CHAPTER 10



 

“It doesn’t matter that Roarke knows Liliane is on to him,” Ariadne told her squad before their departure for the assault. “The Prince has negotiated with the wizards and with the Princes of the surrounding demesnes. Roarke and his rebels aren’t going to find shelter anywhere. They’re trapped, and they know we’re coming after them. This means they’re only going to fight harder. They’ve got nothing to lose.”

The four soldiers nodded in agreement. Even Po-Mo. The tattooed punk had been getting high marks from every squad leader he had been assigned to, so Ariadne decided to give him his shot at the big leagues tonight. He joined Brian, Ella, and, because Ariadne needed to keep him where she could see him, Bourne. Bourne’s flak jacket was ill-fitting for his bulk, but the way he cleaned and loaded his rifle reminded Ariadne that every member of Liliane’s court, even its jester, took seriously the responsibility to defend it.

“You need to be careful,” she continued. “Take no chances. We've got several advantages, but he has . . . whatever it is he does. He can fuse bones into the earth. He might even be able to transform Kindred into piles of black ash from a distance.” Ariadne winced as she remembered Hera’s mysterious annihilation.

As they loaded their supplies into a waiting SUV, Ariadne looked out over the city and tried to imagine Archibald and his flock of Ravens scattering far and wide. He had assured Liliane that he would be preparing all manner of distractions to occupy the mortals’ media hounds, a score of scandals to fill the morning papers. He had positioned ghouled mortals in key locations to place phone calls to the police and to commit petty but dramatic, easily noticeable crimes in faraway neighborhoods to draw as much attention away from Fresh Pond as possible.

Araidne and her crew rode to Fresh Pond in silence. Even Bourne seemed preoccupied. Ariadne stared out the passenger window, watched the red and white pairs of lights on the Alewife Brook Parkway pour toward the spiral in the rotary. Each car held a world, a set of lives, to which Ariadne knew she would never be privy.

Ariadne remembered a wizard’s conversation with Liliane once, on the topic of private universes. Ariadne could believe they existed. For a moment her mind wandered as she tried to imagine all of those shopping lists, bills to pay, loves sought and lost, yet she could not form more than a few vague sketches on her mind’s easel. Even something as large as a universe could vanish, could hide in plain sight.

Suddenly she caught sight of the Fresh Pond Motel, felt mothlike before the flickering summons of its vacancy sign. The crumbling concrete of the building’s facade reminded her of some squat Soviet living complex dropped in the middle of Siberian wasteland. The “tundra” around the hotel consisted of rail yards filled with sawdust and disused boxcars. By day, this area saw passengers shuttle to and from the suburbs. By night, it was a forgotten graveyard for the industrial hopes of urban man.

Somewhere within that train yard was the base of operations for the man Ariadne was charged with eradicating. Somewhere within that motel was the man Ariadne could not banish from her own thoughts. She scanned the pattern of lit windows, trying to sense which one was Andrei’s, as if the rising rush and churn in her gut could serve as a magic compass.

Po-Mo interrupted her thoughts. “What I don’t get is why Roarke ain’t out there just Embracing like a madman. Building an army. I mean, he obviously doesn’t care about the Masquerade.”

Ariadne and Bourne both stared at him.

“You wanna take the newbie, boss,” asked Bourne, “or should I?”

“Siring a childe takes a lot out of one of our kind,” said Ariadne. “He’d be weakening himself, and all he’d be creating would be a near-helpless neonate who would need training in the basics of Kindred existence.”

“Waa, waa,” Bourne snickered. “Goo-goo. Feed me blood. You do remember your own first nights like that, don’t you, son? Even though they were, heh, oh so long ago.”

“Screw you, old man.” Po-Mo puffed himself up. “I was born blood-suckin’. Becomin’ a vamp just made me better at it. But a sire, he can, like, control other Licks he makes, right?”

Everyone shifted uncomfortably.

“Hey, I’m just askin’, here. My sire got himself axed by some pissed-off elder before he could teach me much. That’s why I came here.”

“I don’t exactly know,” said Ariadne slowly, “but I don’t think siring a childe fully guarantees its obedience. Not without further measures.”

