The Kindred of Darkness

by Barbara Hambly

  Both Cece and Hellie expressed their feelings in a way that Lydia’s Aunt Lavinnia would have deemed only to be expected of Americans. Miranda grabbed his leg and pressed her face to it. ‘Papa’. He could feel her shaking.

  ‘Your mama’s downstairs,’ he said quietly. ‘Go quickly – stay by the wall …’

  We’re going to get out of this after all …

  Behind him in the dark Lydia screamed, ‘Jamie, look out!’

  THIRTY

  Asher turned his head and Hellie grabbed her mistress and shoved her at him, the American girl’s weight catching him on his right side and collapsing his weakened leg like the blow of a hammer. He tried to roll clear, but Cece wrenched the shotgun from his hands and reared herself back, fired it at him as he threw Miranda out of the way – to his life’s end he was never sure how he managed it in the confusion. Ricocheting pellets tore his arm and scalp; he heard both Miranda and Cece scream. As he tried to get to his feet someone flung herself past him, almost tripping over him in a rush of skirts.

  The next instant a numbing kick to the ribs sent him almost over the edge of the gallery. He grabbed the broken stub of a baluster, dragged his legs back from over the black drop, and saw, by the flaring glow of the lantern, Damien Zahorec at the top of the stair, holding Lydia by the waist and one arm.

  Cece, on her knees and clutching a bleeding arm (the ricochet must have caught her, too, and serve her right), sobbed, ‘Kill her!’ A revolver lay near her on the floor (Lydia must have had it in her hand) and Cece grabbed for it. In the same instant Miranda wailed, ‘Mama!’ and ran toward Lydia with arms outstretched.

  Lydia twisted in Zahorec’s grip and smote him across the eyes with the silver chains wrapped around her left wrist, lunged for her daughter when the vampire dropped her with a shrieked curse. She might have reached her, had not Cece fired at her – missing her by yards, but Lydia dodged aside, and the next instant, with the near-invisible swiftness of the Undead, Zahorec had overtaken her, knocked her spinning with a sidelong slap, and scooped up Miranda in his arms.

  The child screamed, bit, thrashed like a demon, but the cold clawed hand wrapped around her throat and Zahorec shouted, ‘Stay back!’

  Lydia, halfway to her feet with a look in her eyes that Asher had never seen in his usually matter-of-fact young wife, froze, crouching. Cece swung the pistol toward her and Zahorec shouted again. ‘Drop it!’

  Such was his power over the American girl that she too stood still, though she didn’t let go of the weapon, or lower its aim.

  ‘Cecelia,’ said the vampire softly. ‘Caro. I have told you I have need of this woman – stay where you are, Lydia, meine Liebling … This is your so-brave husband?’ The blue eyes flickered down to Asher, who had got his elbows under him and was struggling to breathe. In the soft old hochdeutsch of the Empire he continued, ‘Don’t be foolish, mein Held. I want your beautiful one alive and willing, and if you make me kill you then I shall be obliged to kill her also, and your lovely child. Surely you have seen how it is, and what it is that I need.’

  ‘And what,’ panted Asher, ‘do you need?’ He could probably, he calculated, reach the vampire if he lunged for him, but if he did so he knew Miranda would die. Lydia, too, the moment Zahorec took his attention from the hysterical girl with the pistol.

  Watch for it, he thought. You’ll only have a split-second …

  ‘I need what all men need,’ replied Damien gravely, ‘living or dead. I need my freedom.’ In the lamplight he looked far worse than Ysidro had, skeletal and alien, with his dark hair falling over his eyes and his powerful form bony and shrunken. The silver chain on Lydia’s wrist had left a suppurating welt across his forehead, as if he’d been struck with a red-hot rod. He did, in fact, bear a superficial resemblance to Noel Wredemere. Asher wondered for how much longer he would have been able to muster the strength to maintain the illusion. How much longer he’d have been able to make love to Cece Armistead in her dreams.

  ‘For three hundred years I have been a slave – three hundred years! Suitable penance, my old confessor would say, for one who used to boast that I could enslave any woman whose eyes met mine …’

  His glance returned to the dark-haired girl in crimson, her revolver still trained on Lydia, but her eyes on Zahorec’s face: suspicion, incomprehension, jealousy, adoration.

