CHAPTER 18

 

 

Unthinkable!

Ariadne thoughts raged. She had walked in on Po-Mo and his boys gathered in the younger vampire’s quarters, arms linked, performing Liliane’s unity ritual. Without Liliane. Or anyone else, for that matter. Their blood flowed into a large cast-iron pot.

“What are you doing?”

Ariadne rushed forward, forcing their hands apart one after the other.

“No biggie, boss.” Po-Mo laughed, but the expressions on his fellows’ faces were anything but mirthful. “Just buildin’ a little backup reserve, y’know, in case we need an extra zing in the next battle.”

“The whole point of the unity ritual is to benefit and bind the community.” Ariadne folded her arms. “We’re all united—”

“By God’s love and New Jerusalem, yeah yeah,” said Doughboy, following it with a snigger.

She turned on him. “You dare to mock the Prince’s vision in front of her Hand?”

The others fell silent, even Po-Mo. But Doughboy, still high from the blood, puffed out his chest. “Hey, come on, Ariadne. It’s not like you’ve exactly got your eyes on the prize there, either. How many battles have you actually led us in lately, anyway? Seems like we’re the ones workin’ our asses off on this New Jerusalem thing.”

A millisecond of silence passed.

With a flash of her sword, Ariadne severed first his right hand and, an eyeblink later, his left.

Doughboy’s eyes widened. Then his face scrunched as he battled back a scream. Finally, the sound erupted from his mouth and he fell howling to his knees.

Po-Mo laughed and kicked him in the back.

“’Ey, what did I tell you about messing with that chickie? No, you had to learn the hard way. Next time, she’ll cut off your balls and make you crawl through the sunlight to get ’em back.”

Po-Mo was now walking with a veteran’s swagger, and his burgeoning flock followed his every move. When he bayed, bloody-mouthed like a lupine at the night skies, they joined him. And the next night, when Doughboy tried to jump Ariadne as she did her regular inventory in the armory, she wondered if it were mere revenge for humiliation or part of some darker ambitions of Po-Mo’s.

If so, it was a pretty weak plan. Doughboy’s heavy gait betrayed his attempt at stealth, and Ariadne had drawn her sword and thrust it behind her, impaling him even as he charged at her back. She spun and danced with the blade in hand, drawing it in an arc that almost bisected Doughboy’s body at the waist.

Then she withdrew the blade, brought it up at ready position by her shoulders.

“Okay,” Doughboy coughed, staggering. “Okay, I give up.”

“Yes,” said Ariadne. She made a swift swipe, and Doughboy’s head was gone. His body crumbled to stinking earth moments later.

Doughboy had been an idiot. But Po-Mo wasn’t. The war was almost over. Ariadne knew Po-Mo well enough to be certain he wouldn’t try anything that directly stupid until Roarke was taken care of once and for all. But once that happened, would the next ambush be his?

She made a note to ask Andrei his advice on the whole situation. Then she paused.

She was asking his advice a lot lately, and giving him so much in return. If she had spent a little more time on the front lines, would Doughboy’s challenge have ever occurred?

Ariadne walked down the long red-carpeted hall inside the house on Eagle Hill, approached the large wooden door, had her hand on the knob and a mind full of uneasy thoughts when Liliane’s voice rang through the empty hall.

“Daughter.”

Ariadne flinched. The Prince had not emerged from her private study in almost a week. She had communicated through agents only, even to Ariadne. To suddenly hear her, with no warning, was startling enough even without a secret to protect.

Some Kindred took unsuspecting mortal lovers, of course. There was no crime in that. Ariadne hadn’t come close to breaching the Masquerade with Andrei. And the war was all but over. Still, the Prince’s cold eyes seemed to stare accusations at her even as her blood-red lips formed a smile. Liliane seemed to glide down the hall toward Ariadne, the motion of her feet completely obscured beneath her flowing white gown.

“My lady.” Ariadne bowed.

“Does the war go so well that we can afford to diminish our own ranks?”

Ariadne began to shiver in dread, remembering the pile of goo that had once been Doughboy, but Liliane waved her delicate hand dismissively, white handkerchief gripped daintily inside.

“Have no fear. We are not truly angry at that whelp’s destruction. He raised a hand to you in a time of war, and you did only what we have taught you to do. Finding you weak, solitary, sire-less those few years ago, what else could we do but ensure you developed the skills with which to protect yourself?”

