, crumbled to dust as Lydia had watched, and for more than a week, Theo had said nothing about it, had pretended that nothing had happened, just like he'd been pretending a minute ago that Lydia wasn't there. There was a reason, Lydia knew. He'd told her, told all of them, but she wasn't buying it.

This never happened, Theo had said before they left the warehouse that night. Vitel disappeared, faded away. Far as anybody knows, he probably slipped out of the city. Just wanted to save his own ass. None of this, he'd said in the smokeand body-filled warehouse, ever happened.

And that meant that Baldur had just disappeared. Faded away. Without a trace. And that didn't sit well with Lydia.

"Tell me about it," Theo said, the droning of the engines almost drowning out the sound of his voice. "This once..." he said, pausing, leaving unsaid the last part of the sentence, and then never again. "Tell me."

Lydia stopped pacing. She was caught off guard. She hadn't been ready for that. She wasn't sure what she was ready for, but that wasn't it. Her thoughts were still churning, still angry, her every muscle, her blood, ready for conflict. She balled her fingers into fists to She kicked Theo's foot. Hard.

"I know we can't talk about Vitel," she started weakly. Words were so uncertain. They weren't what she'd wanted. What she'd wanted — and she knew it suddenly, saw it, now that the impulse crested, fell back — was blood. Her knees felt like they were go-ing to give. She felt pale, cold, more aware of it than ever before. She felt more dead than she ever had, as if what she'd eventually accepted intellectually was finally coming home to her body.

"Jesus." She lowered herself to the floor, sat with her unsteady legs stretched out before her, black denim hiding cold, dead flesh.

"Baldur was always there for us," she said. "And now he's just gone, and we just let him go, like he never was here. I don't like it."

Theo crossed his arms. "What the hell d'you want me to do? Buy an ad in the paper?"

Lydia's anger started to rise again, tried to, but she was too tired. Her body seemed not to be hers; the cargo hold seemed very large and Theo very far away. Her thoughts, so violent and churning moments before, were dissipating, dissolving like a morning fog burned away by the sun. Maybe the sun was rising beyond the walls of the plane.

"Look," Theo said, "I'm not your momma, and I'm not your shrink. I'm not here to hold your hand. You don't pull your shit together, before long you won't be no good to me or to anybody else."

Lydia was sinking. Otherwise, she would've told him to fuck off. But Theo was very far away. Maybe it was the sun, but it felt different somehow, like it was her blood pulling her down for some other reason. She felt like she'd been climbing, climbing to the brink of ... of something. She'd almost gone over, but now she was tumbling back down the hill.

"Baldur's gone," she heard Theo say. "It was his time. Some night it'll be yours, and some night it'll be mine. And maybe somebody'll cry, and maybe they won't, but I don't really give a shit. I got things to do He might have said more. Lydia wasn't sure. Probably he hadn't, she decided. Theo wasn't one for speeches. Either way, Lydia was crawling into one of the long crates, forcing her body to go where she wanted it to go, pulling the top back on, not really feeling the splinters that dug into her fingers. She listened to the deep droning of the engines, felt the vibrations of her bones against wood, listened to the droning....

"He's right," said the voice. "He's right." A faint French accent. Christoph. Lydia didn't open her eyes. She wanted to, but not enough to force the issue. "We've all got things to do while we're here, or else we're not around very long. Fighting to be fighting isn't enough."

Lydia couldn't absorb what the voice was saying, what Christoph was saying. He had opened her crate. She could feel the cold air. Or was that just her skin?

What the hell was he talking about? She didn't want to hear, didn't want to think.

"Hook the latches on the lid," the voice said. The lid was back in place, the voice fainter. stop the shaking. while I'm here."

"You've got to find a reason, Lydia."

"Find a reason."

Yeah, whatever. Go the fuck away.

"Hook them!" A fierce pounding on the crate denied Lydia peace. She did what the voice said, fumbled at the latches, one at a time hooked them. The pounding was gone, and the voice. All that remained were, again, the plane's engines gently rattling her skull.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 3:18 AM Alfred Thayer House Baltimore, Maryland Temporarily Closed for Renovations read the sign on the front gate of the restored nineteenth-century house and former home of some local personage. No lights burned within the building. In the spacious parlor, Parmenides sat in darkness. Sat and waited. For what he was not exactly sure.

"Are you ready, my philosopher" Vykos crooned from nearby. Her voice, though still pitched like that of a woman, was more nasal, almost mechanical, as if the larynx had been reshaped, only slightly, but in some strange manner. There remained no trace of the feminine about her words. "We are close now.", Parmenides waited in silence. He had given up trying to predict the actions or interpret the mutterings of this creature. She sat wrapped in darkness, her black robes indistinguishable from the shadows. All that was visible were her face, bone white, a vile beacon in the night, and one smooth, almost skeletal hand at her throat, as if she might at any moment choke herself.

"I am ready." Whatever the task, the Assamite was prepared. This fiend, to whom his masters had delivered him, had over the past months required any number of deeds from her charge, deeds ranging from the dangerous to the mundane, from the perverse to the menial. He was Ravenna, prepared to serve the whim of this abomination that occupied his heart and mind; he was Parmenides, prepared also to carry out the terrible purpose of his masters.

"Excellent," said Vykos. Her eyes were not visible; they were hidden in the depths of hollowed sockets, beneath hairless and razor-sharp brows. "Then when my rivals assail me, you must strike me down."

The words hung in the darkness between them, between the Cainite and the child of Haqim. Parmenides doubted himself, doubted that he had heard correctly — the fiend supporting the terrible purpose of his masters, urging her own destruction.

"You are silent," Vykos said. "Have I not stimulated your mind as well as your body?"

"A thought unspoken is no less a thought," Parmenides said.

"Ah, there is my philosophe," said Vykos, but her words were cold, an emotionless mockery of her playful manner with him over many weeks, itself a mockery of true affection.

Mockery of mockery. Just as the fiend was a mockery of all Cainites, themselves mockeries of frail humanity. "Good. I have not lost you. When my rivals assail me, you must strike me down," she said again.

"I..." Parmenides did not know how to respond, could not quickly enough unravel his tangled impulses.

