Silent Knife, part 15

CHAPTER 25

 

 

Bourne barely had enough strength to drag himself away from the car chassis. Crawling across the pavement on his belly, his head pounding and his vision blurred by blood, his mind lost track of the year and the place. It was 1934 again on the Embarcadero, and he was crawling to evade the hooves of the police horses, the fall of the truncheons. He crawled over blood-soaked copies of the The Waterfront Worker, the pamphlet’s cheap paper scraped into wet chunks by his knees. Above the shouts and screams of strikers and the whistles of the riot cops, above the strains of “The Internationale,” which someone was still singing, Bourne could hear the seagulls crying up in the San Francisco skies. They soared high enough to avoid the tear gas wafting through the air.

Those were the days when he had walked in daylight, when he hadn’t felt the hunger. Or rather, he had, but for an entirely different sustenance: justice, equality, brotherhood. Commodities apparently no less forbidden and unnatural than Vitae, as he learned when the truncheons fell upon him again and again. Somehow, with rocks and empty canisters landing all around him, Bourne managed to drag himself beneath the chassis of a flatbed truck. He knew he was dying. The entire world, with its punishing sense of irony, finally decided to turn red. Then it began to fade away entirely.

A silver Mercedes M550 bore down on Bourne, and he stared uncomprehendingly. That car didn’t belong in 1934. Then he realized it was more than seventy years later and the car was about to hit him.

Bourne had crawled to a rather unsavory neighborhood. The street was devoid of people at 2:00 A.M., exactly the kind of situation in which the kind of person who drove a Mercedes would least want to find himself. The driver had probably taken a wrong turn somewhere and was rolling slowly up and down Boston’s notorious one-way side streets looking for a way out of the maze.

Staying low, Bourne tossed himself to the side as the car drove past. He flung out an arm, raking his claws across the left rear tire. The car lurched, and the driver pulled over by a fire hydrant. The door opened. Bourne scampered close behind, racing forward at knee level. He reached the well-dressed man just as he looked down.

Leaping up from all fours, Bourne tackled him. To his credit, the man fought. Had he any training or strength beyond the panicked urge to survive, he might even have fought off the weakened vampire. But Bourne had been tenacious in life, and was doubly so in death. In his neonate days, he had wondered if the blood of the wealthy would be thin and watery compared with the hardy pulse of the working man, but blood, in the end, was blood. Sweet, sensuous, it truly did unite the human race, gave it equality. Equality as chattel for the Kindred.

And here he had thought he had outgrown all those tired political metaphors long ago.

Bourne rolled over on his back, too exhausted even to wipe up dribbles of red from his beard. After a few minutes, he had regained enough strength to climb up, seal the puncture wounds on the man’s neck, check his pulse. The suit-and-tied bastard would live. Bourne laid him across a stoop and left him for the good people of the neighborhood to find in the morning. Maybe they would be kinder to Mr. Suit-and-Tie than he would have been to them if situations were reversed and they had shown up at the lawn of his gated house out in the suburbs. Bourne hoped not.

He changed the tire and drove back to Eagle Hill. He knew exactly which roads to keep to. What he didn’t know was what he was going to tell his sire.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

Silas always looked nervous and haggard, but Bourne could tell the difference between his sire’s habitual anxiety and genuine worry. Lately Silas had mostly displayed the latter; after the destruction of his townhouse, he had been in a constant state of near-apoplexy. At the moment he was pacing up and down the halls in Liliane’s safehouse. Bourne arrived and walked desultorily in his wake.

“Well?” Silas turned, hands wringing, eyes narrowed and molelike. That was the only greeting he offered Bourne. No words of concern over his childe’s battered appearance, no expression of relief over his return after a covert operation.

Bourne sighed. That might make what he was about to do easier. Then, upon reflection, he thought: Yeah, right. The same way screwing the stewardess makes it easier to survive a plane crash.

“I did what you asked, sire.”

