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a sourcebook for
The dead whisper about her from LA to El Paso. About the
barbarian, the cannibal, the big bad blackbird. The mon-
ster who sneaks in like a thief in the light, and leaves in
a cloud of dust and clotting blood. The Unholy.
Maybe you want to hunt her. Maybe you want to fuck her.
But looking in your eyes, I think more than anything you
want to be her. To break the rules. To be feared and wanted.
To ride alone forever and never take no for an answer.
Well, you better step up now. Pick a side. Because
she’s here tonight, and no matter what you’ve
heard, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
– Sheriff of Santa Teresa, last words
This book is:
Information on vampires
that vampires talk about,
from preeminent monsters
to ancient horrors
The legacies of these legends
•
among the Damned: new
bloodlines, Devotions, and
blood magic
Allies and antagonists for any
•
chronicle, from
Vampire
to
Hunter
5 3 2 9 9
9 781588 464491
PRINTED IN CHINA
www.worldofdarkness.com
978-1-58846-449-1 WW25308 $32.99 US
•
The Resurrection Man
The tomb lay largely uninished, though Mother Nature had conspired to inish the bro-
ken walls herself—black roots took mighty grip of those walls, laying claim to this dead
place. Unmoored tiles, many broken, lay scattered about. Motes of dust whirled. Dead
spiders, creatures that had come here looking for a feast but inding none, inding this
place nothing more than a trap, reposed desiccated in their webs. Clods of dirt lay here
and there. Mushrooms. Moss. The lesh-scoured bones of a rat, maybe a possum.
In the corner, a crumpled metal trapdoor sat, ruined. The hinges were busted. The center had been kicked so
hard a cruel bootprint remained in the metal—it warped the words engraved across the top,
Est vir qui adest
.
This was a place of death, to be sure, but no part of it looked as dead as the corpse in the middle of the loor,
swaddled in white linens gone yellow. The shriveled body lay kinked beneath that pale shroud, bony hands
gripping the fabric in arthritic eternity. The body was brown and black beneath the yellowed sheet—little
more than a scarecrow whose skin was cracked leather and tough jerky.
The face could not be seen, though—a featureless porcelain mask, no eyes, no mouth, lay crookedly cocked
atop the skull. It was the one perfect thing in this mausoleum; the very dust seemed afraid to touch it. This
was a city of masks. Did this one hold some untoward power like many of the others?
A claw reached down out of the darkness, tracing a pattern across the top of the mask. Another talon joined
it. The two went for the edges and delicately picked up the relic, gently setting it down on the earthen loor.
It was the last gentle action that would occur this night.
A talon slit the center of the shroud, a swift and unmerciful slash. The sheet parted, showing its package:
the torpid corpse of the heretic elder, Rafael Pope. His eyes were puckered sphincters, his mouth a wretched
scream where his own teeth had bit into his diaphanous lips.
But it wasn’t his face that drew interest from the woman standing over him, a broad-brimmed hat slung low
over her dark face, her yellow eyes. It was his moldering chest and what lay beyond the breastbone—a heart
so leached of life it must have looked like a peach pit or a lump of anthracite. With rough claws—ingers
of wrinkled dark red skin like that of a cockscomb—she unceremoniously spread the ribcage with a brittle
crack, exposing the dull organ within.
The Unholy smiled. Licked a fang. She was going to eat that heart, then eat the rest of him, then swallow
his betraying soul like the last gobbet of sweetmeat.
She reached in to curl what passed for her hands around the dead heart—
“Stop.”
The word was like an icicle to the back of her head. She snarled, and felt the air grow thin around her; the dust stirred
in ways that denied the currents of air blowing in from the trapdoor’s opening. Nothing lurched inside her, no Beast
threatening to come to the fore—that awful monster had long come to the surface, and now lived just beneath her
tough skin, ever-present but well-reined. Dirt cracked off the walls, thudding in great clumps against the loor tiles.
Spider webs trembled. The air grew loud with the sounds of beaks clacking, feathers shufling, little feet tightening on
their perches. Eyes glittered behind her. The room now grew heavy with the presence of a hundred crows, fat-bellied
birds roosting on roots and tiles and tucked away in any uneven niche the wall presented.
A man-shaped shadow stepped away from the corner of the room, and she nearly loosed her lock upon
it—but he held up a hand, and she had to admit she was curious.
“Birch,” she said, the word hitting like a gob of spit against cement.
“Guilty,” the shadow answered, stepping into the moonlight offered by the trapdoor’s opening. It gleamed
off his shorn scalp. The light caught in the contours of the scars crisscrossing his skull and face. He held up
his hands and smiled. “Nice trick with the birds. You have to teach me that some night.”
She eased the tension in her shoulders, and the birds visibly quieted, too—the bond between them was palpable.
“It ain’t the best idea to interrupt me,” she said.
By
Chuck Wendig
“I assure you, that wasn’t my desire.
Technically
, though, you interrupted me.”
“You were here the whole time?”
“I was.”
He took a few steps closer. It didn’t bother her. She wanted it; she and the birds could take him apart like he
was a piñata, spilling out whatever candies waited within. Birch was a fascinating sort; one never knew how
he’d approach a situation. Here he was in the tomb of an elder well-loathed by the so-called Sanctiied, but he
wasn’t in his sacred vestments. Just a powder blue polo shirt and a pair of khaki slacks. Golfwear covering up
a body marked by brands and scars.
