by Lynne Murray
“Hal.” Mina blurted out. Then she put her hand to her mouth and looked around.
“Sir John’s human friend,” Morford told Quiller.
Quiller leaned toward Mina with a force of will that everyone in the room could feel. “You saw this?”
She shook her head, “No, but Hal told Sir John he was going to go find them.”
Morford turned to me. “You should have been honest from the beginning about Vi’s contamination.”
“Even now you seem to care less about Vi and more about yourselves.” I couldn’t keep the indignation out of my voice. “When I called to tell you about them, you told me it was our problem and hung up on me.”
“Unwise, Morford.” Quiller spared him a sharp look. “It is your problem, and ours as well.” He took out a small notebook and leaned toward Vi. “Miss Semmelweis, how do you feel?”
“I need to feed,” she said thickly.
She had been hunched over, staring at the rug, but when she raised her face her complexion was almost gray, and she was trembling. I wanted to go to her, but she terrified me. I didn’t want her to drink my blood.
Quiller went to her and knelt by her chair. “Forgive me. I was so distracted by the larger threat, I neglected your care.” He opened up his jacket and pulled out a small plastic bag filled with a red liquid—a unit of blood. “Drink this. Here, I’ll hold it for you.”
We all watched, mesmerized, as he held it up to her and steadied her hands and the bag as she cradled it and bent her head over it. “There now. Slowly, don’t spill it.”
For several moments there was only the sound of Vi sucking the contents of the bag. Finally, when she had drained it completely, he removed the empty bag from Vi’s hands and handed it to Morford, who thanked him politely, raised it to his lips and used one fang to neatly slice the bag from top to bottom. Then he licked out the last few drops with relish and not a hint of self-consciousness. He folded it into a clean handkerchief and put it in his pocket. “Can’t leave these lying around,” he smiled at Mina, Bram and me.
We all turned back as Vi raised her head more strongly and looked around. Kneeling so close to her, Quiller gasped, and we all saw. Her eyes had a reddish, luminous glow. He swallowed audibly and asked her to turn her head this way and that while he examined her face and neck. He touched the scar that now stood out angry and red.
“Sir John.” He said to no one in particular.
“Yes.” Vi’s voice was stronger. “I asked him to drink my blood, so he would be strong enough to tell me his stories.”
“Ah yes, he’s a great one for stories, isn’t he?” Quiller’s voice was as tender as a mother bathing a child. “What then? After he drank your blood.”
“Then, at night, I saw them, outside—they—I can’t remember, but it was glorious and painful, and then I was freezing to death. Dying, I think.”
Quiller tapped her mouth. “Open, let me see your teeth and fangs.”
Vi opened her mouth and we all gasped to see that her teeth were now pink. There seemed to be more of them, with her new fangs growing in above, pure white against the pink.
“Thank you, dear. Now, continue. You were dying, then what?”
“Hospital, transfusions. Came home. Sir John—drank my blood, I drank his. I died. Then I woke up—” she turned to Morford, who nodded. “They fed me. Talked about my new life. Came home, Kristin helped.” A red tear stole down her cheek. “Cats don’t like me anymore.”
“And then?”
Her voice grew stronger. “Went Mrs. Battle’s classes. Learned to feed, and to ignore—you know—them. But they were so many. They hurt Kristin. I can hear them now.”
“What?” Quiller and Morford both said at once.
“Faint. Not words. Like songs, or bugs buzzing far away. I block it out when I’m strong.”
“Keep blocking it. Distract yourself as much as possible. We will talk about it later.” Quiller went back to his chair, dropping his bedside manner and resuming his irritable expression.
In the profound silence that followed, the only sound was the breathing of the three humans in the room.
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Quiller said at last. “These things seem to exist on a different plane. Whether it is another dimension, or a kind of shielding that is beyond our current science to detect, I wish I knew.” He cast another resentful look at Morford. “We could do some useful tests, although the Foundation hasn’t seen fit to equip a lab properly.”
“It’s not the lab, it’s the containment, Nehemiah.”
“We have to grow our own experts.” Quiller’s voice was plaintive. “When Vi feels better, she may be able to help.”
“Is Dr. Quiller the only researcher?” I had to ask.
Both vampires stared at me, then looked at each other. “Science is new to the vampire community,” Quiller said. “Some in our community believe that studying these creatures makes them stronger.”
“We still live by ironclad rules and taboos,” Morford said. “Sir John broke several rules when he brought Vi over after she—uh—had that—um—encounter. But the highest authority in this area, the Night Court, would hold Quiller and myself and all of you responsible. Of course, the national and worldwide vampire community would blame our local group for inviting an infestation. All who have been touched by it any way would be hunted down and destroyed. They would sow salt in our graves and burn our remains to close any possible doorway into the realms of the creatures of whom we speak. Such is our law.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling a little faint just to hear it.
“Dr. Quiller feels this would not solve the infestation problem. Worst of all, it would cut off all possibility of finding a solution—which most likely will come from Dr. Quiller’s lab.”
Personally, I thought worst of all would be the part about destroying us.
“Sir John’s protégé invited this upon us,” Morford said. “Sir John must take the blame.”
