The Kindred of Darkness

by Barbara Hambly

  If he touches the silver on my neck or wrists he’ll know I know about what he is.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Lydia briskly. ‘And anyway that’s electricity, not moonlight. You sound just like Bertie, and I’m perfectly fed up with him—’

  ‘Bertie?’ He got between her and the door and made it look accidental.

  Her heart was pounding so she could barely think. ‘Bertie Mousemire.’ She manufactured a sigh. ‘Trust Bertie to arrange an assignation and then not be able to find his way up from the terrace. The man is hopeless. And by this time Richard will be looking for me, and—’

  He was suddenly beside her – it was nearly impossible to see vampires move – and his hand closed around her arm above the elbow. Through the thick satin of her sleeve his touch was like warm electricity, a shocking sense of his presence. Of need.

  ‘And do you so hunger for love that you must needs seek it with the Berties of this world?’

  His eyes were in shadow, but she knew they were blue. Languor flowed over her mind, honey now instead of sparks. A yearning to taste his kisses …

  With THOSE teeth?

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ gasped Lydia, in her best imitation of her long-departed Nanna, and prayed her voice didn’t shake. He’ll probably think it’s with passion …

  And it was. Irrational, overwhelming hunger for what James never gave her (but he DOES), for what no man had ever given her …

  She pulled free and he didn’t hold her. This was seduction, she recognized; the game vampires played.

  The game he was playing with Cece.

  Or maybe it isn’t.

  WOULD he kill here at a party?

  There are nearly a thousand guests, he could hide my body and no one would know I was gone …

  ‘I have never understood,’ said Lydia, ‘this passion people have for going around kissing total strangers …’

  He put his hands on either side of her against the wall, pinning her without touching her. But she could feel the heat of his body, which meant, she knew, that he’d fed.

  Someone in London had already died. Two and three kills a night sometimes, Grippen had said …

  ‘Since you do not understand, will you not open your mind?’ He put his hand to her cheek. His face – barely seen in the darkness – seemed weary and a little sad, the face of a man who has survived horrors. ‘Why do you so much fear even the taste of a dream? Are you afraid you might follow it?’

  Footfalls whispered in the carpet of the hall. Had the vampire been a cat he’d have put one ear back. Lydia took the moment to step away from him, and open the bedroom door. Cece’s voice was no more than the scent of the candle wax in the darkness. ‘Damien?’

  Lydia felt the velvet cloak brush past her, smelled again the halitus of fresh blood. Gaslight from Queen Street filtered into the hallway from its windows, showed her the vampire like a shadow beside the pale shape of Cece Armistead in her lace-clotted gown of gold and bronze. Jewels still twinkled in her powdered hair, but she’d removed the collar of lace that had covered her neck. Zahorec bent his head to kiss her, gentle as a flower petal, on the lips, on the breast, on the delicate skin of her throat. Cece whispered, ‘I have …’ But the vampire touched his lips to hers.

  ‘It can wait. All things can wait.’

  Shaken, breathless, Lydia stood in the door of the bedroom as the two shadows merged; heard Cece’s soft gasp.

  It was two steps to the door of the backstairs and Lydia held down her heavy skirts with both hands, terrified that she’d feel his arms circling her from behind in the pitch black of the staircase. She was shaking uncontrollably by the time she reached the door at the bottom, stumbled out into the shadows of the pergola …

  Can he follow me through the maze? Follow me back to the hotel?

  She went straight up the graveled path and across the terrace to the front hall, where she tipped one footman to get her a cab and another to take a note up to Aunt Lavinnia, claiming a splitting headache and the urgent need to return to her hotel at once, and would Aunt Lavinnia see to it that Emily got home? Aunt Lavinnia will never speak to me again …

  Once at the Temperance Hotel, Lydia double-locked the door, dragged the little desk in front of it, wound her garlands of garlic-flowers, aconite, and Christmas rose around the door handle and the window sashes.

  And dreamed, for what remained of the night, of Damien Zahorec’s eyes.

  SEVEN

  Ludovicus Bertolo. Lydia studied the entry over tea at her little table in the gray of Sunday morning.