“Of course.”

Silas nodded, then turned his back, stared intently for a few moments at the wall, at this painting or that one. “Liliane has no taste whatsoever. Her age is no excuse for a fascination with this Baroque rubbish. I have met plenty of Kindred who personally remember the Council of Trent and yet still recognized Bernini for the pervert and charlatan he was. Bah!”

Silas spun away, seemed to fold in on himself. “I miss my own paintings.”

Bourne kept his distance and kept his silence.

Eventually Silas looked up, like an ostrich removing its head from a dune. “Well? Where are your inane little witticisms?”

Witticisms. It was 1934 again, and Bourne was blood-curdlingly furious. After his first few nights among the undead in Silas’s studio, the elder had finally revealed the reason for snatching the young union agitator from death’s embrace.

“I wanted to forever preserve a piece of idealism,” the strange old man cackled. “As a tonic for when my moods become dark.”

The weeks flew by, and Bourne came to see that Silas hadn’t preserved him, the idealistic labor activist, because the elder had wanted to rekindle some long-lost noble fire that would illuminate the darkness in himself. No, he wanted that idealist around so that, when he was feeling blue, he would always have someone to laugh at.

Bourne had fought against that role. Yet the more he raged and hewed at his sire, the more humorous Silas seemed to find it. Silas laughed all through those years when Bourne, kept on a very long leash, rejoined the old movements, rejoined them again when they became new movements. He bashed heads at the Ford Motors Strike, strangled rednecks with their own lynching ropes in Selma, set fires in Watts. But the system endured.

Silas helped him peek behind the system’s mortal curtain, showed him the Kindred of the Invictus Council. Bourne joined the Carthian revolt, sang its rallying cries about the basic rights of Kindred freedom. Bourne joined every cause, mortal and immortal, then stormed away when they were crushed or sold out or simply failed. Then he would begin again, and again, and again . . .

Finally, Bourne got the joke. The joke. There was no better world coming, no matter how hard anyone worked. There was only a steady supply of idiots who kept breaking their backs, and the backs of others, believing in it. It was the biggest joke of all.

By the time he realized it, Bourne had developed a big enough repository of cynical humor, of both the gutter and the gallows varieties, that he could still make Silas laugh.

But tonight, right now, he didn’t want to.

“My humor seems to have leaked out tonight, boss. Along with about six pints of blood.” Bourne coughed, wondering when his shattered ribs would get around to healing themselves. “It’s been a bad one.”

“You have no idea.” Silas’s voice dripped off his rotten gums. “You also have no idea how much worse it’s going to get unless we can unseat Ariadne from our Prince’s side. I presume you have the needed evidence.”

So this was the moment.

Bourne felt something bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He preferred to think it was the lining of his intestines slowly re-knitting after being punctured by the carburetor into which Roarke had slammed him.

“Um, yeah. About that.”

Only moments earlier, Bourne had held the tape of Andrei in his hands. He had stared at it, felt the cheap plastic of the case, tossed it in the air once or twice.

“Boss, is this the best possible time? I mean, Archibald’s death still has everyone pretty frazzled—”

“That is what makes it the best possible time.” The elephantine skin of Silas’s forehead wrinkled in annoyance. “Out with it already. My patience is thin.”

Silas held out a bony hand. If the old man still produced saliva, Bourne imagined it would be churning across his gums and tongue as he anticipated the incriminating, lurid scenes the tape would reveal.

Bourne looked at his sire, so desperate, so fragile, despite all his age and power. He had hated that bony, hunched visage for so many years. But even hatred, though longer lived than idealism, had a finite lifetime. Silas had given Bourne so little yet depended on him so much. The man had lived so long, amassed so much art and influence, and yet fell into pits of hopelessness and misery at the slightest provocation. On his good nights, Silas had enough venom of bitterness to at least give himself some lift.

