by Vivian Shaw
“Is – are they poisonous?” Emily asked, eyes wide.
“Ghouls? No. Not exactly. They just carry around an astonishingly unpleasant and extensive collection of assorted bacteria in their mouths, and their claws aren’t much cleaner. Humans who get bitten by ghouls end up losing limbs to the resulting infection. Yves, on the other hand, is trying to heal, but his body is dealing with a hell of a lot of pathogens all at once as well as the physical insult of the wounds themselves. Can I have that water, please?”
“Oh. Sorry. Yes,” said Emily.
It was a hell of a lot easier to do her job when she could see. Emily had brought back everything Greta had asked for – it took her a while to collect it all, looking over her shoulder the whole time in case someone came home early and caught her at it. Corvin and his inner circle, it appeared, were all out hunting; they were entirely nocturnal, which didn’t surprise Greta in the least. It stood to reason that someone so thoroughly committed to the vampire aesthetic would spend his nights roving abroad on the dark tide of the mortal city and his days in undead slumber far from the burning eye of the sun. Possibly in a coffin. Possibly in a coffin on a bier, covered with a black velvet pall; she wouldn’t put it past him to have stacks of lilies lying around the place as well.
The fact that this entire business had to be kept a secret from Corvin also did not exactly surprise her. She’d gotten very little detail out of Yves regarding what had happened, but the gist of it seemed to be that he’d run into some ghouls while on an errand for Corvin and they had viciously attacked him without the slightest provocation. (Greta took this to mean that he had wandered into a section of the undercity near a ghoul lair and they had very firmly seen off the intruder, but she kept this to herself.) Apparently Corvin’s patience regarding mistakes or failure of any kind on the part of his underlings was not so much limited as nonexistent; as Emily explained it, if he found out that Yves had been ignominiously defeated by common ghouls and failed to carry out the errand he’d been sent on, the repercussions would be dire. Coming back empty-handed was bad enough; coming back fucked-up and empty-handed was unacceptable.
He had stumbled back to the lair, bleeding and in considerable pain, and encountered Sofiria/Emily, who had volunteered to stay behind as a lookout while the rest of the coven went out for dinner. After her amateur first aid had failed to deal with his injuries, Emily had decided to seek professional help.
Greta could picture Yves trying to keep his untreated condition secret from his leader. She was fairly sure Emily wouldn’t have brought him to her for attention if Greta hadn’t had that conversation with her about the nature of vampire physiology. I’ve probably saved his unlife, she thought, at least by proxy.
That’s a good thing, right?
He had recovered enough while she cleaned his wounds to start complaining, which she took as a positive sign, but the skin around the lacerations was red and ever so slightly warm to the touch; she wasn’t finished yet. “I’m going to have to disinfect these now,” she told him, quiet and sympathetic but firm. “It’s going to hurt quite badly for a short time. Do you want something to bite on?”
She supposed vampires didn’t get asked that very often. Yves looked up at her – red eyes, he’d started off with brown irises – and then over at Emily, who was kneeling nearby to watch. He reached out to her, and Emily hesitated only a little before holding out her arm.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Greta sharply, but the girl shook her head. Yves was holding her forearm in his hands much as a man might hold an ear of corn he was about to bite into. Before she could protest further, Emily said, “Please. We don’t have much time,” and Yves rasped, “Get on with it if you’re going to.”
Get on with it, she repeated to herself, and spun the cap off the bottle of grain spirits.
The next few minutes were thoroughly unpleasant for everyone present, and Greta worked as fast as she could, grimly ignoring the muffled sounds of pain from two directions at once; but when it was over, she sat back on her heels and could already see the beginnings of improvement.
“You’ll start to heal properly now,” she said. “I’d estimate in about twelve hours these should be nothing but scars. I’ll put a dressing on which won’t be visible underneath a clean shirt, and you should rest as much as you can.”
What he really ought to do was drink some nice reinvigorating blood, but Greta was not about to recommend this particular restorative when she herself was the only readily available source. Yves sat up and she began to wrap his midsection in bandages that were not, in fact, made out of burgundy polyester velvet: they were what appeared to be strips torn from a very nice bedsheet that happened to be jet black.
When she had finished, he had some color back in his face, and the relative ease with which Greta and Emily helped him to his feet demonstrated an improvement. He looked down at Greta – quite a long way down; she thought he must be six foot six at least – and sneered. Presumably he was feeling well enough to sneer.
“Don’t expect me to thank you,” he said. “I didn’t need your help. It was simply convenient.”
Beside him Emily stiffened, holding her wounded arm. Greta ignored her. “I wouldn’t dream of expecting thanks,” she said politely. “Not from one of the Kindred.”
“Well, good,” he said, looking slightly confused for a minute, as if he were working out what she had actually meant. “Come, Sofiria. Bring all these things away.”
