The stranger paused for a long second, looking across the rooftops to the stars dimly twinkling through a pall of pollution and light reflected from the city. "She grew up and didn't need me anymore."
Ryan fidgeted for a second, playing with the doorknob. "I need you, lady. My mom does too."
The stranger took a deep breath and let it out slowly while massaging her forehead. "Kid, this isn't a TV
show. I didn't come to Deadtown to save your mother."
"Why did you, then?"
"I have my own reasons. I don't expect you to understand them. Sometimes I wonder if I understand them myself." She stared at the ragged preschooler for a long moment, then a small smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. "I can't promise anything, okay? Remember that. Now get going, before someone sees you!"
Ryan grinned, his eyes lighting up with real delight. It was the first time since she'd met him that he'd looked like a real-live boy.
***
She didn't want the boy to see her in full action. He had every reason to hate and fear creatures such as herself, and she didn't want his trust shaken by seeing her play up her Kindred nature. More to the point, she did not want him to realize just how difficult it was for her to control her vampiric tendencies. God forbid the child should come face-to-face with the Other.
She strode down the deserted street in the direction of Esher's block. Occasionally she glimpsed the faint glow of electric lights or a wan, frightened face peering out from a second-story window, but to all outward appearances Deadtown seemed as moribund as its name implied.
Appearances, in this case, were indeed deceiving. Three figures suddenly moved to block her way. Their movements were fast and fluid, like those of stalking panthers. The stranger halted in midstride, but did not try to flee.
"I told you we'd find her if we bided our time," said one of the vampires, his voice as dry as corn husks.
"I was the one who suggested staking out the neighborhood!" growled the second.
"Shut up! There will be time enough for arguing over who gets the credit after we give her head to Sinjon!" snapped the third.
"My-my," the stranger smirked. "What have we here? The Three Billy Goats Gruff!"
The first vampire made a disgusted noise and drew himself up to his full height. "Your days of insulting the Ventrue are over, Tremere witch!"
The stranger smiled and shook her head. "Look, fellas—I think you've got me mixed up with someone else."
"Do not seek to confuse us, witch!" growled the second vampire. "We know you were responsible for the execution of one of our prince's human servants! You left your calling card jutting from his back! You sought to insult our master by slaying one of his own on the very steps of the Black Lodge! Such effrontery must be punished!"
"Will you idiots get this through your thick heads? I'm not the person you're looking for! Now, I'm only going to ask you nicely once more to clear out of my way—"
"Enough!" thundered the third vampire, and they were on her.
The first circled behind her, while the second came in high and the third came in low. The stranger caught the third vampire squarely in the jaw with her steel-tipped boots, kicking so hard it hung like a busted garden gate, the tongue flapping like a pink worm. The second vampire's momentum sent him headlong onto her switchblade, skewering his right lung like a toy balloon. Normally such wounds are meaningless to the Kindred—but not when dealt by a weapon specifically enchanted to slay them.
The second vampire shrieked like a stallion in a gelding stall, pulling himself off the knife with a convulsive jerk. He tore open his shirt to expose his pallid, hairless chest. The flesh surrounding the puncture was already turning black and swelling with infection, becoming instantly gangrenous.
"What manner of Tremere wizardry is this?" rasped the first vampire.
The second vampire coughed, spewing forth the remains of his recent feeding, and collapsed onto the cobblestone street—well and truly dead. The stranger wasted no time rounding on the first vampire,
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) plunging her silver switchblade into his right eye. The vampire shrieked, and within seconds his left eye ballooned outward, like some absurd Tex Avery cartoon character, then burst.
The third vampire turned to flee, but found his way blocked by his erstwhile prey. He lifted his hands in supplication and sputtered something that might have been a plea for mercy as the stranger drove the switchblade into his abdomen. The vampire dropped to the ground and lay writhing at her feet like a worm stranded on a hot sidewalk after a rainstorm. It took a lot longer to die from a gut wound than from a shot to the heart or neural system.
Bored, she stepped over her third and final victim, resuming the direction in which she'd been headed before she was sidetracked. She took three steps, then froze at the sound of automatic weapons being chambered.
A woman's voice barked out: "Halt!"
Several Pointers armed with AK47s emerged from the shadows. At their head was the vampiress the stranger had seen previously—the one called Decima. She was dressed in a black leather jacket and leather jeans and earned a loaded crossbow. Decima scanned the carnage and frowned, looking back at the stranger.
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing. Now."
"Don't get cute with me, childe!"
She nodded to one of the Pointers, who rolled over the dead vampires with the toe of his boot. All three were already well on the way to putrefying.
"They're Sinjon's brood, Dec—er, milady!"
Decima's frown deepened and she turned her gaze back to the stranger. "You killed Sinjon's get—why?"
"I had no quarrel with them. They attacked me."
"Why?"
The stranger smiled crookedly, nodding to Decima's crossbow. "Apparently it was a case of mistaken identity. They thought I was you."
Decima's spine straightened as if it had been transformed into solid steel. "Ridiculous!"
"Yeah—imagine how I must feel!"
"Impudent bitch!" snapped Decima, lashing out with a vicious open-hand slap.
The stranger grabbed Decima's wrist, halting the blow within millimeters of her face. "Now, is that any way to treat somebody who's just done you a big favor?"
"What do you want, childe?" Decima spat as she jerked her hand free, her features rigid with rage. She was angry, but her voice held a great deal of uncertainty and a little fear, too. She did not like this strange vampiress, but she was unwilling to challenge her. Until she got a handle on the stranger's abilities, she could not risk being bested in front of the humans.
The stranger smiled, tilting her head so that the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses reflected Decima's angry face. "I heard you were hiring."
