Grave Importance

by Vivian Shaw

  Since that time he’d been involved in a rather complicated mess—the business in Paris, in which she’d managed to get herself abducted by the sort of vampires who wore body glitter unironically and called themselves the Kindred; Greta had extricated herself from that particular situation on her own, and had promptly gone right back down underneath the city with the aid of Varney and Ruthven and several others in order to deal with the coven and an associated tear in the fabric of reality. She tried generally not to think too hard about the tear in reality; that had been weird shit on a level difficult to comprehend, and had required the assistance of Greta’s old family friend, the demon Fastitocalon, and a couple of jobbing remedial psychopomps with improbable names, and—all in all it was a pleasure to contemplate four months of just doing her job in one of the world’s premier facilities for her particular favorite specialization, rather than getting involved in anything metaphysical. Going back to France wasn’t something that frightened her, despite the previous experience. France hadn’t been all bad; after the dust had settled, while Greta went about patching up their various war wounds, she and Varney had found themselves alone in a quiet corner long enough to kiss for the first time.

  She’d been a little afraid that it had been nothing more than the aftereffects of desperation, that he would have thought better of the entire business; but when Francis Varney made decisions, he made them apparently all at once, and wholeheartedly. That had been the first of a great many kisses, some exploratory and uncertain, some rather more enthusiastic and inexact.

  They were—taking it slow, however, physically, and she was surprised to find she didn’t mind: being courted was something new and rather lovely in its novelty. She did, however, hope like hell that Varney could be convinced to visit her in the south of France at least once during this trip, and that perhaps the romantic surroundings might be sufficient impetus for him to lose his last inhibitions and take her to bed properly.

  “Greta,” he said, bringing her out of the reverie. “I—I’m going to miss you.”

  It sounded like an apology. Like a confession. She smiled, reached over to put a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “I’m going to miss you, too. You know that, right?”

  “I—logically, yes, that makes sense, it’s just—not so easy to believe in my heart. After so long. But I’m trying.”

  “I know you are,” she said, “and I know it’s hard. You’ve been alone for centuries and you’ve had a very thin time of it even when you were in relationships. It’s all right, Varney. I do know it’s difficult.”

  Varney looked over at her, faint color mantling his cheekbones. “That’s so strange in itself,” he said. “That anyone should know, or—or understand, once they did know, and not run the other way. I’m not used to it.”

  “Get used to it,” she told him with a smile. “I’m not going anywhere. I mean. Other than to Marseille, but that doesn’t matter, it’s—I want to be something you can be sure of, no matter where either of us happen to be. Varney—Francis—I’m not going to think better of this, and decide to throw it over.”

  “Ever?” he asked, and then had to snap his attention back to the road.

  “I’m pretty sure,” she said. “Ever.”

  “Ah,” he said, and navigated around a Rover that wasn’t sure what lane it wanted to be in. “Well. That’s—good. That’s very good. I’m—glad to hear it.”

  Greta knew that tone, the retreat-into-impenetrable-politeness, and also what it signified, and she waited patiently. After several minutes he ran a hand through his hair and said all at once, a small dam breaking and spilling out the words, “That’s awfully convenient, because I do not think I will, or can, change my mind, either, and—do you like diamonds, I know you don’t wear big fancy rings because the settings catch on your whatsit, exam gloves, but—there are designs that wouldn’t, and—do you like them, because that’s the first thing that matters?”

  Greta could feel all the little hairs on her arms and legs stand up at once, a long shimmer-wave of sensation; her face went hot for a moment. This she had not expected exactly, or—not for a long time yet, if at all. She had sort of known that one of the reasons Varney hadn’t taken her to bed yet, other than his natural reticence and disinclination to inflict his dead and monstrous person upon the living, et cetera et cetera, was that he was almost certainly not very comfortable with sex outside of wedlock. Now, in the moment—despite all the time she’d spent turning over the idea and never quite being sure how she might react, if it ever happened—she found there was no hesitation whatsoever.

  “Yes,” she told him with a cloudless smile.

  Being near a very happy vampyre was a little intoxicating. He kept a strong hold over his thrall—the sanguivore trait they used as a hunting technique, a kind of intense hypnotic control—but nonetheless she could feel the pleasure emanating from him. When he could look away from the road for a moment, she was a little surprised at how much his face changed, when he was this pleased with the world; he’d never be beautiful, not like Ruthven, but the joy lit his face up, transformed the sharp lines and hooded eyes into something quite different. Just for that moment Greta thought she saw the face of Varney as he’d been alive, all those centuries ago, before all the weight of sin and death and misery came down on him in their repeated waves.

  “Then you shall have them,” he said. “And—if it is not too disruptive to your patients and to your schedule at the spa—I should so very much like to bring them to you sooner rather than later.”

  “You are very welcome,” she said, and felt that she was saying many things at once. “Please come, whenever you can, whenever you like; I’ll miss you terribly.”