Greta helped Emily collect the supplies she had brought, including the lantern, which she was going to miss rather badly once it was gone. The girl looked as if she wanted to say something else, but glanced over her shoulder at Yves and sighed instead.
As they left her cell and turned the key in the lock once more, Greta watched Emily mouth the words thank you, and nodded. She stood at the bars for a long time, after the brighter light of the lantern had died away, staring into the distance of the empty corridor where the two of them had gone. She thought of the blank fear in the girl’s eyes earlier, when she’d said, Run, when she’d said, Find a phone and call a man named Alceste St. Germain. He’s a werewolf, a friend of Ruthven’s, and he will help you. And possibly rescue me. And the flat negation: I’m too scared to escape.
It was going to be up to Greta to get out of here. It was always bloody well up to Greta to do what must be done, however she could do it; she knew that, she’d always known it, that had never not been the case, but sometimes – God, sometimes it was hard.
CHAPTER 5
S
ir Francis Varney was what might be termed a late adopter of modern conveniences; but having accepted the inevitability of things such as mobile phones and the Internet and online banking, he had relatively little trouble using technology. He simply complained about it all the time.
On the phone, Greta had failed to mention the fairly crucial point of which flight she intended to take to Heathrow this particular morning, and Varney had failed to remember to ask; and she had said she was busy attending lectures, so he hadn’t quite felt comfortable calling her back to make sure.
He still wasn’t quite certain of – well, of many things regarding Greta Helsing, nor did he have the experience or confidence to ask the right kind of questions to make things more certain; worse still, he was acutely aware of this lack. It simply wasn’t something he had any practice with. His previous interactions with the fairer sex had been more along the lines of the vampyre is at his hideous repast, rather than can I buy you a drink, and it continued to amaze him when Greta seemed legitimately to enjoy his company, and desire more of it.
He hadn’t actually tried to do anything as forward and improper as kiss her, but more and more over the past several months, the thought had occurred to him that he might, and that she might not immediately retreat in horror and disgust.
I want to see these grand works of yours for myself, she had said, and this morning – sitting in his bedroom in the refurbished wing of Dark Heart House, with an
extremely expensive computer in his lap and dawn dripping misty light through the windows – Varney had felt the stirrings of an unfamiliar kind of pride in his achievements.
There were several Paris-to-London departures that might fit her vague description of an early flight, and Varney had decided – with the kind of impulsiveness that had characterized a great many of his decisions over the centuries – simply to drive up to London and wait for her at the airport, and see what happened.
That had been several hours ago. The 6:55 Transavia, 7:10 Vueling, and two Easyjet flights from Charles de Gaulle had landed on time, disgorged their passengers, and departed once more, and there was no sign of Greta. Varney had waited for her to call him, and waited a little longer for her to call him, and finally bitten his lip and called her, and got voice mail. Twice.
Of course she’s thought better of it, he told himself. Why would she want you to pick her up at the airport, she’s changed her mind, she’s coming in later on or something, and as the minutes went by and the single peach-colored rose he’d bought her began to droop on its stem, Varney fought a strong desire to simply get in his car and go back down to the country, to his falling-down estate with its ornamental lake that probably contained a drowned skeleton or two, back to the gloom and decay where he belonged —
I miss you, she had said, and even over the phone he’d heard the warmth in her voice.
His mouth thinned, and he looked down at the uncommunicative screen of his phone: Call ended.
No, he thought. No, this isn’t right.
Varney tapped the screen to clear it, and then dialed a different number.
This time he didn’t have to wait: Ruthven picked up on the second ring. “Hello?” he said, and Varney could hear the edges of the Scots back in his voice – it always crept back in when he had to spend any time up north, despite his efforts to the contrary.
“Edmund,” he said, “has Greta been in touch with you?”
“Not since I left Paris,” Ruthven said, and his voice had sharpened. “Why?”
“Did she say what flight she’d be on?”
“No. What’s wrong, Varney? You are not being reassuring in the least.”
“We spoke on Saturday afternoon,” Varney said, “and I offered to pick her up at Heathrow on Monday, and she said that would be” – he couldn’t quite quote her that would be lovely phrasing, not to Ruthven, not over the phone – “that would be acceptable, and I forgot to ask which flight, like an idiot, and I’m here, and she’s not. And she isn’t answering her phone.”
“Shit,” said Ruthven, delicate and sharp and clear as ice. “I knew something wasn’t right. She said she’d call me; I just assumed she was caught up in the wonders of were-hedgehog medicine and had forgotten. Look – stay there for now, okay, I’m going to make some calls – oh Christ, what now, hang on, Varney, the other line’s ringing.”
“All right,” Varney said, a little nonplussed, and there was a click and silence.