Ariadne remained bowed, ostensibly in respect and deference, secretly in shame. However painful the Prince’s lessons were, she had taught Ariadne how to survive this waking nightmare. She yearned to open up to Liliane about Andrei, to rest in the lap of the all-consuming love of her Prince and have her erase the pain.

Ariadne took a step forward, actually opened her mouth, before her mind seized control again. No. She would not ask for help. Even Po-Mo knew enough to let his disciples try, and fail, on their own. The surest way to reward the Prince’s trust was to handle Andrei herself.

She only wished she knew how.

If Liliane was aware of this struggle inside her Hand’s mind, she gave no sign of it. Instead, she beckoned for Ariadne to follow her back through the corridors, until they found a secluded alcove.

“Daughter,” Liliane whispered. “We would not speak of this to the others, but you deserve to know. If the war continues much longer, we will not make the same mistake one foolish mortal prioress once made in ignoring the warning signs.”

“My lady,” said Ariadne, confused, “the war is almost won.”

“But the peace is almost lost.” Liliane’s smile grew thinner. “Archibald is destroyed.”

Ariadne blinked. “When? How?”

“His fellow Ravens found his sanctuary ravaged, and only a pile of black ash to attest to his presence. Roarke has hit us in the worst possible place.”

“That’s impossible!” Ariadne had posted extra security around Archibald the moment the war began. Roarke had to be nearly helpless at this point. Ariadne stopped herself before she said all of this out loud. The Prince detested excuses.

Instead, she asked tactical questions: How many attackers? With what weapons? The Prince’s answers reassured Ariadne that at least the entire attacking party had been destroyed. It had been a suicide mission.

Ariadne ran the numbers in her head. “Then that’s it. The end of Roarke’s army. Other than Roarke himself, the rebellion is over.” Archibald was destroyed, and that was a tragedy, but Roarke was now alone.

Then Ariadne felt a chill.

“Wait,” she whispered, the realization finally sinking in. Roarke’s goal had never been to destroy Liliane, had it? It was to cause chaos, break the Masquerade. Then others would move in to do the job of destroying the Prince for him.

“No . . .”

“Yes,” the Prince said heavily. “None of the local Ravens have Archibald’s skill. All Roarke need do now is draw us into breaking the Masquerade, which sooner or later he will force us to do. We will have no cover. Whether it be the kine, the Invictus Council, or the wizards, they all have their dreams to protect as well. Sooner or later, no shadow will be long enough to hide us. We must regroup and build again.”

Ariadne couldn’t believe her ears. Even with their ranks thinned by the war, Liliane’s demesne hosted a population of seventeen Kindred and twice that many ghouled servants. What other Prince in his right mind would freely welcome such an influx into his domain? What unclaimed city existed that could support so many vampires?

When she voiced her concerns, Liliane replied, “Your questions are wise ones. You yourself should have gained enough wisdom to know the answers.”

Ariadne swallowed hard. All two-dozen of them wouldn’t be making the trip. Liliane would pick a select handful, flee, and leave the others to die at the hands of Roarke, or the Mages, or the Council.

“Be thou not afraid.” Liliane stroked Ariadne’s hair. “We do not blame you for this. You have fought the war admirably and remain high in our esteem. At any new home we build, you shall be present to guard its gates.”

Ariadne turned from the Prince, buried her face in her hands. This was all her fault. Andrei had been a distraction at the worst possible time. She had thought she was on top of the war, hadn’t realized that even as she congratulated herself on winning each skirmish, she was fighting on the wrong front.

But Ariadne decided then and there that she would never make such a mistake a second time. If Liliane indeed moved her court, if she indeed took Ariadne with her, then Ariadne would never see Andrei again.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 19

 

 

Ariadne watched Andrei’s naked body through the frosted glass of the motel shower. The pinkish hues were beautiful, like the impressionist paintings Silas kept.

Her foot connected with a small stuffed rabbit. Cassie’s toy. Sighing, Ariadne pulled her pants back on. By the time Andrei emerged, she was fully dressed.

“Going already?” He sighed. “Is it too much to ask that once, just once, you stay?”

Ariadne nodded silently.

“Can I at least know a little bit about who he is? I mean, I’ve told you everything about Sarah. About Cassie. This weekend I’ll be seeing her again. Maybe you’d like to meet her? You could come out. I could introduce you as one of Daddy’s friends—”

Ariadne buried her face in her hands. Andrei drew near. He wrapped her in his arms, and for a few moments, everything was bounded, contained.

“I’ve screwed up, Dre.” She spoke into his shoulder. “Horribly.”

“What do you mean?”

“My job. The person I owe everything to. I failed her.”

“What do you mean?”

Ariadne tried, as best she could while obscuring the details of the Kindred’s world, to explain her misguided triumphs, her unexpected failure, the dangers that lurked around the corner. It came spilling out, not in the organized, professional manner of a business consultation, but the fevered, whimpering panic of a college girl. The Silent Knife was gone again, had perhaps been fading more and more with every visit to the Fresh Pond Motel. Ariadne was simply Ariadne, in need, and Andrei was Andrei, holding her hand, stroking her hair.

Andrei started making suggestions, drawing charts and diagrams. The words barely registered, drowned out by the comforting tone in which he spoke them. Confidence. Reassurance. Ariadne wrapped herself in it, sat back on the bed and listened. Everything was going to be all right.

Ariadne remained rapt until Andrei reached his conclusion.

“You need to leave.”

“W-What?” A burst of cold water had fallen on her.

“Leave this woman. Your boss. She’s got you all out of sorts. This relationship you two have, it doesn’t sound healthy. She’s moving her operations? Good. Don’t go with her.”

“I can’t abandon her!”

“Why the hell not?”

Ariadne now held her arms tightly around herself. “She’s . . . she’s a great woman, Dre. A leader. A visionary. I owe everything to her.”

Something in Ariadne’s fervor made Andrei bite down his first reply. Remarkably, he stood quiet, listening.

“She was kind to me, at a time when no one else was. I would have died without her guidance.” Ariadne swallowed. “She’s hurt me at times. Terribly. But it was for my own good, I think. She has this mission. This dream.”

“I thought you said you had been losing faith in that dream.”

“Oh, I don’t even know anymore! Whenever I’m here with you, thinking about the rest of my life is like trying to reconstruct a sandcastle after the tide’s come in.”

“Ariadne—” Andrei moved back in “—this sounds like a cult. It really does. You’re way too smart to be taken in by something like this.”

“She needs me—now, of all times. I failed her, when I owe her so much!”

“What? What precisely do you owe her?”

Ariadne opened her mouth. At this point, it was not even the Masquerade keeping her silent. It was the challenge of explaining the pride in what she had become, in her skills, her title, her reputation, now, when it all had melted away in Andrei’s presence, when it hid and refused to be found.

Instead Ariadne growled, feeling the reins of the Beast slip a bit. Andrei recoiled. He backed into the bathroom door, hitting his head. Ariadne moved to comfort him before stopping herself.

Rubbing his head, he repeated his command. “You need to leave this woman. Regardless of what you think you owe her.”

He stared into her eyes with the zeal of the newly baptized. “Look, I know it must seem impossible, to break out of a routine, to transcend the rules you’ve made for yourself. But I had rules like you wouldn’t believe. Thousands of them. You remember. And life fell apart anyway. There are good rules and there are bad rules, and the bad rules are just paper. We can rip them up any time we want to.”

Ariadne tore at the cobwebs that kept clouding her mind. “You have no idea.”

“I’m sure it must seem impossible, but—”

“You have no idea what I went through after you broke us up. No idea what kind . . . of how I . . . of how everything . . . she was there for me! She was the only one there for me! Where the hell were you? Where in God’s name were you, Dre?”

“Look, I’m sorry!” Andrei spread his arms, voice rising to match hers. “I am. I really am. I was a stupid kid. I think I’ve paid for my mistakes, don’t you agree?” He gestured to the motel room all around him.

“But seeing you again, being with you again . . . it’s like that missing piece is back. I’ve bent the rules. I’ve moved around taxi shifts, given my freelance jobs half the effort I should, and what do you know, the world didn’t fall apart. In fact, it got better. I’ve been so happy when you come to visit, Ari. However horrible your life seems to be right now, you look happier, too. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Ariadne couldn’t speak a word.

“We have to put the past behind us, Ari. Both of us. Or it’s going to kill us. It’s going to drive us right into the ground. We have to move forward. We’re strong enough now. Both of us have seen terrible things and felt terrible pain and we’re still here.”

Ariadne stared in disbelief. There was little she could do but watch Andrei place his hands, like a preacher about to perform a baptism, on her shoulders.