“I didn’t smell you,” she said.
“Good to know I don’t have a peculiar odor. I do brush my teeth. Our choice of drink doesn’t do well when
it rots in the mouth; best to keep our chompers clean.” As if to punctuate his remark, he snapped his teeth
together.
“If you say so, Birch. Listen, let’s just get this over with. You were waiting for me, so say your piece, then leave
me to my leisure.”
“Oh, but I wasn’t waiting for you. Your presence here is unexpected. Then again, it usually is. I heard a story
about you in… Detroit, was it?”
“Something like that. About a year ago. Always seems that nobody wants to let me pass in peace. I like to
leave them with some souvenirs.”
Birch shrugged. “We’re all cursed in some way.”
“So you’re here for the heretic.”
“I am.”
“I got here irst.”
“You did.”
The two eyed each other up. She wasn’t scared of Birch, and she knew he was scared of her—it wasn’t just the
tickle at the base of her spine, but other things, too. The way his neck muscles tightened into cords. The way
his tongue played over his teeth even with his mouth closed. The cock of his hips, giving him a faint slouch
(and Birch, he never slouches). And yet, for all that, he wasn’t
that
scared. Couldn’t be. He was here. He took
another step closer, offering his hands up like a Vegas dealer who has just cleared the table.
The Unholy grew frustrated. “So just go the fuck away, then. I’ve laid claim to this body. His heartsblood is
mine. Go ind yourself another slumbering fool.”
“I don’t want to claim the body. I’ve no interest in devouring this one’s soul. Actually, I want to wake him up.”
“Well, that’s fucking stupid.”
“Probably.”
Just to make her dominance clear, she put her mortiied claws back on Pope’s cracked and blistered heart.
She’d have pissed on it if she still had the juice.
“Don’t much care what you want to do with him,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if you want to hollow him out
and ill him with nuts and stufing, because I’ve made my mark. My intentions are clear.”
“They are. And yet, I cannot back down. God’s will is clear, here.”
“Don’t you mean
your
will?”
He sighed. “Same thing, I’m afraid. He speaks through me. He acts through me. Actually, I suspect He acts
through you, too. That’s how God is.”
“He moves in mysterious ways,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“It isn’t mysterious to me. It’s mysterious only to the ignorant and the unbelieving.”
Birch started to pace a rough half-circle at Pope’s torpid corpse-feet (the two ankles crossed, a pose ironically
Christ-like). His brown loafers crunched on bits of broken tile.
“You’re bold,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
“Let me be bolder, then. Let’s make a deal.”
“I’m not good with deals. You have nothing I want.”
Birch clucked his tongue. “I don’t know about that. We may not believe the same things, and we may not
want
the same things. But I have to believe our interests intersect, here.”
“I doubt that very much, Birch.”
“Will you at least hear me out?”
She tightened her grip on the heretic’s heart. It was now that she realized something—it remained true she
had nothing to fear from Birch’s physical presence. His words, though, were a different matter. His tongue was
a snare; even laid bare, she threatened to step into it. The birds sensed her tension. They rufled their wings.
Shifted nervously from foot to foot.
Birch sensed it, too—he didn’t wait for permis-
sion to speak, and instead let his words tumble
out of him, careless but exact.
“I know the stories,” he said. “I’ve heard tell of you
since my earliest nights. My sire was a killer. Elegant
in some ways, but clumsy in others. She was in
awe
of
you, but of course as is the nature of our kind she was
also jealous and apparently certain that one day she
could surpass your skills. She never got the chance,
of course, because she was ultimately weak and they
put her down like a distempered dog. She told me
many stories about you. Some probably true. Many
probably less than true. It wasn’t just her. Inevitably
someone would bring you up. Your visits to cities.
Your long journeys down dark highways. The things
you did. The unlives you ended. It’s more than just
gossip. This is gospel, sprayed in blood across a lonely
desert road.”
“Poetic.”
“I try.”
“Go on.”
“I see a theme in what you do.”
“I don’t
do
themes. I only do what I want.”
“You’re elemental that way, I recognize. But
that’s part of it. You’re not just some id-driven
monstrosity. You haven’t fallen prey to what
so many of us have. Your acts have meaning.
They reveal
purpose
. Otherwise, you’d just
kill wantonly. All would die. All would be
blood on your claws and in your mouth.”
“You calling me weak, boy?”
“Quite the opposite, I assure you. You’re
strong enough to retain that purpose well
beyond the point that lesser creatures would
have become contaminated and driven mad
by their sins. God works through you, and
with Pope you can let him continue doing
so. Release him to me. Let me wake him. I
have my people—Emily, and a handful of
loyal Brigmans—coming with an offering
for Pope. A taste he dare not refuse. Let me
rouse him from his slumber.”
“Why?”
“You’re not just a castigating force. You’re a
creature that enjoys a certain
random
element.
Knock over one domino, see what happens.
Pope is a very big domino. You loathe the power
structure that sits in place. Help me shake it up.
They’ll run like ants. Some will woo him, others
will try to kill him or enslave him or worship
him. The chaos born of such an event surely ap-
peals to you?”
She moved fast. She slammed Birch up against
the wall, hard enough that the tomb shook, send-
ing a rain of dirt and dust over everything. His feet
dangled. His throat lay soft in her curled claws.
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