The Kindred of Darkness

by Barbara Hambly

Was the fact that he needed the vampire’s help – that he dared not kill him – made more, or less, maddening by the knowledge that in his way, he liked Ysidro? That they understood one another, as he had seldom found anyone – other than Lydia – to understand his thoughts? Sick and exhausted from the effects of the elixir he’d taken (The same stuff Zahorec has been taking all these weeks?) Ysidro would doubtless hunt in Glasgow’s teeming docklands before following Asher and Lydia down the road to the western land of lochs once known as Lorn. Only blood and death could heal him.

  But looking worriedly for that terrible knowledge in Lydia’s eyes, Asher saw only the coolness that masked her anxiety. Nothing existed for her now, he realized, but the chill single-mindedness of a hunter, who must achieve her prey or die.

  Glasgow was a seaport, one of the biggest in the world. Flushed out of London, Zahorec would be seeking another refuge – and seeking a place to conceal Miranda, where neither Lydia, nor any vampire whose help she might be able to enlist, could find her.

  What Zahorec needed now was human allies whose obedience he could trust: without prevarication, without lies, without the slightest fear that they would dare betray him. A mother I can trust, Grippen had said, to do as I bid her …

  By tomorrow – Tuesday at the latest – he would have found someplace, put some scheme in train. Cece’s three million dollars would be secured to Colwich, whom Zahorec could manipulate – or, in the hours of darkness, simply replace.

  We have to take him tonight. We have to find her tonight.

  Or, his heart told him, we will never find her. And we will be his slaves.

  When he and Lydia came out of the old house on to the cobbled High Street, and locked the door behind them, they found Ned Seabury waiting for them in a rented Ford, its headlamps glowing yellow in the last blue of summer dusk.

  Leaning heavily on Lydia’s shoulder, Asher climbed into the front seat. They set out into the twilight, and the road to the hills of Lorn.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Just beyond Dumbarton, with the moon not yet risen above the peaks of the Arrochars and slate-black rain clouds sweeping in from the sea, Asher caught the gray glimmer of a shadow beside the road. He signed Seabury to slow as the headlamps revealed Ysidro’s thin form.

  ‘I am a friend of Noel’s from Paris.’ The vampire avoided the reflected light as he offered Seabury his gloved hand to shake, and climbed at once into the rear seat beside Lydia. ‘Do you travel to Stenmuir?’

  Looking back at him, Asher could see the scars on his face, the glint of fangs as he spoke, and as Seabury put the Ford into gear he saw, too, the young man’s shaken expression.

  ‘There’s no road to Stenmuir,’ said Lydia, since Seabury appeared unable to reply. ‘The summer I came here for the shooting – not that I ever actually shot anything, but anything was better than staying back at the Hall with my stepmother and Lady Crossford – it drove the servants mad because one couldn’t get the wagon with the lunch supplies anywhere near the Castle. They’d have to make three trips in the dog cart and then lug everything up the Castle hill by hand. But the view from the top of the tower was breathtaking.’

  Her spectacles flashed, like twin moons in the dark. ‘You’d probably better drive to Kynnoch, Ned, and see if we can get horses.’

  She turned to Ysidro, shivering slightly in his black greatcoat at her side.

  ‘There should be no problem achieving horses, Mistress.’

  Seabury shot another glance at his uncanny passenger, then returned his attention to the road. ‘I know them at the stables.’ He wet his lips. ‘Antrim – the head groom – is a little fond of the bottle, and if this is one of his nights there’s a good chance I can take four out unnoticed.’

  ‘I suspect,’ purred the vampire, ‘the man will be deep asleep.’

  Asher hoped Ysidro was right. He looked exhausted and ill. Still, Zahorec had been using such an elixir from December to May, and had been able to put down everyone at Tufton Farm.

  ‘Make that two horses,’ Asher said. ‘Ned, I’ll want you to go up to the house and speak to Noel. Don’t let Cece know, if she’s there. Don’t let anyone know. Wake him up if you have to, lie to him if you have to, but get him away from Kynnoch. Take him back to Glasgow tonight – back to London, if you can. He’ll probably be doped, but he’ll also probably be himself.’