Bourne, like everyone else, feared Silas in his moments of rage. Unlike everyone else, Bourne realized just how vulnerable the elder was. Bourne had made a legion of enemies; he knew that, if not for Silas’s protection, he would have been destroyed long ago. But Bourne knew just as well that, if not for Bourne’s companionship, Silas would have long ago dissolved into some solitary madness.

Bourne didn’t know which he feared more in response to his revelation: the punishment that was surely to come or the sight of Silas’s own grieving disappointment.

Well, we all gotta face the music sooner or later. Least I stole some clean underwear from that yuppie I drank.

“Recording’s no good, boss.” Bourne forced the words out. “Destroyed when our car got ambushed by some of Roarke’s goons.”

It was true enough. Silas had ordered Bourne to make the recording, to bring it to him when it was ready. The elder had imposed his will. The strength of the Vinculum, especially from his sire, commanded Bourne’s obedience. But commands came in words, and words were funny things. Silas hadn’t specified anything about taking great lengths to protect the recording—for example, about not choosing to use it as a passably adequate shield against Roarke’s goon’s knife. Bringing the recording to Silas was required. The recording, however, was hardly in working condition.

Silas paused, still processing the words he had expected to hear, not the ones he actually had.

“It . . . you . . . what?”

Trying to push all images of the tape shattering between his hands from his mind, willing his thoughts to erase the feeling of the delicate magnetic ribbon as his claws slashed it to pieces, Bourne continued. “Gets worse, boss. The actual guy Ariadne was seeing? Roarke’s thugs took care of him, too. Not enough of his body left to even prop up as a puppet, let alone bring in to testify.”

Every lie seared Bourne’s tongue. Ariadne’s cruel words bubbled up in his mind: Lapdog. Stoolie. Fat piece of shit.

She should have added “complete idiot,” he thought.  Look at what he was doing, for her sake no less!

Silas’s anger seemed to travel slowly, neuron by neuron, rippling up each individual skin cell and muscle until, one by one, they clenched and began shivering.

“This,” he hissed, “is unacceptable.”

“Accept it.” Bourne tried to pull himself up to his full height, but the spine just wouldn’t stretch right. He chose to blame it on his injuries. “Shit happened. Roarke’s stronger than we thought. He—”

“I don’t care about Roarke!” Silas roared. “Roarke will die in a few days, just like everyone else in this damned city.”

Bourne started. “Ah, how’s that now?”

“Can I trust you with nothing? Not even self-preservation? I thought I had at least trained you for that.”

“What do you—?”

“A flood is coming.” Silas jabbed a finger up toward the ceiling and presumably the outside world that lay above Liliane’s subterranean refuge. “A terrible flood, all consuming. Liliane is building an ark, but space is certain to be limited. We shall not walk out of this place two by two. Surely she will take with her her Hand. If we sever that Hand, she shall pick a new one. Me! As she should have before. And, unlike our dear Prince, I would not forget those who had been loyal to me. Had been loyal.”

“What? She’s not leaving. What are you talking about? Is this because of Archibald? I’m sure the Prince has contingency plans.”

“Liliane has done all she could.” Silas’s voice shook. “But I have been watching the kine’s blather on the television news. They are noticing too many hints of our actions. The Prince is convinced the Council and the wizards are ready to descend upon us to preserve the Masquerade. We must act quickly, re-assess our plans. You may have doomed us both, you useless waste of flesh!”

Bourne clenched his fists and bit his lip. So the end was coming. Ariadne was going to be saved. Bourne had sacrificed his own chance at being saved in order to protect her.

He felt like smashing every breakable object in sight. Silas had been right. Bourne was extremely laughable. Hysterically so. A shame Silas didn’t know enough of the story to fully appreciate the humor.

“We will have to make plans.” Silas voice was now very soft. “But first, you need to pay for your incompetence.”