“When you say blame,” I had to ask, “What does that mean, exactly? You mean that you would shun him?”
“We want to avoid bringing this to the attention of the Night Court. We may have to kill Sir John—permanently,” Morford said.
He and Quiller got up and left without another word.
Part IV: THE DARK LADIES
Chapter 67
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 28th continued
I watched the two vampires walk away down Clement Street in the rain. They didn’t have umbrellas. I hoped they got really wet.
“Friendly group,” Bram said. “No wonder they don’t make much scientific progress. Killing everyone who encounters a new phenomenon means you never get any enough info to find out how to deal with it.”
“I shouldn’t have told on Hal,” Mina said. “I don’t want them to kill him.”
“They would have found out,” I said. “They may have already known.”
A screeching sound from the back of the house and a flood of hearty cursing made everyone jump. I went down the hall and looked, just in time to see Sir John shoving up the back window at the end of the hall—the one Vi told me was permanently stuck. He clambered in, kicking and thrashing with his fists at Others who tried to slip through with him. Once inside, he slammed the window down and turned to face us.
“Mistress Kit, I came with all deliberate speed.” He wore the clothes I had bought him. The microfiber trench coat was wet. He took it off as we walked down the hall.
“Morford and Quiller just left,” I told him.
“Indeed. I waited till they had safely gone.”
“Vi is, she’s—” I realized I was close to sobbing, and he stopped and enfolded me in an unexpected hug, wet from the rain. But, unlike Vi’s coldness, Sir John was unaccountably warm. I didn’t want to think about whose blood and life force he had recently fed on.
“Come then. Let’s see what’s to be done.”
We went back into the front room and t
here was a knock at the front door. Mina, Bram and I all looked up in alarm, fearing that Morford and Quiller were back, but Sir John seemed calm. “You’d best get the door, Mistress Violet,” he said.
Vi went out into the hall to open the door.
“Oh, hello!” Her voice had a happy tone I had not heard lately.
A low, precise voice answered. “Invite me in, but limit the invitation to me.”
“Mrs. Battle, I invite you to enter my home.”
“That is correct, my dear.”
Vi ushered in a short, very round, African-American woman. She wore a tan trench coat, which she took off to reveal a plain navy blue dress with an old-fashioned watch on a chain around her neck. Her navy blue fedora hat should have looked absurd, but somehow it looked extremely stylish on her.
She removed the fedora, revealing crisp salt and pepper hair twisted up in braids, knotted at the nape of her neck. She knocked drops of rain off the hat and, after a moment’s consideration, put it on the mantelpiece itself. “That way I won’t forget it,” she said. “Well, then, introduce me—except to that rogue. I know him all too well.”
Sir John bowed. “My dark lady. We meet again.”
“This is my vampire instructor, Mrs. Battle.” Vi introduced everyone else.
Mrs. Battle removed her wet trench coat and leaned down to look into the empty fireplace. As she did, we could all see the red eyes of several Others lurking behind the fire screen. Mrs. Battle instantly straightened up and draped her trench coat over the fireplace, covering it completely. “That should have been blocked before, but no doubt the gentlemen who just left were too busy quarreling and pointing fingers.”
“You must know them,” I said.
“All too well. Some things are remarkably consistent over the centuries.” Mrs. Battle settled into the wing chair where Morford had sat. Sir John sat in the straight chair Quiller had occupied, and the rest of us returned to our previous seats on sofa and computer chair. “So did the gentlemen who just left have any ideas to cope with our problems?”
“Aside from blaming Sir John, you mean?” I said. ‘No.”
“Blame is a dangerous word.” Mrs. Battle and Sir John exchanged glances. “Vampire laws are severe.” Mrs. Battle shook her head. “Morford and Quiller are young in vampire terms. They lived as humans in the 1800s. I came from New Orleans nearly a hundred years earlier, yet, considering their prejudice, it is a miracle that they let me teach young vampires.”
Mrs. Battle inclined her head slightly to the newbies—Vi, Mina, Bram and me. “When entering into the undead state some gain a new power, some preserve a native talent. Sir John brings us the gift of laughter. Rare in human life, rarer still among our kind. We honor him for that—or we should, if we had a lick of common decency. My gift—and my hunger—is history, finding out what happened to us. It’s written in fragments, old letters and diaries. I also find it stored in old vampires’ memories. I have to ferret it out, sift out the misinformation and save the truth to teach new vampires. Even if old in human years, we all start our undeath knowing very little.”
Vi sighed. “Fascinating,” she said. “You can see why I love to go to classes.”
I nodded, relieved that once her initial hunger was satisfied, Vi’s mind seemed to be waking up again.
“Thank you, Violet,” Mrs. Battle said. She turned to me. “Your friend is an excellent student, and you are going to need everything I can teach you, because we all face a grave challenge. I expect Sir John will help us just as he did in 1939 at the Time of Relocation.”
“What’s that?” Bram asked eagerly. I could see him itching to interview Mrs. Battle and write down all this vampire history.
