He said, “Pet is very photogenic.”
Adele smiled and rose. He was looking at a picture of a grey cat stretched out on his back, looking coyly into the camera. There were many other pictures of the cat and of the many other cats who lived around the castle. Gareth continued to shuffle through the photos. Many showed Edinburgh’s inhabitants at their daily chores. A pretty young woman smiled into the camera in a few of the shots. And there were other pictures of the stone city of Edinburgh in various seasons and sunlight. Soldiers of her personal guard lounging or training. Townspeople drinking, laughing, flirting.
Gareth nodded with approval. However, there was something curious, a little disappointed, about his expression. He obviously noticed an absence among the photos. Adele took the stack from his hands and went to her desk. She pulled open a drawer and removed a box.
“What’s that?” Gareth asked.
“Pictures of you.”
He tried to look surprised, but he couldn’t keep the satisfaction off his face. “I have my own box?”
Adele pulled out a pile of photos and set them on the desk near a flickering lamp. He joined her and saw an extraordinary variety of pictures of him. Some he posed for, but most she had taken when he was unaware. Sitting before the fire. Staring out the window. As a distant shape in the air above the castle. There was a picture of him on the battlements surrounded by a veritable herd of cats, with his hand resting idly on the back of one that arched happily under his touch.
He flipped through a series of close-up pictures of his hands. His fingers were long. His fingernails were sharp and capable of being extended into claws. The photos showed his hands draped along the arms of chairs, holding books, settled on a tabletop, holding a pen, and grasping Adele’s hand.
Gareth looked up at her. “You seem fascinated by my hands.”
“I am.” She placed her own over his, relishing the roughness of his hands. “They’re wonderful.”
“They are just hands.”
“No. They belong to a vampire. You have a diminished sense of touch compared to humans, and yet, look. Holding a pen. Writing. You use tools, unlike any of your kind. Your hands are subtle. Facile. Elegant. Powerful.” She kissed his fingers. “And yet gentle.”
His lips skimmed over hers, light as the air itself. “Let’s go back to bed.”
Adele took the photos and dropped them back in the box. “I’m not sleepy.”
Gareth swept her up off her feet. He clutched her tight against his chest as he leaned down and blew out the lamp. “Who said anything about sleep?”
CHAPTER 2
Adele woke the next morning with Gareth beside her. He stared at the ceiling with one arm looped over her shoulders. Pressing into his side, she enjoyed the warmth for a few minutes longer. The position of the sun on the floor told her that it was long past mid-morning.
“I could stay in bed all day,” she told Gareth.
“I should get up.”
“Eager to be at work?”
Gareth gave a huffing breath that could have been agreement. He sat up, taking the heavy quilt and allowing the frigid air to assault her body.
“Oh God, it’s cold.” A furry form shifted and complained at the foot of the bed. Then a huge grey cat stretched and padded over to Adele. With a groan, she lifted the feline deadweight into her arms. Adele buried her face in his luxurious fur. “Oh my God, Pet. You’re like the best bed warmer ever. When Gareth isn’t about, that is.”
She grabbed for her robe and raced for the coal grate to prod the embers. A faint orange glow throbbed, and she tossed several new pieces on the fire. Tending her own hearth would be forbidden at home in Alexandria, but there were few true servants in Edinburgh Castle and she kept them all out of this wing so she and Gareth could be alone. The nature of their relationship was kept secret, although no doubt rumors of all sort likely circulated around the city and beyond. Adele had little time to worry about that. This time together was the only common domesticity she and Gareth had ever shared, and she relished any touches of normalcy.
Adele noted the wonderfully rumpled Gareth sitting on the side of the bed with his muscled legs stretched out. She found it alluring that he was so unaware of himself at all times. She wanted a picture. Her camera rested on a nearby table. It was a box several inches square with a lens on one side, a viewfinder on the back, and a single button on top. A simple but wondrous device that created instant memories and history. When Adele lifted the camera, Gareth gave her a mild warning glance. She shifted her focus to a yellow cat sitting outside the thick window. She pretended to click the shutter and gave Gareth a charming smile. When he looked away, she took a photo of him.
