Lay Down With Lions

The Year of the Scarab Trilogy, Book II

by Andrew Bates

Excerpt from Chapter Two [©2001 White Wolf Publishing; ISBN 1-58846-803-8]

Beckett growled in frustration. He needed to learn why the clan of vampires to which he belonged, the Gangrel, were accused of revealing the secrets of the undead to mortal vampire hunters. He figured his best bet was to contact fellow Gangrel. This was a challenge in itself; wanderers as they were, most of his kind didn't have permanent addresses. Plus, in the year since the troubles that split off the clan, many of his kind had moved to even more secluded areas. Since the Gangrel themselves were often on the move, Beckett pursued secondary leads, mortals and more sedentary Cainites who were sympathetic to the clan.

Luckily, Beckett could track a decent number of them by phone and the Internet, saving him the tedious necessity of running around Chicago and the rest of the Midwest for the next few nights. Shortly before dawn, Beckett discovered that a Gangrel he knew by the name of Augustus had moved to Chicago some months before. The lackey with whom Beckett spoke was happy to set an appointment for the next night. Beckett looked forward to getting some solid leads from a reliable source... only to arrive a few hours after nightfall to find the place burned to the ground.

His talons dug into the stone wall he crouched atop, surveying the damage. Some cosmic force was toying with him, cutting off every lead he pursued. He considered that paranoia was a good idea at this point. He wasn't going to cut and run, though. Better to discover what happened and how it might relate to him. After all, this fire might be a freak accident. He didn't think so, but he could hope.

Considering he'd spoken to one of Augustus' people late the previous night, it was clear the fire occurred not long ago. His sensitive nose registered the lingering stench of burned wood and melted plastic, but the site was cold and dead. Beckett guessed it happened sometime in the morning, perhaps even near dawn, after his call. Coincidence seemed less likely by the moment. Scanning from his perch, Beckett saw the place looked like it had blown up rather than burned down. The heat had melted all the old snow surrounding the place; burned wreckage lay amid frozen mud churned up by the firemen tramping around in a futile attempt to stop the fire. Debris was strewn to the wall that ringed the property. The twisted blob of a melted telephone lay in the frozen grass below him; scorched metal lawn care implements -- a twisted lawnmower blade, the mangled fan of a rake -- were scattered nearby. He didn't bother trying to identify the other residue covering the lawn. His attention was on the structures.

Clouds had rolled in during the day to obscure the new moon, making the night even darker than usual. Not that it mattered to Beckett. His preternatural senses aided him in looking over the site. His ears picked up the faint creaking of brittle support timbers giving way under the stress of collapsed debris. His nose sifted the miasma of smells, from scorched grass and charred timber to melted rubber and burnt flesh. His eyes shone in the night, taking in the destruction in a degree of detail a mortal couldn't match even in brightest day.

He could have become a wolf and used his hypersensitive lupine nose to track down the actual source and composition of the accelerant, but he didn't think that level of detail was necessary. His human senses were plenty sharp enough to puzzle out what happened. Even from fifty yards away Beckett could see that this was not the result of oily rags catching alight. Maybe stored fuel or even manure or compost, but most likely a manufactured explosive charge. It started in the garage. The asphalt led from the wrought-iron front gates to circle the front of the house with an offshoot that stopped at a small crater. The initial blast had vaporized the garage and ripped through a good half of the house. Whatever remained had lit up and burned to so much charcoal.

Blackened timbers jutted out from the foundation like the bones of some great beast. He could see portions of deeper shadow that hinted at where the floor had fallen into the basement. Through the ruins he saw the half-fallen frame of a greenhouse. He shifted position to get a better view. No, an enclosed pool. Well, once it had been enclosed; he could see the glitter of ice from the frozen surface, peppered with black chunks of burnt wood. He wouldn't be surprised if the pool was cracked from the weight of all that ice. The firemen had more important things on their minds than draining the pool. He wondered why they hadn't somehow suctioned the water to help put out the fire, then dismissed the thought with a mental shrug. Not equipped for it, or it was too much of a hassle, or some other reason irrelevant to him.