Blown by an unseen wind, the door to the room slammed. Silas’s eyes narrowed. There was no trace of depression in them. He strode forward toward his childe, claws extended, and Bourne at least found the dignity to stay rooted. As for Bourne’s inability to keep back his own screams a moment later—well, none could fault him for that failure.

Those screams went on for a very, very long time.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 26

 

 

“Ah, Daughter. You await us.”

Ariadne had tried her best to make herself look busily occupied at Liliane’s writing desk, reviewing Po-Mo’s field reports composed in childlike scrawl on bloodstained paper. Over an hour had passed since she had left the secret passageway, had buried her tracks and thrown away Roarke’s key. Liliane’s study looked as undisturbed as ever. Still, Ariadne tensed when the Prince entered the room, certain some statuette jostled a half an inch to the left would somehow give her away.

Indeed, Liliane’s brow was furrowed.

“We sense your heart is heavy and wrought, Silent Knife. Come, unburden yourself. New Jerusalem is your home, your oasis, your sanctuary, as it is to all who wander and are lost.”

Liliane spread herself out on the divan, looking more radiant than ever. Her translucent white dress gave her body an ethereal glow in the room’s dim light. She smiled, her ice-blue eyes fixed on Ariadne.

Ariadne knelt before Liliane, and the Prince stroked her Seneschal’s long hair with strong, defined sweeps of her hand. Ariadne knew at any moment those lovely fingers could apply pressure and crush her skull like a fruit.

“Rise and drink with us.”

Liliane reached to the small night table beside her, where two crystal goblets and a decanter lay. She poured a rich, thick soup of red into each and offered one to Ariadne. The blood smelled sweet. It soothed the restless energy inside Ariadne as she pulled it close to her lips, but for a moment she hesitated.

Two glasses. Does she always keep two glasses or did she know I would be here? I’ve been here plenty of times, but she’s never asked me to drink with her before. . . .

Ariadne slowly pulled her lips up from the rim of the glass, feeling as if she were fighting against the draw of a strong magnet. “You have shown me so much kindness, my lady. I am unworthy of all you have already done, yet I have to ask you for one more thing.”

“Our Hand,” Liliane said pleasantly. “We always reward those whose faith has been strong.”

Ariadne’s thoughts rang with voices, Roarke’s most insistently: “Liliane’s got something much scarier up her sleeve than Old Dishonest Abe ever dreamed of.”

She willed the voices to silence, but they were replaced in her mind by Liliane’s eyes. Cool blue lakes.

Ariadne took a sip of the blood. It seemed to take every ounce of her strength now simply to swallow. The Vitae, rich and thick, churned in her throat and stomach.

“Speak, and we shall hear,” Liliane said.

Ariadne fought to get each syllable out. “I wish to petition for permission to Embrace. I have found a mortal upon whom I wish to bestow eternal life.”

Liliane’s smile remained, but now it thinned ever so slightly. Her eyes narrowed. Such tiny gestures, and yet Ariadne felt the Prince’s mood change in her own bones like temblors heralding an earthquake.

“You are but a childe yourself.”

Ariadne wanted more than anything to throw herself on the ground before the Prince, to beg forgiveness and be on her way. But visions of Andrei’s battered body, of Bourne holding his bloody finger, pushed her forward.

“My lady, I know I am unworthy, but I desire—”

“You desire what?”

Now Liliane’s voice grew genuinely frosty, and Ariadne knew she had made a mistake. “Do you desire love? Is that it? Yes, I see it in your eyes. And he is kine? Mortal?”

Ariadne nodded meekly.

“You. The Silent Knife. You desire the love of a mortal, made eternal by the sharing of your own Vitae? Pshaw.”

The Prince put her glass down gently, but even the small clink sounded ominous. “Has our love for you not been enough?”

“I would never suggest that, my lady.” Ariadne felt as if the fresh blood she had just drunk was starting to coagulate.

Liliane fixed her with a gaze that felt like sunlight itself. Just as Ariadne thought she would cry out for the Prince to stop, the pressure eased.

