Chapter 22 -- North American Sojourn -- Summer of 2032 -- L.B.

Lord Blake's Personal Journal -z- Chapter 21 -- An Act of Public Expiation - Houston (Spring of 2032) -- B.E.Z

>> Hand printed via the discipline technique Shadow Script in crisp Gothic lettering, but in the colloquial English of the middle 21st Century. <<

August 7th, 2032 -- London

Leaving Galveston

By the summer of 2032, the United States of America had been history for over a decade. Unfortunately, in its place there was a quilt-work of paranoid little nations that used to be states in the old union. My journey began the night following the feast on the Galveston Pleasure Pier. I briefly considered flying, but security around airports and on the airplanes themselves is significant. In the end, it was the desire to see what this new North America was like, that decided me on a more vagabond approach, though somewhat dangerous, to travel the rail lines from Texas into Colorado.

I booked a sleeper car from Houston to Denver and settled in for pleasant trip with a good book, a portable magnetic chess-set and a small amount of luggage. I would be lying if I said that I would be sorry to see the last of Houston, it was positively one of the least attractive cities that I had ever visited. And its Amtrak station was no less vile, soulless and dirty. The station is located at or rather below the intersection of two different highways. It was not so much a public building as I have come to view them in Europe, rather it was a thoroughly modern cattle-shed equipped with plastic bucket chairs, concrete floors covered in cheap linoleum and harsh florescent illumination. It reminded me of a line from Dante's Inferno in which the damned are gathered together like a mass of insects on the shore of the Styx awaiting their turn to cross into hell proper. Throngs of mortals stood in long lines that moved slowly when they moved at all, while music that was old when I was mortal played just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of countless conversations. From every corner of the cattle-shed the harsh twang of Texas crashed about the room like rough seas, while the Spanish of Latin America drifted periodically from here and there like a kind of flotsam that mixed in a queasy fashion with the smooth southern drawl of white-trash from the Louisiana Free State.

Its a queer thing, that in the long slow march of history, one can be cheered by a random and familiar thing, for me that was Amtrak. I know how silly it sounds, but I have many fond mortal memories of traveling on the trains of Amtrak from one part of Colorado to another, usually from Grand Junction to Denver and back again. So many other things I used to recognize have disappeared, either consumed whole by oblivion or transformed so completely into something else. That the Amtrak corporation survives to provide rail transport from places best forgotten to one's place of origin is a small miracle in itself.

Of course, as you can imagine, I thanked whatever dark powers were responsible for the Curse of Caine that granted me the ability to transform into shadow and board the train hours ahead of all those poor souls trapped in the Amtrak terminal. I had ambushed the ticket officer the night before in the station parking-lot on his way home. A touch of hypnotic suggestion was all that was needed to avoid all that mortal unpleasantness, as an afterthought I placed a sizable number of currency notes in his hands as I departed for my days rest.

The train departed the station an hour past schedule, not bad for a retrograde little nation like the New Republic of Texas; after enjoying the prompt and convenient rail system of Europe its easy to become a touch spoiled. The first few hours were peaceful enough, I watched the lights of Houston recede into the darkening distance with a pleasant feeling of satisfaction. But, I only had two hours to relax as the train's next stop would be Austin, a Sabbat held city. So, just before the train stopped at the Austin platform, I once again transformed into shadow and took refuge in the train's ventilation system. The Sabbat did not disappoint me, a pack of would be toughs canvased the train while mortals boarded and departed per their assigned tickets. To their credit, the scum did sense my presence, but try as they might, they could not find me and then the train was in motion once more. They waited aboard for me to appear until the last second before the train slipped into the lightless rural Texas night. But I watched them from the darkness until they had all jumped from the train, then I took physical form again. By that time I was quite famished and had to hunt the train carefully to find the right dinner companions. It can be a devil of a time to hunt the public spaces of a modern train, there are so many reflective surfaces and it seems everyone irrespective of wealth has a set of camera capable glasses.

The next three stops: San Angelo, Midland and Lubbock, were not worth mentioning except that despite their respective sizes, all over one hundred thousand mortals, that I never saw hide nor hair of another vampire. It was a pleasant surprise to not encounter any werewolves either, which I had truthfully expected. Before I left Houston, I rented out a blacksmith's shop and forged a pure silver flanged mace, just in case. Silver blades are simply too soft to last beyond the first strike, but a nice thick silver mace can crush a lupine's skull before he or she realized their peril. It set off more than one metal detector, but to most security forces it is just a curio and my forged antique dealer paperwork satisfied the zealous few.

A Night in Amarillo

As the train was pulling into Amarillo, I made the calculated decision to disembark as the sun would be on the rise within a couple hours. As any sane Lasombra will tell you, find shelter at least an hour before the rising of the sun; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I had done my research ahead of time and figured that baring a complete disaster, this city would be a daylight layover for me. So I had reserved a suite in a quaint little bed and breakfast a few block south of the train station in the heart of Amarillo.

Once again, I took shadow-form and departed the train and lucky I did so, for this time, there was another vampire lurking around the platform lazily watching the passengers as they sleepily disembarked for a meal or a place to sleep. It was chance that I spotted him, he looked like I imagine every hick cowboy does in the Texas panhandle, a lit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, dressed in dirty denim pants, an old cowboy shirt and Tony Lama boots. It was the way he lurked by himself in a darkened corner and that he only breathed to keep the fag lit that gave him away as one of the damned. Regardless, I was in far too much of a hurry to stop and figure out which clan or bloodline he might belong to, but his presence suggested that Amarillo had a prince of some sort. I could not afford to be discovered due to the political risks of being a Camarilla Kindred in what could potentially be League territory, so I played it safe and journeyed to my resting place directly in shadow-form.

Upon arrival at the bed and breakfast I entered the building and checked my rooms before taking on a material form again. I stowed my things and scryed the building with Visceratika, it revealed three other boarders and a night attendant at the downstairs desk. I do not normally act as sandman, but hunting could be dangerous with so little time before sunrise and being in an unfamiliar city is always a risk. Each of my fellow boarders would awaken in the morning the victim of some variant of the flu, while the night attendant would need several days off to recover from his illness. Thereafter I stealthily entered the basement with its concrete floors, canning closet and wine racks to melded with the floor in a portion of the room not easily seen from the door.

Fused with the concrete floor in the basement of the bed and breakfast, I slept away the day without dreams or incident. Upon awakening, I once again called upon Visceratika to allow me to reach my room without being seen to freshen up. I stopped to settle the bill with the proprietor who would remember conspicuously little about me from our brief encounter.

Then once again, I transform into a shadow and made my way to the train station. The cow-boy was already there, sitting in the same corner with a beer, an ash-tray and his boots on the table; it must have been his regular perch. It took a few minutes to figure out which train on the tracks was headed to Colorado, and in that time, he picked up on my presence. He must have had Auspex, I cannot imagine that in the crowded train station of Amarillo that I gave myself away. As soon as he sensed me he was out of his chair and exploring the room in search of me; meanwhile, I entered the buildings ventilation system and made my way for the roof. From a point of elevation I spotted my train and drifted over the locomotive yard to enter my train as its first passenger.

Once there, I remained in immaterial and stealthily avoided the train crew to take up residence in the ventilation. It seemed like forever as I waited for the mortals to board and as I suspected the cow-boy entered my train and searched it carefully, even looking into the ventilation ducts. But by that time I had emerged on the roof of the train and patiently waited for him to give up, which he eventually did, thank the Abyss. As the train left the station, he stood upon the platform with eerie glowing eyes and looked directly at me, he had spotted me, but must have decided I was not worth the effort as I was trying so hard to leave his Texas panhandle town.

Colorado

Later, I re-entered the train, but remained immaterial for the remainder of the trip to Trinidad. There were simply too many unknown dangers during this leg of the journey, the region between Amarillo and Trinidad was largely wild spaces and open ground, prime lupine territory and a bad place for me to battle their kind. The region is home to three or four national forests and a couple of native American reservations, all of which increased the possibility of a lupine encounter. Though we stopped at several small towns and took on native tribal passengers, none of them seemed to be werewolves, I regretted not being able to see the scenery of the region as I would not be passing this way again anytime in the near future. But the train reached Trinidad without incident.

Once we stopped in Trinidad, I took human form again in the men's lavatory and convinced the conductor with a touch of dominate that I had lost my ticket and that I was entitled to a place in the sleeper car. Money changed hands and I settled in to watch the southern Colorado panorama slip by as I read my book. Walsenburg came and went, a blip on the map; the terrain around it reminded me of my youth on Colorado's eastern prairie, wild and desolate. Pueblo was different, the first real city in southern Colorado, according to my travel guides it possessed 150,000 mortal citizens, which meant that there likely was a resident Kindred who called it home, possibly a entire coterie. So I stayed in my room with the curtains closed and waited for the living to complete their business here. Once the train was moving north to Colorado Springs, I exited long enough to find a bite to eat and then returned to sight-seeing.

The pleasantness ended with the train's approach to Colorado Springs, the city radiates true faith. As the faith rolled over the sleeper car, my skin crawled and I was dizzy with nausea. The layover in the Springs was far longer than I would have liked, a full half-hour; it was pure torture. If I were found by the resident Kindred now, I would be in poor shape for flight or fight, but no-one disturbed me and eventually the train left the Christian city of Colorado Springs behind. My hands were shaky with fatigue as I washed the blood-sweat from my naked body and changed into my last set of clothes. But luckily for me the journey was almost over, just a couple more hours to Denver. So, I took a risk and fed among the comatose passengers of the sleeper-car so as to be refreshed for my arrival in Denver.

The Mile-High City

Long before I left Galveston, I had contacted my sire Don Alonzo De Vargas and asked his permission to visit. While I am his only non-Catholic, non-Spanish bastard childe, I do not make a habit of visiting often or unannounced. So it was that I found myself once more in Denver, the city of my Embrace and the source of so many arcane mysteries. After so many years of traveling in the old world and the Middle East, Denver did not seem so large or impressive anymore. In fact, despite an obvious growth spurt and a touch more sophistication, the city of my immortal origin seems more than ever an over-glamorized western town. Unfortunately, there was one hitch, Denver was no longer a city of the Camarilla, but had recently joined the nascent League of the Night. And my sire, the former Camarilla prince of the city, was now a duke of this upstart league and a traitor to the Camarilla. I could see how my clandestine visit to Denver to see my sire could have damning possibilities to the less than understanding hardliners of the Ivory Tower.

My first sight of Denver from the south was disappointing, it had changed to a vast degree. The old tech-center was packed with unfamiliar skyscrapers and the southern end of the city had expanded out farther than I imagined possible; according to my e-travel guide the city was come to 4.5 million people and despite some efforts to slow its growth continued to expand outwards and upwards. The train made a few cursory stops at what looked like brand new platforms that in turned seemed connected to an extensive light-rail system. The train's slow approach to the old downtown and Union Station gave me time to see just how much had changed, some of the landmarks I had known as a mortal were still there, but the skyline was different and some icons of the city were gone altogether.

I did not bother to wait for the train to stop or to look inside Union Station, much as I would have liked to do so, it would be watched by one of the Kindred. Did the League of the Night still refer to themselves as Kindred, or were they like the Sabbat now Cainites, or perhaps a completely different term had come into vogue, like just plain vampires? The truth was that it did not matter what they called themselves, titles and terms for what we are change from one language to another, and from one century to the next, but we are what we are. Once again, I abandoned my material form for that of shadow and drifted towards old West Denver. My sire has maintained a haven there since the late nineteenth century, an old silver baron mansion that came to him, I know not how. I had not visited the place since my last visit to Denver back in 2016, at the time I had been in the company of Madame Mina the Ravnos vadoma who thought she could manipulate my sire into aiding her for one reason or another. That meeting had not gone as she imagined and she had left the city deep in debt to Don Alonzo, while she acted as if it were all my fault.