"That is what you people do, is it not?" Now Vykos's words were not mocking, but measured, completely and utterly reasonable in their unreasonableness. "We will discover how much of the philosophe remains, will we not, Ravenna?"

Parmenides was distracted by the sound of several automobiles outside, not passing on the street, but stopping by the front gate.

A few more seconds passed. Parmenides could hear car doors slamming, the gate swinging "Are you ready, my philosopher" she goaded him.

"Soon," said Vykos. "Very soon." open, footsteps climbing the stairs to the porch. The front door burst open, and in strode Cardinal Polonia. He was flanked, as was beginning to seem usual, by Costello on one side and Hardin on the other. Parmenides heard others, but they remained outside; they were spreading out, surrounding the house.

"You have betrayed us," Polonia's steely voice snaked through the darkness as forcefully as any of his shadow minions.

Little light from the open front door was able to make its way as far as the parlor. The gathered Cainites remained in darkness, as Polonia no doubt would have had it.

Parmenides, however, was assaulted by lights. For him, lightning flashed, terrific bursts that left him leaning on his cane lest he collapse to the floor. Conflicting images assaulted him: There was Polonia confronting Vykos, the here and now. But there was also the image of himself on hands and knees, vomiting forth black liquid that he had suckled from Vykos's foul breast.

What is your passion? Vykos had asked him. Death. He was bred and trained for it.

Destruction. Who would you destroy? He had told her Monçada, had misled her, kept from her his terrible purpose. But there was memory layered beneath memory, cloud upon cloud, lightning crossing lightning. Preceding the lie — the lie that was for his benefit, not hers — he had revealed all to her: his clandestine meeting with Fatima, the information he was seeking, his task once the knowledge was passed on.

Ah, but the night was fated to come. It can be no different with your kind. When my rivals assail me, you must strike me down. You cannot betray your nature.

"Betray you, my Cardinal?" Vykos said. "But the city is yours... If this is betrayal, then long reign the treachery of the Sabbat."

"We did not take the city," Polonia spat. "It was given to us, handed to us ... and you knew.

Your spy knew. Last night's resistance was for show, a token defense. We surrounded the city, cut off the airport. There was no mass exodus to the north or any other direction, not by land or sea, yet they are not here. They are not hiding in wait for us. They are not here!"

"Then the city is yours," Vykos said again, as if speaking to a slow child. "The last Camarilla city on the East Coast taken in a bloodless coup of your arranging. What more could you want?"

"I want to crush them," Polonia said through clenched teeth.

Parmenides, still reeling from the lightning of his own self-discovery, could sense the tension in the cardinal's muscles, could see the outline of the sword at his belt, even in the darkness.

"You have betrayed us," Polonia repeated. "Now you will come with me, and I will determine what else you have kept hidden."

"Ah," Vykos sighed. "This was bound to happen without Monçada to stand watch over you, eh? Tell me, did you wait to move against me out of fear of him, or merely so that I could first help you win your war?"

When my rivals assail me...

You must strike me down.

Who would you destroy?

I would destroy you.

"Say what you like. We stand united against you, Archbishop."

Vykos laughed: the sound of bone grating against bone. "You may have your cities, Cardinal. I do not care for them. As for standing united against me, I have little doubt. You have spoken with Bolon then, who cannot fashion his own war ghouls to command. And good Gregorio, my clansman?"

"Gregorio is loyal, as much as any fiend can be," Polonia said. "Solon has been dealt with."

The cardinal gave a slight, mocking bow. "Now ... you will come with me." Polonia's hand moved to the hilt of his sword, but he paused.

There were more footsteps now, a single set ascending the front steps, entering the house.

A young aide to Polonia, a junior Lasombra whom Parmenides had seen before, came into the parlor. The aide hesitated, sensing the tension between the leaders, but he was driven by the task entrusted to him.

"Your Eminence," he said to the cardinal, "news from Bishop Mendes. There is trouble in New York."

Polonia, still not forgetting Vykos, regarded the messenger skeptically. "Trouble — what sort of trouble? What did Armando say?"

"The news is not from the bishop directly," the younger Lasombra clarified somewhat sheepishly. "Apparently he is ... occupied."

Parmenides imagined that Polonia did not care. to appear surprised in front of his underlings, because his obvious shock transformed almost instantly to rage. His eyes, flaring wide for an instant, narrowed.

His dark, handsome, Spanish face contorted violently. To the cardinal's credit, he didn't sputter and bluster about the impossibility of an attack, as Borges might have done in similar circumstances, but neither could Polonia seem to accept that the oversight, the fault, could lie with him. Instead, he turned back to Vykos.

"You and your damnable spy arranged this!" Polonia bellowed, then his sword was unsheathed and in motion. The strike blurred toward Vykos's head — but was deflected at the last instant. The cane should have been shattered by the force of fine Toledo steel, would have been had not Parmenides's parry been timed and angled perfectly.

In the same motion that he blocked Polonia's sword with the spiked cane, Parmenides lashed out with another blade. Two quick slashes at Costello's eyes. The Lasombra stumbled backward screaming, hands over his face, blood streaming between his fin-gers.

Polonia recovered quickly and struck again — where Vykos had been standing but an instant before. The cardinal's sword found only air. Vykos had skillfully shifted to interpose her assassin-ghoul directly between herself and her assailants.

Parmenides stood between archbishop and cardinal, Vykos's words, lightning, flashing through his mind. This was undeniably the moment — the moment to act upon his mistress's command, the moment to fulfill the terrible purpose given him by his masters from Alamut. This was the moment to turn and strike down the Tzimisce fiend that had violated him body and soul.

But the assassin could not strike, could not raise blade or hand against his torturer ... his "Occupied? Yes?"

"Apparently New York is ... well ... under attack."

When my rivals assail me, you must strike me down. love, she who had made him what he was. We will discover how much of the philosophe remains, will we not, Ravenna? And in that instant of impotence, the question was answered. Not enough of the philosophe, not enough of the assassin, the Assamite. He was Ravenna. Created to serve his mistress. He passed one test only to fail another, his purpose for existence supplanted by this fiend! This, in the space of a human heartbeat.

Polonia's sword, raised again, fell. Ravenna blocked it not with the cane but with his own arm. Steel struck flesh, dug deeply, cut into bone — but did not pull free. Pain like fire coursed up Ravenna's arm, and he smiled. He smiled because, at the same time, with a flourish of black robes and one last alabaster sneer, Vykos was gone. Ravenna knew that she would be free, that he had served his purpose — her purpose for him.

The sword lodging in the ghoul's arm threw off Polonia's timing for a moment, and in that moment Ravenna plunged the ferrule spike of the cane through the cardinal's right hand, splintering bone, severing tendons and nerves. Polonia jerked his hand back. He managed, barely, to keep hold of the sword as it pulled free of Ravenna's arm.

Hardin rushed in with his falchion as the cardinal stepped back. The Lasombra messenger, too, had produced a weapon, a pistol that he was firing ineffectually above their heads.

Ravenna, with his stiletto in his good hand, met Hardin's charge. The transformed assassin drew his blade along his useless arm, coating the blade with the toxin of Assamite blood.

He brushed aside Hardin's awkward thrust and buried the stiletto deep in his attacker's gut.

Hardin seized up almost at once, the poison taking hold. His falchion clattered to the floor. He raked frantically at the burning wound in his abdomen, but the poison spread, the fire shooting through his body.

Before Hardin hit the floor, Ravenna had flung his blade at the messenger. It sliced through his esophagus, coming to rest lodged in his spine. There was some poison still on the blade — enough, Ravenna suspected.

The guards from outside would rush in soon, he knew. But there was still time. As he reached for another hidden blade, however, the shadows closed in about him, slowing his movements. He tried to dive away, but the darkness was nearly solid; it held him in place — far too easy a target for Polonia to miss, even wielding a sword with his off hand.

The steel bit down through Ravenna's shoulder. Had the blow been a few inches farther from his neck, it would have severed his right arm. The next blow destroyed his right knee, and Ravenna collapsed to the floor slowly, the darkness cushioning his fall.

The enraged Polonia stood above him, and, as blow after blow fell, hacking Ravenna to pieces, Vykos's ghoul smiled.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 3:51 AM East 129th Street, Harlem New York City, New York The blood-splattered drywall sizzled. So did the clothing and flesh bordering the massive, charred hole in the chest of the man of the floor. A few sputtering flames lent ghostly shape to the wisps of smoke rising from the wound. The hallway was dark otherwise. No electricity. The tenement was abandoned except for a few squatters: homeless, down on their luck, drug-addicted, illegal immigrants, mentally ill, whatever. They were nothing more than food to the predators among them.

Theo slipped another dragonsbreath round into the shotgun's magazine. Full up. He'd need to be — had needed to be all night. He'd used more ammo tonight than in the fight with Vitel. And the night wasn't over yet. Not quite.

He stepped over the body. The phosphorous blast at close range probably would have been enough to finish this Sabbat nobody, but for good measure the corpse had a crushed skull as well, the deep indentation conspicuously shaped like the metal butt of Theo's Franchi SPAS. They were like cockroaches, these Sabbat flunkies. Individually they weren't much of a threat, at least not to Theo, but they carried disease. Sickness spread wherever they gained a foothold. Society crumbled. The poor and the weak suffered the most; the disadvantaged preyed upon one another. It happened other places too, but when the Sabbat vermin infested a neighborhood, a city, it was far worse. They didn't give a shit about the kine. Neither did most members of the Camarilla, Theo knew, but the order provided by the Masquerade at least gave the mortals half a chance to pull themselves up, to fight the prejudices of their own society rather than being consumed by the hunger of the shadow predators. The archon might not have approved of everything that had happened tonight, but progress was progress.

Theo paused, looked back at the corpse, spat on it. Then he opened the door to the basement and began down into the darkness.

Almost twenty-four hours earlier, the Eurofreight cargo jet had touched down at JFK International Airport. Theo had already secured himself inside one of the crates on board and surrendered to the oblivion of day, but he resurfaced enough to know that he was being unloaded. He was not cognizant to the point that he could worry-which he would have if he'd been able.

Pieterzoon had made the arrangements for this part of the trip. That was tolerable, as far as it went. But Jan had been forced to deal with representatives of Clan Giovanni. The smuggling of an individual Camarilla member into New York, especially through JFK, was nothing irregular. It happened often enough to have prompted Sabbat leadership-most notably, Francisco de Polonia, who reports indicated had assumed the mantle of cardinal of the Eastern United States-to send roving packs through the airport periodically. But the airport bureaucracy was riddled with Camarilla agents and sympathizers of one sort or another, and the smuggling continued.

In the past forty-eight hours, however, practically every member of the Camarilla that had escaped Baltimore, including most of the refugees from the rest of the East Coast, had been ferried through JFK and LaGuardia. A half-dozen obscure air-freight companies had directed flights to New York, many rerouted through various cities or with falsified itinerary and flight manifests, but all having passed through Baltimore. All of the companies were owned or controlled by one of three different holding companies, which in turn were subsidiaries of firms that, if someone wanted to spend the time and resources, could be traced back to Jan Pieterzoon. Not to Pieterzoon himself, of course, but to a dummy board to which he had no ostensible connection. If anyone were to dig that far, though, they would certainly attract the attention of Mr. Pieterzoon, and the investigation would be brought to a conclusion, by one means or another.

For an undertaking of this unprecedented scale, there was another faction which, through various mob and financial guises, had its fingers in almost as many union and bureaucratic pies as did the Ventrue, and could not be ignored: Clan Giovanni. Pieterzoon didn't need the necromancers' help, per se, as much as their acquiescence — and their silence. After abortive initial negotiations, a bit of hardball, Ventrue style, in the form of the Italian currency crisis, had convinced the relevant Giovanni that looking the other way in this case might not be such a bad thing. Thus the airlift had proceeded, and thus Theo found himself spending the day in a crate in a storage hangar at JFK.

The fact that the Brujah archon was too under the sway of the sun even to worry only made him that much more vulnerable. He'd known that that would be the case, and so he'd done his brooding ahead of time. Being among the very last to leave Baltimore as the Sabbat closed in, though dangerous, hadn't bothered him. That had been part of the plan — his part of the plan. This, he'd had to admit grudgingly, had been part of the plan too, but it was part where he had to depend on others, a Ventrue and-God help him — some faceless Giovanni who wasn't likely to be loyal to anybody who wasn't his cousin, if that.