Liliane’s voice softened. “Do not think we do not value and appreciate all you have done for us. Neither should you think us so cold that we do not recognize your passion, your burning need to create.”

The Prince turned and stared at some distant point. “The ability to create may be all that keeps us from becoming monsters through and through. Even when He damned us, God in His infinite mercy left us with that small shard of His grace.”

There! Ariadne found and seized upon her opening.

The words started to come now, unbidden, and Ariadne was surprised at how much honesty lay in them. She wove a tale of Andrei, praising his skill as one who could forge new structure out of rubble. Just the kind of soldier-architect to help build New Jerusalem. What started out as a flattering exaggeration became true as it left her lips, all of it.

As Ariadne’s story wound down, Liliane slowly drew the knuckles of one hand across the palm of the other in thught. Ariadne kept her mouth closed, desperate not to spoil whatever germ it was that she had planted.

“From the mouths of babes,” Liliane said at last. “Daughter, you ask much of us. These are dark times, trying times. Remember what we told you earlier. We must flee soon, and if your new childe is to come with us, someone else must not. Know that if you Embrace this man, you condemn more than one soul this night.”

Ariadne nodded. This hardly seemed the time, though, to raise the next idea: that neither she not Andrei would join Liliane at all.

The Prince was speaking: “Little time remains. If it is to be done, it must be done quickly. Tonight if possible.”

Tonight, then. Ariadne would worry about the future tomorrow. Maybe Roarke’s accusations were true, maybe they weren’t, but what mattered was that Liliane had come through for Ariadne yet again. She rose to leave.

“Daughter.”

Ariadne snapped to attention. She had thought the interview concluded.

Liliane sounded almost tired as she spoke her next words. “This is a bittersweet night. It seemed like only yesterday that we had taken you under our tutelage. But then, why does one create, if not to have something last beyond you?”

Ariadne nodded, uncertain what to say.

“Still, we have a vested interest in this new creation, as well. He was yours to find, but he will not be yours alone in undeath. You are not yet ready for that.”

Ariadne stiffened.

“You will bring this man to me before you Embrace him.” Liliane’s voice was crisp and deadly in its superficial nonchalance. This was no mere request.

Forgetting her place, Ariadne blurted out, “Why?”

“A sire need not explain herself to her childe,” said Liliane. “This man, this Andrei, will be of your blood, but he will also be of ours. We take very special, exceptional care of what is ours. We shall teach him, just as we taught you.”

At once, Ariadne felt herself collapsing. The room seemed to tilt. What Bourne did to Andrei would be tender lovemaking compared to Liliane’s tutelage. Those thoughts so consumed her that it took Ariadne a few more moments to realize the totality of what Liliane had revealed to her.

“A . . . sire? Your . . . blood?”

The words tumbled out of Ariadne’s mouth, as suddenly the full import of the Prince’s words seeped into her brain. “My lady, do you mean—?”

“Yes.” Liliane beamed her warmest, most terrible, most deadly affectionate smile. “You are ready now to know. We are your mother in fact as well as name, sire and liege in one. Rejoice and know your place at our side to be rightful in the eyes of God.”

Ariadne had to steady herself on a bookshelf, nearly toppling it in the process.

The revelation rushed like a river through a broken levee, there to flood and fill and fulfill. The taunts, the jeers, the cold shoulders, all of it came screaming up to her in a giant cacophony. Orphan. Wanderling. Caitiff. Outcast even among a community of outcasts, all of whom could at least name the sire who had rejected them. A thousand scornful, pitying leers, and all along . . .

“Look not so crestfallen, my Hand. Any childe of a great sire can claim greatness, which was all the more reason why we made you earn it. This Silent Knife has been forged from true steel, not bastard iron.”

The next thing Ariadne knew, Liliane was standing, holding her in her arms. Terrible warmth suffused Ariadne, generosity so boundless and consuming that it frightened her. Caught up in those arms, Ariadne was an infant, helpless to do anything but be rocked and soothed.

