A Place to Belong: Chapter 14

Chapter XIV

What Stalks the Shadows

The sky was gaining a lighter gray hue as Isadora and I stumbled through the door of our church, closing the heavy wood as quickly as we could. The latch clicked and I secured the bar that had been installed at a more exciting time in American history, to lock it in place. We collapsed against it, putting our backs to the wood and panting, though more out of habit than need. 

“Where the fuck have you two been?” I heard Diego’s voice coming from the shadows before I saw him. He stepped forward, paler in color than was healthy for his warmer skin tone. Wisps of shadows still clung to him, almost as if he was getting ready to shroud himself in them and lunge through the door. 

“You never struck me as the worrying type,” I said, playfully, but his eyes were hard and serious.

“Don’t you fucking joke,” he hissed at me. “You left me with Callie, who I might add, was raving about Isadora the entire uber ride back, meaning we had to wipe the poor driver’s memory, and I had to tip him cash because, big surprise, the Ventrue is a shitty tipper.” 

“How did you get in an uber without frying his GPS?” I asked, my curiosity overwhelming any bad feelings I had for making Diego worry. 

“I didn’t,” Diego snapped. “So I had to tip him very well. Then, I had to sit here and wait. And wait, and wait and wait! Because Callie went back to report about the Garou, but then when she got back before you two did I thought the mangy mutts had gotten to you both. Now the sun is freaking rising, and you stumble in like a couple of drunken teenagers who missed curfew instead of my coterie, which I would like to point out, has existed for less than one freaking night!” 

“These are all valid concerns,” I said, gingerly trying to get to my feet, but needing Isadora’s help to manage it. “And had we just been fucking off, I would validate your concerns with apologies and reconciliation. Considering the circumstances, would you accept an explanation instead?”

Diego looked at me, and I watched his expression morph from a mask of rage and indignation to one of horror as he realized for the first time just how damaged both my body and Isadora’s clothes were. 

“Dio,” he murmured, making the sign of the cross, which the irony of watching a vampire make the sign of the cross was abundantly amusing to me. “Did the dogs get you?”

“Something got me,” I said, gesturing at Isadora. “But it got her first.” 

“You must be tough to survive better than him while looking worse for wear,” Diego said, pointing at the clawed clothing.

“Not as tough as you think,” she said, nodding for Diego to take my other side. The two began walking us to the stairs and down into the basement. The stairs were awkward, but we managed them. Diego had set up a little man-cave looking space down here. Comic books, a guitar, and a candle with a saint on it sat in one corner next to a sleeping bag. Besides that, the space was minimalist and lacked anything that resembled Isadora’s personality. 

“I thought you two were sharing the basement?” I said, looking around at the dark, empty space. 

“I got the basement,” Diego nodded at another door I hadn’t noticed before. “Isadora took the sub-basement.” 

“Oh it's never good when there’s a sub-basement,” I said, a bit concerned. 

“Like a secret room off of your bedroom,” Diego agreed. I looked at him, and a silent moment passed between us. One that promised many quotes and inside jokes the two women would probably not understand considering their chosen social circles. We may be undead monsters, but at the end of the day, we’re both still dudes. 

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Isadora said, helping place me on a couch shoved unceremoniously in a corner, completely oblivious to the silent understanding growing between Diego and myself. “There’s a crypt down there. Apparently they had their own mausoleum. It hasn’t been well cared for since the church shut down, almost like it was forgotten, so I’ve been taking inventory and looking to see what I can do to help restore it.”

“That tracks,” I said, nodding. Then I looked over at Diego. “You said that Callie had come back from her reporting to the Baroness?”

“Yeah,” Diego said, shaking his head. “But she went right into that back office, and with the sun rising it's a minefield of multicolored death trying to get to her. We should probably get curtains for the stained glass windows. Painting over them might make a few people angry. Not the least of them, God.” 

“Yes, I’m sure that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” I said, sighing. “Painting over those windows is God’s line in the sand with Kindred kind.” 

He scowled at me, but didn’t retort. Either I’d touched a nerve or he didn’t feel it was worth going back and forth with me right now. I sincerely hoped that it was the second one. Regardless, we were in an unprecedented situation, and I was going to take advantage of it. 

