Accursed (53 page)

The vampire reached up then and grabbed its lower jaw, slicing off the tip of his left ring finger on its teeth as he tore that mandible from its roots with a pop of bone. The thing’s screeching was pitiful as he ripped the remnants of skin that still connected it, and then the jawbone was in his hands.

The Rakshasa let him go, reeling away from him and staggering, dropping to its knees as black blood flowed over its chest.

“If you want to kill something like me, you’ll have to do better than that,” Nigel growled.

Something shimmered unearthly blue in the fog behind the screaming, suffering Rakshasa, and Nigel frowned when he saw that it was Byron. The specter rushed through the fog toward him with no trace of the pretty, clever words or fanciful pretense that were his hallmarks. Nigel knew instantly that something had gone horribly wrong. Yet even as Byron whipped toward him through the fog, he heard the shifting, leathery noise of the Rakshasa behind him making one final assault.

He spun and brought the stolen jawbone around in an arc, using it as a weapon. The rows of jagged fangs glistened in the damp air and he felt as though he were in a dream as he twisted through that gray-orange cloud of mist . . . and then he slashed the surviving Rakshasa across the face with its brother’s own fangs, carving flesh and puncturing those eyes, which spurted yellow pus that sizzled on his skin like acid.

It shrieked, blinded, and he slipped around behind it and quickly snapped its neck, dropping the demon to the ground. The one with no lower jaw was still bleeding, still wailing, and it began to twitch. It would die soon, but Nigel would let it suffer.

There were other things afoot.

He ran through the fog to meet Byron, the ghost nearly passing through him in the thickness of that cloud.

“What is it?” Nigel demanded, all manner of terrible imaginings in his mind. “What’s happened?”

The very fabric of the ghost, his spectral essence, seemed to roil with emotion. He brought his hands to his face, fingers bent as though he meant to tear at himself in grief. There was such horror in his eyes that the red beast living in Nigel’s heart, that berserker soul in him, withdrew, and the part of him that was still human faltered. He had no need to breathe, yet still he held his breath.

“Tamara,” Byron said, frantic. “The girl was there, Priya, and Tamara’s been injured. Badly. You must come quickly.” And then, the worst of it, the words that tumbled out of Byron with more anguish than Nigel had ever heard in a voice. “And I cannot help, cannot touch her, not even just to lend her comfort.”

The ache that leaped into Nigel’s heart astonished him. He was not in love with the girl, not that. But he loved her just the same. It felt, in that moment, almost as though he were alive again . . . alive enough to feel the acute emotion that made humanity an utter joy and total anguish.

“Come,” he said simply, and then he raced through the fog. He could hear other things moving about the gardens, crashing through greenery and snapping tree branches as they moved toward the palace, but he no longer cared about the queen or about Albion. Not in that moment. The queen could bugger off.

Byron sailed through the air beside him, utterly transparent despite the bright shade of his velvet coat. How often had Nigel thought him a fool? And yet in their shared fear for Tamara, they were joined in a manner neither was accustomed to.

They left the gardens behind and raced for the corner of the palace in sight of Constitution Hill, the place where Nigel had left her—
and damn you for doing it, you fool,
he thought. For just a moment the fog cleared, and he saw her on the ground up ahead, slumped on her side with a pair of Kali’s Children looming above her unmoving form. He thought he could hear their hiss, but it might merely have been the wind and the dark magic of that damnable fog.

Then the mist shrouded the palace again, and it was several long seconds during which he was sure they must be eviscerating her before he and Byron emerged again, a dozen feet from where Tamara lay.

The accursed monstrosities that stood above her were dead, turned to volcanic glass by sorcerous flames. Tamara’s right hand was outstretched toward them, frozen in the act of casting that spell. It had been too much for her, though, and she had fallen unconscious from the effort.

Nigel rushed to her. Unthinkingly he lashed out, shattering the glass creatures in his frustration and fear. A shard of glass carved a gash in his arm, but he barely flinched at the pain as he dropped to his knees beside her, scooping her up.

Her blood soaked through his trousers, warm and sticky. The wound in her shoulder was small and could be easily patched, but the puncture in her abdomen was not so simple. The blood bubbled from it, drenching her dress and her jacket.

He was a vampire, cursed with the taint of Hell, of a horror to which God turned a blind eye. All of the gods, in fact. Nigel Townsend had not uttered a prayer to any deity in many years.

Tonight, he whispered a prayer to the heavens.

“Do something!” Byron cried. “You must! Look at the wound! She’s going to die unless you can heal her.”

“I . . . I’ve never studied healing magic. I can’t—”

The poet could be shrill at times. Not now. He slid his fingers into Nigel’s hair and yanked back his head. “You worthless bastard, with all that you owe these children and their grandfather’s memory . . . you
do
something!”

The specter’s touch was only a reminder that Nigel himself was not human. He glared at Byron until the ghost faltered and released him, glancing away shamefacedly.

“It’s . . . Nigel, I’m sorry, but it’s Tamara.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I can see her, Byron. I smell her blood! I . . .”

And an idea came to him. A very dark idea. The red beast inside him trembled with anticipation at the thought. Nigel narrowed his gaze and a low rumble came up from his throat as he stared at Tamara. There was a way to save her.

A way . . .

His nostrils flared with the scent of her, and he squeezed his eyes closed and twisted his head away, fresh sorrow and torment drowning him as he recalled the last time he had been faced with such a choice. Her name had been Louise, a young girl who worked onstage as part of Ludlow’s magic act. She had discovered Nigel’s true nature and fallen in love with him, and he with her. Yet the lure of what he was had tempted her. She saw romance and real magic in him, when he knew that it was only monstrousness and death. She had pleaded with him to make her like him and then, when he refused, she had slit her wrists. Louise had wanted to love him forever, but Nigel would not damn her to an eternity of bloodlust and darkness.

He had let her die.

There was no way he could allow the same thing to happen to Tamara, and yet once again he would not give in to the temptation to create another like him, to give her damnation instead of death.

“No,” he said grimly.

There came more hissing from the fog, and the laughter of at least one more Rakshasa. The vampire turned and glared at Byron.

“Hold them off. Whatever it costs you, hold them off.”

Black tree branches could be seen thrusting like skeletal fingers clawing from the fog, right through Byron’s body. He was silhouetted in that fog. Insubstantial and yet with more presence than Nigel had ever given him credit for.

“They won’t touch her,” the poet vowed.

Then he was off, flitting through the fog.

Nigel turned to Tamara, her blood still soaking through the knees of his trousers, and he slapped her.

Unconscious, she flinched.

“Tamara! Wake up, damn your eyes!”

He slapped her a second time, then a third.

Her eyelids fluttered open, brows knitting in pain. “Nigel?”

“Wake up!” he snapped again. “Listen to me, girl. You will not surrender to this, do you understand me? You are the Protector of Albion and the granddaughter of Ludlow Swift. Your wounds are not beyond your power to heal. The magic flows through your veins, sweats from your very skin. Remember the way the Rakshasa could sense it before, because it was seeping from you? It’s a part of you, girl. Seize it!”

Tamara shook her head, ever so slightly, eyes closing again. “I . . . I cannot, Nigel. I don’t feel it now. I feel . . . nothing.”

“Then by the gods I shall make you feel something!” he snarled, and he plunged a finger into the wound in her shoulder, twisting it around.

Tamara went rigid, eyes flying open wide, and she let out a scream that echoed through the fog and all the way up Constitution Hill. A stream of filthy invective the likes of which he had never heard from such a proper girl spilled from her mouth, and she snarled at him like an animal.

“You son of a whore!” she gasped as she completed her cursing of him.

Nigel smiled. “That’s a story for another day, pet. Now you listen to me. You
will
heal your wounds. If not for yourself or for Albion, then for your brother. You are a far greater magician than William can ever hope to be. If Priya has made such short work of you, what will she do to him?”

He saw the fear appear in her eyes, but still there was no fire there. “It is more than the wound. Her magic has poisoned me, somehow. I can feel it burning in me, tainting me.”

“Then flush it out!”

Her eyes went wide, but she was staring past him.

The Children of Kali had come. Byron was fighting them to the west, near the garden, but these came south from the hill. Nigel swore and leaped to his feet. He glanced around wildly as more and more of them emerged from the fog, closing in on him and Tamara. He counted no less than a dozen, probably more.

“Tamara,” he warned. “I may have to leave you alone again.”

But even as he spoke the words the air shimmered all around him, the fog shifting and shuddering as though battered by a hundred errant breezes. A sound like wind chimes filled the night, and then they were there.

The ghosts of Albion.

Like a wave they materialized, one after the other. Some he recognized but most he did not. Soldiers and playwrights, teachers and carpenters, men and women who had nothing in common during their lives, and yet shared one vital trait in death . . . they were all, now, soldiers in the war against the darkness.

“Take them broadside, my friends, and give no quarter!” cried a voice from above, a voice Nigel had never been happier to hear.

He glanced up and saw the fog shifting around the phantom form of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson. The man could be a fool at times, with his priggishness and arrogance, but in war he commanded nothing less than awe. And he was not alone.

With a battle cry that made even the animal within Nigel cringe, Queen Bodicea appeared from the fog, her spear clutched in one hand and a small ax in the other. As always, her face and nude body were painted for war, and her scream curdled his blood. Nelson was courageous and brilliant, Bodicea cunning and savage, and the ghosts of Albion were their army tonight.

The Children of Kali began to die.

And then the sound of hoofbeats and the clatter of a carriage reached them, and a hansom cab rattled out of the fog. It had left the street and was coming across the grounds outside the palace, rushing at them, right into the midst of the fray. Only one man was inside, and the horses neighed as he reined them to a stop.

He leaped from the cab.

“Tamara!”

Nigel prepared to kill him. “Who the hell are you?”

But then he saw Tamara’s face. There was confusion there, but also a tenderness that was surprising.

“John?” she said.

Nigel narrowed his eyes. “John? That Haversham bastard? I’ve heard about you. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve heard about you as well, Mr. Townsend. I’m here to help if I can. When William left the Algernon Club, we all suspected there was something amiss, but never imagined . . .”

He settled down beside Tamara in the very spot Nigel had just vacated, and gazed upon her kindly. “They sent me after him, Tamara. But I would’ve come anyway, if I could.”

With the poison magic of Priya Gupta in her system and her wounds still bleeding, she barely had the strength to gaze at him, but she managed. “I . . . I don’t understand. The . . . the club?”

“William hasn’t told you?”

“Told us what?” Nigel demanded, though he glanced about as he said it, eager to rejoin the battle, listening to the sounds of monsters dying in the fog.

John was examining Tamara’s wounds, and now he shot a dark look at Nigel.

“There isn’t time.” He looked back at Tamara. “What’s important is that we know who and what you are. Both of you. And we’ve been trying to help. The idols that were stolen . . . we were trying to gather them up so no one else would be infected. I was the primary thief.”

He bent lower then, holding Tamara’s hand tightly, and though he whispered so low that no human ears could have heard him . . . Nigel was not human.

“They assigned me to you, do you understand? To discover the identity of the new Protector. That’s why I reacted to your . . . enticement the way that I did. I hated the idea that you and I might have shared such intimacy under false pretenses.”

He bent to kiss her forehead, and Tamara reached her hand up to caress his face, ever so weakly.

“It seems you’re too late,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Haversham replied. “I can help you. The meager magic I have at my disposal is a pale shade of yours, but perhaps I can bolster—”

“No.”

Nigel flinched. He heard Byron shouting something, but wasn’t sure what it was. His attention was split between the war and Tamara’s condition.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” the vampire asked, incredulous. “Don’t let your pride destroy you, Tamara. Don’t be a fool. Not with so much in the balance. If the man can help you—”

“I don’t need help,” she snarled.

Face etched with pain, she forced herself to her knees. Blood had soaked her dress in bizarre patterns. When she glanced up at Nigel and John, her eyes were alight with life; golden sparks flickered at their edges, danced around her fingers.

“I am the Protector of blessed Albion, gentlemen. The power and the duty are mine.”