  Ned nodded jerkily. In his eyes was what they both knew Dr Millward would do: stop the car, get out, and say, You cannot take the help of the enemy without turning toward the shadow yourself.

  Not even to save your friend?

  Not even to save your daughter?

  And your wife, Asher reflected. And yourself …

  Seabury’s gaze went back to the road. He drove on in silence.

  Was that why Johanot of Valladolid went back to Spain?

  And did his flight do him any good?

  Fleeting moonlight revealed the eerie landscape of rock summits and bare boulders, blinked on the waters of Loch Lomond. You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, the old song said: the low road being, Asher knew, the paths that the Dead walked. And I’ll be in Scotland before ye …

  Because the Dead do indeed travel fast.

  Far off in the darkness, rising wind bore the howling of dogs.

  ‘That will be the pack at Kynnoch Hall,’ Lydia whispered.

  Asher felt as if the skin crept on his body.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Seabury. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Some chance noise, mayhap.’ Ysidro, who had sunk into meditation, raised his head a little. ‘Or perchance they sense that ill things walk the moor tonight.’

  ‘What weapons have you?’ Asher had seen the long gun-case Seabury had loaded into the back of the Ford.

  ‘Shotgun and pistol.’ Loaded with silver, Asher guessed. They were what he’d carried to hunt vampires in the sewers below London last night. ‘And Roddy’s rifle.’

  ‘Let us take them. We’ll need them more than you.’

  Clouds gathered, broke; swept the motor car with a spattering of rain as it turned on to the track toward Kynnoch Hall. The howling of the pack grew louder, dying when some kennel man, perhaps, came out and whipped them silent, only to break out again. Ysidro, arms folded, listened without a sound.

  They surmounted a hill crest. Moonlight showed them a huddle of roofs, touched with a few lights low against the earth, where servants washed up after late tea. A single lantern gleamed where the stables must be. Seabury began a careful descent over tarmac buckled and rock strewn from winter downpours. A glance at his watch showed Asher that it was just after one.

  ‘Two horses?’ whispered Seabury. ‘Not three?’

  ‘Saddle no beast for me.’ Ysidro’s soft voice came from out of the darkness. ‘I shall follow afoot.’

  ‘All right.’ Seabury asked no reason. No horse would bear the Undead and few mounts would even endure a vampire’s touch. The clamor of the pack continued unabated, but no man’s shadow now crossed the lantern light beside the stable door.

  In the rear seat of the Ford, Ysidro was motionless as pale stone.

  Only after Seabury had braked the car, sheathed his dark lantern, and picked his way afoot toward the stables, did the vampire lift his head. ‘No child dreams in the Hall,’ he said. ‘There are some, sleeping here and there in the night – villagers, at a distance, I think. Without knowing the child I cannot tell one from another.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Lydia touched his arm.

  ‘’Tis naught. Think what fools we should have looked, mounting assault upon an empty castle while our quarry was left behind us here.’ He turned his gaze out into the darkness, where tor and heath and Munro blended with piled cloud in a wall of black. ‘I shall play the scout, I think, before you and behind. The dogs do not lie. Undead walk the moor tonight.’

  ‘Zahorec?’

  There was something bird-like about the movement of the vampire’s head – Listening? Scenting? Something un-human.
<
br />   ‘More than one.’ A broken fragment of moonlight showed pale brows pinch over the aquiline nose.

  ‘Could Grippen have followed us after all?’ Lydia’s voice sank to a whisper, as if she feared the Master of London might hear them. No unreasonable concern …

  ‘He has living men aplenty at call,’ agreed Ysidro softly, ‘who would take five pounds, or ten, to travel to Scotland with a trunk and ask no questions what it might contain. The world e’en abounds with those who would do so for nothing.’

  ‘Is that how you got from Italy to London in two days?’

  ‘The dead travel fast, Mistress. And the living sometimes stand in desperate need of whatever the dead can pay them.’ Rising, the vampire leaped lightly over the side of the open car to the stony drive. ‘Whether ’tis Lionel out there, or whether this Zahorec has made a fledgling, either of the American girl or of someone else, I cannot tell. Perchance it may be one of the old vampires, the spirits that haunted the moors and caves time out of mind here and preyed upon the villages. ’Twere best I keep behind you, and best we all pray – to whoever we think might listen – that through weariness I am mistaken in my perception, and that we shall meet only one foe tonight.’