“It wasn’t Garou,” I said quickly before I could change my mind. Diego looked up at me in surprise, but Isadora didn’t even flinch as she adjusted the pillow behind my back to keep me upright. 

“The fuck was it then?” Diego asked, turning to head to the stairs. “Wait, let me get Callie and I’ll…” 

“No,” I cut him off. Diego paused, then turned to look at me suspiciously. 

“No?” he asked, and I could see wheels turning in his head, as if connecting dots in his mind. Dots I’m sure were made by Callie on their long ride home. 

“No,” I confirmed, shaking my head. “Hear me out first. I don’t think we should tell Callie, and Isadora agrees, at least… I think she agrees.” 

Isadora made no move to confirm or deny my speculation. Instead, she walked to the other side of the couch and perched at the edge of it, like a bird roosting but ready to fly off at a moment’s notice. Her eyes darted between the two of us, uneasy, but patient.

“Okay, gringo,” Diego said, crossing his arms and facing me. “Talk.” 

“Do you want to give me Callie’s talking points so I can be sure to hit each one, or do you want to just judge my character based on our time together and any questions you ask me now?” I asked, bluntly. Diego’s face contorted slightly with surprise and anger, but went back to neutral. 

“Why don’t you just tell me your part of things, let me ask some clarifying questions, and I’ll decide from there?” he asked me. 

“Fair enough,” I said, nodding. “Well then, let me first tell you that there’s something out there that’s worse than Garou, and we can’t tell anyone about it. Especially not the council.” 

“We can’t?” Diego asked, his voice growing hard. “You know that our most important job, my most important job, is to report back to the council so they know what’s going on in their territory, right? If there’s something worse out there, they need to know. Otherwise, what’s to stop it from attacking us again? Or another coterie that doesn’t know it’s out there?”

“You make fine points,” I said, nodding. “And I’d agree with you under any other circumstances, but I have information that makes it paramount that we don’t tell them. And if you ask, I’ll tell you, but I need you to know something before you ask.” 

“What’s that?” Diego asked, his voice hard as flint, eyes blazing under his dark, furrowed brow. 

“That you’ll have a hard time with it,” I told him, looking him dead in the eye. “You’ll want me to be lying, just to be able to tell yourself that it’s not true. To save yourself the suffering of it being true. I know you well enough, Diego.”

“Why don’t you let me decide?” Diego asked, a cruel edge to his voice. I looked over at Isadora and nodded. She understood, then turned her attention to Diego. 

“The creature is somehow related to the council,” she told him, her tone blunt, and not giving any room for dispute. “Should information about it come to light, you’d see our region’s Anarch leadership tear itself apart, leaving it open to Camarilla assault. The one who we believe is aware of it may kill us should we go to them with the information. The one we believe is in the dark about it will use us as cat’s paws to die for them in an attempt to secure their political position.” 

Diego looked at her, his jaw set as he processed her words. He knew that if she was saying it, it was the truth. But I could also see in his eyes that he caught the side stepping of direct information. We knew more, and he knew it. We were hiding it on purpose, and he knew that as well. We weren’t hiding that from him, and it was probably frustrating him more than if we were lying to him. A low growl escaped his throat, and he threw himself to the ground across from us and leaned back against the wall.

“So what? I do my job and get us killed or open us up to Cammie attack?” he asked, a harsh tone still in his voice, but it was clear now he was willing to talk it out. “You’re acting like we’re as bad as the backstabbers at the ivory tower.” 

“Politics is politics,” I said with a shrug. “American components, Russian components…” 

“All made in Taiwan,” he said, a bitter laugh escaping his lips. “Armageddon? Really?”

“It’s appropriate for more reasons than you think,” I said, a wry smile on my lips. “Camarilla politics, Anarch politics… All shady as fuck. Politics will always suck, and if we start a political war, even if there isn’t back stabbing, but there’s any animosity, it exposes us to Camarilla attack.” 

“But you think they’re just as bad as the Camarilla,” Diego pressed me, taking the opportunity to make me tell him straight. 

