Pale Guardian
Page 20
‘Aye.’
He couldn’t say, Good, either, knowing that a bullet wouldn’t kill the thing that that poor old Irish fence had become. That the only way out for him – and for any future victim of his insane hunger – was through fire. Fire, or the burning corrosion of the sun.
All he could say was, ‘Let’s do what we have to do, then.’
EIGHTEEN
Teague was awake when Asher and Grippen returned to the shed. The chickens still chattered and clucked, though softer, resigning themselves – as animals do – stoically to their pain. The Irishman, Asher noticed, hadn’t cried out, and it interested him that the man had enough on his conscience to keep him quiet even in a pitch-black shed on the Hackney Marshes with a revenant somewhere out in the darkness …
And the smell of fresh blood close by.
Asher unhooded the lantern. ‘So is this something you’re being paid for, or were you the ones taking delivery on that first package from France when it got away in London?’
Teague spit at him. Asher sidestepped the wad.
‘We know about that French doctor trying to cook these things up for their army, and it doesn’t really make a lot of difference whether it was the French who sent that poor Fritzy over here and he went astray, or whether one of your people lifted him from them, either on-site in France or on the way. What I need to know is, who are you working for, and do they – or do the French – have some way of controlling these things?’
‘Sod you.’
‘I see you mistake me for someone in the Department.’ Asher slipped one of his knives from his boot, set the lantern down and slashed the buttons from Teague’s shirt, then ripped the garment back over his shoulders. With precise care he cut a large, shallow X in the Irishman’s chest, only deep enough to bleed. Copiously.
Teague’s eyes flared in horror. ‘Damn it, you can’t …’
‘I told you I’m not in the Department.’ Asher wiped the blade on Teague’s shirt and replaced it in his boot. ‘Even if I were, I suspect you underestimate them. I think the smell of that’ll carry more than those poor chickens.’
He stepped back, and watched his prisoner thrash in a violent effort to twist free of the ropes. The man didn’t curse, as he would have, Asher thought, had he been less utterly terrified.
At length Asher said, ‘That’s not going to help you, and it is wasting your time. I think you know none of your men is in any state to help you and I think you know what’s going to happen when that revenant gets here. Even if you do manage to break free and get away during its attack, I think you know what happens to those whose blood gets mixed with Fritzy’s. So why don’t you—’
He turned his head sharply as, from the door, Grippen said, ‘It’s out there.’
‘You’re lying—’ Teague’s voice was hoarse with shock. ‘I been setting chickens out here three nights now—’
Asher retreated a step or two up the ladder to the loft, his eyes warily on the door.
‘I don’t know anythin’—’
‘Too bad.’
‘I swear it!’
Asher said nothing. He’d been perfectly prepared to have Grippen impersonate the revenant – the night was coal-sack dark and the vampire perfectly capable of imitating the random, bleating groans that had come from the cellar – but he knew this wasn’t the case.
Damn it, he’d better not hold out …
He dropped from the ladder, walked to the door to listen, to breathe the damp air— ‘Don’t!’ Teague screamed, clearly thinking he was going to go through the door and keep on going.
Outside in the blackness Asher neither heard nor scented a thing. But the whole night seemed to whisper of it.
He turned back, his face a calm blank.
‘They got one they say’ll be able to command ’em—’
‘Name?’
‘I dunno. Some woman.’
‘Would or does command them?’
‘I dunno! She said would be, will be …’
‘Who said?’
‘Meagher. Oonah Meagher. Calls herself Tuathla. Let me out of here, for the Lord’s sake—’
‘I thought finding these things was the thing you most wanted in the world, Teague. Bringing them over to England, so they could walk about—’
‘For the love of God, man, it’s business! Meagher and her friends, they heard talk of a risin’ against John Bull, while England’s army’s away in France an’ half the Ulster volunteers with ’em! Meagher works over there for this Frenchie, says he’s come up wi’ a scheme to make soldiers out o’ nuttin’, men who’ll walk straight into machine-gun fire an’ won’t care. I dunno the whole of it, they just hired me an’ my boys to meet ’em on the Calais beach in a motor launch: two hard Armagh lads an’ a Fritzy that just huddled under a blanket an’ shivered. We put ’em up in a safe house in Brunswick Road an’ that’s where he broke out from …’
‘Names of the friends?’
