Dawn Thompson (5 page)

“I’m going to hunt him down,” Jon decided, balling his hands into white-knuckled fists. “I’m going to hunt Sebastian down and destroy him. What? Don’t give me that look. He isn’t human, he is undead. He preys upon the East End slags. I followed him. I saw where he goes. He has followers. I have
seen
them—odious hangers-on. Evidently, some of those whom he has infected are his to command. He must be destroyed—his minions with him—before the sickness spreads. But for Cassandra, I would have done it already.”

“Well, there is another argument for your not having been fully made,” the vicar said. “Here you stand plotting his destruction. If you were made, how is it that you are not his slave? You—both you and your woman—have been infected, but to what extent remains to be seen. If my suspicions are correct, it isn’t only Cassandra who is in danger. You are as well.”

“How? I don’t understand.”

“Were you wearing your official church togs when you went into that den of iniquity?”

“Yes. Why? What has that to do with any of this?”

“It has everything to do with it. Unless I miss my guess, this Sebastian did not mean to make a vampire of you. He meant to kill, and would have done so if he hadn’t been interrupted.”

“But why?”

“The greatest prize for any necromancer, demon, or vampire is to corrupt one of the Lord’s anointed. To kill a member of the clergy is the greatest achievement such creatures can hope to attain—the most valued offering to lay before the Devil himself. This creature is eons old, I’d stake my life upon it, and you are no match for him. He will be driven now. He will not rest until he has taken your life—his ultimate triumph—and turned your Cassandra into what he is—
undead
—to become his concubine, his consort. God help you both.”

Jon swallowed, hanging on his mentor’s every word.

“I will help you in any way that I can short of sacrilege, m’boy,” Clive went on, “but what you need to do is seek out someone with more knowledge of this abomination than I possess. Your very life could well depend upon it.” Getting up stiffly, he lifted a tome from the bookshelf beside his desk and opened it.

“What I told poor old Bates . . . how I explained all this was true enough, then,” Jon mused to himself.

“How is that?”

“I excused the condition as some sort of malaise Cassandra and I had contracted in London—there is always some malady loose. Town’s inevitably rife with one disease or another, and I assured him neither he nor Grace were in danger of contagion.”

“Just so,” said the vicar. “Who told you that you had become a vampire?”

“No one told me, Clive. I came to that conclusion myself before you first used the word, though I can still scarce believe it. We only touched briefly on such phenomena at university, under the guise of superstition and folklore. Precious little was served up in the way of theology, I’m afraid. We were supposed to take on that mantle when we swore to uphold the thirty-nine articles of the Church. The only theology we were taught was glossed over in the philosophy part of the curriculum. You know that—that hasn’t changed since you were there. As long as a man can do sums, knows his history, and hasn’t been branded for theft in the prisons, he is deemed fit enough to preside over a living. More’s the pity.”

“Hmmm,” said the vicar, thumbing through the tome. “Ah. Here it is. As I said, I am not qualified to mentor you in this. You need someone more versed in the phenomenon than I. You shan’t find that here in England, which is probably why this Sebastian has been able to infiltrate our populace so easily. He will infest here, then move on to other shores before we realize what has come among us. You need to seek help where this insidious affliction began.” He pointed to a map on the page before him. “Moldovia, a landlocked principality between Romania and Ukraine, just west of the Carpathian Mountains. According to this, the Orthodox clergy there are well versed on the topic of those they call
vampir.
These are the council you must seek. They have insights none here in England possess.”

Jon surged to his feet and studied the map in the open book on the vicar’s desk.

“It is a long voyage to reach the Baltic Sea,” the vicar
continued, “and an arduous overland journey along the Polish border to Ukraine, then south through the Dkula Pass to this priory.” He pointed. “Though I am sure any religious house in the region would do.”

“What of Cassandra?”

“You must take her with you. She cannot remain here with none to protect her.”

“This is another reason to marry us. By the time I’ve gotten her to Gretna Green and then booked passage, God alone knows how far this sickness will have progressed.”

Clive cast him a look so devastated that it drove away Jon’s eyes. “Don’t waste a minute’s time,” the vicar said. “You have the advantage. You can go about in daylight while Sebastian cannot. You must book passage at once—tonight. I shan’t lie to you: There is no known cure, but if there is any help to be had, these Moldovian holy men will know of it. According to what is written here in these pages, they have dealt with such for centuries.”