He looked down at the rose in his other hand, its neck drooping like a tubercular heroine’s, and felt abruptly and horribly sorry for it: for the fact that it had been grown somewhere, fed and watered and nurtured, and cut and brought all the way here to this airport to be bought and given to someone, to make them smile, and here it was with him instead, dying in his hand. Thwarted of its purpose. Its small brief life all wasted.
He could feel the weight of melancholy that had been keeping its distance over the past half a year threatening to descend upon him all at once, a precarious balance ready to collapse in crushing, sharp-edged rockfall – and had in fact turned away from the arrivals board to walk back to the car park when Ruthven’s voice was suddenly back in his ear.
“… sorry about that,” Ruthven was saying, still sounding sharp and focused with concern. “That was the hotel in Paris calling to ask why my party hasn’t checked out by the specified time. She hasn’t been back there, Varney. She’s not answering my calls, either; no one can get hold of her. I knew something was wrong.”
“What do you mean you knew,” Varney said, his own unhappiness banished from the active center of his mind. “Did something happen while you were there with her?”
“No. Not – not really. I felt bloody strange at the Opera, and there was another vampire there I didn’t recognize who was apparently paying close attention to us, and there were these monsters —”
He sounded uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “What monsters?” Varney demanded.
“It’s a long story, but – I had a feeling something was going to happen, and she told me not to worry about dire forebodings and get on with the task at hand. So now the task at hand is to get over there as soon as possible and start looking. I can try to get a flight to London from here but it’s probably simpler for us to just meet in Paris, to save time.”
Varney blinked. He still didn’t quite expect anyone to want him to be part of things. “You – I – that is, yes, all right, I can manage that.”
“Good. I’m going to call an old friend of mine who lives there and have him meet us at the airport. I’ll text you the details. Talk soon.”
Varney took the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a moment or two. He straightened up. Slipped the phone into his pocket. Looked again at the drooping stem of the rose – and with another of those impulsive choices, cut the stem off short with a slice of his thumbnail, and tucked it into the buttonhole of his lapel. Against the dark grey of his suit, its bright peach-coral petals looked undeniably, absurdly brave.
He dropped the rest of the rose stem into a wastebin, on his way to the ticketing desks; and the tiny wounds its thorns had left in his thumb and fingertip healed to faint white scars as he walked.
Crepusculus and Brightside had sat up quite a long time talking – and drinking – after the expedition to the site of Les Innocents. It was late morning before they emerged from their hotel and found their way to a building on the corner of the Rue du Temple and Rue Pastourelle.
Brightside peered at the list of tenants’ names over the doorbell-intercom button. Everything had seemed rather less alarming by the light of day, and while he wanted to know what was causing the strange manifestations, he felt less of the unease that had threatened him the night before. They would get some answers out of Irazek, at least – or possibly get him to have a word with somebody in Hell who could investigate, and then Brightside could stop worrying.
“‘Isaac, Z,’” he read, and pushed the button. “They’re just not all that creative, are they?”
“Hello?” said a puzzled voice after a while, crackling over the intercom.
“Irazek, of the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation?” Brightside asked, brisk. “My colleague and I would appreciate a minute of your time.”
There was a pause, while Irazek presumably worked out that anybody who knew his real name and his infernal departmental affiliation was probably someone to whom he should be polite, and then the door unlocked with a buzz. “Please come up,” said the staticky voice. “It’s the third floor. Mind the floor in the entryway; it’s just been waxed.”
Brightside held the door open for Crepusculus, and paused in the hallway. “We should be wearing identical dark suits,” he said. “And possibly pretentious sunglasses.”
Crepusculus eyed him. “You’re having too much fun, Gervase, are you coming down with something? I prefer to blend in.”
“Tattered jeans and a leather jacket are blending?”
“It’s a lot better than the silk-turtleneck-with-a-blazer thing. Granted, that makes a statement, but the statement is ‘I am stuck in 1975.’”
Brightside rolled his eyes. “You have never had any taste. Come on, let’s go and ask Mr. Irazek some questions.”
Demons came in all shapes and sizes. This one turned out to be short, earnest-looking, with hair that was not so much ginger as orange. He was wearing an apron and had a tea towel draped over one shoulder, and when he let them into the apartment, the smell
of fresh croissants suggested he’d spent the morning in the kitchen. “Hello,” he said, looking at them. “Er. What exactly can I do for you?”
“We have some questions about haunting,” said Brightside, and then sighed. “I’m terribly sorry, allow me to introduce myself: Gervase Brightside, and this is Crepusculus Dammerung. Have a card.”
He liked the cards. They were heavy cream-colored stock with slightly raised, dark silver lettering: DAMMERUNG & BRIGHTSIDE, REMEDIAL PSYCHOPOMPS. Below that, in much smaller letters: NO JOB TOO IMPROBABLE.
