Blood Spirits

by Sherwood Smith

  Then silence fell. A charged, icy chill, the smell of rot and mustiness indicated the vampires were still there in the shadows.

  Dmitros Trasyemova leaped over the line of flames and beckoned to Phaedra and me. “We’ve got our strategy now. Help guard the Council.” He tipped his head toward the tunnel.

  “Tony’s pinched the lot of them. I won’t be part of that,” Phaedra stated.

  The commander said urgently, “Look, Tony doesn’t know any more than you do what you’ll find at the far end of the tunnel. Also, you might see a chance to . . . diffuse the situation. I don’t think Tony would attack you as readily as he would me.”

  Phaedra’s frown eased. “Right.” She turned to me. “Coming?”

  I hesitated. I could hear the vampires prowling back and forth just out of the reach of the ruddy glow that limned Alec as he prowled back and forth, as if daring them to attack again.

  When I looked his way, he glanced toward me. Our gazes met, and Alec leaped over the border created by Dmitros’s oil fire and approached. His mouth curved in tenderness as he slid his free hand around my cheek, the cobalt ring glittering on his hand. It actually seemed to shoot sparks as he said, “Back Phaedra and Beka, would you? I don’t think you see these things, right?” So he’d spared a glance for my wild swinging.

  “True enough.”

  “And we don’t know what might happen at the other end.”

  I said, “I’d rather fight by your side.”

  He kissed me—I kissed him back—we broke apart, and I ducked into the closet in time to catch an ugly glance from Cerisette, who’d come back through the tunnel for some reason. “Alec, the Prime Minister . . .” she began.

  Before she could say anything more, the vampires let out another shrieking cry and rushed in at the attack, flinging cushions and things gathered from the Council chamber in an effort to extinguish the flames.

  “Shut the door, Kim!” Beka yelled, pushing Cerisette inside the tunnel again. Phaedra followed, her sword at the ready.

  My heart hammered as I leaped inside the storage closet and pulled the lobby door shut. I hated leaving Alec out in that horrible lobby, but my presence wasn’t going to add anything to the defense, not until I figure out how to see the vamps.

  The pain as that door shut was like my heart had been ripped out by the roots and left behind with Alec. But that’s how I felt as I ducked through the back door of the musty closet, and stepped down into the tunnel. It was low—I had to duck my head—and it smelled dank. Beka and Phaedra slammed the inner door, Beka with a glance of sympathy, and Phaedra with one brow cocked skeptically. Then we hustled down the tunnel to catch up with the others.

  With a massive attempt at normalcy that probably wouldn’t fool a newborn kitten, I asked Beka, “What’s the story behind this place?”

  “There are escape tunnels all over the city. My ancestors had them put in. Beginning in the later 1600s, after the terrible pogroms in the Ukraine.”

  “Did people use them during the war?”

  “Oh yes. Many people lived in the northside tunnels for the duration.”

  “One of my great-uncles among ’em.” Phaedra whipped her rapier point back and forth in front of her, whish, slash. “He was an Orthodox priest.”

  “Tunnels, I get. Vampires, I don’t,” I admitted, looking behind me for the fiftieth time in two minutes. No, Alec was not there. “Why are those things all over the place all of a sudden?”

  “No one knows,” Phaedra said, saluting me with her sword, as she swung the lantern with her other hand. “This is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen them anywhere but at the Eyrie.”

  Beka winced. “Please don’t do that.” She paused, taking a shaky breath. Sweat beaded on her forehead. “This is my first day out of bed, and I was dizzy before you began to jiggle that lantern.”

  Phaedra started to say something, took a good look at Beka, and shrugged. She carried the lantern with a steadier hand as we descended the last of the stairs and set out at a swift walk in order to catch up with Cerisette, barely visible ahead, her head bowed so she wouldn’t clock herself on the low, rough ceiling. Phaedra and I had to duck as well. Only Beka could walk upright, but just barely.

  I don’t know how long we walked. Time underground, without the sun as guide, alters perception. We went down and down, took a bend to the right, then up and up again. My neck began to ache.

