The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  “And their child, a girl of six or seven years, was taken by the countess. She cut that innocent’s throat that she might drink of her blood. Or perhaps tore it open with her teeth. But she drained the child like bleeding a pig.”

  This did shake Marinello. He touched his arm, where I knew the bandage covered his hurts. He glanced down at the woman who had stepped back to the top of the stairs and was looking at us all as if she were royalty, and we were the peasants. Her face changed as I looked, as if two voices within her struggled for ascendancy, then an expression of great amusement curved her lips.

  “The countess, yes, she feeds of necessity,” she said, as if of another. “And she enjoys it, and mixes pain with lust. But the taking of life is mine. You know me, Edward Kelley. You and I have spoken many times.”

  I noticed Marinello fall back a pace.

  “Saraquel?” I managed to stammer. I covered my eyes for a moment with shaking hands.

  “Yes, I am Saraquel.” The body of the woman seemed to glow, and I could see the aura of light around her grow until it almost blinded me. The voice seemed to ring in my head, like a hundred men and women together, so I clamped my hands to my head, and closed my eyes against it. “And you know, Edward, of my power. Shall I take the lives of every mortal in this room, sparing none? And leave just my lovely, carnal countess?”

  I cried out, the pain in my head as if it were splitting. “No! Spare them!” I screamed the words in English, and could feel strong hands under my arms, supporting me.

  “Then you shall save the countess, and I shall leave your fellow men.”

  The light faded, and I squinted up to see the concerned look of Konrad, and, above him, the angry face of my friend. I stepped forward, and raised my hands to Marinello.

  “Let me take the countess,” I cried, seeing her quaking as if Saraquel had shaken her as much as me. “For else we shall all die.”

  “I am prepared to die,” said Konrad, hefting his sword up over his head.

  “And I!” shouted Marinello.

  “No!” Something of my utter conviction must have caused them a moment’s doubt, for I was able to take a few steps up the stairs, pushing past the guards.

  The sword of Marinello swept forward, toward my face, and a wet thud told me it had found its mark—not my neck but one of Konrad’s men who had followed me onto the stairs. I sprinted up the stairs to the countess. Behind me, the battle had resumed, and the dozen or so remaining men fought for their lives. I slid toward the countess, and an unarmed servant screeched and ran into a room behind her. The countess smiled at me as if we were standing in a ballroom, or a garden.

  “My lady, stop this,” I said, in some delusion that if she could give herself up to Konrad, Marinello at least would be spared. “I beg of you. You can only cry mercy.”

  “There is no mercy for me,” she scoffed, “since your sorcery. It is time for you and me to depart,” she said, grasping my hand and dragging me to a door that stood a little open. There I found a trio of terrified women huddled into an alcove praying for their lives. Their light voices added a strange counterpoint to the mêlée beyond the heavy door, which I bolted. She turned away from the women and held out a kirtle. “You shall assist me,” she said, stepping into the skirt, and turning that I might lace up the back. She snatched up a net of some golden thread, and twisted her hair into it. My hands were shaking, but I did a fair job of pulling and tying the laces, though the sounds of battle made me fumble. She tucked a dagger, a narrow stiletto, down the front of her bodice to sit under her arm but easily reached from the neck of her gown, then slid on long boots. I knelt to lace them at a gesture from her, knotting them hastily. I leaped to my feet as a banging upon the door began.

  “But, how do we—” I started to say, but she pressed a finger to my lips, and then beckoned me to follow. A tapestry hung upon the wall was turned back, and a tiny door, so low I would almost have to crawl into it, was revealed. The lady turned the key in the lock, took it, and pushed open the door.

  “Franco Marinello showed me this. Hurry!” she snapped, and I squeezed into it, almost falling headlong down a flight of stone steps as steep as a ladder. I managed to stand, though the top of my head brushed the roof. The light from the door disappeared as she shut it, and grated the key in the lock.

  I placed one foot carefully on the next stair down, reaching around for some support. I grasped a rope banister but it almost as soon crumbled into dust. I found another step below, then another. The woman behind me grasped my shoulder and half pushed me along.