  Then he was gone.

  ‘They’re sleeping like the dead in the stables.’ Seabury, when he came up the path leading two of the Earl of Crossford’s hacks, was waxen with strain. ‘Not only in the stables, everywhere! Every hound in the kennels is giving tongue and nothing! Not a kennel boy, not a groom, not a servant from the house …’

  He looked around him, the white of his eyes showing all round the dark pupils in the dim glow of the dark lantern. Flakes of silver rimmed the streaming clouds overhead; the baying of the hunting pack drifted on the night like the smoke of spreading fire.

  ‘The noise will wake the house again soon,’ said Asher. ‘Get Noel out of there. If Miranda isn’t in the house I’m guessing that Cece isn’t, either. Tell anyone who tries to stop you that Armistead’s threatening to disinherit his daughter completely unless Noel wires him tonight. We’ll leave the motor here for you; you’ll probably need to refill the petrol. Once you’re away from the house tell him about Zahorec: that he’s a vampire; that he’s been controlling Noel; that he’s planning to kill Noel and take his place. That’s if you need to. He may be too dopey to care.’

  The young man’s lips tightened, but he didn’t disagree.

  Asher gathered the reins in his left hand. Seabury caught him around the waist, took his weight while he balanced on the running board as a mounting block, got his left foot in the stirrup. Then while Asher recovered his breath he handed him up one of the rifles, the dark-lantern, and the walking stick he’d bought at Willesden. The rainy wind was rising, driving the clouds before it toward the moon.

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘And you,’ said Asher quietly. ‘Even if we manage to kill Zahorec, you know, it won’t be the end of Noel’s griefs. He’ll still be the man you tried to save in Paris, with that man’s family and flaws.’

  ‘I know that.’ Seabury smiled crookedly. ‘And I suppose …’ He paused, as if looking at his friendship – his love – for that tall, clumsy nobleman who only wanted to paint and read and be left alone. ‘Do vampires have this sort of problem? Loving, and trying to help people who don’t want to be helped, and getting their affairs into a mess? Do you know?’

  Asher said, ‘They don’t. Their existence is very simple: protecting themselves at all costs, the hunt, and the kill. That’s why people become vampires.’ He reined away, toward the barely seen Corbett of rock that Lydia had pointed out to him as marking the way to Stenmuir. Night lay on the moors like the foreshadow of death, as if all the world had been tipped over into an eternity that moved with invisible peril.

  It was only hours until first light.

  He smelled wood smoke before he saw Stenmuir Castle itself: not a castle, as Lydia had said, but a square gray manor house grafted on to the original tower of what was in those parts called a fortalice, a small fortress built to defend against border reivers. With the disappearance of the moon again Lydia had dismounted, leading both horses by a slit of lantern light. Tiny as a lone fragment of glitter adrift in the ocean of the night, a window glowed against the cloud wrack.

  Roof line and tower took shape against the ragged sky. A suggestion of broken timbers, the black spoor of some old fire. Beside the ruin of a pair of crumbling gateposts something white moved in the gloom, and he heard a horse whinny in fear, and the tink of harness-brasses. A chaise stood near the gate, empty. Its lights had been doused but their metal was hot to the touch. Asher whispered, ‘Ysidro,’ but the vampire failed to materialize.

  Scouting at a distance?

  Lying with a broken back after an encounter with one of those vampires he’d sensed? Unable to move and waiting for first light to ignite his flesh?

  No way to tell.

  Asher’s own mount jittered against the lead rein. The wind? Or something else? Five miles away across mire and stone, the dogs could still be heard baying at Kynnoch Hall.

  He slid from the saddle, handed Lydia the rifle. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  ‘You can move quicker.’ He took a step, almost fell, stood for a moment clinging to his stick and wondering if Millward’s idiotic scheme of last night was going to end in the entire Asher family and their Undead godfather getting killed.