  We caught up as the slower old folks reached the end. Shimon led the way, pausing at the top to shoulder open a door that looked like it hadn’t been budged for decades.

  Tony stood at the head of the line just behind Shimon, sword gripped in one hand. He jerked his chin at Phaedra, who sidestepped around the Council and pushed past her relatives up the stairs, rapier at the ready. I followed in her wake, my palm sweaty as I gripped my sword.

  The door opened into brightness—footfalls rustled—and an ancient monk appeared, slippers on his feet. He didn’t seem to see the guys with the pistols, or maybe he didn’t care.

  He gave a cackle, then said in a loud, quavering voice, “That door hasn’t opened in seventy years.”

  The bishop stepped past Tony and Phaedra, and gently drew the old guy aside.

  A few of the mustachioed tough guys streamed around the bishop and the monk to do a sweep inspection of the area beyond. When they returned, shaking their heads, Tony stepped out of the way, and the rest of us filed up the narrow stairs past Phaedra and me.

  Tony reached to help Honoré, who hissed at each step. “Nunquam est fidelis potente societas. What was that?” Tony murmured.

  “You don’t remember your Latin?” Honoré responded, his voice breathy with effort as he shrugged off Tony’s hand.

  “You will recall I was chucked out of the two schools that tried to stuff Latin into my head.”

  “That was Phaedrus.” Robert’s deep voice rumbled with irony, from behind Honoré. “‘Alliance with the powerful is never safe.’”

  “Here’s another, from Seneca,” Honoré’s heavy eyelids flickered. “Ars prima regni est posse invidiam pati.”

  And Robert translated smugly, “The first art of kings is the power to suffer hatred.”

  “Aimed at me?” Tony said mockingly. “Honoré, you wound me. When I went to all that trouble to get Gilles to dig up Inspector Clouseau and company.”

  “Who?” Honoré asked.

  “My inspectors disguised as punks,” Tony began.

  “Bugger off, Anton,” Robert interrupted, glaring at Tony. “Make yourself useful, for once and find a chair for your mother.”

  The single-file line had passed into a large, sunny room by then. A couple of sturdy older men from the Council helped the duchess, who seemed unsteady on her feet. Cerisette and her mother walked together, the pair so skinny they reminded me of storks as their heads turned sharply.

  The old monk stood there next to the door, wearing a simple, ropetied white habit. As the last of the train passed, Phaedra and I bringing up the caboose, the ancient monk nodded several times, then asked in a rusty, loud voice, “Shall we sound the alarm, then?”

  The bishop, a stout white-haired man about Milo’s age, paused by the Prime Minister, addressing him in the low voice of a lifetime of familiarity. “Shimon. How many will know that pattern of bell rings as the alarm about vampires?”

  “I believe the children are told in school when taught our history, but I cannot answer for how many retain the knowledge.”

  The bishop turned to the old monk, who leaned toward him, repeating “Eh, eh?” He cupped one hand around a huge, hairy ear.

  The bishop patiently repeated, “It. Is. Time. To. Sound. The. Shadow. Ones. Alarm,” pronouncing each word distinctly.

  “Ah! Ah!” The old monk cackled. “The alarm against the Shadow Ones has not been rung since 1722.” He looked old enough to have personally pulled the bell rope.

  The Prime Minister winced as he tottered to a chair. There was an enormous bruise on the side of his head
, and another on his jaw. I hated to think what the rest of him looked like.

  The bishop held out his hands to the group, Council and Tony’s guys alike. “Please make yourselves comfortable. I will see about breakfast.”

  Tony said, “I’ll send someone to accompany you. As guard. You never know what might be waiting.”

  The bishop gave a short, dignified nod, but returned no answer as he vanished beyond a bookshelf full of centuries-old, hand-bound books. One of Tony’s guys followed him, weapon ready, but pointed downward.

  The ancient monk shoved the tunnel door shut. It fitted into a woodpaneled wall, and a tapestry depicting St. Dominic fell into place over it.

