Clare Cassandra - The Fall of the Hotel Dumort

For the next several days Magnus kept to himself. The weather was brutal, flicking between heat and storm. He tried to forget about the scene in Camille’s apartment, and the best way to forget was to keep busy. He hadn’t really kept up with his work for the last two years. There were clients to call. There were spells to study and translations to do. Books to read. The apartment needed redecorating. There were new restaurants and new bars and new people. . . .

Every time he stopped, he flashed back to the sight of Camille squatting on the carpet, the girl limp in her arms, the mirror full of drugs, Camille’s face covered in blood. The mess. The stink. The horror. The blank looks.

When you lost someone to addiction—and he had lost many—you lost something very precious. You watched them fall. You waited for them to hit the bottom. It was a terrible wait. He would have nothing to do with it. What happened now was not his problem. He had no doubt that Lincoln and the werewolves would take care of things, and the less he knew the better.

It kept him awake at night. That, and the thunder.

Sleeping alone was Hell, so he decided not to sleep alone.

He still woke up.

It was the night of July thirteenth—lucky thirteen. The thunderstorm outside was incredibly loud, louder than the air conditioner, louder than the radio. Magnus was just finishing up a translation and was about to go out to dinner, when the lights flickered. The radio faded in and out. Then everything went very bright as power surged through the wires. Then . . .

Out. Air conditioner, lights, radio, everything. Magnus flicked his hand absently and lit a candle on his desk. Power outages were not uncommon. It was a moment before he realized that things had grown very quiet and very dark indeed, and there were voices shouting outside. He went to the window and opened it.

Everything was dark. The streetlights. Every building. Everything except the headlights of the cars. He took the candle and carefully walked down the two flights to the street and joined the excited masses of people. The rain had stopped—it was just thunder grumbling in the background.

New York . . . was off. Everything was off. There was no skyline. There was no glow of the Empire State Building. It was utterly, utterly dark. And one word was being yelled from window to window, from street to car to doorway . . .

“BLACKOUT.”

The parties started almost at once. It was the ice cream shop on the corner that kicked it off, selling anything they had for a dime a cone, and then just giving away the ice cream to anyone who came by with a bowl or a cup. Then the bars started passing around cocktails in paper cups to passersby. Everyone poured out onto the streets. People propped battery-powered radios in the windows, so there was a mix of music and news reports. The outage had been caused by a lightning strike. All of New York was down. It would be hours—days?—before service was restored.

Magnus returned to his apartment, got a bottle of champagne from his refrigerator, and returned to his front stoop to drink it, sharing it with a few people who walked past. It was too hot to stay inside, and the outside was far too interesting to miss. People started dancing on the sidewalk, and he joined in for a while. He accepted a martini from a nice young man with a beautiful smile.

Then there was a hissing. People gathered around one of the radios, one playing news. Magnus and his new friend, who was named David, joined them.

“. . . .ires throughout the five boroughs. More than a hundred fires have been reported in the last hour. And we have multiple reports of lootings. Gunfire is being exchanged. Please—if you are out tonight, use extreme caution. Though all police have been called in to duty, there are not enough officers to . . .”

Another radio a few yards away, on a different station, gave a similar report.

“. . . .undreds of stores have been broken into. There are reports of total breakdowns in some areas. You are strongly advised to stay indoors. If you cannot get home, seek shelter in . . . .”

In the short silence, Magnus could hear sirens in the distance. The Village was a tight community, so it celebrated. But clearly this was not the case all over the city.

“Magnus!”

Magnus turned to find Greg breaking through the group. He pulled Magnus away from the crowd, into a quiet space between two parked cars.

“I thought that was you,” he said. “It’s all happening. They’ve gone nuts. The blackout. . . . The vampires are going crazy at this club. I can’t even explain it. It’s on Tenth Ave and down a block. No cabs in this blackout. You have to run.”

Now that Magnus was trying to get somewhere, he realized the pure madness of the blacked-out streets. Since there were no traffic lights, normal people were trying to guide traffic. Cars were either frozen in place or moving far too fast. Some were parked and turned inward, their headlights being used to illuminate stores and restaurants. Everyone was out—the Village had poured out of every building, and there was no room anywhere. Magnus and Greg had to weave through the people, through the cars, tripping in the dark.

The crowds thinned somewhat the closer they got to the river. The club was in one of the old meatpacking warehouses. The brick industrial facade had been painted silver, and the word “ELECTRICA,” along with a lightning bolt, was above the old service doors. Two werewolves stood by these, holding flashlights, and Lincoln waited off to the side. He was deep in conversation with Consuela, who was his second-in-command. When they saw Magnus, Consuela stepped aside to a waiting van, and Lincoln came over.

“This is what we feared,” Lincoln said. “We waited too long.”

The werewolves guarding the entrance parted, and Lincoln pushed open the doors. Inside the club it was entirely pitch black, save for the beams from the werewolves’ flashlights. There was a strong smell of spilled, mixed liquor and something unpleasantly tangy and sharp.

Magnus raised his hands. The neon lights around the room buzzed and glowed. The overhead work lights—unflattering fluorescents—sputtered on. And the disco ball crept to life, slowly spinning, sending a thousand points of colored reflected light around the room. The dance floor, made of large squares of colored plastic, was also illuminated from below.

Which made the scene all the more terrible.

There were four bodies, three women and one man. All looked like they had been running for various points of exit. Their skin was the color of ash, marked everywhere with greenish-purple bruises and dozens of marks, and garishly lit by the red, yellow, and blue lights below them. There was very little blood. Just a few small puddles here and there. Not nearly as much blood as there should have been.

One of the dead women, Magnus noticed, had familiar long blond hair. He’d last seen her on the plane, handing him the passes . . .

Magnus had to turn away quickly.

“They were all drained,” Lincoln said. “The club hadn’t opened for the night yet. They were having trouble with their sound system even before the power went out, so the only people here were the employees. Two there. . . .”

He pointed to the raised DJ platform with its piles of turntables and speakers. Some werewolves were up there examining the scene.

“Two behind the bar,” he continued. “Another one ran and hid in the bathroom, but the door was broken down. And these four. Nine total.”

Magnus sat down on one of the nearby chairs and put his head in his hands for a moment to gather himself. No matter how long you lived, you never got used to seeing terrible things. Lincoln gave him a moment to collect himself.