by Vivian Shaw
After coming up with nothing in the immediate vicinity, he’d begun to circle wider and wider as the afternoon dragged on, trying to catch the scent of anything untoward. Anything peculiar.
Eventually St. Germain had given up the hope of finding answers on his own, and gone to kill some time in one of his usual haunts, an old café in the Place Saint-Michel, while night drew in. As soon as it was dark enough to be safe, he’d ventured forth again and spent most of the night patrolling Paris, doing the job he should have been doing properly for some time now. Visiting his friends and informants; catching up on gossip; asking questions about anything peculiar people might have seen in their perambulations around and under the city.
He had learned a great many things, among them the fact that his own efficiency as a protector had, for the past couple of months, been practically nil. He’d been distracted, yes – the work he was doing on the book had taken up so much of his attention – but that wasn’t an excuse.
There had been deaths. He’d seen that in the paper, at least. Bodies pulled out of the river – the Sûreté was being cagey regarding the details of the actual cause of death, but St. Germain had now spent half an hour talking with the grey and sharp-boned melusine who lived under the Pont au Change, who had told him quite offhandedly that none of the bodies she had seen contained a single drop of blood. She’d had rather a lot of words to say on the subject of people polluting her river by dumping dead bodies into it – the changes in nitrogen and oxygen levels in the water as a result of decomposing corpses were not to her liking – but the means by which these unfortunate individuals had met their end was for her a matter of supreme indifference, expressed with a very Gallic shrug of one thin shoulder.
A brief discussion with a ghoul chieftain in the quartier du Petit-Montrouge had revealed that the ghouls had had to relocate several of their underground lairs recently after multiple near-encounters with intruders – in parts of the catacombs where no intruders should be, carrying no light with them. “Smell like meat,” the chieftain had said, or rather hissed. “Too fresh. Like blood – and astrkhk. Too much astrkhk.” He had wrinkled his face up in a remarkably unpleasant expression of disgust. It was the ghouls’ word for plants, or things that grow: they didn’t have much cause to differentiate between types of vegetation, living underground, but St. Germain thought he understood.
“Flowers?” he’d asked, and the ghoul nodded. “Blood and flowers. Perfume.”
“Too much,” the ghoul had repeated. “They come three, four time. If they come again” – he sighed – “we must move our home.” And then, almost an afterthought: “Not just the man-creatures. There are other things under the city that are new.”
“What other things?” St. Germain’s attention refocused sharply.
“My people call them hakh-nir,” said the ghoul. “Guardians of treasure. We see them sometimes in old places, but not here, not in this undercity, before. They are small, these hakh-nir. They smell new.”
“Guardians of treasure,” St. Germain had repeated. “About so big, grey, sort of like a frog?”
“Smaller,” said the ghoul, nodding.
That had to be a wellmonster, and a fairly recently summoned one at that. He had no idea why anyone would be summoning wellmonsters in this day and age; most people kept their valuables in safes, not halfway down abandoned wells, and relied on codes and PINs to maintain security. It made no sense – and that bothered him almost as much as the evidence of vampires.
He should have known. He’d grown complacent, that was it, so long since anything more than minor evil crossed his path that he’d settled into thinking it couldn’t, that there was no urgent need to keep the watch he’d charged himself to keep; he’d gotten distracted with his stupid project, failed to pay attention, and now there were people dying, and —
St. Germain made himself shelve the self-recrimination, with an effort. There had been that faint trace of vampire scent in the Place de la Sorbonne earlier. It could have been someone new; it could just as easily have been one of the Paris vamps he had encountered many times.
They were pretty calm, to his knowledge: much too sensible, and too old, to be running around killing people in a profligate sort of way – let alone dumping the bodies in the river to be easily found. That was a young vampire’s characteristic mistake. Like – well, like wearing unnecessary evening dress and much too much perfume.
The other stupid thing young vampires did which often got them killed was forming groups, rather than maintaining an individual territory. The natural group size of vampires in a self-sustaining closed environment was basically one; they didn’t do well for very long in larger numbers, especially if they went in for the pile-of-bodies bit. A few centuries ago, they would have self-selected right out of the food chain, as a string of greedy exsanguinations would invariably lead to discovery by angry townspeople or a determined hunter, and then there would be the pitchforks and torches, the stake and garlic and burial at the crossroads, and silence long enough for people to forget.
Now, though. Now they could get away with a little bit more than that. In an age where few people paid attention anymore, and fewer believed – an age where fear was focused on death from the air, determined madmen in desert caves and in political office grinding the world on toward mutually assured destruction – things that went bump in the night held little actual terror. Perhaps, he thought, the underdwellers missed it; perhaps they were trying to manufacture it, and positively enjoying the collateral damage.
New vampires. In his city. Somewhere, in his city. And he hadn’t known; hadn’t stopped them when they started killing. He’d let it happen.
And the wellmonsters. That wasn’t as bad as the vampires, but it made no sense: where the hell had they come from and why?
And somebody who’d planned to tell St. Germain about peculiar things he ought to know about had disappeared – or been disappeared – before she’d had a chance to pass on that information.