‘For God’s sake—!’
He could still smell nothing, hear nothing, but backed from the doorway toward the ladder. Grippen was nowhere to be seen, and Asher knew better than to think that the master vampire would tackle a revenant. Keeping his voice expressionless, he replied, ‘No. For the sake of the men – and women – who won’t be either killed by these things or transformed into them; who won’t have to be killed like murrain cattle to keep this plague from spreading. For the sake of this country – of the world, if you will – if these things start roving at large. And for your own, of course.’
‘Jimmy Darcie, Nan Sloan, Joey Strahan …’ He almost babbled the names. ‘Uh— Jerry Dwyer … Ned Mulready …’
‘Any of them hurt when the thing broke out?’
‘No! ’Twas down the cellar, an’ broke a window. I’m to tell ’em when we catch it – then we heard it got Bert … Please, man, please, what d’you want me to say? If it’s comin’—’
Asher heard – or thought he heard – the soft crunch of a step on the wet gravel outside, and his heart turned sick with shock. ‘Any more of them come over, or just the one?’
‘Just the one – dear God—!’
‘Who else is in on this?’
‘Nobody— Just us! Meagher, an’ Joey—’
‘Safe house, bunch of hard lads,’ mused Asher. ‘That’s a lot of money invested, for just a couple of rebels.’
‘Nobody else knows!’ Teague screamed the words. ‘Not a livin’ soul, I swear it—’
Asher tested the ladder that led up into the loft, made sure that it wasn’t attached and could be pushed down easily. He pulled the knife from his boot again and mounted a step or two, to check whether the cord that would release the trap on the shed door could be easily cut. It could. He mounted another step and Teague shrieked, ‘Butler, a chap named Butler! He paid for it all! Sets up deliveries of the guns wi’ the Germans! We told ’em we had a way to get fighters is all! He gave Jimmy Darcie a hundred pounds and paid us besides! I swear that’s all! I swear it!’
Asher sprang down from the ladder, bent to cut the cord that held Teague to the beam, and in that instant was surrounded by the stink of the revenant: blood, rats, urine, filth. He swung around, aghast to see that it was inside the shed with them, coming at them in the dim glow of the dark lantern, How could I not have seen it? Not have heard it …?
With a hideous crash the steel-and-silver grille dropped over the shed door, but the revenant didn’t slow its rush by a second. Asher made to dive to cut the rope on Teague’s feet, but like a nightmare darkness surrounded him, and he had a vague awareness of being dragged literally off his feet. The next second, it seemed, he fell with a crash on the plank flooring of the loft and by the lamplight reflected from below saw Grippen hurl the ladder down into the shed beneath them.
Teague screamed.
‘You’ve more bollocks than brains,’ snapped Grippen, and ripped open the lid of one of the crates. ‘Could have got yoursel’ killed, an’ who knows how many of these godless things
yet to deal with.’ As Asher had guessed, the crate was full of rifles, brand new and still thick with factory grease. The vampire pulled one out and used it to smash a hole in the flimsy wood of the roof between the rafters. ‘Don’t bother,’ he added, as Asher moved toward the edge of the loft. ‘The man’s dead.’
Teague was still screaming, but Asher knew what the vampire meant.
Grippen sprang lightly up to the hole and pulled himself through it, reached down – brutal, strong hands in their black gloves – to draw Asher up after him, then slid down the roof to the edge and dropped off, a bare eight feet to the ground. Asher followed, and walked with him to the boarded-up pub, where, more by touch than anything else – for no gas was laid on in the building and Asher guessed, now, that it would be deadly dangerous to light a lamp – they dragged Teague’s compatriots out and into one of the other sheds.
‘There’s paraffin in the kitchen,’ said Asher.
‘Stay here, then,’ growled the vampire. ‘I’ll make sure the place is good an’ doused – an’ you look like hell.’ He shoved Asher down onto something – it felt like a barrel – in the smaller shed, and turned back, a dim shape of black in the blackness, toward the pub.
Realizing that he was, in fact, almost too tired to stand, Asher caught the dirty wool sleeve of his coat. ‘Did you ever hear that thing coming?’
‘Nary a peep.’
‘Did you hear anyone else? See anyone?’
The vampire turned back, stood over him, a dark presence more sensed than seen. ‘There’s someone out there, aye,’ he said. ‘One of these Irish or one of your lot, I don’t know. Followin’ old Hungry Tom in there—’ he jerked his head toward the larger shed – ‘I’m guessin’.’
‘The Department knew one of their subjects had been taken,’ said Asher wearily. ‘They had a man looking out for him, the moment he landed in England. Trying to trace him – and trying to keep those who’d stolen him from recapturing him before they did.’ He rubbed his throat, where the bruises of the garrote still smarted. ‘By whatever means they could.’
The matter is in hand, Langham had smiled …
And somebody in Germany was doubtless saying the same thing to his superiors, and basking in anticipation of promotion.
He added, ‘Thank you. That’s twice tonight you’ve saved my life.’
‘Huh.’ The vampire set his hands on his hips. ‘I ain’t given up hope you’ll come round to my way of thinkin’, Asher. I need a man like you. And you’re a natural for it. But I warn you now. I’ll kill you mesel’, ere I let that Papist whoreson Ysidro make you a fledgling of his.’
Grippen scattered paraffin over both the Blind King and the shed where the first revenant – Hungry Tom, Tom the Ogre, some poor nameless German soldier picked at random from among prisoners in a war he might never have wanted to have anything to do with – gouged and tore at Teague’s body. Then Asher and the Master of London sat down to wait until it was almost sun-up, Asher to make sure that neither revenant would escape the flame into night’s darkness, Grippen listening for ‘our little pal’ in the darkness, though Asher was, by this time, fairly certain of who it was out there. Certain, and a little disgusted with himself for not having guessed it sooner.
Shortly before the first whispers of daylight, Asher became aware that Grippen had gone, and tossed burning screws of paraffin-soaked newspaper through the broken windows of the pub, and the hole in the roof of the shed. Then he went back into the smaller shed, to inform Teague’s henchmen that the police would be on their way. With the first stains of light, he discovered that the smaller shed also contained boxes of German rifles.
And that it now contained only two bound Irishmen, when he knew that there had been four, asleep around the table in the pub.
Grippen had brought them out to the shed in darkness.
Grippen, who’d had a severe burn from the silver wielded by Asher’s attacker earlier in the night; a burn that vampires had only one way of healing.
He closed his eyes. Yes, the men had been smuggling guns from Germany to Ireland, a hanging offense in time of war. And yes, they’d been part of a plan for even greater horror: greater still, had the plan progressed to the point where Germans could get involved. And yes, they’d have killed him two weeks ago if he hadn’t gone through that window and gotten away.
But they’d been prisoners. And bound.
And the house would burn over their bloodless bodies and no one – not the police, not Osric Millward and his hunters – would know how they died.
And Grippen wants me to become part of that world. Because I’d be a useful fledgling. A good vampire.
He walked away from the burning buildings, back toward the railway embankment. With the destruction of the two revenants he was fairly certain that he was now safe from further attack – Langham certainly wouldn’t care about the fates of a couple of Irish rebels – but frizzling in any case with the sense of being watched as he went.
But if I’m right about who it is who’s been watching me—
The thought snagged at his mind as he started the long trudge across the Marshes toward St Paul’s Road, where the busses would begin running for the city.
—why doesn’t Grippen try to recruit HIM?
