The Ride — Friday, March 8, 1991, 5:48 PM

Kaspar & Sons / South Side streets / Sears Tower Chicago, Illinois

Neally waited outside the basement entrance at Kaspar & Sons, where the missing steel door exposed the passage behind him and boards covered the storefront glass. Darius had shot him at this address. Now he had returned to ask a favor. He kept looking past Darius toward the street, and each time he turned back he had to recover the composure that once belonged to Lodin’s administrator.

“Jefferson’s blood has hold of me. The Creation Rite is the only way I know to break it. I need you to carry my request to Bach. You’ve dealt with his pack and lived.”

Darius stayed in the entrance. The damaged frame had sharp edges where the metal had torn. There were repairs to pay for, a lease to preserve, and a man on the pavement whose usefulness had survived being shot. Somewhere above them, ordinary people were getting ready for work. Neally would have to find a place to hide before they finished.

“Oh, we’ll carry it. But it’ll cost you.”

Neally offered information learned in Lodin’s service: part now, the remainder if Bach agreed to hear him. Darius required the first part before settling anything further. A promise from this man could belong to Jefferson by the time Darius collected it.

“Menele. That’s the name I learned in Lodin’s service. An elder has a claim in you.”

Hell’s Pasture returned in pieces: the buried body, the work of recovering it, the vial and the hunger that had made its contents sufficient reason to drink. He had helped carry the elder to Lodin. He could remember handling the container more clearly than he could remember deciding to use it. The blood had entered him before he had a name for its source.

He looked at Neally’s face. There was no need to accept an explanation of everything the elder intended. A name, attached to the body he had recovered and the blood he had swallowed, was enough to alter the question. He had been treating that night as an operation he had completed.

Find out who else knows. Make the errand pay twice.

Neally’s request remained practical. Find Bach; ask him to accept Neally for the Rite. If Bach agreed to hear him, the rest of the information would follow. Darius would carry it.

By Friday evening the hunger had sharpened again. He set up the police-band watch rather than spending another night asking people who might sell the question. Reports came through in bursts of static and clipped dispatch language. Most could be disregarded. Overturned cars and an assault in an industrial stretch of the South Side gave him something he could use.

He reached the bikers before the squad cars, with Sable and Tomás beside him. Seven people stood among the motorcycles. Bach was recognizable from the opera, as were the three identical men whose bodies turned together. The Creole woman watched their approach. The other two stayed with the bikes. Engines ran against the cold; exhaust spread close to the pavement before the wind broke it apart.

The Sheriff and his enforcers had their own instructions. Darius had arranged positions covering the pack’s likely routes out of Chicago, with a strike contingent on an attempt to leave. He kept that preparation out of the conversation. Having men in place was useful only while Bach did not know where they were.

Darius walked straight up. He left his hands clear of his gun and made Bach watch him cover the distance. Mireille turned first; the identical men pivoted with her. Bach raised a hand to hold them.

“You came looking for me. So talk.”

“You’re in our territory. You know you don’t belong here. We want you to get out, now, and there’s some trash we want you to take with you. Your stooge.”

Bach understood which man he meant. The sirens were nearer. He looked toward them, then back at Darius, and demanded that Darius and his friends ride with the pack before making demands about Neally.

“It’s not your city, lick. You’re a Sabbat pissant from LA. You don’t belong here, and it’s you who need to earn the right to not be staked for the Sun in our domain.”

Bach stepped closer. “Then stake me. You’ve got your friends and your badge. Make it happen.”

He offered the Ride again. Darius tried to make him state terms that could be carried back; Bach kept the offer where it was. Behind him, three matching faces followed the exchange with a concentration Darius would have preferred to see divided. There was still time to leave before the police could add their own demands.

Darius put his gun in his waistband. “Let’s ride, then.”

The pack got all three of them onto the backs of motorcycles and pulled out as the squad cars reached the damaged vehicles. Darius held himself steady through the acceleration. Air forced his coat against his chest, and the pavement passed beneath him fast enough that individual defects became a continuous vibration in his teeth. The engine’s heat reached his legs while the wind took sensation out of his hands. He could endure the trip. Bach received no evidence to the contrary.

Outside a late-night bar, Bach picked a new Lexus. Two people watched from the doorway. He told Darius to flip it.

Darius assessed the men available for the work. The three identical bodies supplied coordination, but Bach was the most powerfully built individual. Darius caught his eye and issued the instruction himself.

“Flip.”

Bach turned to the car, put his hands beneath the frame and heaved it onto its side. Glass burst across the pavement. One witness ran for the bar; the other remained where he stood. The pack roared approval. Darius stepped off the bike before Bach turned back.

“Looks like you’ve got bigger problems than me, Bach. You just broke the Masquerade in a Camarilla city.”

No Sheriff appeared to seize him. Darius had two witnesses within reach and dealt with them separately, taking their attention long enough to interfere with what they had seen. He could obscure the impossible effort, the hands under the frame, the face of the man responsible. The overturned Lexus would remain. Neither mind yielded enough for a clean replacement of the event.