***
Decima did not bother to respond to the Pointer's flowery sobriquet, brushing past him as if he did not exist. The stranger followed in her wake. The Pointer's gaze tracked her for a few seconds, but when she turned her mirrored eyes in his direction, the guard quickly looked away, returning his attention to the darkness beyond his post. When it came to their fellow humans, the Pointers were as aggressive and vicious a group as anything this side of a wolf pack, but they automatically deferred to Kindred.
The House of Esher loomed over the blasted landscape like a mammoth tombstone. The stranger focused her attention on the building, dropping her vision into the Pretender spectrum. She had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing out loud. The energy fields surrounding the stronghold pulsed and vibrated with considerable power.
There was magic involved—which confirmed the rumors she'd heard of Esher being a Tremere blood-wizard. She had dealt with vampires of great power before—but their strengths had lain in the disciplines
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) of the mind, not the occult. She had knowledge of magic through her business arrangements with such alchemists-for-hire and spell-slingers as the kitsune Li-Lijing and the petit daemon Malfeis—indeed, it had been Malfeis who'd given her switchblade the Kindred-destroying enchantment it now possessed—but she had never done more than dabble in the dark arts. Still, it was clear from the braided chains of etheric energy surrounding the House that Esher had access to some serious supernatural connections. This was going to be tricky. Very tricky, indeed.
The Pointers lounging outside Esher's stronghold snapped to attention upon sight of Decima. The vampiress did not bother to look in their direction as she glided up the stairs. She paused on the threshold of the front door, her hand on the ornate brass knob fashioned to resemble a roaring lion's head.
"This is the house of my prince, the heart of his domain. It is his power made manifest. I will warn you but once, childe—do not stray from the central corridor. If you do so—then you are doomed." Having issued her ritual warning, Decima pushed the door open and motioned for the stranger to step inside.
The floor of the building abruptly fell away like the bottom of a carnival Gravity Barrel, and the interior spun in a dizzying circle. Pinned to the wall by centrifugal force, the stranger glimpsed numerous doors that turned into lizards, then into birds, then into doorways again. Some of the doors were over her head, others under her feet, while still others hung suspended in empty space.
Decima's voice came from nowhere and everywhere: "Do not move. Do not try to open any of the doors you see before you. Only the corridor is safe. The corridor leads to Esher, no matter where he may be.
Close your eyes. Do you see it?"
The stranger did as she was told. The dizzying carousel of doors disappeared, to be replaced by the image of a perfectly ordinary corridor, the hallway decorated with tasteful wallpaper and gilt-framed portraits. As she focused on the corridor, Decima appeared before her, motioning impatiently.
"Hurry up! I haven't got all night to waste on you, childe!" she snapped. The stranger stepped forward, her eyes tightly shut. She followed Decima, keeping to the corridor as it snaked its way through the house.
At times the hallway turned in on itself and she found herself walking back the way she came. She battled a surge of vertigo as the corridor twisted into itself, turning the floor and ceiling into a Möbius strip. Still, she had to admire the skill and knowledge necessary to create such an impressive magical construct. It took a great deal of power and effort to bend space so deftly. Esher's stronghold made the spirit-house called Ghost Trap look like a shoebox dollhouse.
At last Decima stopped before a huge oaken door on which was carved the symbol of the Tremere. She paused to glare over her shoulder at the stranger. "This is the audience chamber. The master awaits within. Tell me your name and bloodline, so I can announce you into his presence."
The stranger shook her head. "If he wants to know what's my name and who's my daddy, he'll have to ask me for himself."
Decima's jaw twitched. "You dare much, fledgling! I will enjoy breaking you under my heel."
"Just open the fuckin' door, bitch."
Decima's eyes flashed crimson—but she pushed open the door all the same.
The audience chamber was hung with black velvet drapes and blood-red tapestries with occult symbols and sigils embroidered in gold thread. The room was lit by several cathedral-style candelabra, each weighing as much as a man, whose curving arms held over a hundred candles apiece. The prince of this domain was seated in a fifteenth-century Savonarola chair, behind which hung an exact replica of Notre Dame's famed Rose Window, suspended by steel cables and lit from behind by artificial light. Curled about his feet like a dozing cat was Nikola, her eyes half-lidded as the vampire lord caressed her hair.
Esher was learning forward, speaking to the two Pointers who served as Nikola's guards—the Anglo with the spiderweb tattoo and the Haitian called Obeah—using a quiet, but authoritative, tone of voice.
"I don't care whom you pick—although I would prefer it to be one of the lesser lights, if you understand me. No one who will be greatly missed or might prove useful later on." Esher glanced up at the sound of Decima's approach, then motioned for the Pointers to leave. "Go, now. Do as you must."
The stranger eyed the duo as they passed by her. The one with the tattoo, unlike the perimeter guard, openly returned her stare and sneered as he exited the audience chamber. Apparently not all of Esher's human servitors were fully conditioned.
Esher leaned back in his seat, his hand resting atop Nikola's silken head as if she were a faithful hound at his heel. "Have you anything to report, lieutenant?"
"Three of Sinjon's get were destroyed tonight. They were looking for me, to retaliate for the Black Spoon
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) I took down."
"Good job, Decima."
"She didn't snuff 'em—I did."
Esher straightened, his gaze focusing on the stranger. "Who is this fledgling, Decima? Why did you not announce her?"
"She would not permit it."
Esher lifted an eyebrow and turned his gaze on the vampiress with the mirrored sunglasses. "Indeed?
Who are you, childe? Which bloodline do you claim?"
"My sire was Sir Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star—Ventrue, I suppose you'd say—but he abandoned me shortly upon Embracing me. I claim no clan."