Clan Novel Toreador: Book 1 of The Clan Novel Saga by Stewart Wieck

Author:Stewart Wieck [Wieck, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: vampire the masquerade, horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2019-03-04T07:00:00+00:00

Monday, 21 June 1999, 10:22 PM

The High Museum of Art

Atlanta, Georgia

Victoria smiled as she closed the door of Heaven behind her. The black portent of the Tenth Commandment was forgotten at the sight of her party. It was glorious.

From her slightly elevated vantage atop the few steps on the gallery side of the doors of Heaven and Hell, Victoria took in the sight and scenes of her party. Statues and sculptures so grotesque that their assembled whole made the gallery seem the lair of a decadent and mad king. Vampires dressed in rags. Vampires dressed tactfully and expensively. Servants bearing trays of crystal flutes filled a hairsbreadth shy of the lip with rich ruby blood.

All of this was amidst of a veritable maze constructed from sheets of the same opaque, shatterproof glass that lined the outer windows of the High. The eight-foot-high and ten-foot-long sections of glass divided the gallery like crooked snakes. Here were long stretches interrupted only by a narrow portal. There were numerous broken sections that created a maze capable of hiding an individual no matter the direction from which one attempted to view him. Anyone not armed with lenses like those in Victoria’s glasses, that is.

All this was spread before Victoria, and for a moment the scene seemed a choreographed dance. With Victoria’s arrival, though, the rehearsal was over, and these dark and dangerous figures amidst the gothic and terrible set would begin to play games in earnest.

Or at least they had better, for Victoria played no other way, especially tonight, when the auspices were right, and she planned a bold move to catapult her toward the Princeship of Atlanta. The secondary ambition of becoming a powerbroker in this city—becoming an integral part of the new structure—was very secondary now that her entrance had been made through Heaven. She was an angel accepting a fall so she might rule this rabble.

The population of Kindred in Atlanta was still greatly diminished from its level prior to the Blood Curse, but the dozen or so Victoria expected within seemed a suitable lot. Even the sole Caitiff Victoria noted was dressed pleasingly, although like many other Kindred, Victoria harbored vague fears about these clanless vampires. This new breed of Caitiff was often not clanless for the traditional reason of a dead or missing sire who might otherwise claim the childe, but because they were too many generations removed from the source of Kindred power and their blood was too thin to support the kind of differentiation and power that a clan identity provided.

The Time of Thin Blood was one name Victoria had heard applied to the recent proliferation of Caitiff. But this one—Victoria believed her name was Stella—showed some class. She was a dainty little thing and sported little in the way of defining feminine attributes, which to Victoria meant Stella lacked voluptuousness, but the Caitiff was dressed in a tuxedo which granted her petite frame and short-cut hair a certain charming and sexual quality. Victoria determined to keep her eyes on that one.

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