Liliane released her a small eternity later. “Now go forth, free for the first time of the cloak of anonymity. Wear your royal lineage proudly. You will be the helmsman at the prow of our ark, the princess presiding over the walls of New Jerusalem, wherever we may construct it. This night has brought great joy to our heart.”

At once, Liliane raised her hand and waved Ariadne away. “Such moments are far too rare. We must be alone now, to meditate upon it, before darker matters demand our renewed attention.”

Ariadne did not so much walk from as flee the room. She kept on running, through the filthy and torn-up hallways, pushing past Po-Mo’s reveling warriors.

Up, up to the surface, tearing out the front door, Ariadne felt the city falling down behind her. She climbed to the roof of the house, the highest spot on the highest hill in East Boston. Cold wind tossed her hair and battered her form.

“You . . . monster,” Ariadne finally said, struggling through a haze of guilt to speak. Even now, it was so hard to hate Liliane. Was this some power the Prince had over her as her sire? Ariadne had so little knowledge of what actually went on between sires and their childer. What if all Liliane needed to do was speak a word and Ariadne would be forced to stay? If Ariadne Embraced Andrei, would his blood also be Liliane’s to command?

If so, then Andrei would be Liliane’s. As Ariadne would be, for all time.

All her unlife, Ariadne had envied the status a sire would have brought her. Why had she never thought about the freedom it would have robbed from her until now?

Sheriff. Seneschal. None of it was worth anything. The loyalty Ariadne had fought so hard to prove had been meaningless. What use was loyalty when your Prince’s words held the power of blood-command?

Liliane had never let her out of the torture chamber after all. She never would.

Ariadne balled her fists, beat them against her own eyes. She reeled back, her mouth opening to gruesome, inhuman proportions, a mouth wide enough to melt her face into her neck. Her scream set off car alarms throughout the street. Let the police come to investigate.

Exhausted, she hugged herself tight, kneeling on the roof. She never asked for the night, but she had thought, until now, that she had at least carved a place for herself in it. First that place had been defending New Jerusalem. Then it was to have been an eternity with Andrei. But all along, and forevermore, that place was subject to the whims of Prince Liliane.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

Ariadne was half-hoping Andrei wouldn’t call her, but she knew that sooner or later he would. Until then, what?

Ariadne should have felt an electric thrill of freedom. She wouldn’t have to sneak out now. She could go meet with Andrei whenever she wanted, with the Prince’s full sanction. She didn’t even have to wait for his call; she could sweep into the hospital, or that horrid motel, or wherever he was hiding, and simply claim him.

But all of the many imaginings and reimaginings of the scenario of the Embrace crumbled to ash in Ariadne’s mind, ash swept and blown by the cruel winds of Liliane. She couldn’t Embrace Andrei now. And now that Liliane knew about him, could she even run away with him as he was?

Battles with blades had been so easy. But without Andrei’s help, it seemed Ariadne met only with defeat at every step of the Danse.

“Well.”

There, as she passed the silent spires of East Boston High School, sat Bourne, his bulk pressed up against one of the stone lions at the gate. She turned to face him, trying her best to pull triumph from the jaws of all that gripped her. She attempted to sound haughty. “Not on the hunt tonight?”

“Better things to do.”

“Well, blackmail won’t do you any good now.”

“Boo hoo hoo.” Bourne spoke to the cement walkway. Shadows hid his face. “Looks like you outsmarted me.”

“Did you show Liliane the tape? Are you going to try anyway?”

“No and no.”

“Oh.”

The two stood there in silence, alone while the rest of the neighborhood huddled for warmth in the cruel winter winds. Even the cars seemed to pass quickly, seeking shelter.

“Why?”

“You have to ask? Jesus. Go the hell away, Ariadne. I don’t know why I bothered.”