  ‘A jest worthy of the Devil himself. They said Ippolyta Vranica, sorceress and heretic and ruler in her own right of the mountains beyond Zara, had a heart of obsidian, impervious to the smiles of a man. Of course I had to have her. Never did it cross my mind to wonder at it, that I never saw her save after the sun was down … too late I found the reason. Queen of the vampires of the Dinarics, she would not let me go. What would you have done, Englishman? With the life bleeding from me, drop by slow drop, she dangled me over the abyss of death and offered me the choice: to be her creature, her servant, her lover for eternity. What would you have done?’

  Asher dragged himself carefully to a sitting position. ‘I’ve met the lady,’ he said. ‘But if it’s freedom that you seek, what need have you of Lydia’s services, or mine? What need of the London nest, or the Book of the Kindred of Darkness? Where did you get it, by the way?’

  ‘In my days of daylight and breath,’ replied the vampire, ‘I was a scholar of sorts. I read it as I read Pantagreul and Utopia and the dialogs of Plato, and thought of it no more than of those other fairy tales. It was in my house in Venice. I recalled it with bitter longing, all those years of enslavement in the mountains. When the soldiers came and Ippolyta fled, it was the first place I made for. Like everything else it had been sold …’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Cece moved closer to him, the revolver still aimed at Lydia’s heart. ‘I brought you the books, all of them. And I got Noel here. He’s back at the Hall, he’ll marry me tomorrow … Why isn’t it “possible” to get rid of her now?’

  ‘Beautiful one,’ said Zahorec gently, ‘I have need of her—’

  ‘Why? What can she give you that I can’t?’

  ‘Ein Gehirn,’ muttered Zahorec, sotto voce, but replied coaxingly, ‘She is a scholar, beautiful savior. She has skills that I need.’

  ‘I can learn them.’ The American girl’s eyes were wide with the burning focus Asher had seen in soldiers going into the veldt. ‘Is it true what she told me? That you’ve gone to her as you came to me? That you kissed her as you kissed me … Made love to her as you made love to me …?’

  ‘Honestly,’ protested Lydia, ‘I hardly asked him to—’

  ‘You shut up!’ Eyes blazing, the American girl swung to face her demon lover. ‘Did you promise her what you promised me? That she’d be yours forever? Did you tell her you love her, as you told—’

  Asher heard nothing, but Zahorec’s head turned with a snap. Following his glance, Asher saw the maid Hellie, still standing a few yards away, even as her knees buckled, and a ribbon of blood uncurled down her shoulder and breast. Without an instant’s hesitation Asher flung himself at Zahorec’s legs, knocking him over, rolling. He heard Miranda scream and Cece’s revolver fire and felt rather than saw Lydia lunge, too.

  Her feet hammered the wooden floor, fleeing from the gallery through one of the black doors. Claws sank into the back of his neck and a knee ground his spine, but after that first split-second of pinning him, Zahorec didn’t move.

  Asher smelled blood, a lot of it.

  He knew what had happened as he looked into the blackest corner of the gallery, and saw the maid Hellie slither, dead, to her knees and then to the floor.

  The woman who straightened up behind her faced Zahorec across the body, proud pale aquiline face calm as marble and streaked with blood. The dark dress she’d worn in the Roman ruin last night glistened with it; besides the gunshot wounds in neck and breast, her flesh was crossed with the slash-marks of claws.

  She must have met Ysidro …

  Ippolyta kicked Hellie’s body casually over the edge of the gallery. Asher heard t
he meaty smack as it hit the stone floor below. A glance – with Zahorec kneeling beside him, crushing him to the floor, he couldn’t see much more – showed him no sign of Lydia or their child.

  ‘Damien.’

  Zahorec loosed his grip, and stood. ‘My lady …’

  In the old high German of the Empire, she said, ‘Thought you to leave me?’

  Cece fired, emptying the rest of the revolver – Asher didn’t think the bullets even hit their target. Ippolyta turned towards her with eyes like the sun in eclipse. ‘Little whore. Kill her, Damien. I want to see you do it.’

  She still spoke in hochdeutsch, but when Damien turned toward Cece the girl saw in his face what he meant to do. She screamed, ‘Damien, no! I love you!’

  He stopped, features convulsed with pain. ‘Don’t you understand,’ he whispered, ‘that the love of the Undead is not like the love of the living?’

  A statement not entirely accurate, reflected Asher. They look identical so far.

