For my last excerpt of Gehenna: the Final Night, I wanted to highlight a neat storytelling choice. Marmell describes Beckett on page 8, at the beginning, before anything happens, and on page 319, when Gehenna is underway and undeniable.
The contrast!!! Marmell shows us this visual evidence of Beckett's journey and how much he's changed. Since the book's POV is in 3rd person omniscient, we never get access to Beckett's most intimate thoughts. It's great storytelling to note the marks on the body when the mind is closed. Buddy really went through that torment nexus, huh. Yet, despite everything, it's still him.
Transcripts of the screenshots under the cut:
page 8:
Beckett wouldn't really stand out in a crowd. Brown hair just a bit longer than was currently in vogue, brown jeans, a white denim button-down that wasn't currently buttoned, hiking boots and a backpack nearly large enough to crush a man who tried to put it on at the wrong angle. About the only truly unusual feature were the sunglasses he wore even late at night, an attention-getter he'd never have worn if they hadn't served the very specific purpose of hiding his inhuman eyes from mortal observers. From similar reasons, he wore a pair of gloves to conceal the coarse hair and thick nails that marked his hands, a further legacy of his blood's bestial heritage.
/
page 319:
"Beckett," she snarled. Then he blinked. "You look like hell."
Beckett nodded once. His eyes were sunken, his skin pale. He looked as though he hadn't fed in nights. His clothes were disheveled, and he bore the scars of several burns that hadn't quite healed yet. That he'd abandoned his sunglasses somewhere along the way was lost on Cross; she'd only seen him once, and had never known [i]why[/i] he wore the shades at the time. "You're not looking especially shipshape yourself."
"You're here to take advantage of that?" she demanded with something of her old fire. "Here to finish the job after all?"
Caine: Fuck, he's getting suspicious. I better play dumb.
Caine: Not that dumb!
Transcript under the cut:
All things considered, this cave was the best Beckett could hope for. Still, he felt uneasy. Kapaneus, Cesare[,] and he were hunkered down and safe from the sun for now, only an hour before dawn and a few more nights' walk from Qalat'at Sherqat. Things were going as close to plan as Beckett could hope and some instinct told him that was a bad sign.
The trip from the border had gone as expected. Other than the change in uniforms and languages, the soldiers on one side of the border seemed very much like those on the other, as far as Beckett and his companions were concerned: obstacles to avoid. Unfortunately, that hadn't always been possible—traveling by truck required that they stick to the roads and on three separate occasions, men with very large weapons had flagged them down. At the first two stops, Beckett and his companions had been able to talk themselves through—civilian travel in the region was not actually unusual, and people associated with the reconstruction of local oil pipelines and other pieces of the national infrastructure were doing a brisk, if risky business. A certain amount of US currency also helped relax security precautions.
The third stop, unfortunately, had been a more formal checkpoint and the soldiers had insisted on seeing some form of documentation. Kapaneus was able to cloud the minds of the solidiers standing beside the car, but he couldn't do the same for the remainder a few yards down the road. The trio had fled into the desert, leaving the truck behind. They'd then proceeded to Mosul on foot, taking the time to hunt there and replenish what supplies they could. Since then, they'd been following the Tigris. Finding shelter had grown progressively harder as the terrain grew less hilly, but they'd managed. Still, Beckett worried.
After several nights of travel, they found themselves briefly stymied by the actual border fence line, which had been rather dramatically beefed up during and after the recent hostilities. Beckett knew he could easily make his way either over or through the concertina wire barriers with ease, and Kapaneus had displayed sufficient strength and resilience that he could probably climb it without getting too sliced up. As Beckett had expected, however, Cesare was going to prove a problem.
In the end, after several minutes of debate, Beckett fluttered overhead as a bat, made his way to the nearest military checkpoint, and set a truck on fire. The distraction drew the attention of the roving patrols long enough for him to return, in human form, to the spot along the fence opposite his companions. There, Kapaneus tensed and bodily hurled the ghoul over the razor wire. Beckett squelched a sudden temptation to let Cesare take a face-plant in the sand as an object lesson and caught him. Kapaneus followed a moment later, moving in absolute silence despite the shifting and tensing of the fence beneath his weight. He had, when he was done, not a single cut on him. By the time the Kurdish and American patrols returned to their rounds—alert for saboteurs now, since they couldn't be certain yet how the fire started—Beckett and the others were long gone.