“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “We’ve had this conversation…” 

“We’ve had this conversation theoretically!” he snapped at me. “And theoretically speaking is a lot different than you asking me to trust you when you tell me you’re doing something for a system you hate when you have no loyalty to that system!” 

“You want my opinion to be completely clear? Yes, I think the Anarchs are just as bad as the Camarilla,” I said, losing my temper a bit, and snapping back at him. “They’re exactly the same structure, just with worse branding and better excuses. They argue for freedom from the Camarilla’s oppression while subjecting us to theirs.” 

“And your clan is little more than a cult with better marketing!” Diego yelled back at me. “But I’m still working with you aren’t I?”

“Exactly!” I said, slamming my fist onto the arm of the couch, yelling back at him. “If I don’t give a shit about the Anarchs or the Camarilla, Diego, who do you think I’m protecting?”

He stared back at me, lips tight, eyes still smoldering, but quiet now. His eyes flicked to Isadora and then back to me. She shook her head slightly. 

“I was Camarilla,” she told us, and Diego’s eyes snapped back to her in horror, and suddenly I realized that he didn’t even look at the dossier we were given on her. She held up a hand and nodded her head, telling him to remain silent while she talked. “I was embraced by a member of the Camarilla, I was trained by a coven of the Camarilla, and I was abandoned by the Camarilla. When the hurricane hit, they pulled out. My sire, my coven, my coterie. They left, leaving me to defend my haven alone. There was more there than just things… there are memories, there is history, there is… connection. They told me they would help defend it, then never came to my aid. They lied to me, Diego. Lied and abandoned me.” 

He looked at her quietly, his face stony and still, but the fire in his eyes had died down, leaving him more placid than he’d been before. 

“I learned that you cannot trust an organization like the Camarilla to protect you, to support you, to be there for you,” she said, shaking her head. “And though you want to ignore it, you want to deny it, the Anarchs function similarly to the Camarilla because those who made it didn’t know anything else. Just as you know nothing more than your experience with the Anarchs. I’ve seen both and it doesn’t matter how we dress it up, kindred nature is kindred nature. We’re savage beasts battling desperate humanity, and all we want to do is survive. So we’ll choose the path that guarantees our best interests will be met. Regardless of our rank within the system, we want to survive. And that is all Grey wants for you.” 

Diego turned his gaze from her to me, his expression cold. 

“Got her to tell me what you thought I needed to hear?” he asked, bitterly. “Because you knew she wouldn’t lie.” 

“Yes,” I nodded, then shrugged. “Except, I didn’t tell her what to say. I just told her that I trusted her to tell you what you needed to know.” 

He raised his eyebrow at that. 

“You trust her?” he said, with shock in his voice, then turned to Isadora. “No offense, but this guy doesn’t trust anyone.” 

She looked at him, and I saw a ghost of a smile pass her lips. 

“He trusts you,” she said, and her words hung in the air. A look of confusion crossed Diego’s face, quickly replaced by surprise. 

“Wait… what?” he asked, turning to face me. “She can’t lie. What is she talking about?”

I sighed, then shot Isadora a look. She smiled broader as she turned her head just enough to look at me out of the corner of her eye. 

“You told me to tell him what I felt he needed to know,” she repeated, a note of smugness entering her neutral voice. “And I felt he needed to know that.”

“Fine, yes,” I said, looking back at Diego. “I trust you. I trust you to have my back but more than anything I trust you to do what you think is right in any given situation. Now that can backfire on us horribly if you think something is right and don’t have all the facts. Like if you think the Baroness needs to know something that if revealed can get all of us killed, you’ll tell her… unless you realize that telling her can get all of us killed.” 

“But you need me to believe that first,” he said, an edge of bitterness in his voice. 

“I need you to understand that first,” I corrected. “Diego, I could try to mind whammy you, I could lie to you, I could manipulate you, but what is the fucking point of that? Do you think I’m out here to bring down the Anarchs?”

He looked away, proving to me that, yes, he had in fact considered it. I didn’t take any offense from it. If I’d been in his position, I probably would have thought the same thing. But now something was different. Something shifted. 

“What’s out there?” he asked, quietly. 

