Chapter 22 -- A Yorkshireman's War -- Autumn of 2032 to the Spring of 2033 -- 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
- Returning Home to Denver from Galveston: By the summer of 2032, the United States of America had been history for over a decade. Unfortunately, in its place there were a quilt-work of paranoid little nations that used to be states in the old union. Thus, the trip from Houston to Denver was an exercise in stealth, but for a vampire of Lasombra extraction gifted with Viceratika's cloaking abilities, it was not terribly difficult, just dusty and boring.
- 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 snob. 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.
- 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:
