A Dozen Black Roses (31 page)

Esher hammered his arms and legs against her in a futile attempt to break free. The stranger's response to his attack was to tighten her embrace, snapping his spine like a dry branch. Esher's shrieks climbed into the ultrasonic register, until they sounded like the pips and squeals of a bat. His eyes retreated into the back of their sockets as his remaining flesh lost its resiliency, locking his features into a grimace of raw terror.

The House of Esher shrugged.

The stranger halted her feeding to blink and look around at her surroundings. The interior of the audience chamber was ablaze, the tapestries inadvertently ignited by the burning vampires running around. But the fire did not account for what she'd felt—

The House of Esher shrugged again. Only this time it was more like a shudder.

"What's going on—?"

"My magics—" Esher whispered, his voice that of a very, very old man. "My magics are tied to my blood…my life force…without me to sustain them, they can no longer keep the House stable... It is a house of cards… and you… have removed… the king..."

The house shuddered again, and a two-foot-wide crack appeared in the floor of the audience chamber.

The stranger let Esher drop and moved to retrieve Cloudy, who still lay unconscious at the foot of the vampire lord's throne. Esher lay sprawled on the dais, his useless legs twisted beneath him like gnarled sticks.

"Don't leave me here!" Esher wailed. "Deadtown is yours! I surrender all that I am and all that is mine to you—just take me with you!"

"You still don't get it, do you?" she sighed as she tossed Cloudy over her back in a fireman's carry. "You can keep your fuckin' Deadtown—in fact, I think you were made for this place! Now if you don't mind—I think I'll show myself out!"

There was a rumbling from deep within the building and the House jerked as if it were being pulled in three separate directions at the same time. The stranger nimbly sidestepped a fissure that opened up underneath her, pausing only long enough to snatch up her dropped switchblade.

"No! Don't go! Don't leave me here alone—!" Esher cried, his voice lost in the groaning of the House as it began tearing itself apart.

There was the sound of a metal cable snapping, and Esher looked up to see the stained-glass window suspended over the dais swinging dangerously overhead, like the pendulum from the poet's story. His last thought, before the ton of metal and colored leaded glass came crashing down, was of Bakil.

***

The stranger kicked open the doors to the audience chamber and staggered into the hallway. If the House of Esher had been hell to navigate when Esher was in control, it was even worse now. Eyes open or shut, the place was utter chaos. The walls were bleeding and the doors moved about on spindly, lobsterlike legs, their knobs extended on long antennae. The carpet underneath her feet was made from roasted

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) marshmallows. She gritted her teeth and slogged onward, doing her best to ignore the things skittering about on the edge of her vision.

She rounded a corner and saw a clot of Pointers mired up to their waists in the hallway. They looked like roaches in a glue trap. She looked away as the floor convulsed, slamming them against the ceiling with the force of a hydraulic press. She looked down at her feet and saw the carpet runner flex and twist, trying to snare her ankles like a snake. She tightened her grip on Cloudy and stepped up her pace, swearing under her breath. There was another quake and the sound of timbers giving way. She narrowly dodged a rafter crashing its way to the basement. All about her were clouds of plaster dust, crumbling masonry, and splintered wood—it was as if the House of Esher was striving to disappear in its own navel.

She suddenly found herself outside without exiting through a door—the wall had simply disappeared.

She staggered across the street, fearful of being buried under a toppling chimney or an avalanche of brick.

While it might do little but inconvenience her, she doubted Cloudy would survive the trauma. Once she was satisfied she was safely away, she lowered her burden to the ground and turned to watch the fall of the House of Esher.

Her first impression was that the building was on hinges and was being folded inward by a pair of giant, unseen hands. She was reminded of a magic act she'd once seen where the magician had taken a box the size of a car and repeatedly folded it until it was big enough for a child to carry—except that the box hadn't made a quarter of the noise the House of Esher did. The sounds of masonry being ground to dust and glass shattering did little to drown the screams coming from within the convulsing interior. She glimpsed a few bloodied figures leaping from windows to the ground below, but it seemed that most of Esher's followers, both human and vampire, remained trapped inside.

There was a long, guttural groan—not unlike the song of a whale—and the House of Esher disappeared in a mushroom cloud of grit and plaster dust. In its place was an empty lot. The stranger noticed that wherever the House had gone, it had taken its catacombs with it, since the patch of ground where it had stood only moments before was perfectly flat.

"Well, thank goodness that's taken care of," she muttered as she knelt to pick up Cloudy again. The older man's breathing sounded funny—she needed to get him to a hospital. Then she noticed the Batmobile sitting at the curb.

She opened the driver's door and scanned the interior. The keys were still hanging in the ignition. No doubt the driver was dripping off the ceiling in whatever hell-dimension the House had returned to. She opened the back door and gingerly laid Cloudy across the seat. The old hippie's good eye flickered open and his body went rigid.

"It's okay, Cloudy," she whispered. "You're safe now."

"I—I didn't tell him," he mumbled through what was left of his teeth.

"I know."

Cloudy closed his eye and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

***

The nurse at the emergency-room receiving desk glanced up from her magazine at the sound of the automatic doors whooshing open. She was somewhat startled to find herself looking at a tall, thin Caucasian woman in her mid-twenties with unnaturally pale skin and short, choppy dark hair, dressed in a battered black leather jacket, jeans and mirrored sunglasses, holding a grown man in her arms.

"My friend's been hurt," the woman said by way of explanation.

A couple of ER attendants hurried forward with a gurney. The woman seemed hesitant at first to surrender her burden, but finally let them take him from her.

"Uh, ma'am?"

The woman in the sunglasses turned to stare impassively at the nurse behind the receiving desk, who was holding out a clipboard and ball-point pen in her direction.

"Ma'am—we need you to fill out some forms."

"His name is Cloudy," was all she said, and turned and headed back out the door.

"Wait!" The receiving nurse called after the woman's retreating form. "Wait! You can't just drop him off like that! How do we know if he's got insurance or not?! ?"

Cloudy lay in his hospital bed, his left leg freshly slathered in plaster and hanging suspended from a sling. His right shoulderblade and arm were also newly mummified, supported by a metal strut that held his arm out at a jaunty angle. His beard and hair had been washed clean of blood and vomit and the

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) swelling on the left side of his face had gone down enough so he could open his eye. He sat in the dark, sipping apple juice through a straw, watching the TV with the sound off. The privacy curtain that separated his side of the room from that of his roommate's was pulled shut, effectively screening him from the door.

"Cloudy."

He jumped, spilling his apple juice.

"Sorry—I didn't mean to startle you," the stranger said, stepping out of the shadows.

"Jesus!" he muttered. "At least I'm in the right place for a heart attack!"

"Are you all right? What did the doctors say?"

"That I'm fuckin' lucky. I've got a broken leg, a fractured arm, and a dislocated shoulder. I'm also going to have to be fitted for dentures. I've got a couple of busted ribs and a punctured lung, but there's no sign of brain damage and it looks like I'll get to keep my eye."

"What did you tell them?"

"That I was mugged. Which is kind of the truth, once you think about it." He tilted his head and fixed her with a quizzical look. "I wasn't expectin' to see you again, after last night. Why'd you come back?"

"To see how you were doing and to tell you goodbye. Oh—and I thought you might like something to read while you recovered." She stepped forward and placed the Oxford English Dictionary on the night table.

"Thanks. I appreciate the thought," Cloudy said with a crooked smile.

"You'll need it once you get out. Deadtown is no more, Cloudy—don't try to go back. In a year or more it'll be an urban shopping plaza or a new business development."

"Where do you suggest I go?"

The stranger shrugged. "I hear San Luis Obispo is nice."

Cloudy smiled, exposing his naked gums. "I gotcha. Thanks."

As the stranger turned to go, Cloudy called out to her one last time. "Lady—I know this sounds corny…but I don't think I caught your name?"

The stranger paused, her silhouette etched against the privacy curtain. It was too dark for him to make out whether she was smiling or not.

"It's Blue. Sonja Blue," she whispered. "Goodbye, Cloudy."

The patient on the other side of the curtain groaned and muttered something in his sleep. Cloudy glanced in his roomie's direction to make sure they weren't being overheard. When he looked back—she was gone.

***

Sonja Blue yawned, stretched, and cracked her knuckles, all the while steering with her knees while the Batmobile barreled down the highway. She glanced into the rear-view mirror, watching the lights of the city dwindle behind her. Where to next? She'd heard rumors about a vampire coven in Detroit, and there were some pretty weird stories coming out of Boston. Then again, there were some pretty nasty infestations Down South that needed tending to. An embarrassment of riches. What was a girl to do?

Well, better decide her next destination in the usual way.

She fished her switchblade out of her breast pocket and flicked the trigger. Without taking her eyes from the road she tossed the knife at the atlas open on the seat beside her. She glanced down and grunted.

Looked like she was headed north.

She punched the eject button on the Batmobile's cassette player and removed the rap tape, tossing it out the driver's-side window. She reached inside her breast pocket and produced another cassette and deftly inserted it into the empty slot. The distorted shriekback of Diamanda Galas' "Madwomen With Steak Knives" came flooding out of the Batmobile's suitcase-sized speakers.

"There," she said with a smile. "Now that's music I can relate to."

GLOSSARY

ANARCH: A young rebel Kindred with no respect for its elders. Something of a young turk or punk kid, by vampire standards.

BLOODLINE: A vampire's heritage, traced from a progeny via its sire.

BLOOD BOND: The most potent bond existing between vampires; the receiving of blood is an acknowledgment of mastery. If a vampire drinks another vampire's blood three times, he is eternally

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) Blood Bound to that vampire.

BROOD: A group of progeny gathered about a sire.

CAITIFF: A vampire without clan or brood ties.

THE CAMARILLA: A global sect of vampires set up as a loose governing body over the Kindred as a whole.

CHILDE: A young, inexperienced vampire; the progeny of an older vampire (see Progeny).

CLAN: A group of vampires who share certain physical and mystical characteristics. Vampire clans include Brujah (rebels), Gangrel (shapeshifters), Malkavian (insane), Nosferatu (hideous), Toreador (artists), Tremere (wizards), and Ventrue (ruling class).

ELDER: A vampire who is at least 300 years old.

THE EMBRACE: The act of transforming a human into a vampire.

ENCLAVE: A group of vampires unrelated by bloodline but sworn to a central leader.

FLEDGLING: See Childe.

JYHAD: Conflict or warfare between competing vampires.

KINDRED: A vampire.

LUSH: A vampire who feeds on winos or junkies in order to get high.

MINIONS: Vampires who follow or serve a more powerful vampire.

NEONATE: See childe.

OVERDRIVE: A state of hyperactivity vampires can access in order to move faster than the human eye and elude detection. It is physically draining and not all vampires can do it. Also known as

"ghostwalking" and Celerity.

PRETENDERS: Creatures of myth and legend, shadow races that dwell among humankind by

"pretending" to be human. Pretenders include vampires, werewolves, seraphim and ogres.

PRINCE: A vampire who has established a claim to rulership over a city.

PROGENY: A collective term for all the vampires created by a single sire.

SABBAT: A sect of vicious, inhuman vampires; rivals to the Camarilla.

SERVITOR: Human servants of a vampire, such as gypsies.

SIRE: The parent/creator of a vampire.

THRALL: A vampire who is held under a Blood Bond and is under the control and protection of another, more powerful vampire.

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