“A wight,” I said, my voice low and steady. He nodded slowly, as if processing my words. 

“That…” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Is much worse than Garou. But it can kind of look like Garou. So if someone was covering it up… trying to keep it quiet for political security… Well, that means Callie brought them some really good information today.” 

I grinned, watching him puzzle his way through the information. The kid, though I’m not sure how accurately I could say that, given the math… he may be younger than me still, was a lot smarter than he gave himself credit for. He was a lot more of a lot of things than he gave himself credit for. If it didn’t sound so condescending, I would have loved to tell him how fun it was for me to watch him actually show his skills off, rather than just hide as something he was told to be. 

“Wights are wild though,” he said, shaking his head. “Beasts with Kindred powers they can’t even access half the time, unless it's basic, brutish ones. So they’re really dangerous, but they’re pretty stupid.”

“So what I’m hearing is that we need a plan to deal with it,” I said, nodding at him. “Something that we can keep on hand, have ready, and use to deflect it should we need to. But it’s going to be something we need to be able to do without telling Callie…” 

“No,” Diego said, cutting me off as he got to his feet. “No one is going into this blind. For one reason, letting someone walk into a cave knowing there’s a bear in it and saying nothing is fucked up beyond all description. Beyond that, she’d be a liability if she only discovered what we were fighting when the plan started going off. Third, she would throttle us physically or politically or both once she found out we kept her in the dark about this. No. We tell her.” 

My face scrunched up like I was sucking on a lemon. The idea of bringing Callie into this was not a pleasant one. I didn’t trust her, and I knew that she was going to bring in several different elements of complication whether she was aware or not. I’d just calculated that my life would be easier if she didn’t know. This decision worked against me, but it was the first actual decision Diego was making without poking and prodding from others. If I wanted him to grow, I needed to accept it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t get to negotiate. 

“Fine, but we don’t tell her immediately,” I said, cutting him off before he started arguing with me. “Not ‘until I say so,’ just until after our meeting with the Baroness tomorrow. She goes in with plausible deniability, then when we begin our mission, we tell her everything she needs to know, deal?”

“And who determines what she needs to know?” Diego asked, his tone tight. 

“You do,” I said, and enjoyed watching the look of surprise on his face. “You’re calling the shots on this one, but I don’t want her sense of duty to her sire or her desire to watch me get eviscerated to screw us over. Does that sound fair?”

“I don’t think she wants you eviscerated…” Diego started to say, but I cut him off again. 

“I do,” I said firmly. “Do we have a deal?”

He looked at me, his dark eyes sharp, then he nodded once. 

“Deal,” he agreed, though he didn’t offer a hand to shake on it. “Now get out of my room. Sun’s up and I’m exhausted. I was up half the night worrying.” 

“Agreed. I’ll head up to my belfry," I said, getting awkwardly to my feet, but feeling my strength starting to return. Isadora tried to help me, but I waved her off, smiling my gratitude at the gesture. Then I turned back to Diego. “I’m exhausted too. Spent half the night running for my life.” 

I didn’t give him a chance to respond. Instead, I went to the stairs and started climbing up. For a moment, I considered sleeping in the hidden room, but I didn’t want anyone to not be able to find me and think something terrible had happened, or worse, try to find me and accidentally discover my hidden room and mentor. 

Laying down on the cot I swore I’d never use, I turned my eyes to look at the hidden door, thinking of Ledger. For a moment, I wondered what would have happened if he had people like Isadora to prop him up and support him. If he’d had people like Diego to challenge him, but protect him. Maybe he had someone like Callie, who without the other two was able to brow beat him into submission, until finally he had broken. I still didn’t know what ended Ledger, whether they broke his spirit or his mind first. Next time I was at the chantry, I’d have to see if there was a record of him. 

Or better yet, go to the sewers and check with the Nosferatu of the city. 

Something that kindred needed to remember while we skulk and scheme, is that while we are dangerous creatures that slip though the darkness of the city nights, we are far from the most dangerous thing that stalks the shadows. 

And we’re not always competing for the prey. We are the prey. 

I could think of a few kindred who were going to need a rude awakening to that fact. As the daysleep took me, I felt a small smile creep across my face.