  All around them the ceaseless pelting of the rain, the swish-thump of the wipers in their Sisyphean task, the blurred taillights of other cars no longer seemed to matter at all: they might as well have been in a summerhouse on some long-ago estate, or in a gold-lit ballroom, or on the surface of the moon. Varney took her hand in his, lifted it to his cold lips, kissed it, feeling like a promise.

  “Then I will,” he said, and the world came back.

  It was more of a relief than Greta would have liked, flying direct to Marseille rather than connecting through Charles de Gaulle. She didn’t harbor ill will against Paris, but there was something undeniably unsettling about the idea of being so very near to the places where she’d been held prisoner not that long ago.

  The flight was short and entirely uneventful: she spent it rereading articles on mummy medicine on her laptop. There was bound to be a somewhat sharp learning curve, despite her years of experience: she knew Oasis Natrun had absolutely up-to-the-minute equipment which put hers to shame; it would take her some concentrated effort to get up to speed, and she was looking forward to the opportunity to learn.

  Ed Kamal was waiting for her in the airport. He looked exactly as he had in Germany: tall, rangy, the skin around his eyes perpetually darker regardless of his level of sleep deprivation. He wore a linen shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up, the pale fabric a pleasant contrast to his dark skin, and looked less like a doctor and more as if he’d just come from a central-casting audition for Intrepid Adventurers; he smiled when he saw her, but Greta thought his mind was at least partly on something else.

  “Greta,” he said, and strode forward to shake her hand and take her luggage, despite her protestations that she could manage. “Thank you so much for coming, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this—I couldn’t leave the place in anybody else’s hands, there simply isn’t anyone I’d trust who could drop everything and come over to play locum for four months who knows anything about the specialty.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Ed,” she said. “Did you know it’s been raining for approximately forever back at home? I notice that it is not raining even a tiny little bit in these parts, which feels like a gift. Really, I can carry that, it isn’t heavy.”

  He gave a rueful smile and relinquished one of her
suitcases. “Fair enough. This way—it’s not a long trip, you should be able to get there in time to enjoy the sunset from the terrace.”

  She followed him. “I thought it was all the way up in the mountains above the town.”

  “It is,” said Dr. Kamal, and she realized that instead of leading her toward the taxi rank or the airport’s parking lot, they were heading for general aviation—the part of the airport that handled private aircraft.

  She was beginning to get the idea that perhaps her mental image of the place they were heading lacked certain important details. Dr. Kamal grinned at her; the grin turned into actual laughter at her expression when he led her to a gleaming and very beautiful—and new—helicopter.

  “You should see your face,” he said.

  “I didn’t know Oasis Natrun had its own helicopter,” said Greta, wide-eyed. “How much money do you actually have?”

  “A thoroughly vulgar amount. Come on, let’s get going. I have to be back here for a flight to Cairo this evening; the schedule’s pretty tight.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and climbed in. The interior of the helicopter was configured as an air ambulance, to accommodate stretcher cases—or patients still in their original coffins, she thought, and had to smile—with several seats also available for ambulatory passengers and their medical attendants. It was undoubtedly the most elegant and well-appointed ambulance she’d ever seen, and she said so.

  “It’s necessary,” Dr. Kamal said. “So many of our patients need absolute discretion and privacy; being able to provide secure and entirely confidential air transport to and from the facility has improved our services enormously. It’s—like a great many of our large pieces of equipment—paid for with funds from a private foundation.”

  Extremely, Greta thought, and then had to swallow as the pilot pulled up on the collective pitch control and the tarmac fell away beneath them, frictionless, unnerving.

  They didn’t talk much on the short ride—for one thing, Greta was far too distracted by the scenery outside her window to hold any kind of serious conversation—but as the helicopter began to descend, Dr. Kamal leaned over to peer out of Greta’s side.

  “There it is,” he said, and the warmth of pride in his voice was obvious. At first Greta didn’t see what he was pointing out—the pale rock and scrubby vegetation below them looked like the rest of the landscape—and then, with the sudden shift of a magic-eye picture, the shapes resolved.

  Oasis Natrun was partly built into the hill. Which made sense, when you thought about it—mummies were most comfortable in rock-cut tombs—and also significantly decreased its visibility. She couldn’t see how far back the rock-cut part extended, but the surface section of the complex consisted of a series of round-to-oval pavilions connected with corridors and steps, cantilevered out from the hillside. All the colors had been designed to blend into the surrounding landscape. The whole complex was tucked into a triangular valley, the confluence of three streambeds meeting in a Y.

  “There are major wards on every approach,” said Dr. Kamal. “We have them checked weekly. No one who doesn’t already know it’s here is going to be able to see it. There’s one road in and out, and it’s gated several times. Seven, in fact.”

  Greta could see the road now, a narrow but very well graded pale ribbon leading down from a wide turnaround area, out into the rest of the world. A fleeting sense of claustrophobia closed over her, just for a moment—she would be isolated up here for four months, partly living underground—and then faded again.

  The helicopter descended smoothly, so quiet inside that it was only by looking at the dust kicked up by the rotor wash that Greta could get an idea of how powerful a machine it actually was. They landed on the wide turnaround space, waiting for that dust to subside before climbing out, and Greta was only a little surprised when she checked her watch to find out that the whole ride had taken less than fifteen minutes. The sun was low in the west, but the light hadn’t begun to change color just yet.

  Dr. Kamal picked up her suitcases again and smiled. “Welcome,” he said. “I hope you’ll like it here, I really do—I’ll introduce you to the staff and then I really must be going, I’m sorry to have to leave like this but I need to catch that plane.”

  “Ed,” she said, smiling, “it’s fine, I understand, and give me back at least one of my goddamn suitcases, okay?”

  He smiled back at her, a crooked charming little smile, and handed over her bag. “Absolutely, Interim Medical Director.”

  “I like the sound of that,” said Greta, and let him lead her inside.

  café., in Greenwich Village, all lowercase italic, punctuation included, was the kind of coffee shop that changed its menu frequently based on individual sacks of beans and featured more gleaming borosilicate glassware than a medium-sized laboratory. The baristas, achingly hip, had an average body-mass index of approximately sixteen and wore unrelieved black without even the slightest hint of a name tag. Either they had transcended the need for individual nomenclature or you were just expected to know.

  All of which was largely lost on the two individuals sitting at a corner table, being stared at—partly because in this shrine to Coffea arabica they were drinking weak herbal tea, and not one of the esoteric hipster blends of it at that, and partly because they were both identical and exquisitely, alarmingly beautiful. It was a kind of beauty you didn’t see outside of excruciatingly expensive fashion photography or runway shows. In fact, these two kept themselves in watery chamomile by having their pictures taken; they were very pale, with white-blonde hair and absurd white eyelashes that somehow avoided looking rabbity, complexions like translucent rose-milk, perfect and androgynous bone structure, vast violet-blue eyes. They were wearing slightly different variations on the theme of grey, long coats and sweaters, scarves, all of it the kind of fiendishly simple that spoke of price upon request.

  They were either unaware of the stares or simply didn’t care about them, locked in intense and largely inaudible conversation with one another. What little could be overheard was definitely not in English, which lent further credence to the assumption that they were models: models tended to be foreign. As it happened, these two weren’t from anywhere around here; the language in question was Enochian.

  “The land is full of adulterers,” one of them was saying, looking peevish. “Adulterers and harlots and infidels and beggars and demons. And blasphemers. For because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.”

  “I saw one of them again today,” said the other. “The demons. The one who has an art gallery. It was walking past a church and didn’t even look up. As if it didn’t affect it at all. As if it didn’t notice. I hate it here.”

  “Sin of hatred,” said the first one, whose name was Zophiel, the way one might say you’ve got spinach in your teeth. The second one, Amitiel, looked immediately contrite.

  “I shall pray for forgiveness,” he—they sounded a little more masculine than feminine, but still fairly vague on gender—said at once. “I am not worthy to conduct this great and glorious task that is laid upon us.”

  “All fall short of the glory of God,” said Zophiel, nodding. “I confess I wrestle with the sin of hatred myself. It is a trial, to be in this world, even if the purpose is glorious and just.”

  “And a madman shouted at me,” Amitiel added, wrapping his hands around his teacup. “About blasphemies and the end of creation.”

  “Courage,” said Zophiel. “Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.”

  Amitiel sighed, smiling a little. “It’s always better when you tell me holy words,” he said. “It—feels nice?”

  Zophiel, who—like all of his kind—had an encyclopedic memory for scripture, reached across the table to pat his companion’s hand. “It will be well,” he said. “We are near
to our goal, to accomplishing our mission, and then we will be able to return home and leave this terrible place forever. You know it was not simple fortune that presented us with the woman to use in our efforts; it was the providence of the Almighty, a sign of favor.”

  “Heaven will be pleased with us,” said Amitiel, not sounding entirely convinced.

  “Very pleased,” said Zophiel. “Soon her greed and vanity will be her undoing, and with her will come about the end. Already she has caused so much damage to the world barrier; it cannot be long before it is breached completely, and the great and terrible battle can begin.”

  “Tell me again about the end time,” Amitiel asked, wide blue eyes beseeching. “About the battle and the righteous destruction?”

  “Not now,” said Zophiel. “Not here. There are too many humans listening. But—Amitiel, you are unhappy.”

  “I am weak,” he agreed. “You can bear the iniquities of this world better than I.”

  Zophiel shrugged, a slightly constrained gesture, as if he was used to something heavy weighing down his shoulders which was currently in abeyance. “Praised be God, and not my strength for it—but even though this world is heavy with sin and wickedness, there are still places that should be holy. If besmirched, still holy of a sort. I will take you to this world’s Rome, and perhaps being near this version of the Great Basilica will help you feel easier in your mind.”

  “You take great care of me, Zophiel,” said Amitiel with a little smile.