SILENT KNIFE

A Vampire: The Requiem Novel

by David Nurenberg

 

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

 

First, panic. Ariadne felt her throat fill with water, felt its weight enter every cavity and tug at her. Her limbs felt leaden, slow to respond, dragging through walls of liquid. She thrashed and spun, all sense of direction gone.

Then, pain. It centered her perceptions, zeroed them in on her chest and neck. The dog’s paws clung to her as if they were prehensile. Its jaws dug bloody chunks out of her shoulder; Ariadne’s hands swept through the severed pieces of flesh floating in a cloud around her.

Relief came next. She didn’t need to breathe. No matter how powerful the dog was, it seemed to be a living thing; it had to breathe, at least eventually. And regardless of which direction was up, she knew where her enemy was.

Finally, focus. She grabbed the dog by its shoulder haunches, tried to pull it off her. Its strength, like its speed, was preternatural. Ariadne brought her fists down on its back, but the water blunted the force of her blow.

She cried out soundlessly into the river as the dog’s jaws found purchase in her shoulder again. Ariadne twisted and turned, trying to keep her neck away, but again water held back her movements. Her hair billowed in tangles in front of her, blocking her vision.

In her living days, Ariadne had loved dogs, would run over to pet any strays she saw wandering campus. Here, this night, one was trying to destroy her.

It was Silas’s hound. It had to be. The elder must have been feeding the thing his blood—that was the only way the animal could move so fast or hold its breath for so long. Underwater, unseen, unaccountable, the beast could finish her off and Silas could blame her disappearance on Roarke.

With a surge of rage, Ariadne seized the dog’s torso and hurled, using the weightlessness of the water to her advantage. The two spun, and Ariadne began kicking with all her might behind her, holding her attacker before her as a battering ram. She endured the claws and gouges as she moved them forward, forward, until she felt an impact reverberate. Whether it was a bridge column, the riverbed, or a piece of sunken debris, she didn’t know, but something had arrested their forward motion, and the dog had taken the brunt of it. The impact caused it to release her.

Ariadne shook her head, whipping her hair out of her eyes. She could see the shapes of sunken barrels, bicycles, paddleboats. She could see the fingers of light from the city, showing her the way back to the surface.

A shadow cut through one of the fingers. The dog had recovered and grabbed a breath, was now churning the water beneath it like a thoroughbred racing toward the finish line, captured on slow-motion replay. But the water slowed Ariadne as much, if not more, than it did Silas’s cur. Accustomed to fighting in air, she misjudged how much force she needed to bring her arm up to protect her body. It flopped like molasses, too late to stop the oncoming attack.

The dog pushed her down, and Ariadne’s back cracked as it slammed into some unyielding object. Enveloped by the dark, Ariadne’s mind sank along with her body.

She found herself trying to envision New Jerusalem, and saw a sparkling city bereft of any need for a creature such as her to walk its streets. The pain clawing at her body cried out like one more impurity, one more sign that she did not, would never belong in a world of light.

If I cease here, a weapon ceases to be. No one mourns the loss of a weapon.

Daaa-da-da-daaa, da da da . . .

Her whole world collapsed into those few bars of that partially remembered song, into the motion of her floating hair across her cheek, awakening memories of Andrei’s fingers. The grip of claws around her waist became his protecting hold.

A weapon had no such memories.

With the simplicity of an underwater bubble bursting, Ariadne realized there was another path out of this madness, one that had been haunting her since the taxi ride. Assuming she survived to find it.

Extending her claws, she dug her fingers into the dog’s neck. It spasmed and released her, and she kicked it aside as her legs worked furiously to bring her to the surface. If she could only get to land, she knew she could prevail.

She swam toward the light that the city above the waters held out to her like a safety line. Pain scraped at her kicking heels as the dog’s jaws tried to catch them. In a straight swim, her long legs gave her the advantage. She increased the distance between them, pulling through the water with her arms, and broke the surface with all the relief and triumph she would have felt had her lungs actually yearned for the air it offered.

Ariadne had never been the best of swimmers, but she remembered enough. The river’s current was weak, and even injured she had little trouble moving toward the shore. A splash of water behind her announced the dog’s presence, a soft series of slaps heralded its pursuit. But a strong crawl easily outpaced a doggie paddle.

Dripping water and blood, Ariadne grabbed the rocks at the water’s edge with soaked hands and hauled herself up. Small streams cascaded off her as she rose. Her diaphragm heaved, and a spume of dirty water blew forth from her lungs. She didn’t need to breathe, but neither did she need a gallon of water clogging her insides, slowing her down.

Ariadne turned to meet her opponent.

The dog was a small black torpedo cutting through the water. With her blades, Ariadne could have sliced it in half as it approached. As things stood, she would just have to time its leap, grab it in midair, wrestle it to the ground. The loss of blood and the strenuous swim had weakened her, but the newly drained Vitae from the bouncer gave her strength.

Knees bent, she watched the oncoming shape. Five meters. Two meters.

She crouched. The dog leapt.

The dog exploded in a fireball in midair.

A puff of steam smelling of singed fur washed over Ariadne. A few bone fragments showered the water and the ground at her feet.

Ariadne spun around, still crouched, fangs bared. A growl issued from her throat, the universal predatory signal for “back away.”

All she saw was a woman sitting serenely on a bench on the Esplanade, silhouetted in the light from the skyline. A woman who did not flinch.

She was petite, with a bob of black hair streaked with a blue highlight, green eyes behind stylish glasses. She wore a thick cardigan sweater, blue jeans, and brown Doc Martens. She didn’t look any older than Ariadne, or than Ariadne should have been. Ariadne could smell her breath, hear her heartbeat. Kine, not Kindred.

Ariadne began calculating the time it would take, waterlogged as she was, to leap to high ground and set upon her.

“You’ll never make it before I toast you,” the woman said amicably. Her fingertips glowed softly in the night.

Ariadne stiffened. A wizard. It had to be.

“Relax. Frying draculas isn’t my raison d’etre. I assume you’re one of them, given that plunge you took and how long you were under before you came up. A little far from Eagle Hill, eh?”

Ariadne said nothing, just fixed her with a withering glare.

The girl remained incongruently cheerful. “Really, I was more curious about the dog. Obfuscated motion, preternatural speed. Parazoology’s a hobby of mine. But I couldn’t just let it munch you, so against my better judgment, I had to waste it. One would think you’d be grateful. Given that there’s not much left of the pooch to study, maybe you could tell me a thing or two about it. By the way, my name’s Marie.”

Ariadne began walking away along the shoreline, never taking her eyes off Marie. The girl watched her expectantly.

“Hmph. There’s gratitude for you. You know, there’s been all sorts of talk lately about troubles with the local draculas. Lot of folks where I hang out say it’s time to stop letting you all be our guests in these parts. Me, though—” Marie rose, sauntered nonchalantly parallel to Ariadne “—I just want to know things. Don’t you? Why not have a chat?”

Ariadne’s muscles clenched, begging for the command to leap, to rend, to tear. For a moment, all she wanted to know was how Marie’s body would feel, flopping like a rag doll, pinioned by claw and fang.

But the moment she let that tension release, she couldn’t deny the urge to actually have a conversation, about something other than battle strategy, or keeping up the Masquerade, or pleasing the Council. Or even, she realized, about New Jerusalem.

Ariadne hoped the yearning in her eyes didn’t show.

“Come on,” Marie tried. “Anything you can share?”

“A wicked beast, sent by a wicked man,” Ariadne said softly. “One weapon trained to kill another. Its sender didn’t anticipate that the target was more than just a weapon.”

Marie looked puzzled for a moment. Her eyes seemed to be following some object that Ariadne couldn’t see. Instinctively, Ariadne reached out her senses, but except for a few very chilly ducks, she and Marie were alone along this stretch of shore.

Marie cocked her head. “Something’s weird about you. Beyond the whole undead thing, I mean. I’ve been trying to read your aura for minutes now, and I can’t.”

“My what?”

“Your aura. Normal folks have a faint one. Mages have bona fide nimbuses. Vamps, they’ve got these nasty clouds. But you—every time I look, my eyes wind up just sort of . . . skidding off. It’s like water refracting light. Pretty neat trick. How do you do it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Ariadne.

“Never known a dracula who could do magic. Not real magic or even close enough to fool me.”

Ariadne remembered Roarke’s grimoire burning into nothingness in front of her. “Maybe they just need to read the right books.”

Marie rolled her eyes. “Hardly. I read about vamps who learn a few tricks, but that’s different.”

