Clan Novel Ravnos: Book 8 of The Clan Novel Series by Kathleen Ryan

Author:Kathleen Ryan [Ryan, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vampires, horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2019-04-08T06:00:00+00:00

Sunday, 8 August 1999, 4:26 AM

A network of tunnels and caves

New York City, New York

Cassandra Washington strode briskly along the tiled hallway of her shared home. Unlike her peers, she carried herself erect, maintaining the perfect posture she had been trained (and beaten into) in life. She rubbed her eyes wearily. Time for bed, and not too soon for her. The chief had kept them busy these last nights, and so far they had nothing to show for it. No sign of Hesha, no more luck finding their few “reliable” Ravnos contacts…no luck finding the perverse little devils, either. And the war between the Camarilla and the Sabbat for “control” of so many cities kept getting in the way of more interesting projects. She had begun to feel less like a reporter and more like a switchboard operator: latest word from Buffalo, memo from Charleston, movements in Atlanta, situation in D.C., hasty phone call from Richmond, dateline Baltimore….

Cass passed her “office” and snorted at it. She skirted the edge of the drop shaft and listened for incoming friends or foes. She turned the corner, saw that the break room was empty, and turned off its lights. Looking up again, she had a shock: At the end of the hall, an unexpected apparition staggered out of the doorway. Her elder’s hands were bright red, smeared with black ichor, clutching at the door jamb and an untidy fistful of white paper.

“Cassandra…” he rasped.

Concerned, she ran to him, switching off the overhead lights as she came. “What is it? I’ll find Umberto for you—”

“No. You come with me.” He tugged gently on her arm. Cass let him lead her through the old closet, out the crumbling back wall, and into the small cave that the old Nosferatu had taken, long ago, as his den. The floor had been smoothed out by the elder’s helpers, first by chisels, later by jackhammers, but it was most polished along the paths made by its owner’s methodical feet. Cass saw old, paper-labeled wooden boxes stacked beside the door; brass-and-oak file cabinets standing next to them; elderly metal versions of the same a little farther over; and shining, modern, fire-safe hanging files beyond those. On the right, generations of rough tables and desks lined the rock wall. The newest—antique, nonetheless—came at the end of the row, and the one chair in the room stood sentry beside it.

“Look.” He cleared the desktop with one careless swipe of his long arms. Reams of paper overturned and fluttered to the earth. Cass rescued a stack, set it on the next desk, and reached for the mess on the floor. “Never mind that now,” said her guide. She steadied the typewriter and the lamp in their corner, but otherwise obeyed.

He laid down his papers and set them in order with his stained hands—ink-stained, she realized with a release of tension, bright red and ribbon-black from his work, not gore. His gnarled claws tapped shakily at the typescript. “Follow me through this,” grated the old Nosferatu.

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