  Not Grippen, not his fledglings.

  He’d arrived from Cherbourg on the Reine Margot. He’d come through France.

  Checking other entries for those who’d come from France, she found the record of Titus Armistead and Party, with crates enough to transport an army of vampires, also from Cherbourg, on 17 January. Presumably the Imperatrice was a higher-class vessel than the Reine Margot.

  On the Imperatrice also had been Noel Wredemere, Lord Colwich, with two steamer-trunks and three crates over two hundred pounds and four feet in length – ‘and valet’. Someone last night (Valentina?) had told her that Colwich’s beloved Ned Seabury had gone to Paris in the fall because of Colwich’s ‘way of life’. Had he traveled back on the Imperatrice as well, gazing in hungry jealousy as his friend flirted with the American millionaire’s daughter?

  Or had he returned earlier, and learned of the engagement when he went to the dock to welcome his friend home, and saw him come down the gangplank with that bright-hued bird of paradise clinging to his arm?

  As she removed the protective garlands from the windows and sought soap, towel, slippers, sponge bag and pennies for the bathroom geyser among the untidy chaos of the bed, Lydia recalled the look of weary pleading Colwich had thrown his friend along the dinner table Friday night, and the way the two young men had stood together in the drawing-room window Thursday, at Lady Brightwell’s with Dr Millward. Were the tender looks and cheerful caresses with Cece last night window dressing only, to keep his wealthy father-in-law sweet?

  She remembered Cece’s golden shape as the vampire’s cloak enfolded her in darkness. The girl’s soft gasp.

  Of course Cece would accept the proposal of a Viscount. One day she’d be Countess of Crossford.

  The Crossfords had property all over England and Scotland.

  He’s going to make her a vampire. Lydia shivered as she thrust coins into the bathroom geyser box and turned on the spigot for her modest fivepence-worth of nominally hot bathwater. It isn’t just seduction. He’s biding his time, waiting till she marries. The Crossford lands were mortgaged and in a poor state of upkeep, but this wouldn’t matter to a vampire.

  He doesn’t want a victim.

  He wants a fledgling.

  Who will leave him property in her will.

  Lydia reached St George’s church in Hanover Square just as the congregation issued from their pews to take communion, but after all one went to St George’s to be seen by the beau monde, not because the sermons were any good. She waited at the back, from a sense of guilt and because, without her spectacles, she couldn’t identify the Halfdene pew until the footman in blue and yellow livery wheeled the bath chair into the aisle. Then she hurried down and ducked into the enclosure. ‘I’m so sorry …’

  Uncle Richard smiled as he took her hand. ‘I will give unto this last, even as unto thee,’ he whispered, quoting Christ’s parable about dilatory latecomers who scurried at that last minute through the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven.

  Following divine services, like three-quarters of the population of the West End – or that portion of the population that weren’t polishing boots, preparing dinner, pressing Madame’s skirt or taking Madame’s children for their Sunday stroll – the family of Viscount Halfdene went driving in the Park, Uncle Richard’s saddle horse having been brought along tied to the back of the landaulet which had carried them to church. Lydia made all the correct responses when they encountered friends or
family among the slow tide of vehicles and horses that flowed along the southern avenue. By the gates she glimpsed, across the road, the massed green-purple-and-white banners of the suffragists gathered outside the Horse Guards, and she thought she saw one of them – undoubtedly her friend Josetta – wave to her, but couldn’t be sure at that distance.

  But within moments her thoughts returned to Cece Armistead. To that voice like sable velvet: Do you so hunger for love …?

  No matter how many times Lydia told herself, Actually, no, I don’t, its echo returned. Why do you so much fear even the taste of a dream? Are you afraid you might follow it?

  No wonder poor Cece wore that goopy smile. Lydia shivered again.

  God knows what Zahorec has told her about what he is. About what being a vampire means …

  Beneath the trees of Rotten Row she caught a glimpse of Cece, riding in company with Lady May. No sign of Colwich’s bright waistcoat: two-thirty in the afternoon was evidently too early an hour for his lordship to be astir. A stolid detective followed them on what was clearly a rented hack, his brown suit like a baked potato in a plate of petits-fours. Even had Lydia been wearing spectacles the little group was too far off for her to tell if the American girl looked pale or ill, but she seemed to have no trouble controlling her frisky steed.