  “I was not expecting this tunnel to come up in monk-space,” I muttered as I sank down on the floor next to the tapestry-concealed door, my back against the wall and the rapier at my side. One of the pistol guys wandered by, checking the walls—for more passages I guess—as others scanned out the row of windows, which were blue with the coming daylight. The meeting had been set for eight, just before sunrise this far north. Though it seemed like hours since my arrival, it had been no more than twenty minutes. Twenty very intense minutes.

  Phaedra gave a sniff of amusement, then blew out her lantern and began to prowl the room, ignoring Tony’s goons.

  All the chairs and benches had been claimed by the old folks. Beka winced as she slowly lowered herself down next to me. “During the early Soviet years, most of the religious orders had to take up residence down there, just like during the war.”

  I said, “All of a sudden a bunch of what I’d thought hazy or innocuous references in Milo’s diary have just decoded. Wow. Milo was flashing all around the city, using these tunnels to vanish and reappear, like some kind of superhero.”

  “He evaded pursuit by using them, yes.” Beka gently rubbed her middle over her broken ribs, and winced. “My grandfather showed him the first of the tunnels when Milo was chosen to inherit the throne.”

  “So all the kings knew?”

  “Not all,” Beka began, falling silent when Cerisette stalked up to me, and glared down from the empyrean height of self-righteousness.

  “I hope you realize,” Cerisette said in a venomous tone, “that you can make a fool of yourself all you want but Alec will never stoop to your level. Except as a—”

  DONG-dong . . . DONG-dong . . . DONG-dong . . .

  Saved by the bell? But I didn’t have to hear it to know what she was going to say. A couple of people jumped as the biggest of the cathedral bells began the deliberate toll, in patterns of three.

  “Cerisette, this is not the time. Or the place,” Beka said as soon as human voices could be heard.

  “Shut up, Beka.”

  During that pleasant exchange, I did a full tai chi breath, consciously trying not to take on the poisonous anger that Cerisette so obviously wanted to share. I said, “‘Stoop to my level.’ That’s a weird way to look at a relationship, or do you mean that what you really want is to be Queen of Dobrenica?” When her face tightened preparatory to an answer, I said quickly, “Never mind. I don’t want to hear it. In fact, the worst thing I can think of is to see the world the way you do. But yeah, if I do hook up with Alec, I am completely down with the fact that I will never be more than a mistress, whatever our legal status, because he’s married for life to Dobrenica.”

  “Ripou,” Cerisette muttered under her breath, then stalked back to her mother’s side, where she got the sympathy she wanted, judging from the twin looks of loathing fired my way.

  Phaedra sauntered up, her expression cynical. “How much of that do you really believe?”

  “Check back in ten hours. Or ten years. Right now I’m making it up as I go along.”

  Phaedra’s fine brows shot up. She gave me a rakish smile, and an unwilling laugh as she flipped up a hand in a fencer’s acknowledgement of a hit, then wandered away.

  A door opened. Everyone stiffened. But it was only the bishop, to invite everybody to the refectory for breakfast. This was a rectangular room whose line of windows overlooked a secluded garden, now covered with snow. The continuous toll of the vampire alarm was not quite as loud here.

  A couple of the white-cassocked Dominicans brought in several loaves of fresh bread, a tureen of mammaglia, honey, butter, and scrambled eggs. They set it out for us to serve ourselves, and then departed.

  The Prime Minister conducted the duchess to the head of the main table, where she picked up her coffee in both hands, as though the little cup was too heavy to hold. The Council settled themselves along the middle of the table below the von Mecklundburgs. I sat at the end, as far away from the von M.s as I could get, and Beka sank down across from me.

  The guards had spread around the perimeter of the room. After a quick glance, Tony made an airy gesture of invitation. “Help yourselves, mates. “

  And so our guards swooped down on the platters of food, then decamped to the second table, where they laid their weapons beside their plates and dug in. A distinct atmosphere of vintage laundry plus unwashed male emanated from that side of the room.

  I shut them out, and sat there staring at the piece of bread I’d put on my plate. There was nothing wrong with the bread, but I couldn’t dispel that picture of Alec, leading the line to attack those horrible things.

  I looked up at Beka, who was only drinking coffee, as were the rest of her family. I remembered that they keep kosher.