Ariadne could feel the blood-rush from battle beginning to subside. Caution seeped back in. “I need to leave now.”

“Oh.” Marie looked disappointed. “Well, this has been such an interesting night. I’d love to meet you again. I get the feeling we could learn a lot from each other.”

Ariadne stared uncomprehendingly.

With a girlish giggle, Marie turned and simply ceased to be. Her smell faded with her.

Ariadne took stock of her situation. She was covered in blood and water, sure to attract attention. She needed to clean up, to change, to recover her swords from where they still sat in the club coatroom. She needed to move that stolen car off the bridge, and fast, before it attracted attention. She marveled a bit that it hadn’t already. But these all seemed like small problems.

Marie, and what she said, left the Seneschal puzzled. Ariadne made a note to ponder her words later. For the moment, though, they weren’t relevant either.

Only a few things really mattered: Tomorrow night, Roarke would fall and the Silent Knife’s duty would be complete. That hunt would be over and a new one, for Andrei, would begin.

 

 



CHAPTER 9

 

 

The armory, with its arched ceiling, had always reminded Ariadne of a chapel. The rows and rows of hanging firearms were pews, the crates of ammunition pulpits, and, to complete the picture, at the head of the room, where the crucifix would be, stood the target-practice dummy. It filled the role of the wounded Christ, riddled with bullet holes and knife punctures, undergoing renewed torment each night as it suffered for the sake of Liliane’s New Jerusalem.

Ariadne shook her head, still trying to shake loose water lodged in her ears. A whole day had passed and the wounds from last night had healed. She had changed her clothes. But somehow the Charles River still felt as if it were running through every canal in her body. She tried to distract herself from the though by busying herself, checking to see that each rifle and handgun was oiled and loaded.

“Developing OCD on us?”

She spun around. Bourne was there, arms folded, hunting cap turned sideways on his head. Combined with his pouty expression, he exuded a cruel mockery of childhood. How was it that he could always sneak up on her?

“I don’t know.” Ariadne slammed shells into a shotgun as forcefully as she could. “I think these days caution is required. Wouldn’t want any stray animals sneaking up on me.”

Bourne’s expression shouted ignorance and innocence to all the world.

“Hmph. Wake up on the wrong side of the coffin this evening, Princess? Or is the Seneschal now too high and mighty to spare a word for her old friend?”

He stretched, cracked his arms and knuckles. “So what’s the plan? Which of Roarke’s hidey-holes are we going to storm? Who are you taking with you? Or are you gonna fight the whole thing all alone?”

Ariadne put the gun away, walked up to Bourne, and glared. Wearing her heels, she could look him in those beady brown eyes, surrounded by paunchy flesh. He had the look of a man just starting to lose the firmness of youth, now forever frozen in that transition.

“My first plan, Bourne, is to figure out the best way of flaying your sire for treason.”

“Yikes,” he said. “Single-handedly slaying an elder. That would be quite the encore to defeating Roarke. Might want to be careful, though, to leave yourself a few peaks yet to climb. After all, where do you go from there? Dragon slaying, maybe. Haven’t seen too many dragons in East Boston these days. Maybe they all hang out in Charlestown. For the clam chowder, of course—”

“I’m Seneschal now. Your master can’t send his dogs—four-legged or two-legged—after me without consequences.”

“Look, I admit or deny nothing, let’s make that clear. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say you bring this issue to a head tonight. Tonight, the eve of the big assault to end the war. What’s that gonna do to morale among the troops?”

“Improve it, I imagine. The only one in the whole court who loves Silas is you.”

“Actually, I’m not too fond of him myself some days.” Bourne shrugged. “But read your Machiavelli. It’s not about love. Elders stick together. They are not about to sit idly by as a neonate, even one Liliane calls her Hand, lowers the axe on one of their own.”

“Maybe we’ll just have to find out what they’ll do.”

“Hey, go ahead, try. I can’t stop you. You’re the Seneschal, after all. But just remember, a Seneschal needs more than flashy swords to keep the peace. You can’t be within throat-striking distance of all the people all the time. Isn’t that what Abe Lincoln said?”

“Silas is not going to get away with trying to kill me.”

“Come on. You’re still here, right? So whatever he may or may not have tried to do couldn’t have been too much of a threat. Not to the Silent Knife. You take it up with the court, you’re going to look weak. You want to bide your time, find a better moment.”

