E-Books: Clan Novel: BrujahBy Gherbod Fleming
Thursday, 14 October 1999, 1:47 AM Dockside, U.S.S. Apollo, the Inner Harbor Baltimore, Maryland
He’ll never go for it.
As he walked along the waterfront, Theo had no illusions that his current task was anything but doomed to failure. There was little chance for gain, and presumably much risk of loss.
The feeble breeze blowing in off the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River shared Theo’s lack of enthusiasm. The night was unseasonably warm, but the Brujah archon still wore his heavy leather jacket, as well as the omnipresent black baseball cap.
The Sabbat’s breathing down our necks, and I’m playing diplomat, he thought, shaking his head.
The Inner Harbor area was quiet. The museums, shops, restaurants, the aquarium-all of them catered to the tourist dollar, and tourists generally went to bed early. This "revitalized" part of the city was Prince Garlotte’s pride and joy.
Theo didn’t understand it. He could only take so much "quaint" before he gagged. He preferred other parts of the city, real parts of the city, where real honest-to-God people lived and died. The trickle-down economics of the uptown developers didn’t ever seem to trickle that far. But those real neighborhoods weren’t where the prince and his refined, financier buddies spent their time, so what did they care? They were already the kings of the mountain. They had everything they wanted at the top, and not much was left for anybody else. It didn’t have to be that way. Money and influence were like water — left to themselves, they flowed downhill. Problem was, they never were left to themselves. Some greedy, button-down motherfucker was always building a dam, so the thirsty bastards at the bottom of the hill were left with jack shit.
What the world needed was somebody to bust some fucking dams.
But Theo couldn’t honestly say that he lived up to that philosophy. Not all the time, anyway. Not most of the time. Times like tonight, he felt more like a damned houseboy.
Yes, sir. No, sir. The pisser was that he could run roughshod over Garlotte. Theo could make the prince see things his way—or at least agree to go along. But nothing was ever that simple. Too heavy a hand now caused more problems later. Restraint was the difference between an archon and a thug.
Maybe a thug has the better deal, Theo thought. Bust heads now, ask questions later, if at all. The idea wasn’t completely foreign to an archon’s job description, but it wasn’t the way to go when a prince was involved. Especially a Ventrue prince. The blue bloods were just too damn tight. Too many friends, or if not friends, flunkies, in high places. Threaten a Ventrue and he might give in rather than take a punch, but the next thing you knew, Interpol was on your ass, and your haven was condemned by the local housing authority and bulldozed, and all your credit cards were cancelled. Bad mistake. So on went the kid gloves.
Like I got time for it.
It wouldn’t matter whose feelings were hurt when the Sabbat rolled into town. But Theo played the game anyway.
He stopped about a hundred yards from Garlotte’s boat — Garlotte’s fucking schooner, rather. A sterile reproduction of a nineteenth-century merchant ship. The thing reminded Theo of a slave ship. The period was off by at least several decades, but that was the first thought that came to his mind every time he saw it. Lord knew that Garlotte got his kicks >>>>>
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