What did some greasy customs mole in the U.S. care if Italy's economy went in the tank?

And it wasn't as if anything innately Italian spawned loyalty-Axis, Allies, Sabbat, Camarilla, whatever.

In the weeks leading up to the pullout from Baltimore, Theo had kept his mind on other parts of the plan, parts that were right then and there. There had always been the chance that they would never even get this far. But they had, and there he was, and when Theo climbed out of the crate that night, someone was there waiting for him.

"Right this way, sir," said Hans van Pel. Theo looked at Pieterzoon's ghoul and then at the other crates, those that contained Lydia, Frankie, and Christoph. Van Pel followed his glance. "They will be brought along separately."

Theo and van Pel got into the back of one of two unmarked delivery vans. Within thirty minutes, the van pulled onto the grounds of Aqueduct Racetrack. The smell of horses was unmistakable in the air: sweat, grain, manure. The odors took Theo back — back-to what he didn't care to be reminded of, his mortal years in Mississippi, the plantation years, the years when humans were bought and bred like horse or cattle stock. Theo was a product of that world, but he had rebelled against it, risked his life to overturn it, and in the end outlasted it. Now, looking over the van driver's shoulder, the Brujah watched the track facilities, deserted except for a few cleaning crews, pass by. The place was eerily quiet at night, empty other than the familiar horse smells, and other smells that he noticed now: stale cigarettes and beer, human sweat too. The scents mingled and formed what Theo could think of only as the smell of desperation.

Those earthy, plebian odors retreated as van Pel led Theo into the track offices, to a suite that was ostensibly an auxiliary office for the New York Racing Association. This was the turf of the modem high-rollers, dealing in horse flesh.

"Ah, here is Archon Bell now," said Jan Pieterzoon warmly. He rose from his seat at a crowded conference table.

Van Pel took his place behind Jan, but Theo stopped in the doorway. He and Jan had carried their scheme this far, but looking at the other Kindred around the table, Theo wondered if all their planning had been shot to hell. Lucinde was there; that was no surprise — not this time. The Ventrue justicar had come from Baltimore with Jan. She'd helped him with convincing the Giovanni to cooperate; she'd done some kind of deal with Hesha; she'd consulted with Jan regarding the spy. Now she was here, in business suit and gloves, appearing deceptively young.

Neither was it a surprise to see Michaela, prince of New York. Jan had been in contact with her for some time. It was her city after all — at least nominally — that they were betting everything on. Michaela was very proud of having held on to the city for the Camarilla. She had long boasted of having kept the Sabbat out of Manhattan — mostly. To Theo, that meant that she had held on to the blue-blood financial district — like the Sabbat was going to try to waltz into the boardrooms anyway — and let everything else, the majority of the city, all the real parts of the city, go to hell. In addition to this limited — in his opinion — success, she'd managed to seriously piss off quite a few higher ups in the Camarilla by Embracing a considerable number of stuffed shirts — eight or nine by most counts. Even Lucinde had criticized her clanmate. What would happen, the justicar had asked, if Michaela came to an unfortunate end and left that many equally powerful childer behind, all of whom would certainly want their share of the inheritance? Internecine warfare, that's what. A civil war within the city that would claim much blood or, just as bad, balkanization. Either way, the "stronghold" that had been Manhattan would be compromised, and the Sabbat would be that much closer to traipsing in and taking over for real.

In recent years, though, the problem had begun to alleviate itself somewhat. Several of Michaela's progeny had themselves met unfortunate ends, some ambushed in the city by Sabbat packs who seemed to know where to find them, others simply disappeared. There were those in the Camarilla who argued that the Sabbat was making a determined effort to undercut Michaela's power base in preparation for storming Manhattan. Theo had other suspicions. He wasn't one to cast aspersions or make unfounded accusations, but surely there were those in their own sect who would be more than pleased to see Michaela out of the way. Those kind of sentiments, if shared by a large enough number of Kindred, and at high enough a level, tended to be acted upon.

Only three of Michaela's brood remained, and they were all seated at the table. Suit-andtie busi-ness sort. They were, in Theo's opinion, being treated above their station. Sure this was their home turf, but what the fuck did they all need to be here for? After all, Lladislas wasn't here, neither was Goldwin, and he'd been a prince, in title at least, before they'd ditched Baltimore. Gainesmil wasn't here. Hell, there weren't any Toreador in the room. This was the kind of stunt — thumbing her nose at the other clans — that got Michaela in trouble.

There were two more Kindred at the crowded table. One was ruggedly handsome and wearing clothes that Theo considered dressy but the high-society types would call casual.

This Kindred looked like the cover off a catalogue come to life — he might as well be. Theo had met Federico diPadua before and knew that the square chin and strong brow hid that bone-ugly that could only be Nosferatu. Federico was a decent sort, as far as Kindred went.

The other man at the table wore a suit, but he wasn't one of Michaela's stuffed shirts. A white orchid graced his lapel. "Archon Bell," said Jaroslav Pascek briskly, "we've been waiting."

Sucks to be you, Theo thought, but held his tongue. Taunting a justicar was generally not a bright idea. Besides, something big was going on here, something big enough to attract two justicars, whether Theo liked it or not. He glanced at Jan, but the Ventrue didn't meet his eyes. Still something about Jan's manner — the perfect, practiced normalcy of his manner — made Theo think that some of this, at least, was news to him as well. Shit, Theo thought, holding down his aggravation with the secrecy and fuck-you politics of the Camarilla higher-ups. It could be worse, he reminded himself.

Pascek watched Theo impatiently. The green specks in the justicar's hazel eyes seemed to glow with an inner fire. "You and Mr. Pieterzoon have devised a passable plan," he said to Theo. "We've made some changes."

That was when Theo knew that it was worse. And he had a feeling in his gut that it always would be.

In the basement of the tenement in Harlem, they were waiting for Theo. Firing his shotgun upstairs a few minutes before hadn't exactly left a lot of room for sneaking, so he was expecting them too. At times like these, Theo took pride in the fact that he always seemed better able to predict what his enemies would do than what his allies would do. As he went down the stairs, the darkness deepening with each step, he felt the tendril of shadow snaking around his feet before it was able to trip him. He ducked so he wouldn't hit the ceiling, and jumped the tendril and the last few steps.

As soon as his feet touched the floor, he whirled and fired into the room. The muzzle flash and the exploding phosphorous shell lit the room like a streak of lightning at midnight. For that split second, Theo could see them clearly. Two were within a few feet of him, one with a baseball bat, one pointing a revolver at him. A third was not far. The Lasombra maybe. A fourth — wide-eyed, deformed monstrosity; a Nosferatu that had lost its concentration, not a Tzimisce creation — was in the comer.

After the flashes, the room plunged into total darkness. Theo stepped toward the Sabbat with the bat, stepped into the swing that had to be coming. The attacker thought he was hitting something two feet farther away. The handle of the bat and the Sabbat's hand pounded Theo's shoulder.

At the same time, the revolver fired. Theo had moved enough that the bullet struck him a glancing blow, didn't make it through his reinforced jacket. Theo fired his shotgun again — at the comer. The Nosferatu was the most likely to get away. Theo didn't plan on anybody getting away. The misshapen thing was lit up by phosphorous fireworks and slammed back into the wall, screaming, squealing.

Another blast from the revolver — this time square in the back. The Sabbat had a better idea again where Theo was standing after the veritable flare from the shotgun. The jacket helped, but the bullet penetrated, and stung like hell.

By feel, Theo clicked the SPAS from single shot to burst, and fired. The Lasombra practically disintegrated in a fiery spray. The shot bathed an entire wall in chemical light.

The angle, as luck would have it, was good enough to send the revolver-wielding Sabbat down screaming too.

Sputtering phosphorous and flaming shreds of clothing cast an uneven pall across the room, which was quickly filling with smoke and the pungent smell of burning flesh. Theo looked for the Nosferatu — saw him dragging himself toward the stairs, going nowhere fast with wounds he couldn't heal and too shaken up to concentrate and disappear.

The Sabbat with the bat, a bruiser almost as large as Theo, was more reckless, or maybe frenzied, than smart. He charged, swinging. Theo blocked the bat with his forearm. The wood splintered, the barrel flying over Theo's shoulder. Theo smashed the stock of the SPAS into the Sabbat's face. The nose and left cheek bone gave way. The bloodied slugger crumpled to the floor. Back to single shot. One more white-hot blast and it was over.

Except for the mopping up. The Sabbat who had shot Theo was still moving. Theo replaced the couple of dragonsbreath rounds that were still in the magazine with conventional cartridges and blew the Sabbat's head off.

Then Theo walked over to the Nosferatu — the Nosferatu antitribu — who had pulled himself up to the fifth step. "I was spying on them," he pleaded through yellowed teeth clenched in pain.

I don't think so, Theo thought. The loyal Nosferatu knew what was going on. Federico's few words at the track had made that clear enough. If this was a Cam Nossie, it wouldn't have been here. Not tonight. Theo had no use for antitribu. Lasombra and Tzimisce were bad enough, but if it weren't for defectors from the Camarilla, the Sabbat wouldn't have the numbers to thrive. Probably one of the other fuckers on the floor was — had been — antitribu. It was a seductive call for somebody who was sick of taking orders, sick of being told what to do and pushed around. But it was just trading masters.

Theo sometimes wondered what would have happened to him if Don Cerro hadn't found him, if he hadn't been Embraced. He had achieved his freedom as a mortal. Probably he would have been shot eventually, while helping other slaves escape. Or he would have been captured and hanged. But he would have died a free man. Instead, he'd agreed to a deal with the devil. He'd received the power to avenge himself, to avenge his people, and while he wasn't exactly a slave to his masters in the Camarilla, he sure as hell wasn't free.

How much more plainly could that point have been driven home tonight?

Theo cocked his shotgun. Finished it. Then he climbed the rest of the steps to find the others.

Earlier, around the conference table at Aqueduct Racetrack, nobody had minced words.

Theo hadn't even sat down. The Ventrue present didn't say much. Maybe that was what made the briefing seem unusual, surreal. Jan, even Lucinde, listened attentively. Pascek did most of the talking, and as the Brujah justicar spoke, Theo became even more convinced that much of what was happening had been sprung on Jan at the last moment too.

"You and Mr. Pieterzoon have devised a passable plan. We've made some changes,"

Jaroslav started.

"There have been certain preparations that allow us a more aggressive stance, and the strike teams you've coordinated have been altered somewhat. Archon diPadua will be leading one, as will Prince Michaela, as will myself, in addition to you and those others you selected, such as Lladislas, et cetera, et cetera." Though he spoke with a Slavic accent, Pascek's words were crisp, terse. He was giving instructions, not seeking advice. "Today's activities have been singularly successful," he said, "and I trust tonight will be no different."

"Yes. Our ghouls have been quite effective," Pascek said quickly. "Law enforcement and city services have served us in good stead: known Sabbat ghouls arrested or executed; widespread destruction of Sabbat lairs. Our contacts among the local media are focusing attention nicely on the heroism of emergency workers. No one will have a chance to explore the possible relation among fires, industrial accidents, burst gas mains, demolitions, et cetera, et cetera, for several days, if at all — that 'support our boys in the field' mentality. Quite helpful of you Americans."

"Please..." the Nosferatu pleaded.

"Today's activities..." Theo repeated.

There was no laughter, if indeed Pascek's last comment had been an attempt at wry humor. The justicar was not known for his joviality. Next he launched into a machine-gun recitation of the strike teams: "Prince Michaela, you and yours will lead four teams and cover the Bronx. Here's a list of addresses; those crossed off were seen to today. Archon Bell, you are familiar with Harlem. Three teams. Your list..."

Theo was not surprised to see those assembled defer to Pascek, even Lucinde and Michaela — although Michaela seemed particularly sullen, which made Theo suspect that she had been as much out of the loop for the overall plan as he and Jan. Pascek gave decisive orders — this was his element, search and destroy, rooting out evil, in this case the Sabbat. To say that his arrangements were "more aggressive" was a phenomenal understatement. He had about the same number of Kindred to work with that Theo and Jan had — utilizing the mass exodus from Baltimore — but it was amazing the difference a few battle-tested elders could make.

And an extra archon and two justicars, for Christ's sake, Theo thought. That still rankled.

In fact, he resented it more and more as Jaroslav talked. He and Jan had been left to slap together what they could, to get by on their own when these other resources had been available — not only available but committed to a parallel plan to the one they had come up with. The two had made the hard decisions — to sacrifice Buffalo and Hartford for the dual purposes of concentrating forces and smoking out the spy. Then, by slowly drawing their defenders back into Baltimore, they'd suckered the Sabbat into using everything it could muster for a coup de grâce, into attacking just as the Camarilla was striking elsewhere, where many of the invaders of Baltimore had just been taken from — New York. Jan and Theo's plan had been necessarily more modest: Shore up Manhattan, press into the Bronx, establish a beachhead in Brooklyn. They had negotiated and worked it out with Michaela, who was pleased to accept the influx of manpower but was not excited about possible rivals to her authority. They'd set it all in motion — held off the Sabbat, suckered them in, dealt with the spy, abandoned Baltimore, arrived in New York to find...

That others had taken over, and that their own efforts had been a screen, a diversion, for what had been going on behind the scenes all along. Because from what Pascek was saying, it was obvious that the preparations had been underway for months, perhaps years. The ghoul attacks, as Theo saw reading over some of the lists, were too surgical, the intelligence gathered too complete for this to have been hastily arranged. From what he could tell, as much as a quar-ter to a third of the Sabbat strength in the city, mostly ghouls and lower-echelon types — Theo didn't recog-nize many of the names or pictures — had already been ass-fucked. Tonight would probably push that figure over half.

Meanwhile, the Sabbat was partying in Baltimore and maybe starting to figure out what had happened.

The whole thing smelled of Lucinde. It had been so invisible until the last second. Theo wouldn't have been surprised if Michaela had been involved, if she'd led him and Jan on, knowing what was coming, set-ting them up. But no, she was the type who would gloat.

She was too pissed off right now. She was out of the loop, and that didn't bode well for a prince trying to hold her own against a justicar.

"Mr. Pieterzoon," Pascek was saying, "you will coordinate strike-force activities with support from the Tremere. Regent Sturbridge will be arriving shortly."

Jan nodded. He wasn't looking too chipper ei-ther, Theo noted. But like the Brujah archon, Pieterzoon did a better job hiding his resentment than did Michaela hers.

As long as we fuck the Sabbat, Theo kept telling himself. That would make it all worth it.

Against two justicars, damn it all, Theo thought.

He may have been hung out by Pascek-justicar, fanatic, asshole — but if it worked, that was what mattered. Like so much Theo did as archon, the end justified the means. It had to.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 4:10 AM Eldridge Street, Lower East Side New York City, New York Eustace nodded and kept an even pace with his friend. "I think that white girl and that black girl was..." he searched for the right phrase, "you know ...shacked up." Now he started shaking his head. "That's how you get them mongrel breeds."

Eustace saw his partner's point. "Well, you know what I mean."

They walked in silence now — or without talking, at least. There was no real silence. Even at this time of the morning, a good number of people were out and about, staggering home late, or on the way to early work.

"The city that never sleeps — that's what they call it. New York City."

"Oh. They ought to call it the city where don't nobody speak English. I swear, except for us, I don't think I've heard ten words of English all night. We are still in America, right?"

"All three of them Sabbat fellas we caught were jabberin' something at us. You understand any of it?"

"Then again, I guess we weren't sent to stop by for tea with them."

Three jobs carried out successfully, now they just had to find the safehouse and hole up until tomorrow night.

Eustace took a scrap of paper from his pocket as they walked. He checked the address, checked a street sign. "Not yet."

One block looked pretty much like the next: row after row of brick tenements, shops and cafes on the ground floor, z-stacks of fire escapes. Only the accents changed.

"This a Jewish fella we're supposed to stay with?" Eustace asked. "I don't know Jewish. I hope he speaks English."

Reggie and Eustace both noticed the stranger at about the same time. It took a lot to "Damnedest thing I ever seen," Reggie said.

"With two women?"

"The city that never sleeps," Reggie said to himself.

"Huh?"

"Uh-huh."

"Nope."

"Hope.."

"We on the right block yet?" Reggie asked.

"Yiddish."

"Huh?'' "They talk Yiddish."

"Don't say."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I still hope he..." stand out from the kind of folks they'd been seeing all night, but this was not a run-of-themill vagrant. He was dressed as shabbily as a lot of them, but what set him apart was the thick, yellowish discharge running down his chest from his face, from his eye.

Eustace stopped, grabbed Reggie's arm, pointed. "Je-sus. Look at all that pus. I guess that'd make him a ... pus-sy." Eustace chuckled.

Reggie wasn't so sure this was a laughing matter. The closer he looked, the more he decided there was something seriously not right about the vagrant's eye, his left eye. "It don't fit right."

"Looking, yes?" the vagrant asked. He seemed to be talking to them. "Looking for... ?" He started moving closer.

Eustace sniffed at the air. "Jesus, do you smell that? We must've walked out of Little Italy and right into Little Leper Colony."

"Looking for...? Won't find..." The vagrant was coming toward them still.

Reggie took a step back. He had a bad feeling, a feeling he hadn't gotten even from the inhuman Sabbat creatures he'd encountered over the past months. "Look, buddy, you keep your distance, or somebody's gonna get hurt."

The vagrant stopped, smiled, nodded emphatically. And then the sidewalk opened up beneath Reggie and Eustace. It just wasn't there, and they were falling. They landed hard at the bottom of a steep pit, but they didn't have time to worry about that. The walls of the pit were melting, and molten rock rushed down over them to fill the hole.

For agonizing seconds, Reggie could only see the eye gazing down at him, glowing....