  I can do this …

  He took a deep breath, shifted his hold on the cane and the shotgun, and limped agonizingly up the crag on which the little Castle was built. Steps had been cut where the path was steepest, but he was sweating by the time he reached the door.

  It was unlocked. A candle burned beyond a door to his right, and the suggestion of voices, of footfalls, murmured overhead. Feeling as if he had been rationed only a certain number of paces for the night, Asher dragged himself through the great entry hall to the half-opened door of what had probably been a dining room. An enormous table was all that remained of its furnishings, and on it lay a woman’s crimson leather handbag, a candlestick with candle burning, a Thermos, a picnic basket, and four books.

  Worn leather covers glinted with faded gilt. They’d been wrapped in a silk shawl and he hadn’t the slightest doubt what they were.

  Cece must have found where her father hid them, and stole them when she fled.

  The thought was only a passing one. The important fact was that there was no one in the room.

  Wait for them here? The picnic basket and Thermos promised a return. Getting up the stairs – and then coming back down them – were going to be exercises in agony that he might well not be capable of making without a fall. The banister was long gone; the drop from the gallery above would be wicked.

  But the utter stillness of the night raised the hair on his nape, and morning’s nearness after the short summer night was a goad even sharper than the pain in his ankle. She’s meeting Zahorec here with the books. They’re upstairs now …

  He dragged himself up the first two steps, strained his ears to listen. A woman said something, indistinct through the intervening stone and wood. Another voice, also a woman’s, replied.

  Then like the stab of a silver knife into his flesh a child’s voice: ‘Go home …’

  ‘Hush,’ snapped an alto voice, with the slight inflection of speech that Asher recognized as characteristic of American southern blacks. ‘We gonna take you home soon, honey.’

  The sound of his daughter’s voice heated every atom of his flesh, as if he’d drunk brandy. Wild and murderous rage …

  They’re waiting for him. He must have gone to kill. With dawn this close, he’ll be here very, VERY soon …

  By putting his shoulder to the paneling on the stair, and keeping his weight on the risers, he was able to climb, more or less steadily, and without a sound.

  ‘… all depends on what your daddy’s gonna say about that little girl,’ continued the black girl – Hellice, Lydia had said h
er name was. ‘You say she’s this Charlene Savenake’s baby given over into your care – though I never heard Lady Savenake had no other daughter but Sylvie—’

  ‘Whose daughter she is, is none of your business, Hellie,’ said a lighter voice – like a soubrette who’d had elocution lessons. ‘She’s in my care—’

  ‘Then why keep her secret from your daddy? Why send me out here with her all today? I’m not sayin’ you’re wrong, Miss Cece. I’m just sayin’, your daddy could fire me without a character, and then where’d I be?’

  The upper floor of Stenmuir was far more ruinous than the lower. Much of the roof was gone, and the walls of several of the rooms. When the clouds shifted Asher saw the tower rising above them, little more than a hollowed shell, floors broken away and inner doors opening into nothing. None of the banister that once had circled the gallery above the hall survived. The hall below was a pit of night.

  Keeping to the wall where the stronger flooring would take his weight without creaking, Asher angled his head to look through the door of one of the few intact chambers that opened from the gallery. By the light of a single lantern, Cecelia Armistead had to be the dark-haired young lady in a flame-red walking costume more stylish than practical. Hellie – what Americans would call an octoroon – stood beside a camp chair in a corner where a couple of carriage rugs had been thrown.

  Miranda sat curled into the corner on the carriage rugs. Her red hair was tangled and uncombed, her dress dirty, but she watched the two women without fear, as if she were just calculating her moment to run. Asher could almost hear her thinking, I’m only a baby, how far can I get and is it worth getting slapped if I get caught? Her face was bruised: someone had slapped her recently and hard.

  Smoothly, Hellie continued, ‘I just want a guarantee, Miss Cece—’

  Through the door, Miranda’s eyes met her father’s, widened in shocked joy—

  And she didn’t make a sound.

  A stride took Cece to her servant and she caught Hellie’s arm. ‘Don’t you try to blackmail me, you black bitch—’

  Miranda bolted for the door as Asher stepped around the doorpost, leveled the shotgun on both women as they turned. ‘Stand right where you are.’