Whatever had happened to Greta Helsing had not involved exsanguination. Not here, anyway. There was no blood, not even a trace of it, in the Place de la Sorbonne. Still, he couldn’t shake the conviction that the vanishing doctor and the evidence of new vampire activity were connected.
Young vampires, preying on the citizens of Paris. That in itself he could have taken care of easily, ages ago, if he’d bothered to notice.
There had been other signs that something was wrong, as well. Signs he simply hadn’t paid enough attention to. The herd of confused and unhappy ghosts – or parts of ghosts, missing legs, heads, arms – that had appeared in the Place Joachim-du-Bellay last week.
Young vampires, and disappearances, and unexpected supernatural creatures wandering the undercity, and unexpected hauntings. The psychopomps he’d hired to take care of that particular problem hadn’t seemed all that concerned at the time – although Brightside had been rather quieter than usual, St. Germain thought belatedly. They’d said the haunting must be due to the fact that the bones had been relocated from Les Innocents to the catacombs, accepted their payment, and taken their leave.
Things going rotten, underneath his city. Inexplicable creatures in the catacombs. It was like pulling on a single weed stem and realizing you’d got hold of only the edge of a vast underground network of branching roots, deeper and deeper. What else had he missed?
And what else might be going wrong?
Lilith’s boudoir was a symphony of violet and black, lace and ruched satin, silver and jet. On her dressing table a black coffin-shaped purse did the duty of a makeup box, spilling a scatter of expensive lipsticks in various shades of shimmery black. She had selected every piece of furniture from a catalog, circling the item number with a black gel pen that left faint sparkles in the darkness of its ink, and she was thoroughly proud of the effect she had achieved.
Mostly she spent the nights with Corvin, in his massive scarlet bed, but this was her personal retreat, and in here everything was exactly to
her taste. Her perfume – violets and vanilla – hung sweet and heavy in the air. No one dared disturb Lilith in her boudoir but Corvin, and he was busy doing something else; she wasn’t sure what, nor did she much care. Right now she had other things on her mind.
She sat crosslegged on the violet counterpane of her bed, framed by the heavy tassel-trimmed curtains, bent over something cupped in her hands: a small, sleek creature, brindled brown-and-black, that wriggled and squeaked faintly and licked at her fingers with a tiny pink tongue.
It was very new – as was the tiny grey creature sitting on her knee, its miniature hands clinging to the velvet of her skirts. She had only summoned these last night – it was easy now, she knew all the words and she was getting so good at it, the strange sucking feeling didn’t bother her at all, not like the first couple of times – and she thought the brindled hairmonsterlet was definitely her favorite of all. The grey creatures were called something weird in the book she’d found, Lilith wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, but they were supposed to guard treasures, so she had just been calling them her little guardians. One of them had been very naughty, near the beginning, and stolen Lilith’s black chandelier earrings with the marcasite and rubies in them, and Corvin had – well, he’d been really not happy about that. But she’d been more careful afterward. That was all. She just had to be careful.
Lilith lifted the hairmonsterlet to her face, nuzzled its soft belly. She was definitely getting better at it. This time she hadn’t even had to look at the book at all before drawing her circle. Soon she wouldn’t need the book, and it could go away again, she could get rid of it, or maybe have someone take it back to the weird little shop where she’d found it to begin with. She didn’t really like the book all that much – it smelled funny, and the leather cover always felt a little strange, sticky, as if it was covered in something that hadn’t quite dried; she always found herself wiping her hands on her skirt after she’d touched it, even though there was never anything left on her palms.
It would be nice to get rid of it. Soon. As soon as she was sure she could remember everything.
It had been a long time since Greta had worn a watch. The one she’d given to the wellmonster, back in the hotel, had been broken for months – she really had meant to get it repaired, at some point, but simply never seemed to get around to it. Checking the time on her phone had become habit the way glancing at her wrist had been, and now, bereft of phone and watch, she had no idea what time it was; only that it felt like late evening. Her diurnal rhythm had not so much altered as disappeared altogether.
She could also wish Corvin’s design concept for his cells had included furniture. Presumably the lack of any such items was due to his well-developed sense of paranoia – what if a prisoner were to break the leg off a bed frame and use it as a stake, for example – but whatever the reason, the result was profoundly demoralizing. Trying to sleep lying on the floor with her jacket rolled up as a pitiful attempt at a pillow was bloody difficult, but she was exhausted enough to consider making the attempt.
She had spent some time earlier playing with the monsters before the forced inactivity became unbearable, and had done a few push-ups and sit-ups to make herself feel virtuous; at one point, one of the other vampires had escorted her to the facilities, and there had been another coffee and pastry delivery. Beyond that, and the conversation with the girl – Emily – she hadn’t seen a single other person all day.
This mattered rather more than Greta thought it should. She enjoyed solitude, ordinarily. Not having to talk to anybody for a while wasn’t something she expected to mind – but there was a difference, wasn’t there, between solitude you had chosen and the kind she was experiencing now. For one thing, it was so miserably boring.