“The hell it doesn’t,” said Po-Mo. “I remember when my sire told me to jump. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask how high before my feet started bouncing. Bastard.”

“Elder Kindred have very powerful methods of domination,” said Ariadne, “and, yes, they seem to know just how to use them on their childer. Some actually practice the Vinculum, but sometimes it’s just the right tone of voice or knowing the right strings to pull.”

“Bastard sure had some way of doing it,” Po-Mo spat. “Damned shame that other geezer got to him first. I wanted to be the one who wasted him.”

“Exactly my point,” said Ariadne. “You fostered thoughts of rebellion. Sooner or later, you would have found a way to put them into action.”

At the thought of rebellion, Ariadne again found her thoughts invaded with plans to see Andrei. But she was no Roarke. She dug her claws into her palm, pain forcing her attention back to the mission.

“Enough. We’re moving out.”

The squad abandoned their vehicle in the parking lot that lay in the shadow of the triple-monolith of Rindge Towers. Ariadne shot a few well-placed darts to smash the nearby floodlights, and the towers themselves blotted out the moon. Her squad moved through near-total darkness, scrambling over the high fence and down a steep hill to the waiting train tracks. An airplane soared overhead, the boom from its engines making Ariadne’s blades vibrate in the guitar case across her back.

The five Kindred walked across the tracks and under the parkway, spread out, hands on their weapons. Po-Mo, as planned, crept ahead to reconnoiter at the power station. He returned minutes later to report three guards weaving through the maze of giant cylindrical transformers, lightly armed, and one more stationed at the master control booth.

Ariadne held up a hand, motioned in the appropriate directions. Ella and Brian took off, skirting along in the shadows, using boxcars for cover as they ran from one to the next. They would create a diversion while Ariadne, Bourne, and Po-Mo circled around the back.

Behind the train yard was the power station and its array of transformers, Ariadne caught sight of a muzzle flash. Brian and Ella’s guns were silenced, so this served as her only signal.

She pumped her fist. Po-Mo and Bourne fell in behind her and the three of them charged forward. They wove in and out of the rows of tall gray transformers, surprising the already flustered sentries from behind and dropping them with silenced bursts of gunfire.

Alerted to the chaos that had suddenly sprung up around him, the guard had just begun speaking into a walkie-talkie when Ariadne fell upon him, slamming him to the ground and sending the radio flying. Po-Mo rushed to retrieve it, then crushed it with his bare hands.

Ariadne’s captive was strong beneath her, bucking wildly. With one hand over his mouth she had a hard time keeping on top. He was driven by a will to be free, to extend his existence one more day. It was a powerful, animal drive, woven into the genes of every living thing, and unlife had not cleansed him of it.

Liliane’s voice, from her nights of training, echoed in Ariadne’s mind: So your will must be even stronger.

The Silent Knife’s free hand drew a knife from her belt, the steel glinting in the dim starlight. She relaxed her hold just enough for her captive to rise, head lifting to lead the body. The exposed neck, reaching for freedom, presented an easy target. She drew the blade across his throat, slicing the neck cleanly. As he fell back, coughing and sputtering, she rose, drew one of her swords from the guitar case, and finished the job with a clean slice. The head tumbled into the darkness, and Ariadne rose to her feet.

Po-Mo seized the headless trunk, already beginning to decompose inside its uniform. “Hell. I wanted some flesh and blood.”

Ariadne shot him a glare as sharp as her blade, then motioned for him and Bourne to take up positions on either side of the door to the power station, guns drawn. Ariadne signaled, and Bourne tossed her a large metal egg. It felt innocuous and light in her hand, like a case of pantyhose. She pulled the pin and tossed it underhand through the glassless window of the door. Then she dove for the ground.

The incendiary grenade’s explosion made a whumph noise. Windows shattered, and heat blew overhead in a wave. Ariadne’s fingers dug into the earth, grinding deep depressions that cracked the dry, packed ground.

Her skin crawled with every Kindred’s visceral terror of fire. But Liliane had taught her to master terror. Had Roarke been as effective with his own disciples?

Brave or not, they would have to flee. Whether they left out the front or the back, she had them covered. Bourne and Po-Mo tensed, teeth gritted against their own fear of the flames from which only a few sheet-metal walls protected them. They stood their ground on either side of the door, weapons drawn, ready to cut down anyone who emerged.

They waited.

And waited.

Ariadne heard no sound of commotion from the front. Roarke’s forces couldn’t be waiting her out. Nothing Kindred or kine could stand that heat for long. Had the blast killed them all, or did they have some other escape route?

Damn it.

She signaled to Po-Mo and the two of them began circling the burning power station, meeting up with Ella and Brian, who had dispatched the front guards—both ghouled humans, blood-addicted footsoldiers—but reported seeing no one else.

“One Kindred, two Lick-sticks?” said Bourne. “That’s hardly an army.”

Ariadne’s team split up and started searching the surrounding boxcars, weapons drawn and ready. They searched the dumpsters, the large cement waterpipes. They found no one.

Alarms began ringing.

“Maybe we got them all,” said Brian. “Maybe we should go.”

“You afraid of the cops?” Po-Mo postured. “Fookin’ piggies put me in the cooler for two years back when I was alive. I’m up for a rematch.”

Bourne drew himself up. “Both of you wankers, shut up! Disable that alarm. No, I don’t know where it is. Find it!” He turned to Ariadne. “This thing’s gone south, kid. I don’t care what Archibald says, the fire department and the cops are gonna be here any minute.”

Ariadne was not listening. She knew what had to be done. Steeling herself, she shed her coat, her Kevlar vest, and the other incendiary grenades on her belt. Ahead, the flames licked up and out of the power station.

“Ariadne? We have to go!”

She didn’t pause to think, didn’t stop to heed the cautionary words from the others. Building up speed, she crossed her arms in front of her face and charged, pretending that the rush of wind in her ears was some sort of protective cocoon. She barely felt the clang of the metal door as it gave way before her. A moment later, the burning hot backdraft blew her to the ground.

Ariadne’s body had no cough reflex, no need for one. If she chose to look up, she knew, on an intellectual level, that the acrid smoke wouldn’t be much of an obstacle to her vision. But for a moment she lay frozen, face pressed to the ground, unable to bring herself to rise. Despite the blazing heat, she was shivering. She was seized with a fierce urge to start biting and gnawing at her own arms.

Fire. The Kindred’s eternal bane.

She tried to recall Liliane’s teachings, but the sound of the flames drowned out the Prince’s words in her thoughts. In the space they left, new words bubbled up:

Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will. A memory of Ariadne and Andrei sitting together, a tangle of arms and bare legs in the sand by the edge of a lake. They were reading “Ligeia.” Ligeia, Poe’s dark lady, whose will and passion let her rise from the grave.

Ariadne had done that much already. Couldn’t she rise from this floor?

Reflexively, like some young simian reaching out to hold the limbs of a tree, surprised at how natural the action felt, Ariadne’s mind clung to the newly recovered memories of the sand beneath her bare knees, the smell of the leatherbound poetry volume, the smell of Andrei’s cologne.

Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

She pulled herself up, hand over hand, along the ladder of memories, and her body followed suit. Ariadne rose to her feet, billows of heat crashing down around her like invisible surf, and surveyed the scene before her.

The power station’s control room was full of wooden planks and reams of paper records, all feeding the hunger of the fire. There was more. Tables, desks, blackboards, computers—yes, this place had been a base of operations. But the file cabinet drawers ajar, the computer cases torn open, these and a dozen other signs all spoke of a hasty departure. A scout must have noticed her squad’s approach after all.

Where could they have fled to? Gritting her teeth so hard she feel the enamel chip and fragment, breaking small, bitter-tasting, flakes into her mouth, Ariadne crouched low to the floor, feeling for trap doors, secret levers, anything.

A safe. Tall, man-sized. She grabbed the handle and was rewarded with a searing pain in her hand. When she pulled away, some of her flesh remained upon the metal.

The room started to spin and blur. She couldn’t stay here much longer. Bearing her claws, Ariadne did what she should have done first—tear off a strip of her bodysuit and wrap it around her hand. Wincing, she tugged with her shielded hand at the safe door. It resisted her.

A door had no will. Ariadne did. Bracing herself, she heaved. She felt the door protest, its lock struggling to hold fast.