Caine, the third person God ever got mad at: err, that might not be a good idea
Transcript under the cut:
Slowly, he rose once more to his feet. "I'm going in back to clean up. Cesare, let me know if anything changes. Kapaneus…" Beckett frowned for a moment. "If you're a religious man, I wouldn't take it amiss if you'd start to pray for me."
Kapaneus smiled sadly. "With all I've seen, Beckett, God and I no longer get along as we once did. You don't need my prayers."
Beckett looked at the elder for a long moment, then nodded and closed the door to the cabin.
The next evening, immediately after awakening in the old but scrupulously clean rented room, Beckett spun to face Kapaneus. The elder actually took a step back. "I do not trust that grin, Beckett."
If anything, Beckett's smile widened further. "Kapaneus, I've seen you vanish from sight more than once. Would I be correct in assuming you can also take on the appearance of others?"
"It's not a skill I practice regularly but yes, I can do so."
"Good. Here's what we're going to do…"
/
On page 289:
"This is a woman who does not wish to be found, Beckett. She's not going to make it easy for us. I am certain we can locate her eventually, but that's going to require staying here for many nights. I don't believe we can afford to do that."
But Beckett had stopped listening after the first sentence. Instead, with a gleam in his eyes that almost matched the red glow that had recently faded, Beckett stepped out into the middle of the street.
"I," Kapaneus said softly to Cesare, "do not trust that expression."
The ghoul nodded sadly. "I fear Signore Beckett is about to do something patently unwise."
"You couldn't just let me sleep this out, could you, Anatole?" Beckett muttered.
Kapaneus looked equally concerned as Beckett summarized current events for him. "What do you plan to do?" the elder asked, after a long period of silence.
Beckett took a deep breath, though it was hardly necessary. "I'm going to keep going. My entire worldview has been—well, blown all to shit and back. But it doesn't change the bottom line. Our kind were born for a reason, Kapaneus. I'm more convinced of that now than I ever was. If we've got a set ending, we damn well had a set beginning. And I'm going to figure it out."
"An admirable goal, Beckett. But if this is truly is Gehenna, you've not much time."
"No." Beckett looked askance at his hands. After so many years of seeing them fur-clad, the smooth skin looked blatantly unnatural. "So we'd best begin."
Fortschritt, the Tremere Fatherhouse
Vienna, Austria
"Let me see if I understand," Kapaneus said, staring suspiciously at the laptop. "You can receive written messages on this device, from anyone else in the world who has a similar device."
"Well—for the most part, yes."
"And you say this involves no magic?"
"Nope. Mostly the same general principles as the phone."
"Fascinating." Kapaneus leaned in. "And they need merely know the name to which they must send their message?"
"Again, for the most part."
"This is truly an amazing world you've brought me into."
"I'm not sure what you want from me, Beckett," Okulos finally told him. "None of my contacts know Fortschritt any better than you do, and it's not as though the Tremere uploaded the blueprints for the chantry to the Internet. I've got the floor plan of the church itself, the public parts of the library, but I'm afraid none of them have 'secret entrance' marked on them. Are you sure you've looked everywhere?"
Beckett grunted an affirmative. He heard keys clicking as Okulos brought what images he had up onto his computer screen.
"You've got the entry hall, you obviously came through there. You've searched all the walls and the floor of the cathedral?"
"Yes."
"The individual reading rooms on the left? The offices on the right?"
"Yes."
"What about the small book restoration room behind the altar?"
"Well, no. The door's marked 'private.'"
There was a long moment of silence from the other end of the line.
"Okulos? You still there?"
"Beckett… Please repeat to me what you just said."
"I said I hadn't gone in. The door's marked 'private.'"
"So ancient curses, religious prohibitions and nearly certain Final Death don't dissuade you, but a 'private' sign does?"
Beckett felt something give in his mind, not entirely unlike feeling an ear pop during a pressure change. If he still possessed mortal reactions, he'd have blushed.
"I've been affected by some sort of aversion spell or ward, haven't I?"
"Unless you've suddenly developed a remarkable obsession with other people's privacy, I should say so."
Beckett sighed. "Thank you, Okulos. We'll negotiate later what it's going to cost me to keep this quiet."
"Just bring your checkbook."
Beckett hung up and proceeded toward the door at the far end of the chamber. Even now, knowing about the spell that must have certainly been cast on it, he wanted to turn away, to search somewhere else. It required an act of will even to put his hand on the latch, but as soon as he did, the sensation vanished.
He glanced back at Kapaneus. "Why didn't you point out that we hadn't searched here?"
The elder raised an eyebrow. "You made such an obvious point of avoiding it, I assumed you had a good reason."