As she dressed, Adele remarked, “I’m starving. I wonder what Morgana made for breakfast.”
“Whatever it is you’ll declare it delicious.”
“You sound jealous you can’t taste her magnificent cooking.”
“A vampire’s curse.” He tucked in his shirt. “I’m thinking a scouting mission to the Continent might be in order soon.”
“That’s dangerous, isn’t it?”
Gareth fumbled briefly with the knob, then pulled the door open for her. “Yes, but we want to be ready for the offensive when the weather warms.”
“We’ll plan something.” Adele knew he was right, but didn’t want him going off alone.
Breakfast was laid in a front room along with a roaring fire. Coffee, tea, and orange marmalade shipped in from Egypt. The Scottish farms provided eggs and bacon and neeps, or turnips, which the locals never seemed to tire of. Adele piled food on her plate, having pushed away the terrors of the night. Gareth didn’t eat, so he spent his time fighting curious cat paws away from the plate of bacon.
They both heard footsteps coming rapidly down the hall and looked up to see Morgana in the door. She was the pretty young woman seen in so many of Adele’s photographs. Her face was red from exertion. Her normally soft eyes were wide. The young servant was barely twenty years old and quite pretty in a vigorous farm girl sense. Her brunette hair was long and nearly as uncontrolled as Adele’s. The two women had become fast friends and Adele trusted her implicitly. Morgana carried a sheet of paper in her hand that Adele recognized was a yellow tear-sheet from the telegraph pad.
Morgana swallowed. “Miss, this message came this morning from Governor-General Condorcet’s office in London. It’s in code.” She held up several sheets, with her handwritten scrawls of letters that made no sense.
“You have the code pads.”
“It’s in Arabic, miss.”
“Really? Arabic and in code?” Adele took the sheets from the servant with an unwelcome sense of apprehension. Arabic was used for more private messages, and although Morgana had mastered translating the English codes, Arabic was as yet beyond her. “Morgana, send for Major Shirazi.”
Morgana paused at the door with a shocked look. “But miss . . . I don’t . . .”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she assured her friend with as warm a smile as she could muster. “But best to take care of the usual protocol. Hurry now.”
Adele began working alone. Several minutes later Morgana returned with the commander of her Home Guard, a unit known as the Harmattan. In his heavy winter serge, Major Shirazi stood at the door, his worried eyes staring at the coded sheet, and then up at Gareth. Adele and Morgana sat at the table and worked together with the codebook. Gareth paced, pausing to study the women conversing, running their fingers down columns of symbols, and writing. He failed to notice that Pet had captured an entire plate of bacon and carried it off piece by piece until the cat collapsed by the fire unable to move.
The room was deathly quiet but for the scratch of the pencil on the paper and Adele’s quickening breath. The words fell into logical place. Finally, she scrawled out the last Arabic word and sat with pencil trembling.
“This is impossible.” Adele studied the sheaf of pages. “There must be a mistake.”
“What is it?” Gareth s
tood at her shoulder. He spoke Arabic fluently, with several regional accents, but he couldn’t read it.
“Vampires.” Adele’s voice almost broke.
Gareth relaxed. “Oh. An attack of some sort on the Continent?”
“An attack in London.”
“London?” He looked down in confusion. “I don’t understand. There are no vampires in London, in the entire British Isles.”
Shirazi offered Gareth a baleful glare. “Present company excepted.”
Adele gave her commander a warning glance before continuing, “Governor-General Condorcet reports there have been murders by vampires in London, the most recent on several of our soldiers.”
“It must be a mistake.” Gareth waved a dismissive hand and walked to the far wall where ancient weapons of war hung. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Cesare’s old human soldiers, the Undead Legion, were committing acts designed to look like vampires. They all dreamed of being vampires in any case.”
Adele looked hopeful. “Is that possible?”
Gareth appeared doubtful. “I thought that between your forces and the vengeful populace, the remnants of the Undead Legion had been hunted down. But it’s possible.”
She threw the paper on the table and slammed her hand down. “Damn it!”
Only Gareth didn’t flinch. “Even so, you knew your geomancy might not keep them out forever.”
“But not even a year.” Adele put her head in her hands before realizing Morgana and Shirazi were there. She sat up straight, but her eyes sought out Gareth. “All that torture and death for a few months of freedom.”
Shirazi asked, “Can you not renew it? Whatever it was?”
“No,” replied Gareth sharply. Adele saw the flash of fear in his eyes. He continued, “That’s what you said.”
She turned slowly from his gaze. “I can no longer touch the rifts here in Britain. It’s as if the Earth is scabbed over from the damage I caused that night.”
“And,” Gareth asserted firmly, as if she had missed the more important point, “you said that if you attempted activity of that scale again, it would kill you.”
Shirazi stared at Gareth, clearly suspicious of the vampire lord’s emotional outburst about Adele’s well-being.
Adele let the moment pass, taking a deep breath. “I said it’s unlikely I could endure another such bout of energy moving through me. But if it’s necessary—”
“Don’t,” Gareth said quietly. “It will never be that necessary.”
“Prince Gareth,” Major Shirazi clutched his hands behind his back, “do you know anything about your kind returning to these shores that perhaps you’ve neglected to tell us?”
Gareth spun with such fury that Adele bolted to her feet, fearful he was about to fly across the room and attack the soldier.
“Major!” Adele stuck out her hand toward Gareth, whose eyes flicked to her and grew slightly less brutal. She glared at her commander. “Your accusation is outrageous. Would you care to withdraw it?”
Shirazi’s stern face was unchanged. He slid his hand from the butt of his revolver. He bowed toward Adele. “I apologize, Your Majesty. I meant no insult.”
Adele resumed her seat to calm the room. “Morgana, ask Captain Hariri to prepare my airship. I will embark for the south as soon as possible.”
“Yes, miss.” Morgana’s voice lowered with disappointment at the political tone of Empress Adele, now sounding as if she was again at war.
Adele glanced around the table with resolution. “I’ll send for Greyfriar to meet me in London. Major Shirazi, I’ll want you and the Harmattan with me.” She gathered her papers together. The soldier saluted, stood aside for Morgana to exit, and then went out himself. Adele slumped and said softly to Gareth, “Will Greyfriar meet me in London?”
“Indeed he will.” Gareth slid a strong hand across her shoulders. “As always.”
CHAPTER 3
A shadow crossed the starry sky over London and fell upon an old man. His strangled cry broke the silence. The nearby crowd shifted away from him and huddled closer together.
The shadow lifted its face from its prey’s neck, sharp teeth glinting white in the light of the swollen moon overhead. Its head dipped down again to drink from the moaning victim. Blood pooled in the hollow of the man’s gasping throat. The horrible shape rose from the bleeding man and moved to stalk a fresh meal.
Suddenly a blade flashed bright and struck the vampire in the base of the spine. It let out a screech as it arched backward and twisted. Adele lifted her sword high to strike again. She was dressed in supple leather and rich cloth, unlike the ragged herd that stood placidly watching. Determination tightened her face as she struck. Steel sliced through the muscle of the vampire’s left arm. No scream of pain fell from its lips. Instead it lunged at the woman, the claws on its hand ripping her thick skirt, tearing it at the knees in an attempt to cripple her.
It was a clumsy attack. Adele’s dark eyes flashed with confusion. This vampire moved more sluggishly than its kind typically did, but not from the wounds she had given it. Such cuts should’ve been paltry to the creature; hardly felt by a vampire. But in this case, its motions were slower than usual. It almost writhed with some sort of palsy affliction.
Adele spun aside, bringing out a second weapon. The dagger’s wicked curved blade glowed green and sizzled as it drove into the vampire’s arm, cutting it straight to the bone and carving out a fair chunk of flesh. The beast staggered and stumbled over the body of its victim. It recovered and ran. Adele sped after the vampire and the milling humans broke apart like a wave, letting the combatants pass without lifting a hand to help or hinder. These remnants of the vampires’ herds remained the easiest of prey. It made sense that this was the area where the creature had been hunting. It didn’t make sense that the vampire existed here at all, but Adele put that out of her mind.
She raced through the overgrown woods of old Hyde Park, leaping over chipped, ivy-covered marble benches in an attempt to match speed with the vampire. It dove for the shadows of the deep woods and Adele plunged in after it, pulling her arms close to avoid the tangled and overgrown branches. She hacked at some that loomed too close to her face. Then she was through to a clearing and the vampire spun to a halt, facing her.
Adele’s lips held a grin of victory until she saw numerous glowing eyes behind her quarry. A pack of vampires crept forward to join their brethren. She only had time for a shocked cry at the impossibility when they surged at her all at once, their tattered clothing flapping like ghosts.
Adele raised her blades to meet the snarling horde. Dodging under the swipe of the first one, she thrust up into the heart of the second. Her other arm swung backward and cut deep into the back of the vampire that had overshot her. Others reached for her with fierce claws and gaping jaws. She kicked one in the face and heard teeth shatter. Each thrust of her weapons drew blood, but she knew she would soon be overwhelmed.
From high in the canopy of trees, a silhouette dropped, barely visible against the forest of deep shadows. There was a definitive shudder among the vampires. They threw themselves away as a cloaked swordsman alighted next to Adele with rapier and pistol clutched in his hands.
One of the vampires whispered, “The Greyfriar.”
“I found them!” Adele exclaimed, gasping and grateful for the respite.
“You have a singular knack,” came the man’s calm response.
“What can I say? I attract them.”
If the man returned her grin, it was hidden. A grey wool scarf was wrapped around his head, except for his eyes, and they were covered by mirrored glasses. He wore the outdated jacket of a Napoleonic rifleman, with its gold piping across the front, and the high black boots of a dragoon. He seemed an odd mishmash of adventurers’ costumes.
The vampires regained a bit of nerve, or realized their desperate plight. There was no escape now. It was fight or die. They summoned their nerve and growled at the two interlopers.
“We need one alive.” Ade
le warned.
“As you wish.” Greyfriar waded into the mob. His blade moved with a speed that Adele could not match even on her best day. Every story written about him couldn’t capture his graceful killing strokes that rose and fell with a fluid system of iambic pentameter. Greyfriar dispatched one of his attackers, obliterating the creature’s heart with a twist of his blade. It wasn’t out of cruelty but because he knew such damage to a major organ was virtually the only way to assure it would stay down. As the vampire fell backward, another came in its place. This one too was dropped, with a bullet to the brain. One by one, the beasts fell in the face of the onslaught. Creatures moved to attack from behind, but Greyfriar didn’t react. Either he didn’t see them, or he trusted Adele implicitly.
Adele contented herself by dispatching the stragglers that scrambled out of the way of Greyfriar’s deadly blade work. Her own weapons aimed for the heart.
Finally, only two remained. Adele doubled over, sucking in breath. The vampires saw their salvation and fled.
Greyfriar cursed and raised his pistol, but stopped when he saw a knowing smile on Adele’s face. “Did you allow that?”
“I am a little winded, but yes, we need to know if there are more of them in the city, and where they are hiding. So don’t lose them!” Adele lurched after the vampires.
Greyfriar darted on her heels, easily keeping pace. Their boots crunched along the streets of London. Grass and roots pushed up through the cracks in the ancient pavement.
The two vampires took to the air, drifting up above the trees toward the largely deserted buildings to the south. Their flight was erratic, as if struggling to control their quivering limbs that threatened to steer them off course.
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