"What was that?" Eustace asked.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 4:17 AM Eldridge Street, Lower East Side New York City, New York She was straining against him with all her might, but somehow Hesha managed to keep his grip on her arm, to keep her from pulling away from him, to keep her from rushing to her doom. Ramona flashed him a glare of pure animal fury. He feared the Beast might take hold of her completely — it was so close to the surface, even at the best of times. She bared her fangs at him and growled, a feral, guttural rumble from deep in her throat.

"Ramona!" he hissed at her, forcefully enough to get her attention, not loudly enough for Leopold to discover them. Hesha's tongue flicked in and out of his mouth. Despite his years and years of practiced calm, the girl's near-frenzy was almost contagious.

She raised a hand to strike at him, claws glinting in the moonlight. Hesha did not flinch or turn away. He met her wild gaze, held it, would not let her look away.

"Ramona!" he whispered harshly. "If you do not stop, you will fail your elders. Their blood will remain on your hands."

She cringed at that. She drew back her hand but did not strike. Still Hesha held her gaze; he willed her return to sanity. And slowly, he saw the red fury fade from her eyes. She looked away from him now, quizzically, up at her own raised hand, at the claws that were no longer extended. Ramona lowered her arm.

"Fuck, yes, that was him," Ramona snarled. Her words dripped bitterness. They had seen Leopold, had watched him kill, again, and had done nothing.

"You must be patient," Hesha said, "Or you'll end up like..."

"I know, I know." She smoothed her hair back, stretched her fingers against her legs as a cat stretches its claws. "But we just let him go..."

"We can find him again. Whatever was shielding him from me, is no longer. The gem I showed you — I can track him."

Ramona sneered. "Yeah, well, that didn't work so damn hot before tonight. What if it goes on the blink again?"

She was right. It was an infuriating habit she had. "I will find him," Hesha assured her. Let her argue. Frustrating as she might be, he needed her lucid; he needed to know what she could see. "Was it the same as before?' he asked.

"The Eye," she nodded, "yeah. He held it in his hand ... and the nerve, bloody, hanging down from it, goin' into the ground."

Hesha watched her closely. That was not what he'd seen. Not what he'd seen at all. But he had reason to believe her. In fact, Ramona, and what she claimed to see, was his reason for hope.

"Come on," Hesha urged her, taking her by the arm and this time gently leading her away.

"We'll find him again. You'll have your chance."

Ramona didn't resist him, but neither was she comforted. Her blood was up. And blood must answer blood.

Hesha let go of her other arm. "That was him," he said.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 4:49 AM West 132nd Street, Harlem New York City, New York Christoph had finished cleaning the blood from his sword; it was strapped on his back again, hidden beneath his trenchcoat. Frankie waited ... patiently? The shoulder twitch he'd developed recently didn't seem to be a sign of impatience. It just was there sometimes, and this was one of those times. Lydia had a smudge of blood on her cheek.

Theo licked his thumb, wiped her face hard.

"The Avon lady you ain't," Theo said; then, "Let's go." They had time to get back to the track but not a lot of time to spare.

"Shouldn't we check back over some of the places we hit?" Lydia asked. "Make sure nobody's crawling out now that we're gone?"

"Nope," Theo said. They could do what she suggested. It wasn't a bad idea. They could find a place to spend the day in this part of town without too much trouble, but they'd had a full night already, and Theo had personal business he wanted to attend to. He didn't have personal business very often. Usually there was business, and that was it. Theo didn't take too much personally. But when he did, like tonight, he wasn't about to be kept from it just because Lydia had gotten herself a taste for killing.

She stared at him but didn't say anything, didn't give him any shit like she'd started to on the airplane. Could be that she was just tired. A long night of tracking down Sabbat cronies and blasting their fucking heads off could do that to a person. God knew that Lydia had done more than her fair share of patrolling and fighting in Baltimore, but tonight had been one long string of rooting out the bastards and tearing them apart. Then again, maybe she wasn't tired. Maybe she just had a handle on the fire in her belly — like she hadn't on the plane. Theo gave her a hard stare, held her gaze until she looked away. He wished he knew. She was a good kid, mostly. Better than a lot of others. He'd come to depend on her over the past weeks. It'd be too bad if she gave in to the fire, if the Beast clawed its way out.

But Theo had lost other people he'd depended on. Depending on somebody was a luxury, not a necessity. Losing people, that was a reality. He'd gotten over it before; if it came to that, he could get over it again.

"What the fuck?" Lydia pulled away.

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 6:03 AM Aqueduct Racetrack, Queens New York City, New York Theo trudged down the plain corridor that only ever saw fluorescent light. He had on his steel-toe-capped shit-kicking boots. Anybody looking closely would see dried blood — very recently dried — on the toes and heels. It had been a long night, longer than most, and it was late. He wouldn't be up for much longer — wouldn't be able to stay up much longer.

Lydia and the others had already turned in. Most of the strike teams weren't being housed here at the track facilities. They were spread among various safe locations in secure portions of the city. But apparently Pascek wanted Theo nearby. For the moment, that suited Theo just fine.

He came to a particularly solid metal door, stopped, knocked.

Theo opened the door and went in. Despite his dislike for his boss, Theo was impressed that Pascek hadn't used his position to secure extravagant lodgings for himself. No perks — hell, very few basic comforts, for that matter. The room was small, cinderblock walls painted dingy white, uncovered cement floor. There was a metal-frame folding bed that had been made up neatly, sheet, blanket, pillow, no wrinkles. A closed suitcase rested, exactly centered, at the foot of the bed. The only other pieces of furniture were a metal chair, which Pascek sat in, a free-standing metal closet, doors closed, and a metal table against one wall. On the table lay a mace. Not a can of Mace. An honest-to-God, crackyour-skull-fucking-open mace. The knobby steel head was clean, almost polished, but Theo knew that tonight, like his boots and his shotgun, it had seen use. Pascek himself, in the chair, wore a loose robe tied at the waist. He was bare-chested and didn't seem displeased to see Theo. There was not another chair. Theo did not sit on the perfectly wrinkle-free bed. The room was indeed too small for him to want to move in beyond the doorway. He towered over the seated justicar, but even had Jaroslav stood, Theo would have towered over him almost as much. The archon folded his arms.