Her head turned, her eyes gazed longingly at the doorway. It would take five steps, three seconds, to return to the lovely cold outside.

No.

Ariadne put both arms to the task. She strained, wondering for a terrifying moment if the handle would break before the door.

A ceiling beam fell with a crash. A wall of flame rose up between her and escape.

The metal in her hands whined and screeched. The door buckled at the hinges and clattered free. In its wake, a rush of cool air welcomed her. She dove for it, and blackness swallowed her whole.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 11



 

As Ariadne fell, something hard and metal slammed into her back, then continued to slam her again and again, dealing pain with every foot she traveled, until she hit the bottom.

A ladder. This had been Roarke’s escape route.

Shielded from the flames, able to focus again, Ariadne struggled to her feet and pulled out her walkie-talkie. She spoke through a haze of static, telling the others to track her signal as long as they could, to try to follow aboveground and be waiting wherever it was that Roarke and his men would resurface. The plan to trap them from two sides could still work.

She began walking into the blessed cool and dark, smelling of sweet moist earth. Stealthily, aware of each footfall and the earth it displaced, Ariadne moved through the tunnel. Its edges were smooth, almost glasslike. What kind of digging tool could have accomplished this? Then her mind turned to the more immediate concerns: How much of a head start did Roarke and his men have? How much weight were they carrying?

Ariadne tested the handle of her blade in the grip of her burned hand. It was healing too slowly. Grimacing from the pain, she switched the weapon to her left hand and hoped for the best.

A soft glow beckoned from up ahead. She slowed and listened for voices. Rounding a corner, she saw dim flashlight beams stabbing into the dark. Ariadne sensed the Kindred close at hand and smelled the ghouls’ fear. She heard their footfalls.

Half a dozen of each of them, and something else. A presence.

Their footfalls stopped. “Move on, boys,” said Roarke’s voice. It was full, throaty, and rich, like a preacher’s. “You’ve got work to do. I’ll be along shortly.”

Ariadne’s vision worked fine in the near-darkness, but deprived of the distraction of light she noticed other sensations, feelings she couldn’t quite name. Roarke radiated an elder’s power, different from the silky shimmer of Liliane’s. His was a rusty, burnt, mulchy vibe. He was like a pillar of the earth itself, at home here beneath the surface of the planet.

His bulky form, clad in plaid shirt, jeans, and hiking boots, moved cautiously down the tunnel toward her. Ariadne readied her blade, cursing how slowly her right palm was healing.

“Hallo? Now just whom do I have the pleasure of addressin’ here?” His voice was warm, throaty, resonant.

Ariadne did not answer.

Roarke’s mouth broke into a wide smile. “Ariadne? Lil’ girl, I gave you the chance to turn on your pretty little heels and just walk away once before, an’ I paid a hefty price for my gentlemanliness. Still, I’ve always been somethin’ of a fool. You can still leave me be. Ain’t nothin’ but death to find in these here parts.”

“I am the Prince’s Hand,” Ariadne announced, not without some pride. Liliane’s words sang in her ear: What Roarke has spurned, you shall be given.

“An’ if my right hand offends me, I will cut it off, rather than I should in anything offend my God. Is that it, now?” Ariadne could not tell if Roarke sounded amused or impatient.

Only a few body-lengths separated the two now. Ariadne readied her sword.

“There’s so much I could teach you,” he said. “So much I coulda learned if you hadn’t done gone and destroyed the grimoire. If Liliane hadn’t done what she done to poor Nadine.”

“There’s a reason that book was banned,” said Ariadne. “We’re Kindred, but we’re not monsters. That book’s turned you into one.”

“Hoo-ee.” Roarke ran a hand through his hair. “That’s Liliane talkin’. This whole New Jerusalem bit. The meek shall inherit. Be good little monsters, play nice together, and God’ll toss you a last-minute rope when He ends the world.”

Roarke rolled his eyes. “Damned shame, it is. If you sucked blood for a few more centuries, you’d realize that God packed up and skipped town ages ago. Ain’t no world I ever seen but this one, and ain’t but one way to master it.”

His left arm rippled and burst like a rotting fruit, flesh falling in liquefying sheets to the ground until the limb became the bone-sword Ariadne remembered from the day she first fought him.