In a flicker of moonlight between the clouds, Ariadne saw his face, the flesh crisscrossed with talon-shaped canals almost deep enough to see bone through. Then the darkness set in again, and he was obscured.

“How did you—?” She fumbled for words. “Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to see you like that and—?”

“What part of ‘go the hell away’ didn’t you understand? I can say it in Gaelic and Russian too, if you’d like.”

Ariadne stepped back. She wasn’t afraid, but she felt awkward, like accidentally walking into a wake being held for someone you didn’t know.

“Whatever you and Silas are planning, it’s pointless anyway. There won’t even be a court to jockey for position in much longer. The Prince told me she’s planning to leave the city now that Archibald’s gone. I don’t know who she’s even going to take with her. I . . . I thought you should know.”

A long pause. Then, finally, he replied: “So Silas wasn’t just being paranoid. How long have you known?”

“Only tonight. She told me herself.”

Bourne stared up at her, his eyes blazing red in the night. “So when you Embrace that mortal sod, you’ll bring him with you?”

Ariadne started. “How did you—?”

“A guess. Nice to know I’m right.”

Ariadne cursed herself. She was better than that. Of course, now that Liliane had declared her lineage, what could Bourne really do to hurt her?

“Let me make another guess. You asked Liliane for permission, and she attached conditions.”

Ariadne said nothing.

“I’m guessing she did because that’s what she does to every Lick here. You’re really going to fold boy-toy into the warm little family of New Jerusalem? We accept everyone, right? That’s Liliane’s credo? How convenient for you. You get to have your cake and drink him, too.”

Bourne went on: “You call me Silas’s lapdog. Well, you’re Liliane’s. Thing is, if you wanted to, you could be running this place.”

“Liliane is my Prince,” Ariadne said with more bitterness than she intended. Tonight’s revelations—and lack of revelations, in the subterranean chamber—still burned inside her. “She commands my loyalty. And yours, too.”

“Even if she orders us to march off a cliff. How sweet.”

“She’s not asking that of me,” said Ariadne. Thoughts of the Prince with her ivory talons around Andrei immediately gave lie to the words. “I’m no pawn,” she added, trying to convince herself as much as Bourne. “I’ve done things. I’ve disobeyed. You of all people know that. I’m Liliane’s Hand, not her slave.”

“Then prove it.”

Bourne’s stubby fingers shook with faint palsy as he held aloft a small object, barely discernable in the dim light.

Ariadne, though, immediately recognized it.

“You bastard,” she breathed. “How did you get that key?”

“Look at me, Ariadne,” said Bourne. “I’m fat and fight like a girl. A real girl, not whatever the hell you are. If I didn’t have a few tricks up my sleeve, do you think I’d have lasted this long?”

“What were you going to do?” Ariadne stepped forward, tried to gauge how she could wrest Roarke’s key from Bourne’s grasp. “Use it as more evidence against me? Prove that I have been trafficking with the enemy?”

“I’ve protected you!” Bourne spat. “First when I destroyed the tape, and now with this.”

“Oh really? So why didn’t you destroy the key?”

“Knowledge is the only power that matters around here,” said Bourne. “I wanted to know what it was first.”

“It leads to an ordinary storeroom. Absolutely nothing in there worth anything.”

“So there’s no harm in coming with me to look at it again, right?”

Ariadne tensed. “Is this some sort of—?”

“Trap? If it is, am I going to tell you?” Bourne shifted. “If you’re that worried, go tell the Prince. Have the soldiers seize me. That’ll show how much your own woman you are.”

Ariadne clenched her fists. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and go to Andrei, run off, and erase the Kindred part of her existence. But what if all Liliane had to do, from however far away she lurked, was whisper “Come back,” and Ariadne would have no choice? Better to exercise her free will now, while she still could.

“Damn her,” Ariadne whispered. “And damn you. Fine. Let’s go.”

 

 




 

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.