"Good. Tomorrow the Tremere help us track the survivors, but we won't have the element of surprise like today and tonight. It was imperative that tonight go well. We already have a bead on Armando Mendes, by the way. Polonia's second-in-command." Pascek watched Theo for a moment. The justicar's expression took on a slightly curious aspect. He'd said what he had to say, and he didn't recall asking his archon for anything. "What do you want?"

That's a loaded fucking question, Theo thought, thinking also some of the many things that he could but wouldn't say. It wasn't a good idea to push a justicar, especially Pascek, too far. It wasn't a good idea to push him at all. It was bad from the start and just got worse and worse. Theo knew it was a bad idea for him to be here in the first place. But he could feel the fire. Fire and hunger, his twin curses. All Kindred felt the hunger, but only Brujah truly knew the fire, the unrelenting anger. The hunger had been sated by blood tonight, and the fire had been assuaged through most of the night by the bloodletting, but as soon as Theo had started thinking about Pascek, the fire had been back. It was back now, growing.

"I wanna know why I didn't know what was goin' on," Theo said.

Pascek's face did not change at all, but instantly his gaze was hot, hard, as if he thought he could, from where he was sitting, crumble the cinderblock walls, collapse Theo's "Enter," Jaroslav Pascek said from the other side.

"Theo," Pascek said curtly, "successful night?"

Theo nodded. massive chest. "There is no middle ground," Pascek said quietly. "Are you challenging me on this?"

No middle ground. With us or against us. Your Camarilla, love it or leave it. Theo had heard all this before. "I did my job, didn't I?" he said. But he knew that the justicar, even without provocation, often saw treachery where others did not. And Theo was pro-voking Pascek, counting on his actions to account for himself. But motives could always be suspect.

Pascek regarded Theo a moment longer, then smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of someone who sets you on fire and then, very calmly, asks you to repent. The justicar abruptly moved on to other matters. "This Prince Goldwin from Baltimore, what can you tell me about him?"

Pascek actually laughed at that. "I see. And Gainesmil. Could he run a city?"

Pascek thought about that, then sighed. "Ah, but we could never replace a Ventrue with one of our own," he said.

Theo wasn't impressed by what Pascek was, in oh-so-general terms, hinting at. Was this the justicar's way of trying to convince Theo that the archon really was in his confidence, by suggesting that Michaela's position might be usurped, as if Theo couldn't have guessed that on his own? Or was Pascek more pointedly reminding his underling of the influence, the power, that was entrusted to a justicar? That wasn't news to Theo, but neither did it do anything to calm his fire.

Now Pascek's expression did harden. He rose slowly from his seat. Normal physical standards, Theo knew, didn't necessarily apply to Kindred, as with Lucinde's apparent youth. Pascek stood barely five feet tall, but his countenance was that of an avenging god.

Theo wondered for an instant if he'd pushed too far. It would be a close thing if he and the justicar ever came to blows.

"This assault," Pascek said coolly, "has been under consideration for quite some time.

Myself, Lucinde, Lady Anne, Prelate Ulfila... we were awaiting an opportunity...."

"And the Sabbat gave you an opportunity," Theo said. An opportunity to take the city or to fuck Michaela? He suspected capturing the city was merely a pleasant bonus.

"Precisely," Pascek said, not elaborating on the specific nature of the opportunity.

"Just like you had an opportunity to test me," Theo growled.

Pascek sighed again. He glanced at his watch. "A test that you passed with flying colors, as I knew you would. All the better for Lucinde to see first-hand how trustworthy my archons are."

Bullshit, Theo thought. You're a paranoid fucking bastard, and you woulda loved catching me at something.

Pascek could see that Theo was not convinced, but the justicar's patience was at an end.

"If you fear a test of your loyalty, there must be a reason."

Theo shrugged. "Not worth a shit."

"Probably."

"And Lladislas?"

"He's done it. I hear he's in the market."

"You didn't answer my question," Theo said.

"Very eloquent, Archon. As for your not knowing everything that you would like to have known," Pascek waved a hand, dismissing the complaint, "there are numerous explanations: You were on the front line. How many soldiers on the front line know what their general is planning? More importantly," and now he took a step closer; the justicar came up to Theo's chest but narrowed his eyes and glared menacingly nonetheless, "that is how I wanted it."

The two Brujah faced one another from just a few feet apart, Theo not going quite far enough to be disloyal, Pascek not going quite far enough to dismiss his archon.

I guess you got what you wanted, then, Theo thought. The fire still burned in his belly, but it was low and hot like red-orange coals. It was a foundation to rival a furnace, but it did not burn out of control. He could have let it get beyond control. Easily. But standing there across from Pascek, Theo was reminded of Lydia on the plane, how pissy she was, out of control. Except this time he was Lydia, bitching about what his boss had decided was best.

Maybe she was right then, maybe he was right now. Or maybe he'd been right then, and Pascek was right now.

Or maybe I'll just have to kick everybody's fucking ass, Theo thought.

Jaroslav Pascek didn't know quite what to make of the half-smile that came across Theo's face just before the archon turned and left. He trudged back down the hallway in his shitkicker boots. No point in polishing them tonight. It was too late. Besides, they'd just get dirty again tomorrow night.

"I don't `fear' shit."

Thursday, 11 November 1999, 8:37 PM Beneath Brooklyn New York City, New York The others followed at a distance, ankle deep in putrid liquid and fecal matter. They didn't speak to their leader. His silence was contagious, oppressive. They didn't dare speak even to one another. The sewers themselves seemed to fall silent before the leader. The inevitable plink plink of water was absent. Squeaking rats fell silent and watched the procession of deformed corpses like some type of macabre parade.

Above ground — in the world, as the leader called it when he did rarely speak — the war was beginning anew. Let them have their war. There was enough to be done in aiding them. The antitribu were fair game, as well as a suitable alibi. However, the underneath, as he called these tunnels and caverns and crevices that were his lot, the lot of all of them, hid bigger game.

He stopped, observed the silence, swished his foot slowly so that the ripples would obscure the reflection of his visage. We will find you, he thought. Yes, we will find you.

Above ground, in the world, several hundred feet above and a few miles away, Theo Bell was again tracking Sabbat through Harlem. The Brujah archon could not know of these people, the third justicar in the city, and the hatred that raged in his heart.