Strangely, I found the place without so much as an upward glance. It had not changed a whit, the beautiful Victorian brick facade was in good condition, but the yard looked like no-one had pruned it in years. I circled the house, aware with preternatural senses that there was movement in the house, but no hearts beating. I materialized in the shadows of the back porch and knocked lightly at the old, heavily carved wooden door. While I waited for the approach of faintly heard footfalls, I spared a glance for the back yard, which was worse than the front.

The door finally opened with a squeal of rusty hinges and I was face-to-face with Dona Isabella Baboa Garcia Mendez, my only sister. She was petite, with sharp pale features that could only belong to a daughter of the Spanish aristocracy. I asked for entrance into the house of my sire in Castillian Spanish with the accent I had acquired in Toledo decades ago. To my surprise she smiled in a courteous manner and opened the door wider. As I entered, I noticed the old-fashioned oil lantern she held in delicate lace-gloved hands. She was dressed in a full-length black velvet dress that had probably gone out of fashion before my mortal grandfather's father had been born. She wore only an elaborate antique golden crucifix as an adornment.

I was acutely conscious that this was the first time we had ever actually talked together since my Embrace. She introduced herself at great length, and waved a hand to bypass my introduction with a simple admission of familiarity, another first. As we slowly walked deeper into the house, she asked me about my travels and all that I had seen since I was last here. Her curiosity was obviously more than just politeness, there was a fever in her eyes for news of the wider world. I had forgotten that she was the only other resident of our sire's haven, an over-protected antique Spanish doll, with no real purpose but to keep her ancient sire company. I stifled any blooming sense of pity, it would only make her my enemy and for once I finally seemed to be one of the family if only to Dona Isabella, it was still a victory to me.

During our conversation I studied the inside condition of the house. I had spent a little over a year here before being shipped off to Milan, it was in the parlor that I had learned my sire's native tongue, the traditions of the Kindred and the lore of Clan Lasombra. Only days after my Embrace I had taken the Blood-Oath to my sire in the dining-hall with its marble fireplace, polished wooden floors and portraits of long dead Spaniards somehow related to Don Alonzo; not much later, in the very same room he had given me my first lessons in the use of sword-play. Despite my brief stay here, the house was full of old memories and it seemed to have changed not at all.

Idly I wondered whether Don Alonzo had found some way to grant this house some of his immortality, but that was pure fancy for it was just a house and in a century or two, it would likely lie in ruins unless my sire spent a small fortune to keep it in good condition. Had my sire already made plans to move from this location when it became too expensive to maintain or would he remain as it slowly decayed around him until it endangered his immortality? In truth, I could never imagine Don Alonzo risking his existence for anything so mundane as a house, no matter how many memories it contained. But then I wondered, how many homes or havens had he been forced to abandon in his eight centuries of immortality? As I pondered, a recollection came to me that Don Alonzo had grown up in a castle somewhere in north-central Spain and that thereafter he had traveled with his own sire, my grand-sire Guilelmo Aliprando from Spain to Venice. At that time, Venice had belonged to the Narcene Lasombra rather than the accursed Giovanni and Guilelmo Aliprando had at that time only recently ascended to become the prince of the city after Narses was cast out by the Cainite Heresy.

The soft murmur of Dona Isabella’s voice brought me back to the present. My lapse of awareness was a distinctly uncommon event and she seemed to sense my unease, as she sought to sooth my embarrassment by changing the subject. A clever means of distracting me from my error, a tactic quite familiar to me, but no less welcome or kind for either of those points. I wracked my memory for what she had been saying, something about Don Alonzo being out and about upon official business for the League of the Night. I nodded my understanding, and thanked her for her kindness. Had she blushed, I would have known for certain that it was all manipulation, but no blood stained her cheeks, she merely lowered her elegant dark lashes in acceptance of the compliment and offered to show me to my rooms. I bowed to show my respectful acceptance and together we ascended the rickety old staircase, that barely registered a sound as the two of us climbed the old steps together.