“I reckon this is where we have to tussle until one of us is mush, yeah?”

Ariadne leapt forward, swinging her blade. It sailed through the darkness toward the traitor’s head—and met Roarke’s right hand.

Roarke turned the blade aside, wrested it from Ariadne’s grip with such strength that she felt her arm about to be wrenched from her socket. The weapon fell to the ground with a dull clatter.

Ariadne blinked. It had all happened so swiftly that she almost failed to avoid Roarke’s bone-sword, ducking just in time to avoid losing her head.

The two danced up and down the tunnel, Roarke’s blows fast and powerful but unskilled, Ariadne’s precise and deadly but ineffective. He failed to score a hit on her, but her fists and boots felt as if they hit stone every time she landed a blow.

Ariadne finally found an opening to draw her second blade, this time with her right hand, pain be damned. An angry flurry of clashes commenced, ending when Ariadne sliced Roarke’s bone sword in half. The severed portion sizzled where it lay in the earth.

Roarke cried out, a beastlike bellow that echoed throughout the tunnel. As Ariadne moved in for the kill, he ducked, threw his good hand out and slapped his palm against the cavern wall.

“’Pears you’ve got the Devil in you, little daisy,” Roarke gasped. “Since I seem to have a habit of goin’ to pieces around you, it’s best I give you a right proper dance partner.”

The wall rippled and bulged where he touched it, as if made from gelatin. Ariadne leapt back as the wall ballooned impossibly, pushing forth a man-shaped form twice Roarke’s height and build. The shape stretched its limbs. Clods of dirt flew to the ground.

Ariadne readied her blade.

Roarke crawled to a position behind the figure, using it as cover for his retreat. She watched as he picked up the katana that she had lost in the fight.

“If you last the night, Ariadne, be a nice girl, will you, an’ go back an’ tell Liliane that this ain’t done? Killin’ my Nadine was the biggest mistake o’ her unlife, an’ some night soon she’s gonna get her just reward.”

Her sword in his remaining hand, Roarke pulled himself into a crouch, then a run, as Ariadne gave ground to the hulking earth-shape. As it advanced, she circled, feinted, tried to draw it out and take its measure. The looming homunculus remained silent. It did not jump at her bait, only moved slowly forward, forcing Ariadne to retreat.

With lightning speed, Ariadne struck. Her blade sank into moist, gooey clay, unbalancing her. Her strength seemed insufficient to dislodge the sword.

Seizing upon her moment of distraction, the earth golem hurled a giant fist that Ariadne barely had time to dodge. She came up under its arm and tried to slip past, abandoning the stuck blade. The creature swiped her with its other arm, bending the limb backward in a way that no human arm could move. The impact jarred her to the teeth, sent her skidding to the edge of the corridor.

Ariadne rose to her feet to find the golem covering the distance between them. She dodged its next blow, grabbed the sword stuck in its chest, tried to pry it lose, wound up forcing it deeper into the creature. The golem impaled itself as it charged; Ariadne’s blade sunk nearly to the hilt, and she let go lest her arms be taken with it. Rolling out of the way, she ducked a punch so powerful that it left a massive divot in the cave wall. The golem could be solid enough when it wanted to, apparently.

Ariadne moved back and reached to her belt for one of her incendiary grenades; since physical blows seemed useless against Roarke’s creation, perhaps fire would serve her better. But then she remembered she had shucked them before entering the burning power station. The potentially helpful fires were far away in the darkness, in the opposite direction from Roarke’s flight, and by now the inferno above would spell certain destruction for Ariadne.

Another barely dodged blow from the golem reminded her that standing her ground was no option, either. She turned and took off at a run through the tunnel. She was followed by the pound-slap, pound-slap,pound-slap thunder of the creature’s pursuit, coupled with the scraping of its clay head against the tunnel ceiling.

Ariadne felt the heat long before she reached the staircase. The moment she smelled the smoke, instinct stopped her in her tracks. Even as she cursed her sudden pause, the golem capitalized on her hesitation, plowing into her, its giant arms enclosing her and beginning to exert crushing pressure. It was painfully solid now, unyielding against her. Ariadne felt her bones strain and crack. She pushed desperately with all her strength, feeling as if she were being buried alive.