“It became illegal to bury people inside the San Francisco city limits in 1901. No new bodies were buried here, and existing graves were moved—mostly out here to the western fringes of the city. For nearly forty years most vampires lived in cemeteries that never changed. They were like neighborhoods. Rich society people in one, separate burial grounds for Catholics, Jews, Chinese and black. They were all over this part of town. Holy Cross, Lone Mountain, and Notre Dame and so on. The city kept expanding, and they moved the city limits further west.
“Every time that happened, they dug up the old graveyards and moved the bodies. Finally all the way out near the ocean to Golden Gate Cemetery—where the golf course is now.
“In 1939, nearly a century after the Gold Rush that brought everyone to San Francisco, the city claimed that final bit of grave land, carted off the tombstones and moved the bodies south. Down the peninsula to Colma. Or at least they moved some of the bodies. The rich ones who had family to pay for new plots were moved. Some poor people’s bodies were dumped in mass graves, other were just left, their tombstones ripped out and used for paving materials, their graves covered over. Tens of thousands of Hungry Ghosts still rest under that golf course only few blocks from here. Vampires resting there met with a worse fate—their caskets cracked open in daylight. Every time the graves were moved many vampires were destroyed.”
“How did Sir John help?”
“Sir John was the oldest vampire any of us had met. He had lived through hundreds of years of wars and uprootings in England. He helped us learn to be nimble and find shelter under the very noses of the living. Sir John saved our small piece of vampire civilization here. We’d be fools to sacrifice him.”
“There’s a kind word for the old man,” Sir John said.
Mina leaned forward. She had been casting glances at Vi. “Mrs. Battle, this change that’s happening to Violet—” She seemed at a loss for words, looking at Vi’s neon red eyes and gray skin, beginning to go transparent.
“It isn’t a bad menopause, I can tell you that much.” Vi snorted with something approaching a laugh.
“So death is worse than menopause?” I said. “That’s good to know.”
“I’ve been dead and I’ve been menopausal, and I’ll take hot flashes any day,” Mrs. Battle said.
Now Vi was laughing. Did I imagine that a little of the red went out of her eyes and into her cheeks?
Mina shook her head at us as if half amused and half shocked at the jokes.
“You’re getting your words back?” I met Vi’s eyes.
“Some. Pulled by group mind, fighting.” She stood and came to me, reached out unexpectedly and gripped my hand. Her grip was like iron. I gasped to find myself pulled close to those neon red eyes. “The girl cats—safe?”
“All five of your cats are safe with me.”
“Good.” She smiled, showing an array of unretracted fangs that sent Mina and me involuntarily scrambling back. “Go.”
“Watch the cats. Ask the cats. They know. How.” She dropped my hand and backed away. “Better go, bad night. Hungry again.”
Mrs. Battle retrieved her hat. “Come along, then. I’m sure Dr. Quiller gave you a unit of blood, but that packaged fast food is dead food. Get your coat, Vi.” She removed her coat from the mantel for a moment, then swept a Mexican blanket off the back of the sofa and draped it over the fireplace, arranging it carefully so that nothing showed. “Keep it blocked—they’ll test the opening,” she said. Then she turned to her fellow vampires. “Sir John, shall we hunt first and think later?”
“Yes, my lady.” He ushered them out the front door.
“Take care, Vi,” I called out. No reply. They were already gone.
We left through the back door. Mina and I started running and Bram followed along. Hordes of Others massing around the house swooped down on us. Their grasping hands brushed us, but they couldn’t seem to grab hold. Having seen the teeth Vi was growing, I was trembling with fear. A few of them followed us to the cottage, but they bobbed around the entrance like fish at the edge of a fishbowl. I slammed the door shut and locked it.
Chapter 68
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 28th continued
“We were running away from—?” Bram asked.
“The thing
s you can’t see.”
Bram offered to take us out to dinner, but neither Mina nor I wanted to go out through the swarm of others.
“I have to work tomorrow,” Mina said.
“Okay, then. I’ll get something to eat and go back to my hotel room to lick my wounds at another crushing defeat in front of the woman I most want to impress.”
“He really likes you,” Mina said.
“She’s very perceptive,” Bram said with a smile.
“I know.” I smiled back a little shyly.
“All right. Either stay and we’ll order a pizza or go, because I’m starving,” Mina said. Bram said he was going, and we all hugged goodnight as if he was off to war. It did feel like that.
Mina followed me while I fed and inventoried the cats. All present and accounted for.
“It’s really important to make sure the bathroom door stays shut till we sort it out with the things outside,” I explained to Mina. “These cats might try to sneak out the door and get stranded with the things outside.”
Mina nodded. Her eyes were as wide as the cats’, and I wasn’t sure how much of this she was tracking.
“Let’s see what we have to eat,” I said.
“Good idea. That cat food was starting to look pretty good.”
But when we looked I found we had had finished the last of the dishes the neighbors brought, and I’d been too distracted to shop. A survey of my cupboards yielded the groceries Pamela had brought and a few cans of chicken broth.
“How about French Onion soup? I can make that from what I have on hand.”
“Wow, really?”
I smiled. “Everything I can cook I learned from cookbooks after the age of 30. When I was your age I could scramble eggs, boil water and bake potatoes, and that was about it.”