The Duke of Denver

Like all the childer of Don Alonzo, I had been given a room in his house. Unlike his legitimate childer who resided mostly on the second floor, my room was a third floor garret just below the servant's quarters in the attic. The size of the room, its location and proximity to where the menials slept was a complicated commentary on my station among my sire's descendants. My room was the last one before the attic stair and the room itself was a simple eight by ten foot closet. It possessed a small bed, a desk and chair, a large seaman's chest that I had used for my personal effects back in 1998. It also possessed a beautiful kerosene lamp for reading and a handful of paperback books I had originally used to pass the time when my sire was absent from the house.

For a year and a day, I was a "guest" within the house, able to move about it at will, but unable to step outside for even a moment. Don Alonzo had banished all but the most necessary servants from the house and I did not often see my siblings either, which was a blessing in disguise. But the servants were not there for my protection, but to care for the house; rather than assign a ghoul or one of his legitimate progeny to look after me, he simply ordered my not leave the confines of the building. It was not so much the loyalty of my blood oath that hampered me, rather that as I reached for the door-handle, my hand would freeze on the old porcelain knob. No matter how hard I tried to force my hand to turn the knob, I simply could not do it; though I did not realize it then, this would be my first lesson in the discipline of Dominate and how efficient and subtle it could be.

As we stepped into the garret together, I took note that nothing had moved or changed in the decades since my sojourn had begun. It was then, in the still air of the room that I noticed the scent of her perfume, jasmine. Of course, I had sensed that she was wearing perfume when she originally opened the door, but somehow, being in a small dark bedroom with her made it all the more intimate and as such, I began to take note of its particular quality. In dreams, the inherent meaning behind inhaling perfume is an augury of happy incidents, while the Victorian British perceived jasmine as a fragrant symbol of amiability, grace, elegance and they used it as a complement to shyness and modesty. That all of these qualities symbolized Dona Isabella struck me as somehow prophetic, as an accomplished occultist and neophyte mystic, I was even more aware of the significance of such moments of clarity. Of course, I also understood that such interpretations could be a flight of fancy or worse still, the deliberate manipulations of a supernatural agency with the right kinds of skills. Yet, over thinking such things can and does lead mortals and Lasombra to become lost in the maze of mirrors, a term used in spy parlance for becoming so paranoid that you question every little detail to the smallest degree

In the dim confines of the room, the little oil lantern sputtered and with less than a thought I snuffed it with a mote of shadow, plunging the room into total darkness. I stood stock still, leaning against the wall furthest from the door, while Dona Isabella's petticoats rustled as she sat on the narrow little bed. For a trio of human heart beats, the room was utterly silent; we were both waiting for the other to speak first. It was a thing, that I had noticed among my kind, that by not seeing ones opponent or ally, one can more easily dismiss the casual illusions and pretenses that are plied by the deceptive to gain a better understand of the other individual. Usually, these competitions of silence can last a while, but I decided to cheat by attuning my sight to the darkness, a trick used by mystics of the Abyss. The room suddenly became as bright as day and I could tell by the brightness of her eyes that she had used Obtenebration to minimize the limitations of darkness. She was looking in my direction, but I could tell that she really could not see me, not in detail, just a silhouette. I on the other hand saw her in all her radiant beauty. I waited a few heartbeats longer and then threw the game by speaking first. I asked the first question that came to mind, was she happy here in this large, nearly empty house when there was a wider world out there to explore?

I heard her draw in breath to speak and saw her lips start to move, when we both heard a skeleton key turn in the downstairs door lock; Don Alonzo was home at last. Instantly she was in motion and as she threw open the door, I returned my sight to the mundane spectrum and lurched into motion behind her. We were like the children of Bob Cratchit in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol", rushing downstairs to veritably throw ourselves into our sire's arms, however as childer of Don Alonzo De Vargas, we both knew better than to touch him in any familiar way, it simply was not done. Rather we entered the hall as he closed the door and simultaneously, as if we had rehearsed it, side-by-side, she curtsied deeply while I kneeled on one knee.