Ariadne arched an eyebrow. “You’re giving me advice on how to outmaneuver your own sire?”

Bourne took a seat on a nearby stool, throwing back his arms against a railing. “Look here: a Seneschal’s job is ultimately political. Say what you will about Roarke, that guy was a real leader of men. We all feared him, sure—beneath that Southern gentleman act, he was the uncle of all scary freaks—but a lot of people also wanted to be him. Not yours truly, of course. But a lot of the younger Licks, they went for that back-country-homey crap of his. Explains why so many of them took off and followed him when he gave Liliane the finger.”

“Roarke wasn’t a leader. He was a lunatic. People say Nadine poisoned his mind, but he would be unpredictable even without delving into freakish magic.”

“You sound downright intolerant of alternative religious practices.”

“How can you joke?” said Ariadne. “You’ve seen it. You were there when we found O’Reilly’s after he and his followers were through with the place. Archibald’s crew had to rip up and replace the floorboards because Roarke had used his magic to somehow fuse the bones of our people to the wood. And that was just the bones! The flesh was strung out between the light fixtures.”

“Yeah, that cleanup was a real Martha Stewart moment. But Roarke, whatever his, ah, foibles, knows how to inspire as well as intimidate. That’s what makes him so dangerous. To rally our troops against him, you’re going to need to know how to do the same. You go after Silas now, you’re going to make the same mistake Roarke made—splitting the court in two.”

“Your concern for the court is touching. I’m so glad you want me to do the role of Seneschal justice.”

Bourne sniggered. “Who’s talking about justice? I’m talking about leadership. The two don’t usually mix, despite what your high school social studies teacher may have told you. And yes, while few things would make Silas happier than you taking a stroll outside in broad daylight, the one thing he wants more than your death is to avoid his own. Whatever he may or may not have done—and again, I don’t admit to knowing a thing—he would never try to overtly kill you in such a traceable manner. Liliane loves you so much she’d have his head. Everyone knows that, which means any accusation you make is going to sound ridiculous.”

“Even if it’s the truth?”

“You may have the title of Seneschal, Ariadne, but truth’s a commodity that the elders control.”

Ariadne narrowed her eyes. Her claws extended, and she beat down the urge to rake Bourne across the face. He would probably take it as a sexual advance.

“Oh, come on,” said Bourne. “Don’t take it so hard. It’s all part of unlife in the big leagues. I can be really useful in helping you navigate this whole courtly drama, if you’d only let me. You know, if you have a thorn in your side, you need to turn it outward, to be a blade against your foes.”

“What?”

“Do you like that one? Read it in a fortune cookie somewhere.”

Ariadne’s eyes blazed. “All right. You want me to make use of you? I need every soldier I can get tonight on the front lines. Even the fat, obnoxious ones.”

Bourne sputtered, choking on a phantom piece of food. Ariadne finally felt a small wave of triumph.

“I was, er, envisioning myself as more of an advisor, and less of a grunt. CIA in Vietnam, pre-fall-of Dien Bien Phu, or—”

“Grunting is precisely what you do best, Bourne. Besides, having you out in front of me lessens the chances you’ll do anything to help your sire behind my back.”

Bourne scratched his neck behind his cap. “I’m probably more of a liability than an asset on the battlefield.”

Ariadne leaned forward, close enough to see the pustules on Bourne’s nose. In a mockery of sweetness, she asked, “Are you refusing a direct order from your Seneschal?”

“No, no.” Bourne edged backward, nearly falling off his stool. “You know me, Ariadne. My loyalty to you is second only to my loyalty to Liliane. And to the Beatles. Pre-Yoko, of course. So, ah, where are we going?”

Ariadne smiled far wider than she had intended to.

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

“The train yards at Fresh Pond. A direct attack on Roarke’s stronghold.” Liliane rested a gloved hand against her cheek as she looked over Ariadne’s shoulder at the map. “A bold move, my Silent Knife.”

Ariadne stood at one end of the table in Liliane’s study, across from the Prince. Although she spoke to Liliane, she could not help but be conscious of the three elders at the table, and did not for a moment take her eyes off the wizened man seated by the Prince’s side.

It wasn’t just that Silas looked as if he were rotting away. There was a contagious quality to his decay, a feeling it could spread to you and make everything you valued tarnish and crumble if you spent enough time in his presence. He sat hunched over as if to protect some bauble he kept in his lap. His cur, for once, was conspicuously absent from his side.

“A foolish move,” Silas said in his sandpaper voice. “To attack at the heart of his forces without first weakening his forward positions is unwise. He could call back those troops and force us to fight an attack on multiple fronts. We’d be surrounded.”

What do you mean ‘we’? Ariadne wanted to say. It’s not as if you’ll be getting off your ancient ass to take part in this.

“Strike at the heart of the beast,” Ariadne said simply, “and it dies. Based on our hostage’s report, Roarke has thirteen men at this base. Only three of them are Kindred. I will personally lead a strike team of five—small enough to be subtle—hit them and be gone before reinforcements can arrive. Our main force waits at the periphery. As the scattered, leaderless remnants start returning, the main force will pick them off.”

Ariadne prayed to a God she knew had abandoned her, prayed that none of them would suspect her other reason for this assault.

Silas scowled. “It’s too risky.” He addressed Liliane and only Liliane. “Roarke’s command of sorcery makes him unpredictable. We have time on our side. Roarke is hemmed in. He has nowhere to run, no resources to muster. He cannot win a war of attrition, and so to wage one is our best strategy.”

The other elders murmured their approval.

Ariadne fought down her rage, pushed images of the snapping jaws of Silas’s hound out of her mind.

“With all respect to Elder Silas,” she said icily, “we do not have time on our side. Remember, Mister Rose is returning tomorrow night to ‘re-assess’ our situation for the Council.”

“Mister Rose,” Silas sneered, “hasn’t been dead long enough to learn proper patience. And yet he’s been dead three times as long as our . . . Seneschal.” The word sounded like ash on Silas’s lips.

“Roarke has to know that we’ve identified his hideouts by now,” Ariadne pressed. “He may already be in the process of moving his operations. We might not have another chance this good for weeks. We have to strike there, and strike tonight.”

The other elders turned to the Prince. Liliane looked her new Seneschal over, up and down, as if sizing her up for inclusion as the centerpiece of a feast. Ariadne felt as if her flesh were shivering, self-conscious of its hidden secrets.

“Our Silent Knife,” the Prince spoke, and despite herself, Ariadne jumped. “We have trusted in your instincts thus far, and have yet to be disappointed. Though the risks are great, we sense you are guided by Divine Providence, and will defer to your wisdom. If you are confident in your plan, and in your troops, then you have our blessing.”

The elders—including, eventually, Silas—stared at Ariadne. Their eyes were cold and small. She could see Silas’s jaw tense, could imagine it transforming into the snapping teeth of his hound. Ariadne could tell he was mentally flaying the flesh from her bones with his gaze.

Silas rose without a word, bowed curtly to Liliane, and then left the room, his leather shoes making no noise upon the carpet. He paused to gaze at his paintings before he departed, drawing the moment out longer and longer.

Ariadne tried to will a thought into his mind: Go on. Your time will come.

For the briefest of moments, Ariadne saw a vision of Silas at a wedding. The man was dressed to the nines but crumbling, crumbling to dust, until at last nothing but a top hat rested on the ashes. Then the image was gone. Wishful thinking.

When Silas finally took his leave, the other elders rose as one, bowed their deference stiffly to Ariadne, then deeply to the Prince. As they filtered out of the room, Ariadne bowed and began her own exit.

Liliane raised a slender finger. “A moment.”

Ariadne steeled herself. What if the Prince knew about her other motivation for staging the attack on Fresh Pond?

“Daughter, you have seemed troubled of late. This concerns us. A court cannot afford a troubled Hand.” Liliane rose, and Ariadne’s dizziness increased with every inch that vanished between them.

“There is no wrong inside me that defeating Roarke won’t remove,” Ariadne said at last. It wasn’t precisely a lie.

The Prince drew nearer and nearer until Ariadne felt her icy cool skin casting its freezing waves her way. She stood still, closed her eyes, awaited what would come with head held high.

“Be wary of Roarke,” Liliane whispered in her ear. “He is a great deceiver, and the power of his blood is matched only by the power of his lies. If he cannot break your bones, he will try to break your mind.”