Beckett shuddered, his hackles raised at the idea of venturing down there. Even though the fire was long out and it looked like there was nothing left to burn, he was jittery. His instincts cried out to avoid fire. It was the most dangerous threat a vampire could face, and coming near flame or even the aftermath of fire was unnerving. He clamped his reason down upon his animal nature and leaped to the ground. As he approached the house, he found his initial hypothesis borne out. Someone had set off a powerful blast in the garage which had resulted in the destruction of the entire estate. He was curious about the placement; the bomb would have caused more immediate and comprehensive destruction if it'd been put in the house itself. Picking his way through the rubble, Beckett checked out ground zero. He found the twisted remains of two vehicles-a sedan and an SUV from the look of the frames-and discovered the explosion's origin.

The SUV frame looked like it had been turned inside out, while the sedan was crushed and flattened. Beckett assumed the explosives were packed into the SUV and set off while still inside. So either the bomber had brought the explosives in himself but was forced to detonate them before he could unload them, or he'd somehow loaded them into the SUV while it was outside the estate and set them off after it returned. Either way it was quite the chancy move. He clambered out of the hole where the garage used to be and past where a couple other cars also consumed in the fire were parked behind it. He assumed they belonged to the hired help. Circling around the house, Beckett took a closer look at the full extent of the damage. Messy, but effective. From the looks of it, the place was too far gone by the time the firemen arrived to do much more than keep it from spreading to the copse that formed a crescent around the estate.

Coming around the back, Beckett had a better look at the pool house. He wasn't sure what could be flammable in there; it looked like it was nothing more than the pool itself with a canopy around it formed by glass panels in a metal frame. A number of windows were blown out and the rest were blackened from smoke and flame, though, so it was clear it had been on fire as well. He walked over and saw something of particular interest. The rim of the pool was scorched black, as if the pool itself had been on fire. Of course, water didn't burn but oil and gas did. On a hunch, Beckett checked inside the small stone pump room set to one side. It has survived intact, though the stones were blackened with soot like everything else. Inside was a small storage area with various burned implements including a number of half-melted plastic blobs. The stone construction had protected the interior from the fire, so he could make out enough of the shapes to see they were gas canisters. Empty gas canisters, he reasoned, since the heat would have been enough to set them afire even inside. Interesting. Why bother dousing the pool and setting it on fire? It might have been the work of a rampant pyromaniac, but Beckett didn't think so.

He wandered back toward the house, debating whether to bother checking inside. Along the way, a patch of disturbed ground between the main house and the pool caught his eye. The lawn was burned to a crisp but he could still see a narrow patch where the topsoil was churned up. It had been baked in the fire and later frozen in the winter air, providing clear evidence for someone who knew what to look for. Beckett knelt and ran his fingers over the ground. It was hard to be certain, but he was pretty sure he knew what he was looking at. The best way to confirm it was to check underneath.

Beckett felt the blood surge to life in his veins as he focused upon the ground. He sensed an immediate connection to the frozen soil, an intimate and irresistible call. His body sank into the earth as if it were quicksand. With an effort of will, he halted his downward progress while his head and shoulders remained exposed. He passed his hands around below the disturbed patch, his movements slow and deliberate against the resistance of solid ground. After a few minutes of searching, he unearthed a few treasures. The pair of hands and length of one arm were interesting, but it was the head that caught his attention. Drawing it up took an effort, like pulling a bowling ball from tar. Beckett let it go once it cleared the ground, then drew his own arms out. The ground became solid where he braced his palms and he used the leverage to pull himself from the earth's embrace. Shaking grit from his clothes, Beckett picked up the head and looked it over.

At first one might mistake it for a rough-hewn sculpture; it had a rocky finish and chunks of earth protruded from it in places. A closer look showed it was still flesh and bone, with an ugly hole where it had once been attached by its neck to a body. The expression, when Beckett turned the skull around to look at the front, was shocking. It contained a ferocity and fear he had never seen before. Beckett shivered in apprehension. He may be undead, but he was not without feeling. The poor bastard had suffered indescribable pain when he died.

The Final Death, Beckett thought. A vampire's ultimate end, his complete destruction. Beckett would have a similar expression should his nights as an immortal someday come to a close. Still unnerved, Beckett lowered the head and looked at the ground from which he'd taken it.

From the angle at which he'd found the remains, Beckett knew the rest of the body had been above ground, where he'd burned to a crisp. Whether from the fire or sunlight Beckett didn't know, but that didn't matter much at present. The earth in which the remaining pieces bonded had protected them even as the conflagration raged aboveground. Beckett held up the vampire's skull again and saw the preservative nature of the ground was lost now that he'd pulled them out. The skull was drying out, mummifying; the skin turning sallow and the eyes shriveling in their sockets.

"Alas, poor Augustus," he said.

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