Her legs staggered and twisted uselessly. Even as her conscious thoughts fled in the face of pain, her training took over. Ariadne bent her knees, threw herself forward to pull the creature off-balance. She felt a crushing weight on her back, and she knew she had succeeded in using the golem’s own mass against it. The creature threatened to fall on top of her, but she was already dodging the worst of the impact. She rolled left, partially out of harm’s way. As the golem hit her and the floor, it turned soft and claylike, splattering in a thousand directions.

Gasping and clawing her way up through the muck, Ariadne seized her sword, freshly liberated from its chest, and leapt for the ladder. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the creature reforming, taking on its mocking shape of a man, but she had bought the time she needed. Ariadne barreled up the ladder and through the portal, out into a red and orange hell.

She felt her clothing catch fire, then her skin, and could not keep down a scream. She had no conception of up, down, left, right. She picked a direction and ran, trailing flames. She was unaware if the monstrous thing was behind her; her entire universe was the flaming scene she was fleeing.

Out she ran into the night, her body a torch as she hurled herself to the ground, rolling and batting madly at the earth beneath her to quench the flames. She heard sirens, voices, but could not place them. The creature that she had become had lost its mind, but as the folds of its psyche pulled away, other layers, other selves, were revealed in vivid flashes of memory:

Ariadne is seven years old, watching a mottled calico cat freeze to death—why can’t she remember its name?—beneath her family’s Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She had been building a snowman when she heard the faint, desperate mewling, had rushed to investigate, only to find the poor thing moments from death. She tugs at her father’s sleeves—why can’t she remember the color of his eyes?—and begs him to make the cat better, but one look and he knows the creature’s soul is swiftly fleeing. Ariadne rages at the kind of God that would allow such an innocent creature to die in such paws-shivering agony, the kind of deity that would make her have to watch, helpless, as its life bled away with every passing breath . . .

Ariadne is nineteen years old and Andrei is carrying someone in his arms. A man? No, his burden is barely more than a child, clothed in a tattered coat and blue jeans buried beneath fabric patches. They’d found the child shivering outside the concert he had saved for weeks to take her to. The boy’s face had been so ugly, so caked with grime and mucous, that Ariadne, like everyone in line, had turned her head aside, kept her gaze elsewhere, erased his existence. But Andrei had refused to pass by, had refused even to flag down anyone in security, but instead carried the child to the first-aid tent and waited, waited through the entire first half of the concert, until the ambulance came. She stands with him in silence, her face hot and red despite the cold. She is unable to speak, and that silence lasts forever . . .

Ariadne hears a song—Daaa-da-da-daaa, da da da—feels the pain behind those notes, knows that if she just listens a moment longer, she will remember where it comes from—

“Ariadne! Hey! And they say I’m off my rocker! Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to go into flaming houses?”

She became aware of Po-Mo’s form above her, batting at her clothing. She opened her mouth to tell him to stop, to beware, that she might soon be followed by the monstrous earth golem, but her mouth refused to open. Her tongue felt as if it had burned to ash.

Fire engines had laid siege to the scene. Water and carbon dioxide sprayed from a dozen directions, combining with the smoke to create a roiling, impenetrable fog. Firefighters registered as ill-defined shapes moving through the miasma. Even the lights of the Fresh Pond Motel had been obscured.

Then, like a raging seraph, a man-shaped fireball careened out of the mists, rushing madly toward them. Po-Mo let go of Ariadne and reached for his submachine gun. The charging beast collided with him, knocking him clear across the yard.

Ariadne heard the report of Ella’s and Brian’s firearms as tiny pops in the roar of the flames. They each unloaded an entire clip into the creature. Ariadne spotted the dim figures just in time to see the golem grab one of them with each burning hand and bash them together like dolls, setting their bodies alight in the process. They fell to the ground, still covered in fire, their skulls shattered.

Bourne. Where was Bourne? Ariadne could barely get her own bearings, let alone determine Bourne’s. She rose shakily to her feet, patting out the last smoldering embers on her clothing. The creature was charging at Po-Mo again. Ariadne refused to look at the smoldering forms of Ella and Brian, deciding there was nothing to be done. Field tactics were clear—save the men you could.