“I’ve got enough for first, last, and security on an apartment. It’s far from the city, out in the middle of nowhere, but what does that mean when you’re telecommuting? It’s close enough that I could still bring Cassie out. Okay, so I’ll lose the Ronnie Cab job, but I figure I can set up a small tech repair business out there. It’ll give people an alternative to the big box stores. Personal support, from someone who cares. We can do it together! You’re an artist. You can create logos, maybe do web design. I can teach you how. We can live a quiet little life that still makes a difference to the people around us.

“Come with me. Tomorrow night. Don’t look back.”

Ariadne shook her head, trying to recall what life this was, whether she was alive or dead or undead, whether this was Andrei in the present or the past or some twisted future. She had imagined a life with him once, but now when she tried to pull that picture from her mind’s memory box, she found something had smeared the colors and the shapes.

Trade New Jerusalem for an apartment and a family business in a small town? How could she explain her inability to walk in daylight? Her need for blood? How could she protect him, or herself, from any retribution Liliane might dream up?

“I need time to think.”

“Don’t take too long. It needs to be like ripping off a bandage.”

He moved away, began clicking on his laptop. “I’ll buy nonrefundable train tickets. That’s a sign of my faith in you. Meet me here tomorrow and we’ll go to South Station together.”

Ariadne tried to even imagine that scenario. All that came to her mind was music.

“Um, Dre?”

“Yeah?”

“This is going to sound silly, but, um . . . for weeks, I’ve been trying to remember this song, and where it came from.” She hummed a few bars, did her best to stay on key. “What is it?”

Andrei’s face darkened in concentration. He was putting his whole self into the task, as he always did. “I can’t put my finger on it,” he said at last, almost apologetically, “but I’m sure it’ll come to me. I’ll have it on my iPod for you when you come to meet me on the train, okay?”

They kissed, passionately, briefly. Then Ariadne collected her things and all but ran out the door.

*   *   *   *   *

 

When Ariadne returned to Eagle Hill, she imagined all eyes upon her in the sanctum, but all conversation was, of course, about what had happened to Archibald. Gone were the bacchanalian loungings and conversations about haute couture that had once filled this room. They had been replaced with a circle of acolytes gathered at Po-Mo’s feet as he reenacted scenes from the previous night’s carnage. Ariadne imagined a raging fire at the center, with Po-Mo dancing, holding a spear high. Then she withdrew into the shadows.

Ariadne walked through the interrogation room where Mister Rose’s body had long since turned to earth and stared up at the bronze frieze. She let her eyes roam over Lucifer, a bearded snake with eyes of coal, as he proffered a fruit to Eve’s tiny, waiting hand. What did Eve know of temptation? It was only a novelty to her, a break from the routine, from endless, static boredom. Only too late did she realize what was at stake, what she was giving up. She didn’t make a real choice, she just flowed with gravity, like a river over the edge of a cliff.

Ariadne walked past the closed door to Liliane’s study. She wanted to enter, ask the Prince to retell the story of her own baptism, her rise from the ashes of the first New Jerusalem. But the shame of having let Archibald fall was too great. The Prince still seemed to trust her, but Ariadne knew the extent of her own betrayal.

She returned to her cell, where she sat on her slab for a long, long time. Then she closed the door, opened the floorboard compartment, and stared at the old photo album again. She saw smiling pictures of a girl wearing her face, sitting on benches or dancing across the campus green, in broad daylight. Holding hands with a young, blond man with determination in his eyes.

Liliane was wrong. Ariadne was selfish. The Prince had placed such trust in her, and she had betrayed it, not for some beautiful divine goal, but for Andrei. For someone who had betrayed her and broken her heart.

Was Andrei, was what she felt with him, worth it? He had taken her back, but only now that he had almost nothing else in his life. No one settled for the Silent Knife. Ariadne’s anger raged, but contained, as always, behind a wall. If it was to have a release, it would be on the nights when she unsheathed her blades in battle. She wouldn’t have survived this past decade if she had been given to senseless rage or to self-pity. But lately she had been finding herself perched atop roofs, staring out into the starry black of night, asking silent questions and receiving no answers. What she yearned for most now was a friend.

In ten years, she had never found a trusted ear among Kindred or kine. Comrades such as Hera, mentors such as Liliane, antagonists without end . . . but no one to whom she could go for advice, no one to truly listen, without any aims of one day using what she said against her. The closest thing to a friend she had, she realized sickly, had been Bourne, but ever since that night at the bathhouse he had refused to speak to her. At first, she had welcomed the silence, had mocked his sullen, pouty brooding. But now?