When he returned his attention to Bach, the ductus had recovered command of his own body. Mireille was watching him. The Chorus approved of the spectacle; Bach’s jaw tightened.

“You made me flip a car and blurred two witnesses. Control, sure. But you’re still pulling strings.”

Darius let him see the result. The car lay damaged beside the bar, Bach had supplied the strength, and the witnesses were struggling with their recollections. There was no requirement to explain his method to the people who had just benefited from it.

They moved before the sirens reached them. Bach’s next target was a CTA bus slowing near a park. The identical men spread around its doors, and the passengers began looking out at the bikes. Darius climbed aboard and fixed his attention on the driver. The man turned the wheel.

The bus went over the curb, tires dragging through the grass, and crushed the sign telling people to stay off it. Passengers caught the rails and screamed. Bach rode alongside, watching Darius through the windows. He wanted Darius’s hands on the destruction; Darius had obtained a driver who already knew the vehicle. When the passengers spilled out onto the grass, the pack left them with the bus.

Under a rail viaduct, three men were conducting a smaller transaction beside a parked car. The cash and a handgun were visible. Bach told Darius to break it up and take both.

Darius checked the faces, the car, the surroundings. He found no familiar sign connecting the deal to Chuc Luc’s money or Gengis’s contacts. It appeared to be local business. His first attempt to arrest their attention gained him nothing; all three remained capable of taking exception to the approaching stranger. He concentrated on the man with the weapon and secured his eyes. The man set down the gun and cash.

Darius collected them. “Whose turf is this?”

“Nobody’s turf. It’s a meet spot. We’re moving for a guy on the South Side, but he’s not here. That’s all I know.”

The man’s attention traveled between the handgun and the motorcycles. His two companions had surrendered nothing of their own wills, but stayed beside him long enough to hear the answer.

“Then count yourself lucky you’re alive, and get out before I decide to take offense.”

They backed away and ran. Darius let them go. He had taken the visible proceeds, acquired no reliable name, and found no immediate reason to make the transaction larger.

The mobile police headquarters came next. An RV stood with two officers outside, its side panel available for Bach’s proposed mark. Darius approached with an explanation about making the vehicle blend in. One officer regarded the suggestion with disbelief. Darius held his gaze until the objection ceased, and the man turned toward the RV to find something to write with.

A biker supplied a spray can. “Don’t worry, I got you,” Darius said, and put the mark on the panel himself. Paint hissed against the vehicle. He could smell the solvent over its exhaust.

The second officer reached for Darius’s arm, his partner useless beside him. Darius turned to meet his eyes.

“Down, boy.”

The officer dropped to his knees with his hands on the pavement. Darius finished the tag while the first man began recovering from his blank obedience. Neither had seen the force that moved them. Both would have to explain the damaged command vehicle. Bach’s pack howled, and the engines took them away before an explanation could become an alarm.

At the Sears Tower, Bach pointed up the facade and told Darius to climb, breaking windows on the ascent. The building’s lights drew long rectangles above them. Darius looked at the glass, then at the man proposing the work.

“Not my jam. I’m Ventrue. I talk. I don’t do stunts. Whatever you were hoping to prove, I hope you got what you wanted.”

He had spent the night making strangers obey, taking their property and interfering with their memories. An officer’s hands had met the pavement because Darius required it. He could still recognize what he had done. Climbing this building would add another public emergency and contribute nothing to his ability to deliver Neally.

Bach would not accept Darius’s word as sufficient reason to admit the petitioner to the Rite. He wanted to know what Darius would risk himself. Darius kept Lodin’s deadline and the Sheriff’s positions out of the answer. He could bring Neally; the pack could hear him and decide for itself.

“You bring him alive and alone, and we’ll hear him out. No court guards, no tricks. Can you deliver that?”

“I can.”

The question of the Rite remained with Bach. He pressed Darius’s refusal of the tower, and Darius held to what the night had already demonstrated. He had ridden beside them. Bach had watched him work. When Darius asked whether hearing Neally was the bargain or merely the start of another negotiation, Bach committed to the hearing. He made no promise beyond it.

“What happens between you and Neally is your business.”

Darius gave him the sentence without the rest of the arrangement. The Camarilla wanted the pack dead. The Sheriff had men waiting on the exits. Lodin expected Neally returned functional and unbound. Darius’s personal indifference to the petitioner made the lie easier to say; he could deliver the man while caring very little about what the man received.

Bach searched his face. He caught nothing he could use.

“Fine. You deliver Neally. The pack decides what happens after.”

“Till then.”

Bach got onto his bike. The pack rode away through Chicago, leaving Darius with Sable and Tomás beneath the tower. The route out of town was still covered; nobody had attempted it. There was a hearing to arrange and a man to bring alive and alone. In his waistband, Darius carried the gun he had brought to the meeting. Elsewhere on his person were another man’s handgun and cash, acquired during a night of proving that he could make other people do the work.