  Damien sprang toward the girl, but either because he was unwilling despite the force of his master vampire’s command, or because the elixirs he’d been taking had eroded his speed and skill, Cece saw him coming. She fired the empty pistol at him, then flung the weapon in his face, doubled from his grab and darted into the blackness of another of those blank-eyed gallery doors. Asher heard her footfalls clatter on the ancient floors, searching a way downstairs.

  ‘Fetch her.’ Ippolyta’s guttural voice was cold.

  Damien averted his face as if from a physical grasp, and as if physically dragged looked back to meet the black glow of her eyes.

  ‘Bring her back here. I’ll fetch the other bitch. I want to see you kill them both.’

  Damien moaned, ‘No …’

  ‘Do it.’ She walked toward him, stopped beside Asher and looked down into his face, then smiled. ‘And we’ll kill the little girl, too.’ And she kicked him over the edge of the gallery.

  He was half-ready for this, and if she’d been a living woman he’d have grabbed her ankles or her skirt, to drag her over after him. As it was he grabbed for the stumps of the burned and shattered balusters; he heard Damien’s footfalls, bodiless as the scratching of a wind-blown tree, as the vampire darted away to catch Cece, but only felt Ippolyta’s going.

  Lydia.

  Miranda.

  It’s fifteen feet to the floor. If I let go I won’t land well; I’ll never get up the stairs again …

  Shadow moved on the stairway. Then a hand cold and bony and strong as the Grim Reaper’s locked around his wrist and dragged him up; another caught him by the back of the jacket.

  ‘Which way?’ It was Ysidro.

  ‘That door—’ There was blood on Ysidro’s hands and clothing: it had indeed been he whom Ippolyta had fought. He looked as if he’d got the worst of it, but at least he’d slowed her down. ‘She’s gone for Lydia and Miranda—’

  Then he was lying alone on the edge of the gallery, Ysidro not even a wisp of smoke vanishing through the door he’d shown. Shaking, Asher crawled to where the shotgun lay, fumbled several silver-nosed bullets from his pockets before finding a shotgun shell, shoved it in the breech. Ysidro looked badly wounded, Ippolyta also …

  She’ll summon Damien.

  He dragged himself to the wall, used it to get to his feet. How much additional silver it would take to incapacitate the vampire queen he didn’t know, but he guessed Ysidro would need every shred of advantage, and the clouds were clearing enough to give him a reasonable chance to aim. Through the black doorway where Lydia had fled with their child he could see moonlight now, and his fear was replaced by certainty. That way led to the stair that wound up the old fortalice tower. Railless stone, spiraling up floor above broken floor.

  He leaned his shoulder to the wall, forced himself up a step, then two. Dizziness swamped him and he sank to his knees so as not to fall. A shadow bent over him, massive and smelling of blood – A hand like cold, clawed iron dragged him to his feet. Damien. He must have killed Cece, to heal himself from the silver-burn …

  A flake of moonlight showed him the face of Titus Armistead.

  And he saw that Titus Armistead had become vampire.

  The American’s eyes caught the thin light like a cat’s. The grizzled hair had almost completely returned to the dark of his prime, and his skin had the white-silk smoothness of vampire flesh. Fangs gleamed wetly as he asked, ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  He answered the father, not the vampire.

  ‘Zahorec’s hunting her. He’ll bring her to Ippolyta alive.’

  ‘Ippolyta?’

  ‘His queen. The one who made him vampire.’

  ‘Where’s she?’

  ‘Ahead …’

  ‘You’re Wilson.’ The powerful arm circled his ribs, dragged him up the narrow steps. ‘You don’t look like him, except your eyes … Your flesh smells like his, your blood … And that’s his clothes …’

  ‘I’m Wilson.’ The conversation in Lincoln’s Inn felt like months ago. ‘I see you found your vampire.’

  ‘He found me.’

  ‘I tried to warn you …’

  The thin lip pulled back from the fangs again; Armistead smiled. ‘Oh, no. I paid him to do me. That bastard’ll bring Cece to this Ippolyta?’

  Asher managed to nod. Badly as Zahorec needed a kill, he couldn’t imagine him disobeying his Queen. Blackness fell away to his left beyond the brink of the narrow stair. To his right, wind keened through a window-slit where the lift of the land, scattered with glacial stones, lay formless in a darkness thinning to ash.