In rage, Ariadne hurled the photo album against the wall with such force that the binding broke. Pictures scattered in all directions.

Ariadne buried her face in her hands. Part of her yearned to march back to Liliane’s study and lay bare her soul, to beg to be placed on the ant table and slowly devoured. Part of her wanted to storm out into the streets, find and drag Roarke back personally.

Her visions of atonement shattered as quickly as they formed. Even if she somehow found and destroyed Roarke, the damage had been done, hadn’t it? Liliane seemed convinced that without Archibald, New Jerusalem’s days in East Boston were numbered. The Prince was already making her secret plans to relocate.

Ariadne sighed deeply. Why not just leave with Andrei? She didn’t deserve Liliane. She didn’t deserve a place in New Jerusalem, wherever it ended up being built.

Ariadne gathered up the pictures, stuffed them and the broken-spined album back under the floorboards, and took up her sword. She hesitated again outside Liliane’s door, thought of some veiled way of making her goodbyes. But the Prince would know, the moment she saw Ariadne. She couldn’t face that.

She returned to her room and carefully placed her sword in the hidden compartment beneath her slab, staring at the blade for long moments before hiding it away from the world.

Finally she left the house and walked out into the night, stalking the streets pregnant with the knowledge that this might be the last time she ever plied these particular paths. A memory bubbled up from the abyss: Her, at age seventeen, being driven through her hometown by her father, off to college and leaving home for the first time. She was watching the same brown and white colonial houses flash past the window in the same order they’d always had, steadfast as the sun in the sky and the giant tree in her backyard. She had been trying to wrap her mind around the idea that she would not see them again for months, terrified and thrilled at the idea that somehow, by the time she returned, she would never see them the same way.

This turned out to be true. Come December she had walked the streets of her hometown like a ghost. Or perhaps only she was real and the rest of her hometown had turned spectral. Storefronts, streetcorners, farms, and people whom she had spent a lifetime seeing every day suddenly seemed less real, less familiar, than the dormitories and classrooms that had surrounded her for three short months. Some changes just un-stuck you permanently from the universe you knew.

Even the prospect of an eternal unlife, it seemed, did nothing to stay this process. Once again, Ariadne was terrified that she would never be able to return, even if she returned in body. Hell or home or both, she knew what she was leaving at Eagle Hill. She tried to think of what she was running toward as she put distance between herself and the sanctum, tried to form visions of a life with Andrei. She could get no further than the image of the two of them seated side by side on the 11:00 P.M. Amtrak train from South Station. It was hardly a beacon, but she followed it along the banks of the river rolling indifferently by, cradling its upside-down city, then up the cracking pavement ramp to the Fresh Pond Motel, itself swiftly becoming one more familiar sight that would soon be abandoned.

That song had returned to plague her thoughts, oppressive in its repetition. Da da da daaa . . . Whatever doubts she had, Ariadne hoped that just being around Andrei would dispel them. She would feel better, more human, in his arms. At the very least, his embrace would free her from the weighty burden of control over her own decisions.

She knocked on the flimsy teakwood door of the motel room. There was no response, but the television was on. She called his name, but her voice was suddenly so soft that she herself could barely hear it. She tried the knob. It turned. The door opened.

A few more steps. She could feel it happening already, the tearing of the husk of her now-self, the opening of the petals of her old life. She would be clay, which could be shaped and moved without pain.

“Dre, I’m ready.” She strode over to the bed where he sat in the dim glow of the television.

She blinked. Something was wrong. Andrei had put on weight, but he was not this bulky. And he never wore a baseball cap. Her eyes and other senses cleared, the mist of her confusion lifting just as the figure turned around.

“Heya, sweetheart,” Bourne sneered, an unlit cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Glad to hear you’re finally ready, ’cause I’ve been waiting all night.”

 

 




 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

DAVID NURENBERG, PhD, is a teacher, freelance writer, and social activist who lives in the Boston area. His credits with White Wolf include writing for the Vampire: The Requiem, Scion, and Exalted lines. His nonfiction has appeared in the Boston Globe, Newsweek, USA Today, and Multicultural Review, as well as many lesser-known papers, ’zines, and blogs. Silent Knife is his first novel published by a major press. His favorite animal is the wombat.