Talking to Emily had been both invigorating and heartbreaking; the fact that they’d turned her without consent was unspeakable in itself, and their subsequent refusal to provide any support or reassurance or comfort after the fact was almost as bad. That brief period of being herself again, being a doctor, a scientist, imparting information, had made the return to miserable boredom even worse. Greta hated being useless more than almost anything, and here she had no choice in the matter at all.
She curled up on her side, feeling every pebble and lump of the floor where it bit into her shoulder, her hip, her thigh, thinking about the pattern of the bruises it would leave, thinking of what she would make of a similar pattern if presented with it in a clinical situation. That thought slid unbidden into a mental image of her clinic – the blessedly familiar ordinary mismatched waiting room furniture, the bright cheerful white plastic of her equipment, the stainless steel and enamel of instruments and basins, the well-beloved faces of her friends – and her closed eyes stung with tears.
I want to go home, she thought. Oh God, I want to go home so much.
Greta had not cried in a long time; had not cried at all since this whole nightmare had begun, but now she could not stop the tears, hot and awful. She cried almost silently, exhaustion and misery squeezing her chest in long spasms like waves on a beach, her breath coming in little judders between them, her eyes shut tight, for a long time.
Somewhere along the line, eventually, she fell into uneasy sleep; when a hand touched her shoulder, she jerked sharply, for a moment unsure where the hell she was before it all came back to her. She had no idea how much time had passed, but the tears soaked into her makeshift pillow were dry; it felt like the middle of the night.
Greta sat up, wincing. Every inch of her was sore and stiff. The little monsters were gone. And kneeling outside the cell, her arm stretched through the bars, was Emily.
Emily and someone else, as well.
She knew her face must be a blotchy, tearstained mess, and part of her cringed in embarrassment at being seen in this condition, but the sight of the other figure pushed that entirely out of her mind. He was tall and thin; his bleached-white hair was cut in a thoroughly edgy asymmetrical style; and he was leaning against the wall, slumped over, pressing his hands to his midsection.
“You’re a doctor, you have to help him,” Emily hissed. “Fix him.”
“What happened?” she asked, eyeing the way the other vampire was shivering.
Emily glanced down the hallway. “It doesn’t matter, just fix him, okay?”
“I can try,” Greta said. “If you bring me what I need.”
“Anything, I’ll get it for you, please, just fix him.”
“Either let me out or bring him in here,” she said. Presumably there was some reason, or reasons, that this needed to be dealt with in a furtive and clandestine manner: right now Greta didn’t actually care. In the dim light the indisposed vampire was a very unpleasant color indeed.
Emily glanced down the corridor again, and turned the key in the lock.
The sound of the tumblers falling into place made her heart beat faster, despite herself. She stood aside as Emily pulled the door open and helped her companion into the cell.
“Sit down,” Greta told him. “I regret I have nothing but the floor to offer you, but my jacket’s better than no pillow at all. Tell me what happened.”
“Can’t,” he said through his teeth – but he did as she said, with a stifled groan, and when Greta gently pulled his hands away from his stomach, he didn’t resist. She unbuttoned his shirt to find a devoré velvet scarf wrapped haphazardly around his torso, holding in place a pad of some dark shiny fabric that was darker in the middle, glistening wet.
Vampires healed fast under normal circumstances. Wounds that would take a human days to recover from posed a few hours’ inconvenience to a healthy sanguivore. This didn’t look right in the slightest, and she thought of the last time she’d seen a vampire – vampyre, in fact – failing to heal from a minor injury. That instance had been due to a particularly unpleasant poison on the weapon that had inflicted the wound.
“Em – Sofiria,” she said, catching herself just in time, “help me unwind this. What’s your name, anyway?” she adde
d, to her patient.
“Yves. He’s Yves,” Emily said before he could reply. Greta remembered her saying, It was one of the others who did it to me, he has this amazing asymmetrical haircut? and fought down a sudden and vicious surge of enmity. This creature had turned a child —
And now he needed help, and that was what mattered. The only thing that mattered right now. He needed help, and she was trained to give it. She’d told Varney that, last year, when he asked her why she did this: because it needed to be done.
She got the makeshift bandage unwrapped, wondering whose scarf it was and if they’d ever want it back, and as gently as she could, she lifted the pad of cloth away from the wound.
Wounds, plural. It was difficult to tell with all the blood, but she thought there were at least three separate lacerations. Greta bent closer, peering in the dim light, looking at the shape of them – two appeared to be diagonal slashes about six inches long with ragged edges, but the third was different. The third was a wider, deeper tear, with what looked like a half-circle of small but deep puncture wounds at its apex.
She recognized that pattern. She’d have recognized it anywhere, and suddenly the rest of the clinical picture made sense, with the familiar satisfactory sense of pieces falling into their proper place. Sitting back on her heels, Greta twisted around to look up at Emily. “Ghouls,” she said, ignoring the little gasp from her patient. “These were made by ghoul teeth and claws. No wonder he’s not healing; I have to get them clean right away. I need water and clean bandages that aren’t made of burgundy polyester velvet with fringe on it, and you almost certainly don’t have antiseptic on hand so bring me the highest-proof alcohol you can find. And light. I need light.”