  He’s seen me, in her bedroom. Hiding from ‘Bertie’, he thinks. And no one he needs to worry about. Unless I speak to Cece and tell her, ‘I know you’re being courted by a vampire.’

  Then she’ll tell him.

  As I told Don Simon, when old Professor Karlebach warned me about HIM.

  She wanted to leap out of the carriage and run … where? Back to the Temperance Hotel? To put up her garlic-blossom garlands again like a madwoman; to sit staring at the peeling greenish trellises of the wallpaper until it grew too dark to see? She didn’t know which grated most across her nerves, having to lie when Aunts Harriet and Lavinnia – out driving themselves in Lavinnia’s blood-crimson park phaeton – asked her how Miranda was, or encountering Valentina (driven by an admirer and full of backhanded compliments on Emily’s dress) and having her not ask about the child at all.

  Three nights she’s been … somewhere. Crying for me? Hungry? Drugged?

  STOP IT THIS MINUTE … She’s all right. She’ll be all right.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt.’ She pulled her mind back to the present. ‘I felt dreadfully about leaving Emily, but I had the most fearful headache last night …’

  ‘It could have been the champagne,’ purred Valentina, whose admirer happened to pull his natty Tilbury up next to the Halfdene landaulet at that moment. ‘It takes some people that way, if they’re not used to it. Though heaven knows had I been left by my husband I’d have done just the same …’

  ‘You’re sure you won’t stay in town and go to the concert this evening?’ asked Isobel, when dinner was over. ‘Emily could certainly lend you a dress – though not the white tarlatan,’ she added, with a worried frown. ‘She’s wearing that to the Ottmoors’ and they’re sure to be there tonight … Not the ice-blue either …’

  Lydia refrained from saying that firstly, nothing would induce her to wear ice-blue, and secondly, she had a perfect right to both frocks, having paid for them. ‘Thank you, Aunt, but I should be getting back home.’

  ‘Have it your own way, dear.’ Isobel poured her out a second cup of tea. ‘Though I must say, whatever Valentina said – and did you get a look at those emeralds she was wearing? In the middle of the afternoon, too! – I expect it was all the running up and down from Oxford that brought on your headache last night. Heaven knows the worst migraine I ever had in my life was when I traveled up to Scotland last August to go shooting at the Wintersons’– I was in bed for days! Dr Purfleet had to prescribe veronal for me. When you come back up tomorrow – You are coming for the opening of the flower show? We’re quite counting on you – you are most welcome to bring your things and stay here. I’m sure Miranda will be just fine without her mama for a few days … I remember during the Season, for years, Emily would go weeks without seeing me and it never seemed to do her any harm, did it, darling? You could—Yes, what is it, Ross?’

  The butler bowed, and extended a polished salver bearing a card. ‘Excuse me, Madame, but there’s a gentleman here to see Mrs Asher.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  ‘He apologizes for the intrusion, Madame, but explains he has but newly come to London and knew he might find her here. He is a friend of Professor Asher.’

  Lydia had already picked up the card. The lettering on it was just large enough for her to read – with a certain amount of difficulty – without holding it up to her nose.

  Esteban Sierra

  Piazza del Trinita del Monte

  Rome

  Feeling a little breathless, she said, ‘Oh … yes, of course.’

  Isobel’s lips tightened – her own father might have owned a pottery works, but not even she had approved of Lydia’s match with a mere lecturer at New College, even if she had been disinherited at the time. But she only said, ‘Then of course, Ross, show him in.’

  He came into the drawing room and bowed, with perfect correctness for the twentieth century. Aside from the length of his pale, spidery hair he had the appearance of any thin young gentleman, though if she looked at him closely, she could sometimes see the scars on his face. She found it persistently impossible to notice his fangs, or the fact that he did not breathe. He went first to Aunt Isobel, and begged her pardon for intruding upon her at such an hour – ‘Professor Asher suggested that your generous hospitality is such that Mrs Asher might well be found beneath your roof …’ Then to Uncle Richard: ‘I’m certain you have no recollection of it, sir, but we met briefly at the Royal Academy Show in 1906. Was the decision to exhibit the Hogarths yours, sir?’