  “Wait,” I said, my breath hardly a whisper in that dark place lest we be heard. “I cannot see.”

  Another few paces, then something of a landing, and a stumble onto another stair, then another. And so we proceeded, in a counterclockwise spiral, my feet barely finding each deep step and the countess following behind, one hand upon my shoulder.

  “Stop.” I squinted into the darkness, and thought I saw a gray among the blackness. There! A strip of low light that my eyes sought, as if running down a door. I mistook my step and staggered down the last few stairs, thumping into a wooden panel. I fumbled down the edge—a hinge. The other side led to a latch, which I lifted, wincing at the creaking. The door opened into a cupboard in what I judged must be a kitchen by the smell of it. Something—cold skin—brushed my face and I almost screamed before I realized some slaughtered pig was hung within a meat closet. I pressed upon the door and it sprang open.

  The kitchen was deserted; perhaps its occupants had fled for another door. One led to a few steps down to the side alley beside the back of the building. I chanced a quick look out to find it guarded by but two soldiers in Konrad’s livery, both facing the main door and the sound of carnage. I reached for a fire iron, a poker or some such, and it found the back of one soldier’s head. As the second turned, the countess’s dagger found his belly and it was twisted cruelly. He gave a strangled shriek, and I did not wait to see if it was heard. I bolted, my fear giving my feet wings, along the street, down another alley, toward the canal itself. I ran along the narrow stone front before the great houses like a dock rat, as much to escape the countess as the Inquisition.

  A great shout from above made me stop, and I turned to see my friend and kind rescuer, Marinello, standing on the window ledge of his house facing the water.

  He glanced down at me for a second, his grinning face lit by the lamps shining within, then disappeared back inside for a moment. I feared his death, but before I could look away, he let out a great cry of triumph and threw himself from the window, swinging along the front of the building on a curtain. He let go at the top of his swing, flying past the jetty below. With a great splash he hit the water of the canal, narrowly missing two boats and the quayside.

  I ran, terrified of Konrad and his tortures, afraid of the countess and her demands, and I prayed for deliverance. I sprinted along the docks, seeking a hiding place, when I saw before me a ship flying a familiar flag. One of the emperor’s many merchants, no doubt, moored against a ship of the ensign of a ship from Rome. I leaped without thought, landing amidships on the Roman ship, and before the sailors could do more than shout in alarm and lift their arms to stop me, I scrambled over the side and onto the emperor’s ship.

  “Sanctuary!” I shouted again and again, in German, Latin, perhaps in English, certainly in broken Bohemian.

  A stout captain came forward and steadied me with one arm. “Name yourself, sirrah!” he said, in stern German. “Why do you need sanctuary?”

  “I am Protestant,” I said, while shivering, “and persecuted by the Inquisition. I am an Englishman and a visitor of Emperor Rudolf. My name is Edward Kelley.”

  From the circle of sailors gathering around us, I heard one voice above the others.

  “Then I arrest you, Master Edward Kelley, on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire. For all captains are tasked with capturing you for investigation into fraud against the citizens of the Emperor Rudolf for a handsome reward.”<
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  My trembling knees gave way, and I sat abruptly upon the boards. I had never been so happy to be arrested.

  Chapter 50

  PRESENT DAY

  “Tell me about this woman.” Jack was taking a turn at driving, following the motorway toward the capital. They had stopped only to eat, now were back on the road. Felix was quiet, but Jack was excited. Finally, something she could do herself, rather than rely on Felix or Maggie. “Gina.”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know.” She overtook a lorry, concentrating in the fading light. “It’s something I don’t have any experience of.” She settled in a lane. “You know. Sex, relationships.”

  He sighed, and she could see him stretch his feet into the footwell. “I’m not going to discuss Gina with you, Jack.”

  Miles slid under the wheels and for a long time she thought he had dozed off again. At the point where dusk was giving way to darkness, Jack pulled into a slip road and a service station.

