Chapter 22 -- North American Sojourn -- Summer of 2032 -- L.B.
>> 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.
- Denver -- May of 2032: Long before I left Galveston, I had contact 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 by mid-May 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 cow-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.
- From Denver to Quebec City:
- A Pleasure Cruise across the Atlantic:
