Pale Guardian

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘I would have heard,’ returned the vampire. ‘Many of us haunt both sides of the lines. In any event, what use would such creatures be? Unless their minds could be directed and controlled the danger would be too great. No general in his senses would take such risk.’

  ‘But that may be why this woman – this dark-haired nurse – is seeking a vampire, don’t you see?’ Lydia glanced quickly across into her companion’s face. ‘You’ve said – many times – that a vampire can govern the actions of a living mind. Can summon at will those whose eyes he has looked into, can … can even sometimes put himself literally into another’s mind, if his victim is drugged, or insane. They’re seeking a vampire …’

  ‘Then they are fools,’ returned Don Simon calmly. ‘An old vampire, whose strength has waxed with time and who has been taught to manipulate the minds of the living, perhaps. A master vampire, or someone like Antonio, whose master instructed him in these ancient skills … Not all masters trust their fledglings to that extent. And so old a vampire will have doubtless learned not to put faith in the living – leaving aside the fact that no vampire, of any age, cares the purchase of a button about the wars of the living. We do not care, Mistress. As Antonio told you earlier tonight: we do not care. Not about our homelands, not about our families, not about those whom we loved in life. Nothing exists for us but the hunt. We know any other ties to be dangerous, and ties to the living, most dangerous of all.’

  He paused for an instant where the communications trench in which they now picked their way branched, then turned right (Welches, said the sign), his strength helping Lydia find her feet where the duckboards were broken and the icy, filthy water soaked through her shoes.

  ‘The Master of Prague, where these things have long bred, and the Master of Peking, have both affirmed to me, that even the strongest master vampire has no dominion over the minds of these things. If this nurse you have seen— Carajo!’ He flinched at the sudden, earth-shaking thunder of an explosion that sounded nearly on top of them. Orange glare filled the sky. Another roar followed, and the splattering of torn-up earth, followed by the shouting and cursing of men.

  ‘We’re almost there!’ Lydia seized Don Simon’s hand again, her heart in her throat but her mind still calculating: That shell was at least a hundred yards away …

  Around the corner ahead …

  She snatched the lantern from his hand and slammed back the slide – no further need of precaution against snipers, not with what sounded like a full-on barrage starting – and ran, digging in her pocket for the rolled-up empty sandbags she’d brought to carry her prize. The ground jerked and the duckboards underfoot suddenly erupted with fleeing rats, swarming from their holes and pouring in a gray river up the side of the trench, as if the Pied Piper had blown his horn somewhere in the hellish cacophony of the darkness. If there’s a push on I’ll lose this thing, or it’ll be buried in a barrage …

  She heard Don Simon swear in Spanish behind her, and a shell went overhead with a noise like an oncoming train.

  Am I being intrepid or stupid?

  Her heart in her throat, not giving herself time to think, Lydia whipped around the angle of the trench and her lantern-light fell on the huddled black mass of the revenant, and a smaller form leant over it. A woman.

  Lydia stumbled to a halt. A shuttered lantern stood near the revenant’s severed head, and by its dim light Lydia saw the woman bend over the hacked and bloody body, doing something she couldn’t see. As the figure raised its face, she had a momentary vision of a heart-shaped countenance framed in pulled-back dark hair, a rich mouth twisted in resolution and shock. The gleam of a silver cross, dangling around her neck.

  Something else by the lantern, a satchel …

  Another explosion shook the ground, closer this time, and the woman grabbed for something in her pocket. Don Simon’s hand closed on Lydia’s elbow and Lydia was dragged back around the protective angle of the trench. She saw the woman rise from beside the corpse – it was still aimlessly clawing around it with one hand – and flee down the trench, turning to throw something …

  Don Simon yanked Lydia along the trench, and she realized what the other woman had flung instants before they ducked around the next angle and the massive shock wave of noise, oily heat and flying debris almost knocked her off her feet. Grenade …

  Men surged, shouting, out of another communications trench, as the barrage intensified over their heads. Yells of ‘Get out of it, boys!’ mingled with the screaming whistles of officers and bellowed commands to re-form ranks. Don Simon’s arm circled Lydia’s waist and he dragged her along, slithering expertly through the struggling bodies. He froze as a shell howled overhead and pulled her back, judging the sound of it, Lydia thought … And sure enough, some dozen yards ahead of them the crash of its explosion made her head reverberate, and dirt and mud splattered her as the trenches caved in under the blow.

  The noise hurt her bones, and the mud splattered on her glasses made it nearly impossible to see. Men formed up around them again into ranks, which flowed through the communications trenches, Don Simon swimming against the tide. They came into a clear space of trench, the walls broken into craters by shells and the duckboards shattered underfoot. Men clattered past them, bearers carrying rolled-up blankets or the new-style litters, feet sinking – as Lydia’s sank – into bottomless mud. Twice she stumbled, and glancing down saw she’d tripped over corpses. But every new explosion filled the air above the trenches with flying shrapnel and splattering bits of red-hot metal – I hope Captain Palfrey has taken cover somewhere …

  He evidently had. His hands reached down from the trench-ladder as Lydia was helped up out of the darkness, and it was he who half-guided, half-carried her toward the road down which men were already rushing toward the trenches, to re-enforce the existing troops against the German ‘push’ that everybody knew was going to come the moment it was light.

  I have to get back to the clearing station. The wounded are going to be pouring in any minute …

  ‘I’m afraid the car was commandeered, M’am,’ gasped Captain Palfrey, as they stumbled over the broken ground. ‘I got their names, and units. The colonel’s going to have words to say to their commanding officers—’

  ‘The colonel?’ Lydia stumbled, and sought in her pockets for some piece of cloth sufficiently un-soaked to make headway against the muck that smeared her glasses. The shell-fire was somewhat behind them now, except for the occasional strays, and men still raced past them, packs clattering, rifles in hand. Minds focused on what lay ahead.

  Four miles back to camp …

  ‘Colonel Simon.’

  The first threads of daylight had not yet begun to dilute the darkness. Don Simon presumably knew how long it would take him to get to a secure shelter – God knows where! Reaction was setting in, and Lydia had to cling to Palfrey’s arm to keep from falling as they plowed through the wilderness of mud and old shell-holes, her wet skirts slapping and tangling her feet. Rats still swarmed. Once the fighting stopped, the creatures would stream back, to feed on the dead.

  Lydia thought she glimpsed, away in the darkness, the pale shape of an ambulance-wagon jolting, and wondered if it was really an ambulance-wagon or just Antonio and Basilio.

  Passionately, cold and exasperation and despair overwhelming her, Lydia cried, ‘Don’t you know what he really is?’

  Captain Palfrey took both her hands in his – warm and strong, like Jamie’s, the capable hands of a man who understands horses and guns and tools – and his blue eyes held a gentle understanding. From his pocket he produced a clean – clean! – handkerchief, and stood while she took off her glasses and wiped the lenses.

  Then with a little smile he tapped the side of his nose and said, ‘Well, M’am, it’s all a deep dark secret, of course … And he’s warned me that all kinds of the most ridiculous stories are circulated about him. Nursery-tale stuff you’d hardly credit, like a combination of Count Dracula and Bluebeard. But I’ve guessed the truth.
’ His eyes shone in the first whisper of the coming dawn. ‘He – and his Department – are probably England’s best hope of winning the war.’

  FIVE

  In his tidy back room on Grafton Place, James Asher sat on the end of the bed and looked down into the narrow yard, glistening under gray morning rain.

  And thought about the Others.

  Hideous memories, most of them. Shambling figures in the dark of ravines, in the hills west of Peking. Red eyes gleaming in the tunnels of abandoned mines.

  Lydia sitting on the muddy shore of one of Peking’s artificial lakes, red hair glinting with the fires that consumed the last of the Peking hive, weeping …

  Miraculously unhurt.

  He’d known she was walking back into danger, just a little over two years later – back in November, four months ago, now. He’d said goodbye to her, his first full day on his feet after recovery from pneumonia. He’d gone to the train station with her, the sixth of November, the gray mists that drifted over the station platform still smelling ominously of leftover gun-powder from Bonfire Night. Lydia in her VAD uniform: the single small trunk beside her wouldn’t even have contained her cosmetics before the war. After the porter took it away she’d clung to him, gawky and thin and stork-like, her cheek pressed to his (she had carefully removed her spectacles, as she always did before they embraced). Wordless.

  He knew she might never come back from the fighting. Seventeen years on Her Majesty’s Secret Service – and another decade and a half of following newspapers and reports – had made him sickeningly aware of what waited at the Front: machine guns, artillery that could kill at a distance of miles. And the White Horseman, Pestilence, more terrible than either.

  Danger from the revenants, whom they had last seen in Peking, had been the farthest thing from his mind.

  Looking back at their parting he couldn’t believe he’d been that naïve. Of course some government was going to hear about them sooner or later.

  Of course they’ll try to make them into a weapon of war.

  His studies had unearthed almost as many examples of similar beings in folklore as the study of vampires did: draugar, haugbui, the Celtic neamh mairbh. African and Caribbean zombies. Greek vrykolak, Chinese hungry ghosts, the barrow wights of ancient English legend. Things that came staggering out of their graves to feed – insatiably. The vampires of Prague, Don Simon Ysidro had told him, had been trying for centuries to get rid of them, to no avail.

  And now one of them was in London.

  Mrs Taylor – who rented out rooms in this tall, narrow house near Euston Station – had brought him up tea and bread and butter, rather to his surprise and unasked (‘I seen yesterday as you was poorly, sir …’). He had spent nearly eighteen hours, since he had returned from his abortive visit to the Foreign Office yesterday afternoon, lying on the bed looking at the ceiling wondering if this was any of his business or not. He ate without much appetite, though he no longer felt feverish. Only deeply fatigued.

  What he most wanted to do was pack up his slender belongings, take a cab (if he could find such a thing) to Paddington Station and be in Oxford tonight, playing hide-and-seek with Miranda and deciphering Lydia’s latest letter from the Front.

  What he would do instead, he already knew, was send another telegram to Mrs Grimes, and then go to the Wolf and Child on Chalton Street, to talk to publican Tim.

  Think no more about it. Langham’s confidential, between-you-and-me smile. The matter is in hand.

  Asher moved his hand toward the now-cold teapot to see if there was another cup left in it, but instead lay down again. Two years previously, he had sworn enmity to the vampires of London and had destroyed most of the London nest … only to discover that those he had killed were the unreliable members whom the Master of London wanted to be rid of anyway.

  Twelve years prior to that, at the end of the African war, he had tendered his resignation to the Foreign Office, being unable to put from his mind the young Boer boy he had killed – a good friend, so far as a spy living under cover is able to make actual friends – in the line of what the Department considered duty. Even then he had known that swearing enmity to the Department would be futile and absurd, though he knew what they were. When he’d left Langham’s office on that occasion, his chief had shaken his hand and said – with that confidential little smile – ‘Au revoir.’ The words had been deliberately chosen. Nothing about Langham was accidental. Until we meet again.

  Think no more about it …

  Go back to Oxford and shout ‘A plague on both your houses!’ from the window of the departing train.

  A revenant was hunting in London. It was only a matter of time before the infection began to spread uncontrollably.

  A knock like a siege engine hammered the door. ‘Mr Asher, sir,’ trumpeted young Ginny Taylor’s adenoidal voice in the hall. ‘There’s a lady come t’ see you.’

  Asher levered himself from the bed, astonished at how much energy this took, and slid into his jacket. ‘Thank you, Ginny,’ he said to the girl – fourteen, clean-scrubbed, with a face that reminded him of the roan cob that used to pull his father’s gig – as he stepped out into the corridor. ‘Please tell her I’ll be right down.’

  ‘Professor Asher!’ Josetta Beyerly sprang to her feet from the threadbare chair in the parlor window, strode across to grip both his hands. ‘I didn’t mean for them to drag you down here—’

  ‘This is a respectable house,’ replied Asher gravely. ‘As Mrs Taylor would no doubt have told you if you’d even thought about suggesting the possibility of coming up to a gentleman’s room. I take it Mrs Grimes telegraphed you with her conviction that I’d taken ill again?’

  ‘Why “good society” leaps to the automatic conclusion that every interaction between a woman and a man is of necessity immodest—’ began the young woman indignantly; then she caught herself, and shook her head. ‘It’s all of a piece,’ she sighed. ‘A way of making women their own jailers … And yes,’ she added, with her beautiful smile. ‘Mrs Grimes wired me last night. Please.’ She drew him back to the chairs by the window. ‘Sit down, Professor … Are you all right?’

  Bright brown eyes looked across into his as he took the seat opposite. Even in the blue-and-white uniform of a volunteer at First London General Hospital, she wore a little rosette of purple, green and beige ribbons that marked her as a suffragette (And I’ll bet she fights every day with the ward sister about it …). He smiled a little, pleased by her stubborn adherence to a cause that many women had set aside at the start of the war because we must all stick together …

  Strident though she was about her politics, Josetta had been Lydia’s close friend since 1898, the year his wife had spent at a select finishing school for girls in Switzerland, where Josetta, five years the elder, had been the English mistress. And Josetta had been the gawky, bookish young heiress’s only friend. Eighteen months later in England, it was Josetta who had secretly coached Lydia through the examination to get her accepted to Somerville College – an acceptance which had resulted in Lydia being disowned by her outraged father. A small legacy had enabled the one-time English mistress to remain in England, where she took day pupils in French and music to make ends meet, and now, at thirty-seven, she was active in a dozen causes, from votes for women, Irish independence and settlement houses to ‘rational dress’, the elimination of the House of Lords, and vegetarianism.

  ‘I’m quite well,’ Asher reassured her, though her dark brows plunged over her delicate nose at this. Evidently, he reflected, it was obvious he was lying. ‘I was kept later than I’d planned by meetings, and in fact I was on my way to the post office to let Mrs Grimes know that I won’t be home today either, nor probably tomorrow.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ she asked. ‘Do you have board at this place, or are you eating at one of the frightful cafés hereabouts? Come to dinner with me at my club, if you’d care to – the menu isn’t much, but at least it would be an improvement on fried chi
ps and sausage.’ She smiled, reached across to pat his hand, still slim as a girl. ‘Lydia did tell me to look after you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Asher returned her smile, though he suspected that, to earn even the utilitarian Josetta’s disapprobation, the food on offer at the Grosvenor Crescent Club must be mediocre indeed. ‘I should like that.’

  ‘Have you heard from her?’

  ‘Not since before I left Oxford. But I know the fighting in Flanders has been heavy, so she may not have had time to write.’

  While the former English mistress spoke of her own experiences with the casualties of the spring’s first great ‘push’, and of her outrage against the propagandist posters which plastered the hospital (and indeed, two virulent examples of the genre glared from the wall of the parlor: Women of Britain say ‘Go!’ and Lend your Five Shillings to your Country and Crush the Germans), his mind sifted her words automatically. ‘… And of course they don’t know any better. Most of those poor boys haven’t been outside their own neighborhoods in their lives. The women who’d come into the settlement houses could give you chapter and verse about each others’ grandfathers and great-aunts, but would regard Kensington as foreign soil …’

  ‘There is something you can do for me,’ said Asher, when Josetta finished her account of procuring books and magazines for the wounded men in London General. ‘If you would be so kind. Do you still have connections with the settlement house in Camden Town? I have heard—’ It was a bow drawn at a venture, but he guessed the query would at least bear some fruit – ‘that there’s been a … a mugger, or a slasher, working along the Regent’s Canal. A man who attacks at night, and who stinks of dirty clothes and fish. It would help me enormously if you could ask some of the people down at the settlement house, or people in that neighborhood, if they’ve heard of such a thug making the rounds.’

  Josetta regarded him curiously – like himself, he realized with a smile, sifting what he said, tallying in her mind what his purpose might be. ‘And does this have something to do with these “meetings” that are keeping you in town?’