  “Do you want me to drive?” He stretched, and undid his seat belt.

  “If you like. I just need a coffee.” She stepped out of the car into thin drizzle, and turned her collar up.

  He opened his door. “I could do with a sandwich.”

  In the end, they had a burger each and some fries, and large coffees.

  Jack mumbled around a large bite of greasy burger. “So what exactly are we doing tonight?”

  Felix looked at his watch. “At ten o’clock, I’m supposed to present myself at the Illustrian Club. I’m allowed to escort you there, but Julian Prudhomme says we won’t be allowed to see around the club itself, but we will be granted a private audience with Madame Ivanova. That’s all I know.”

  A woman at the table beside them shushed a crying toddler. Jack finished her burger.

  “Has any of your research ever spoken about revenants having children?”

  He thought about it. “Well, we know Elizabeth Báthory had several.”

  “Were they normal?” She finished her fries and started on Felix’s. “I’m starving.”

  He smiled at her. He looked older in the artificial light, rumpled. Maybe he was right, maybe he was too old. She felt like she had the energy of a horse.

  “I could look into the Báthory children.”

  “I’m relieved there’s another borrowed timer that’s not a serial killer. Ivanova, I mean. She wasn’t, was she?”

  “Not in the last couple of centuries, no, I can’t find any evidence of killing or torture. But she did terrorize her Russian estate for decades before that.”

  “And she wants to meet me.” Jack drained her coffee with enjoyment. As a borrowed timer she had reacted violently to chemicals in food, but since the ingestion of blood she could eat anything. She smiled. She was finally getting a childhood. She waved at the toddler. “Kids are cute, aren’t they?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the child and its mother. “Oh, you mean—”

  “Well, it was never an issue before, but if I’m having periods, maybe it’s something that could happen one day.”

  His face creased into something like panic, before he masked his expression and bent over the remains of his coffee. “I think Sadie is enough children for the moment.”

  She laughed out loud. “I’m kidding! But your face is a picture.” Now the idea was out there, she let it run through her head in the silence between them. Children. She loved animals, would a baby be like that? She smiled at the thought.

  “Marianne and I did discuss it.” His voice was strained. “It was something we both considered, at different times. Never at the same time, so we never—”

  She put her hand over Felix’s. “Seriously, it’s OK. I’m not thinking about it. It’s just, now, I’m changing. I mean, maybe we’re more than friends, but it’s not like we’re a proper couple.” She thought about it. “Yet.”

  “Aren’t we?” His eyes locked onto hers, and she couldn’t look away.

  She started to feel uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s right at the beginning of things, isn’t it? We hardly know each other, but there are all these feelings.”

  The woman and child had left; there was no one within earshot. “I have trusted you with my life, with Sadie’s,” he said. “I have lied to the police, defied the Inquisition, even helped kill another human being because you persuaded me to.”

  “Elizabeth Báthory was hardly human, and Maggie killed Dannick.” The light mood vanished. “Why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not angry. I’m just thinking how huge the implications might be for the future, that’s all. You drank my blood, Jack, and it changed you.”

  “For the better.”

  He stared at her. “Sometimes you seem different. Sometimes you are the old Jack, cautious, wary, loyal. Sometimes you are impulsive, aggressive, even.”

  She thought over the last few months, the mood swings and the behavior with Powell. “Maybe I’m just growing up. All those years on borrowed time I was just half alive. I feel so much better, it’s different.” But the suspicion of the growing blanknesses was haunting her.

  “It’s more than that. It’s like…” He paused, then he bit his lip for a moment. “Never mind.”

  She drained the last of her lukewarm coffee, and pulled a face. “We don’t have time to worry about it now. Come on, or we’ll be late.”

  He leaned over the table and caught her wrist for a moment. “I know you are stronger and I want that for Sadie too. But there may be side effects to drinking blood that we can’t see yet.”

  She stared back at him for a long moment, reading his sincerity, and, under it, anxiety for her. It made her voice gentle. “Then we’d better find out more about it, because we can’t go back and undo it now.”