  “Do the charms make the vampires difficult to see, or is it their powers?” I asked, touching my necklace.

  Beka seemed relieved to have her thoughts interrupted. “I don’t know,” she said. “Both, maybe?”

  “If the charms make us perceive them as confusing splinters of light, is it possible that’s how the charms work to protect us—make us into smears of confusing light for the vampires?”

  “The prevailing theory is—”

  A noise at the outer door brought Tony’s guards up and alert. The door opened, and Alec walked in, his coat gaping where steel had sliced it, his hair hanging down in his eyes, smears of drying blood on his ruined suit and on his jaw.

  He ignored Tony’s guards. “The vampires went to ground as soon as the sun appeared,” he said.

  “So you didn’t destroy them?” Phaedra asked, fierce in her disappointment.

  Alec said, “Too many of them, and too difficult to see for some of us, but we think they had trouble seeing us as well. When we set fire to the entire building, and put our charms at every corner, they began their retreat.”

  Alec looked my way and smiled. “Trasyemova just received a report that Mam’zelle Dsaret gave out an order for everyone in the city to hang charms and lanterns, lamps, candles, every kind of light possible. Before dawn, people were putting them outside the houses, along walls, and in the street on the benches and statues and fountains.”

  I blushed. “Uh, actually, I asked Tania to spread the word.”

  Beka flashed a quick smile my way. “Tania was smart. An order from Tania Waleska would be ignored, but not one from the heroic Mademoiselle Dsaret.”

  “Murray,” I muttered under my breath, the old poser prickles making my ears itch. “My last name is Murray.”

  Alec lifted a hand toward the window. “As you can see, we now have daylight. We have to assume that the vampires will reappear as soon as the sun sets, so Trasyemova is coming up with some kind of strategy while the Vigilzhi lock down the city.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” the duchess asked. The coffee seemed to have woken her up. “Where is Morvil? Where is Gilles? What was that about Interpol?”

  “Gilles brought Interpol agents, Mother,” Tony said. “Since everyone’s here but Gilles and his people, we might get to the purpose of this gathering. Before we do, I suggest that everyone place their deflections on the table. Honoré, if you would serve as conscience?”

  “If you wished to hear the truth, you might have begun by telling it,” Beka said.

  The silence was . . . really silent. Tony g
lanced her way, that telltale flush along his cheekbones, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he reached up and unhooked his diamond earring and then, at a leisurely pace, divested himself of diamond cufflinks. These he set on the table before him.

  He looked around, waiting. The Prime Minister gravely removed a diamond tie clip and laid it gently next to his coffee cup. One by one the others followed suit, some shooting nasty glances at Tony, or Alec, or both.

  I took off my necklace, and Beka slowly removed her charm bracelet.

  Alec laid his cufflinks down and twisted the cobalt ring off, which had tiny diamonds inset. Then he lifted his hands; his wedding band glinted. He said, “Why, and how, have so many vampires turned up in Riev for the first time in hundreds of years?”

  Tony waved that aside. “Where is my sister?”

  “Anton!” the duchess snapped, eyes wide in horror.

  “Ubi innocens damnatur, pars patriae exsultat,” Honoré said in that detached voice.

  “If you are going to so rudely interrupt, young man,” the duchess said to Honoré, “then you may speak intelligibly.”

  “I was intelligible, Tante Sisi,” Honoré said, completely without heat. “It’s from the mime Syrus, once a slave. Roughly translated, it means, When an innocent man is convicted, part of his homeland is exiled.”

  Alec gazed over Honoré’s head at Tony. “So that’s what this is about?” A tip of his head toward Tony’s guards. “To get me to tell the truth?”

  Tony held out his hands. “It seems to be working.”

  Alec’s expression matched Tony’s. “Will it comfort or annoy you to be told that I’ve never lied about what happened that day?”

  We waited as everyone swiveled to look at Honoré. “Alec believes what he says,” Honoré said in a goading tone, gazing coldly at his cousin Tony.

  Alec went on. “As for your question about Ruli’s whereabouts. We can begin with where she isn’t.”

  “The sarcophagus,” Tony said.

  Alec said, “I take it this is not news to you?”