Canticles of the Prophet Zachariah:
The Invitation
Notes by Anthony
“I came to consciousness slowly. I was on the ground. Hard stone beneath me. Everything was dark. At first, I tried to open my eyes. But I didn’t have eyes. As you might have surmised by now, dear listeners, I was dreaming. I willed myself to have eyes to open. My disembodied spirit “sat” up. I was in the Antechamber of the Temple, illuminated by glowing symbols on the walls. Ben was plastered with his arms outstretched on the inner door. The one I had seen in my vision of the grey man.
“I floated towards the door. Ben was asleep. His chest rose and fell. His eyelids twitched. I reached out to touch his shoulders and he gasped awake. He panicked, begging me to get him out. I willed my arms and mouth and lungs into solidity. I tried to calm him down as I pulled at his arms, looking for a seam. He almost seemed like part of wall. I gripped his shirt hard and pulled. He screamed as he tore apart, disintegrating into dust in my hands. The door swung open. The hallway was lined with blackened stone covered in hash marks. They pulsed and glowed. Red rivulets of blood coursed through. It looked like computer symbols. Kind of like when Kevin Flynn gets digitized for the first time and descends into the grid.
“At the first junction, I saw an open door to my left. A large chamber with something glowing at the center. To the right lay more hallways. Naturally, I chose the left. In the center was a great stone column. Curved, metal knives jutted out from the column at regular intervals. Surrounding it was a fountain of blood. Four chairs with stone consoles faced the column outside the fountain. It gurgled at me. I felt myself drawn to it.
“Forestalling the inevitable, I stared hard at the symbols on the wall. I wanted to bring some information back. The central mechanism was called “The Irad.” The gurgling grew louder. I told it I was coming and sliced my hand on one of the knives. The blood was sucked out of me, far faster than mere gravity would pull. My body withered to a husk even as I screamed. It crumpled behind me as I was drawn into the fountain with the blood. I was the blood. I was pumped through the system. Endless hallways. I pulsed into symbols and tick marks. Tala was right. The Temple had veins. It was alive.
“I woke up in the tub, only a little covered in blood. Ben ran up to me with a blood bag and asked me what I had dreamt. Turns out, dear listeners, he had dreamed the same thing. He remembered being in the doorway. How much it scared him when I pulled him apart. I was about to comfort him when I heard Asa banging about in the other room. I told Ben to stay behind me as I knocked on Asa’s door. I could hear the beast clawing for control in Asa’s voice as he said he was hungry. He sounded frightened. I told him to wait in the bathroom while I quickly opened the door and tossed in the blood bag. He slammed against the door, and I heard the distinctive sound of the plastic tearing open. I told him that it was going to be okay. I’d get him more blood.
“I checked in on Cedric and Jordan. Both were rolling around on the ground, muttering incoherently. According to Ben, they had been quiet all day. Gwen walked in, asking me to see something. Apparently, she and Tala had dreams as well, and left bloody sigils on their bedsheets. Each was a central rune surrounded by smaller ones in the language from the Temple and the tablets. Tala’s sigil meant something along the lines of ‘animating force’ or ‘Spirit.’ Gwen’s meant ‘Entropy’ or ‘Death.’ Later, we read Asa’s sigil as ‘Of Light.’ The smaller marks around each were the same and meant something like ‘the thing that energy passes through’ or ‘gateway.’
“Gwen ordered Paulie to bring Asa a few blood bags, and eventually he rejoined us with the aforementioned bloody sheets. Gwen left to speak with Carlo as we shared our dreams. Asa dreamt that he became a beam of light. He first sought out Diane, and saw she was at a military installation somewhere in Alexandria. But then he was drawn to the other side of the world. Darkness bubbled up from a small island in the ocean next to a cliff. He descended into the ocean, seeking out its source. He could only watch as it consumed everything. Tala had found herself in her favorite place on earth, a small, wooded grove. The spirits were everywhere. She saw a satellite circling the earth. It shot a beam of light towards the grove, obliterating her and everything in it.
“I shared my dream, of course. I tried to leave out Ben’s involvement, but, well, he wanted to be included. I tried not to draw attention to inference that the Temple needed human sacrifice to be opened. Good thing Gwen wasn’t listening. Tala also told us that she had drunk from Ruth, who was an Elder, which is why she was able to teleport and do so much damage on Roosevelt Island.
“Soon after, Tala and I overheard motorcycles approach the Temple. Gwen returned and warned us to go upstairs and stay quiet. We huddled in the room with Cedric and Jordan as Gwen and Carlo walked outside. I used Auspex to listen in, but they were speaking Italian. The man who spoke the most wore a suit with slicked back black hair and tattoos. The other’s head was wrong. He had an elongated head and eyes. Either a Tzimisce or Nosferatu, if I had to guess. The tone sounded friendly enough, but it was impossible to tell what they were saying. I begged whoever was listening to help me Obfuscate my friends the way Joan had, back when we first visited OTCAL. Nothing happened.
“Gwen and Carlo returned, seemingly without starting a war or ratting us out. Gwen informed us that we had to leave tonight, but Jordan would stay behind. As the D.C. Ventrue primogen, he was too important for Carlo to give away. If the Sabbat knew he had been harbored here, that would risk the Giovanni’s precarious neutrality. I tried my best to persuade her, listeners. Told her that Jordan was important to Damien’s plans. He could hold the key to stopping Ruth or understanding the Temple. I’m not proud of it, but I even tried to bait her pride by asking if she just did anything Carlo said. If he told her to jump, she’d ask how high. She stood firm, though she promised that Carlo would keep him in the Sudario for a week, whatever that meant.
“I went upstairs with Asa and Be. I wanted to contact Joan and see if she could help me wake Cedric or Jordan up. Maybe she knew what was wrong with them. Maybe if Jordan could wake up, things would be different. I watched him on the bed for a moment. Jordan shook and whimpered as he spoke. He kept changing accents. Southern, then British English. Shakespearean, maybe? He begged someone to stay away. Pleaded. He sounded so small and helpless. I felt awful about leaving him. Damien had some fucked-up plan for Jordan, but the Sabbat were worse, right?
“Have I killed him, listeners? Thrown him from the frying pan to the fire? Do I just make everything worse? I held Cedric’s hand as I reached out to Joan in the cobweb. Ben sat next to me, ready to catch me when I fell.”