  —

  It seemed strange to step into new shoes, new clothes, fabrics silky and cool against Jack’s skin. Maggie had helped her pick out a few smartish clothes in Ambleside but Jack had a feeling the people at the exclusive club would be much better dressed than her. Felix, in a dark suit, looked somehow less approachable in the hotel room. She hadn’t questioned the one room, the big bed, but now she felt awkward and shy.

  He squeezed her hand reassuringly as they entered the club, then let go. The warm imprint of his fingers lingered while he spoke to someone at reception. She was acutely aware of the deep carpet, the scent of leather and discreet perfumes. When she raised her eyes it was to a sparkling globe of crystals, some glowing, that made a centerpiece of the ceiling.

  “Ms. Hammond,” Felix said, his voice very soft. “Could you please come this way? Madame Ivanova is expecting you.”

  Ah yes, that was the imposture, that Felix had brokered a meeting between two revenants.

  The woman in front of Jack was middle-aged—or maybe older. Something about her soft curls suggested artful coloring; her smooth skin looked as unnatural as a doll’s. Her eyes were pale, the color of fudge. Felix had suggested that while most things would repair themselves, eyes would become increasingly bleached by sunlight. Elizabeth Báthory had had strangely light eyes too. Jack wondered briefly about her own if she survived longer than expected.

  “Ah.” Ivanova’s face creased into a broad smile. “We meet…at last.”

  Jack had the strangest idea that the woman had almost said “again.”

  The older woman nodded to Felix, then waved a hand at the sofa, its silky patterned fabrics and gilded legs making it look like it came out of a museum. Jack sat, aware of Felix standing beside her, in her peripheral vision.

  Jack took a deep breath. “I was hoping you could tell me about blood.”

  The woman’s expression tensed, then relaxed into a small smile.

  “Blood, my friend, is life.” She looked away from Jack, to the fire. “Do you not feel the warmth as you drink it?”

  Jack allowed her head to drop forward in a small nod, just once.

  “And do we not have the right to live?” the older woman said, her voice as calm as the
mask of her face would suggest. “Blood, received as a willing gift, brings such energy, such youth. It is a blessing.”

  Jack shut her eyes for a moment, trying to find the old Jack behind all the new feelings and questions. She looked at Ivanova. “And, there are no consequences for the drinker?”

  Again, the expression changed from tense to calm, through twitches of something less serene. Jack turned to Felix. “I wonder if you would leave me and Madame Ivanova alone for a minute, Felix?” She stared into his eyes, trying to convince him.

  “We agreed—” He closed his mouth. “I’ll be right outside. Remember what I said.”

  That Ivanova might be as powerful and dangerous as Elizabeth Báthory? She tried to make her smile as reassuring as possible, but he still hesitated before leaving the room. She waited to hear the faint click of the door closing before she turned back to the woman.

  “The voice,” Jack said. “I keep hearing a voice. Just a few words when I wake up, like the end of a thought.”

  Ivanova looked down, a quick flicker of her eyelids, then someone else looked back. The skin creased in a smile. “His voice?”

  “His?” Jack tensed her muscles, ready for a leap for the door. The room’s temperature seemed to rise, as if the fire was lit. “Who is he? The voice, the feeling of—danger.”

  This time her expression settled into one smile, the eyes staring straight at Jack. “You mean Lord Saraquel. You have been blessed, indeed. Few of us are so lucky. He touches us.”

  Jack’s pulse was racing, but something about the name made it lurch in her neck. “Saraquel?”

  “You feed him.” She smiled. “You have ascended indeed, to be the vehicle of a great being.”

  Jack searched inside her for the strange feelings she had been struggling with. Something in the back of her mind was laughing.

  “A being that craves blood?”

  The face twitched again, and a younger, softer voice crept out, almost like a child. “He craves experience, craves food. Greetings, Lord.”

  Jack ignored a part of her that tensed her tongue into a response. “Blood.” She forced her mouth to speak her words. “It feeds on blood?”