  Uncle Richard – whose passion was his membership in the Royal Academy of Arts – beamed.

  Only then did Ysidro cross to Lydia, and bend over – without kissing – her hand.

  ‘Mrs Asher.’

  She hadn’t seen him in the flesh in seven months, and had received only a single brief note from him, upon her and Jamie’s return from China, telling her that – contrary to what the old vampire-hunter Karlebach believed – he was well. When he said, ‘I trust you’ve heard from your husband since he and I last met,’ she knew it was for Aunt Isobel’s benefit. ‘Nevertheless, he bade me seek you out and give you his kindest regards when I came through London, and so you behold me, Madame.’

  She replied, ‘I have heard nothing of him for over a week,’ and saw a tiny line, like a pen-scratch, flicker into being between his pale eyebrows. ‘But I understand the posts in Italy are frightful.’

  ‘They are indeed, Madame.’ He turned then and included his hostess and host in the conversation, charming them with a wholly fictitious account of where and how he knew Professor Asher (‘My father insisted that I do a year at Oxford – Christ Church – and as my chief study was languages a meeting was inevitable’) and drawing them out adroitly: Uncle Richard on art, Aunt Isobel on the slings and arrows encountered in presenting a daughter to Society. When precisely fifteen minutes had elapsed, he said, ‘But I must not further trespass on your evening, kind Madame. Having discharged my errand to my friend, I must be in Bayswater at nine—’

  ‘Might I prevail on your friendship,’ said Lydia promptly, as Ysidro rose, ‘to beg a place in your carriage as far as Paddington? No, really, Uncle, there’s no need to turn out poor Perkins—’

  Perkins was the Halfdene coachman.

  ‘—at this hour.’

  There followed a few minutes of polite argument, in which Ysidro made it tactfully clear that his coachman waited for them in George Street, and that he would take it as a privilege and an honor to see Mrs Asher on to her train.

  ‘You don’t really have a carriage waiting for you, do you?’ whispered Lydia, as Ysidro handed her down the shallow step to the pavement of Berkeley Square, and led her toward the dim
shape of a brougham a few houses along.

  The warm glow of the gaslight behind them vanished as Uncle Richard closed the door.

  ‘Dios, no. There is a cab-stand at the corner of Davies Street, if so be you have no objection to such a vehicle.’

  ‘Not in the least. Aunt would be horrified – and horrified at you, for even suggesting that a lady ride in one. Considering you came with no letter of introduction, even, I’m astonished she didn’t give us both a lecture about what married women can and cannot be seen to do with even close and trusted friends of their husbands.’

  ‘I was chosen to come to this country,’ returned the vampire, as they climbed into the cab under the gas lamp at the head of Davies Street, ‘because I was a diplomat – and the principles of diplomacy have not changed so very much in three hundred years. Have you something of your daughter’s, and of this nursery maid who was taken with her? ’Tis early yet in the night for the girl to be asleep, but children sleep at any hour, and the more so, if, as you say, she were to be drugged.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, as the cab began to move, ‘for coming.’ In the darkness he was nothing but the gleam of his eyes.

  ‘Did you not know that I would?’

  Heat suffused her face. In her mind she heard again Damien Zahorec’s voice: Are you afraid you might follow?

  But follow to where?

  No good can come, Simon had told her more than once, of friendship between the living and the dead …

  So why the confusion, she wondered, at the thought that she had known, down into the marrow of her bones, that if she called him, he would come?

  Why the intense consciousness of him sitting beside her, of his gray sleeve against the velvet of her cloak?

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve seen Damien Zahorec. He came last night to Wycliffe House – that’s where the American girl is staying, Cecelia Armistead. It’s he who is seducing her.’ As the cab wove its expert way through the porridge of busses, motor cars, carriages and cabs on Oxford Street, Lydia recounted the events of the evening, and her own deductions as to the interloper’s motives and intent.