  ‘Good. It takes a devil to fight a devil, Mr Wilson – if that’s really your name. The book taught me that if nothing else. There was nothing else I could see to do, to save her.’

  Stone rattled down from above, clattering off the broken rafters that were all that remained of the tower’s floors. Miranda screamed, ‘Mama!’ Armistead dragged Asher up out of shadow and on to the parapet at the tower’s top, where Ysidro and the Lady Ippolyta struggled on the last yard or so of stairway against the first stains of gray in the sky. She was a queenly woman, and of a height with the Spaniard, powerful with a vampire’s power. Lydia lay on the parapet just beyond them, where she had crawled in a last effort to get away from the Master of the Dinarics, Miranda clasped tight in her arms. Her dress was torn, where Ippolyta had snatched at her. Blood streaked the rips, and her face, and her tangled unbound hair.

  Armistead let go of Asher’s arm, and with the eerie weightless power of the vampires sprang across the gulf of the empty tower that separated them, twelve feet from the stairway to the parapet, his gray Inverness cloak billowing behind him like wings.

  ‘Give her to me.’

  Lydia’s spectacles flashed in the sinking moonlight as she looked up at him, her arms tightening around her child. Feet away, Ippolyta drove Ysidro to his knees on the parapet’s edge, claws buried in the back of his neck – she’d strike Lydia next and strike with the speed of a bullet.

  ‘Give her—!’ The fledgling vampire – the mine-owner who’d lived a lifetime by hard-headed greed – stretched down his hands, clawed and hairy and strong …

  And he too, Asher knew, needed a kill. Needed two kills, if he was going to take on Ippolyta and Zahorec both, if he was going to save his own child.

  Lydia shrank against the stone, clinging tight, threw one fast glance at Asher—

  Dear God, I can’t make this decision—

  He saw his dream again, Johanot of Valladolid reaching down to gather Miranda into his arms.

  He nodded, and would have turned his face away so as not to see, but he couldn’t. Miranda clinging to his neck, Armistead launched himself back across the void to the stairway, landed a few steps below Asher and set the child down.

  ‘Take her down,’ said Armistead. ‘I’ll—’

  Lydia screamed, ‘Simon!’ and Asher looked up, to see Ysidro writhe from his opponent’s grasp. But Ippolyta was swifter than a snake, striking at him befo
re he could catch his balance. His foot slid on the stonework, slippery with both of their blood, and he fell, down into the empty hollow of the tower. Before he was even out of sight she was across the space that separated her from the narrow ledge where Lydia crouched, caught her by the hair and bent over her.

  Armistead tore the shotgun from Asher’s hand, brought it up even as Ysidro, catching some broken rafter below, swung himself back up to the parapet. Ippolyta screamed, jerked her hand back from the silver on Lydia’s throat, face inhuman with rage. Armistead fired, and Ysidro jerked back out of the way of the silver deer-shot that ripped through the flesh of the vampire queen’s face and breast. The force knocked her out and back off the wall, and as she went over she caught Ysidro by the arms, whether to save herself or only with the intent of dragging her enemy to his doom Asher could not tell.

  Lydia cried, ‘Simon!’ again and grabbed for them as they tottered on the edge, but she was too late.

  As they plunged down off the parapet, Damien Zahorec shrieked, ‘Ippolyta!’ as if his soul were being ripped from his flesh.

  He stood below them on the stair, Cece pressed against his body, one arm around her waist and his other hand closed on her throat. She was sobbing with terror, her red gown torn half off her shoulders and her creamy skin marked by claw-rips and scratches. She raised her dark eyes and wailed, ‘Daddy! Oh, Daddy—’

  ‘Let her go,’ said Asher quietly. ‘Your lady is dead.’

  Zahorec’s voice cracked in wild laughter. ‘Is that all you know about us, mein Held? You think a fall like that will kill Ippolyta Vranica? Break her back, yes. Break her legs, yes, and all the bones of her body, so that she lies in agony looking up at the sky as it grows light … yes. But kill her? Never!’

  His blue eyes pressed shut, and again his face spasmed. ‘She will have her vengeance,’ he whispered. ‘I feel her in my mind, in my bones … In agony, but strong unto the end. She holds me here. Even now as the sun rises, she won’t let me flee. She won’t let me leave this place until I do as she commands. She will feel me drink this girl’s life, ere the flame burst out on her flesh …’