NINETEEN
‘My dear Madame Asher!’ Lamplight bobbed on the stone of the walls. On the other side of the archway – filled in with bars which gleamed with tarnishing silver plate – the revenants muttered and jerked at their chains, their eyes catching the light. Lydia’s cell had been, she guessed, a burial chapel built off the long catacomb that had been adapted for the revenants. One archway – the one barred with silver – opened into it. Another, also barred, led back into the main round chapel that served as a storeroom.
When the Lady Francesca had dragged her back up out of the tunnel to the well and had thrown her in here, she’d left the cover off the tunnel. In the ten or fifteen minutes that Lydia had been in the cell, with only one of her pocket candles for light, she’d seen half a dozen rats emerge, either from the tunnel, or from the hall which led to Lemoine’s laboratory, and trot straight into the catacomb where the revenants were chained.
There they were torn to pieces, and devoured raw.
So thirteen revenants constitutes a community large enough to have a hive-mind capable of controlling rats.
Lydia was fascinated, despite her horror of the rats and her fear that the next person who entered the storeroom would throw her into the catacomb as well.
I am wearing silver but how long would I be able to stay awake even if three chains’ worth is enough to get them to back off?
Palfrey, bleeding to death back in the tunnel …
Unless Francesca went back and finished him?
Poor Palfrey—
Colonel Dr Jules Lemoine strode into the chapel, his left arm in a sling (Palfrey’s aim, Lydia now saw, left a great deal to be desired), pale in the light of the lantern he carried in his good hand. This he set down, and drew a key from his pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Nurse Meagher appeared from the shadowy hallway at his heels. ‘You can’t mean to let her out, sir! She tried to kill you!’
‘Nonsense.’ Lemoine held up Lydia’s Webley. ‘This weapon hasn’t been fired. It was her companion – like her,’ he added gravely, ‘under the delusion that the vampire we took was their friend.’
‘She is the pale vampire’s mignonne.’ Lydia didn’t see her enter, but Francesca Gheric now stood beside the chapel door.
Seen closer, and in the lantern-light that was marginally better than the shreddy moonlight of no man’s land, she was indeed beautiful. But maybe that was only a vampire’s illusion. Like Meagher, she was dressed as a nurse – In case any of the guards sees her?
Any Matron on the Front would tell her to put her hair up …
Facing the three of them, with the revenants stirring and growling on the far side of the silver bars, Lydia had to struggle to keep her breathing steady.
The colonel’s gaze melted from sternness to pity. ‘Madame, Madame, do you truly believe that?’ and Lydia let her eyes fill with tears.
‘Who told you about the passageway that you used?’ Meagher walked up to the bars, planted herself at Lemoine’s side.
‘Colonel Simon.’ Lydia took off her spectacles, wiped her eyes and tried to sound as if she were struggling against the inner suspicion that she had indeed been betrayed. ‘He said the fate of Britain depends on his mission here—’
Meagher rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘Of course that’s what he told her! And probably his driver as well.’
Lydia reached timidly to clutch Lemoine’s sleeve, and threw a glance of terror toward the darkness beyond the silver barrier. ‘Colonel, what are those … those things? Captain Palfrey wouldn’t tell me anything, only said things like, “Dark forces are at work …”’
‘Why did he bring you?’ demanded Meagher.
‘He said he might need a second person to drive the motorcar, if he were injured.’ She sobbed, and bit her lip in what she hoped was a touching display of wan and ignorant courage. ‘I wanted to help—’
‘It’s all right.’ Lemoine put a strong hand over hers. ‘You’ve gotten mixed up in things that are no business of yours, Madame. Deeply secret things. And you can help.’
Meagher’s blue eyes flared wide and she grabbed the edge of Lemoine’s sling, dragged him from the bars to the far side of the little storeroom chapel. Francesca watched them for a moment with cynical cerulean eyes. Probably telling him he can’t trust me and that Don Simon’s going to read my mind first thing, if they let me go …
Then the vampire turned her mocking gaze back to Lydia.