She dug her fingers into Ariadne’s thick hair until she reached her skull, and then closed around it, tight enough to cause pain. “You have such a lovely, pretty mind. Guard it well.”

The pain turned into a caress, and Liliane gave a short, bright laugh. At once she was girlish, and she floated away to sit atop the desk. Her slender legs, sheathed in sheer white hose beneath her white dress suit, dangled.

“Ah, Ariadne. You have so exceeded all our hopes for you. We have never regretted our decision to take you in, little wounded bird who has become an eagle. Unburden yourself, little bird. New Jerusalem is your home, your family. Brace yourself with our strength.”

If Ariadne had still breathed, the air would have been caught in her lungs. How could she possibly explain what had been happening to her these past few weeks? How could she explain how the answer to the slow death of everything inside her might only lie with the living—and with one of the living in particular? To try to balance what Liliane had done to her with what Liliane had done for her had always been to set off down a road to insanity, but somehow tonight’s plan still seemed like a betrayal.

As long as I defeat Roarke, it won’t be, Ariadne thought. What I do on my own time is my concern. Right?

Maybe she just needed to see Andrei, once, from a distance, and the wrongness in her would fix itself. Maybe one conversation with him, and she could rest easy being the Silent Knife again.

“I will be right again soon,” said Ariadne. “There is no cause for worry.”

The Prince looked her Seneschal over for what seemed to Ariadne like hours.

“Tonight we can afford no errors,” she finally said. “Guard yourself—against all threats. From without, and from within.”

The Prince’s voice lingered on that last word. What did she mean by it? Was it a reference to Silas, or to what Ariadne feared Liliane sensed inside her?

The troops were poised to move out in twenty minutes. Ariadne returned to her cell, wondering if it would have been better had she never happened upon Andrei in that cab. She would have remained the Silent Knife, nothing more or less.

Now, with an addict’s glee, she shoved aside her bed slab and tore at the trap door beneath, nearly unhinging it. Nearly a decade’s worth of dust and rust burst in her face. With an addict’s remorse, she closed her eyes, tried to find the strength to stop herself from picking up what was inside.

Ariadne’s hand returned holding an album, its red binding bent and slightly rotten, its pages tattered and yellowing. Her dead heart seemed to jump exactly the way it had nine years ago, when she stalked, wearing high-heeled boots that would have frightened—and secretly fascinated—her old sandal-self, into her parents’ house. She had stayed only a moment, removed this from her old room.

She had not yet become, Liliane had not yet made her into, what she was today, but a year of such tutelage had already begun the transformation. Unsure of herself, she had revisited the campus, retraced the ghost footsteps she and Andrei had walked. The damp, slightly chilly smell of an unseasonable warm front had only made the phantoms more tangible, tickling the ends of her spine and the fibers of her lungs, lingering in her sinuses before spraying out in radiant halos from her body.

Now, her fingers pressed against the plastic photo shields in the album, so hard that they left impressions on the paper and cardstock beneath. Her own face, unchanged in ten years, smiled back at her from its place beside Andrei’s. The room seemed to tilt and spin, and Ariadne dug her claws into the floor, closing her eyes against vertigo. She threw back her head, raven-black hair flying out of her ponytail, mouth wide open, fangs extended. She felt as if she were gagging, drowning, crying, all without a sound.

She heard the Beatles CD he always used to play in his dorm room, smelled the cleaning solution the college used on the carpet. She felt the prickle of the flannel sheets of her old bed, and the room kept turning, turning, turning. Reality was pulling away from her, sucked into a black hole on the ceiling. She was being dragged back with such force that the flesh was ripped from her bones before the rest of her body could follow.

No more. Ariadne closed the photo album, replaced it in its hiding spot, steadied herself for a moment on her desk. She noticed her chest was heaving, even though heartbeat and breath had not been tenants for ten years. But her chest still remembered.

Did she really want that back? All of it? Even how she felt toward the end, even that small death on the covered bridge long before her real death arrived?

Ariadne retrieved her swords, reassured herself with their weight in her hands. Perhaps in tonight’s fight with Roarke she would perish and all of her worries would be moot. But whatever lay ahead, the path to battle ran through known territory. Under the mantle of the Silent Knife, Ariadne knew exactly who she was. If Roarke recognized even a fraction of her true self, tonight he would be quaking.

 

 

 

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.