Ariadne saw the flaming monster had shrunk, its clay burned away. The process of its destruction had begun, but she needed to see it through. As Po-Mo dueled the golem, Ariadne ran to Ella’s decomposing corpse, seizing the lone remaining incendiary grenade from her belt before the fire set it off.

The clouds of smoke and vapor rendered her eyes next to useless, and it took her long, painful minutes to find her way back to where Po-Mo and the golem were fighting. Along the way she came within arm’s reach of the firefighters as they stumbled through the fog. Someone stopped and asked her if she needed help, but she pushed him away. She hoped the smoke hid her presence from them as thoroughly as their helmets and masks hid their faces from her. The way most of them passed her by, it felt as if they occupied different dimensions.

Ariadne dimly remembered a time when she’s imagined firefighters as smiling, good-looking men who charged in cavalry-style to save helpless maidens. Now, standing in the burnt tatters of her leather jacket and bodysuit, scorched sword held point-downward, hair and face caked with clay and soot, Ariadne felt nothing of maidenhood.

She sped away from them, clambered atop a disused train car, finally got enough height to see where the battle was taking place. Po-Mo was dodging among the railway detritus, brandishing a tire iron, trying to get in position to use it.

Ariadne put all the energy she could into her own charge, but she had been weakened by blows and by flames. Her step was uncertain, and she staggered and tripped as she ran. She reeled back her arm, grenade in hand.

“Po-Mo!” she shouted, her voice broken and raspy. “Get out of the way! I’m tossing a flamer!”

“Stay back! I can handle him!”

Po-Mo made a valiant but stupid stand, lashing out with the tire iron only to watch it sink uselessly into the golem’s bulk. To toss the grenade now would mean Po-Mo’s death. To not intervene would mean his death as well. Roarke was long gone by now. It was only a matter of time before the fire crews got the chaos under control enough to notice the other weird happenings, or the police finally arrived to secure the scene. She marveled at the fact they’d escaped detection even this long.

And, damn it, where in the hell was Bourne?

Shouting every curse he knew, Po-Mo finally pulled back. Ariadne managed to run up to him, pull him aside. The flaming arms of the golem reached for them, and they dove to the side.

“Get out of here!” She seized Po-Mo by the shirt, tossed him back with mad strength. “Track down the rest of Roarke’s men! The longer we stay here, the more time they have to get away.”

She turned back just in time to duck the golem’s next swing.

“Okay. Sure.” Po-Mo started backing away, never taking his eyes off the fiery monster. “Hope you have a nice burial plot picked out.”

Ariadne had no time to watch him go. She dodged several more lunges, fingering the incendiary grenade in her hand. She needed to get some distance between them.

The golem wouldn’t allow it. Wherever she ran, it followed. Her legs wobbled, her feet tripped over piles of metal scrap. Down she fell, grenade falling from her hand and rolling down an incline. The golem bore down on her, giant fists joined together in a piledriver.

Ariadne rolled, but the impact still sent up sparks that caught along her jacket. She grabbed a nearby railroad spike and hurled it with such force that it imbedded in the monster’s chest. As the golem swiveled and swung its fists, Ariadne had to weave so the spike did not smash her across the face.

Its chest was at that level now. The golem had shrunken as the flames consumed its clay form. The incendiary grenade would finish the job, if she could only retrieve it—

Then the golem’s flaming backhand finally connected, sending her spinning off her feet. Her neck could be broken for all she knew, but her body still obeyed her commands, landing catlike on all fours a few feet away.

The golem bore down on her, giving her no respite, and she barely dodged its next blow. As it got smaller, it was getting faster.

As Ariadne rolled, her foot connected with something round and hard. The grenade! She scooped it up just as the golem launched itself toward her. She wouldn’t get that distance she needed, but at least she could take the golem out with her.

In the time it would have taken her old, human self to blink, Ariadne had popped the firing mechanism and hurled the small metal egg forward. It erupted in a blossom of red and white death as it connected with the golem’s chest. The hulking thing collided with her, sent her crashing through piles of wood and metal. Some pieces punctured her skin, her muscles, her lungs.

The golem was barely visible in the heart of this bright new torch that made the night sky momentarily seem like day. Ariadne hadn’t seen day in ten years. She had forgotten what the outside world looked like when illuminated. Insanely, she grinned, even as pain washed over her in a brutal wave. She forced her eyelids to remain open as the blazing beast turned to her, took one step forward, then another, started to run with its arms outstretched.

Then it crumbled at the knees, its legs shattering into flaming chunks. The legless torso fell inward, breaking into a shower of orange sparks. Its arms flailed uselessly, spraying out into clods of burning clay that fell within kicking range of Ariadne’s boot. The head rolled forward, and Ariadne brought up her sword, knowing the gesture was lost on its eyeless brute intelligence. Nevertheless, Ariadne slammed the tip of the blade down, splitting the smoldering head into a hundred chunks.

That action seemed to finish her as well as the golem. She stared with giddy detachment at her body, her chest and waist flayed open in places by the battle. Charred organs and bone lay exposed to the night. She and all of her soldiers had drunk to their fullest before the battle began, but there was a limit to even all that Vitae’s power. Ariadne closed her eyes, willed her body to mend itself, opened them to see the job, at best, half-done. Full recovery would take time that she didn’t possess.

Her vision swam. She heard shouts of alarm, barked orders. She tried to rise, using her sword to steady herself, and made it only to her knees. The flames, the fight, the injuries, had all driven her past her limits. Roarke had fled, the mission was a failure, Bourne had abandoned her.

The kine were coming. Painful minutes ticked by as Ariadne watched the fire shrink and the fire crews and newly arrived police continue to swarm into the area, trying to get control of the scene. She had moved far enough away that the perimeter had not yet expanded to encompass her, but it soon would. Although some wicked part of her was eager to see the uncomprehending reaction on some young paramedic’s face when he tried to take her vitals, Ariadne remembered the Masquerade. The chaos of the fire had covered an entire skirmish between supernatural forces; to have her lone body lead to exposure now would be cruel irony.

Ariadne rose, tried to stagger away, only to feel her knees buckle. She pitched forward, sword flying from her hand. Again she picked herself up, walked a few more steps, and then collapsed. Her body, undead puppet that it was, had expended too much of the vital forces that kept it moving.

Above her, Venus was shining in the sky. Dawn was coming.

A few more abortive tries convinced Ariadne that getting back to East Boston was a fool’s dream. Her only hope was to find some dark, secluded place to spend the coming day. A dumpster or a sewer pipe. Maybe one of Roarke’s hidden tunnels. No, the firefighters had swarmed the control room. Then where?

She gazed up at the glowing red sign of the Fresh Pond Motel, pale and pathetic compared to the bright flames that had raged beneath it.

That had been her original plan, hadn’t it? Slay Roarke, then find Andrei. It appeared God laughed at the plans of Kindred as heartily as at the plans of men.

Ariadne literally dragged herself to the motel loading dock, punched through the lock on the back door, stumbled across the molding brown carpet reeking of cigarette smoke and beer. By now she had healed herself enough that she appeared to be, perhaps, a ragged, recently beaten vagabond. The desperate and the staggering must be familiar sights here, but Ariadne imagined her appearance went beyond the pale. She willed the doors not to open, the heads not to poke out.

She spied a maintenance closet door slightly ajar, tried to pull the stuck door open, succeeded only in moving it a crack. The gap wasn’t big enough for her to fit into, but at least it could admit her sword. She heard the blade clatter in the darkness beyond. She would retrieve it when she could. For now, she needed shelter.

There was only one clear option. Hugging the wall, she hauled herself to the door that bore the faded outline of a number 12. That was Andrei’s room: 12. All the plans she had constructed for use when she appeared at this door now seemed ridiculously irrelevant. The best she could come up with was just to open it.

Her limbs mocked her commands. Her hand rose to only half its normal reach, the doorknob tantalizingly out of her grasp.

Then, as if by force of her will, the knob turned on its own. The door pulled open.

A man’s face stared down at her, piercing blue eyes filled with shock and pity. She heard a word, felt a warm, distantly familiar hand touch her skin.

In the instant of contact, her world crumbled away like Roarke’s golem, falling into chunks, then ashes, then nothing at all.

 




 

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.