“The arrangements will have to be made in daylight hours if we are to keep our plans from Sebastian,” Jon said. He began pacing the length of the Aubusson carpet like a caged animal. The inner restlessness was beginning again, the insatiable hunger gnawing at his belly, chipping away at his resolve. He was powerless to prevent it, and it was getting worse. He had fed but a few hours ago. He had never needed to feed more than once a day since the nightmare began. “If I attempt to go about under cover of darkness making such arrangements, I court all manner of mischief,” he went on, his speech staccato yet thick, through gritted teeth, as he fought the mounting bloodlust. “I am followed, Clive—stalked. I feel that creature’s eyes on me even now, here in this holy place. He is nearby . . . waiting. Yes, what arrangements I make
must be made after the sun rises, when there is no danger of him discovering my plans. I must go.”

“It is happening again,” the vicar said, discovery in his voice. “Jon, do not wait for the dawn. Collect the girl and go. You do not have any time to waste.”

“First, I shall do as you suggest, make a dark place at the Abbey, just in case. I may need it before we sail.” He didn’t tell Clive that he had tasted Cassandra’s blood, that he dared not trust himself in her presence when the feeding madness was upon him; he could not tell him. “I am not liking these changes. They are coming too quickly. At dawn, if I can still bear it in the light, I shall leave for Gretna Green with Cassandra. We must be wed before I take her on such a journey. She is an innocent, Clive, and I love her. I will not make a whore of her.” He paused bitterly. “Then I shall book passage, if you’re sure there is no other way.”

The vicar put a hand on his shoulder. “If you paid attention to your philosophy studies at university you are aware that, according to legend, those whose faith is deep-rooted, when infected with vampirism, are the ones who cannot bear the presence, sight, or touch of religious articles . . . or to tread consecrated ground; atheists and agnostics are not repelled by symbols of our faith at all. Some say this is a spiritual manifestation, others credit it to a psychological and intellectual reaction that has naught to do with faith. If we are to credit this assertion as fact, Sebastian was a righteous man before he was turned. If this is so, he will stop at nothing to corrupt you, simply because you are what you are—the image of his former self, an image he can nevermore embrace and now must conquer. What troubles me is that you, too, are a righteous man, Jon, which is why I fear for you on consecrated
ground. What gives me hope is that your faith and resistance to the vampire lure is evidently stronger than this creature’s ever was, because you can still stand here in this holy place.” He smiled sadly, and heaved a ragged sigh. “You ask if I am ‘sure,’” he went on, “that there is no other way. You stand before me, a living manifestation of something I have never believed existed outside of folklore. I am certain of only one thing: There is no help for you here in England.” He closed the tome and handed it to Jon. “If there is any hope at all, here is where it will be found, and I pray with all my strength that you find it. Do not lose hope. Or faith.”

Jon gripped the book. He could feel the vicar’s strength flowing through his fingers gripping its thick binding, like a stream of pure, cool water. The power tingled against the flesh of his palm, while unease gripped his belly in a fist of iron. The sensation was not unlike that which he’d felt just before his finger, immersed in a font of holy water, set the water boiling. The odd thing was, the boiling water had not burned his fingers. Neither did this holy man’s touch. He hadn’t confided that bit to Clive Snow, nor would he now. It wouldn’t be long. Spiritual or psychological, it didn’t matter. The door was closing on him, on his former self.

Clive Snow released the book, and Jon tucked it under his arm and turned to leave. He dared not stay. Something untoward was happening inside him. He must escape it before it was too late.

“One more thing,” said the vicar to his back, turning Jon around again. He nodded toward the book. “We do not know how much of the lore laid down in that tome applies. It says in there that vampires . . . once they can no longer stand the light, must sleep upon soil from their
homeland. Some are said to spread it in coffins, others strew it underneath their beds. Do not take it from consecrated ground, else it one day reject you. Take some from the Abbey—just in case—and do not set foot on that ship without it.”

Jon nodded. “Will I ever see you again?” he pleaded. The vicar looked him in the eye. “I hope so, but I think not, young son,” he said. “Godspeed. And may the Lord have mercy upon you both.”

Cassandra yawned and stretched awake, misty-eyed. The bed was soft, made with feather mattresses and quilts of eiderdown, but still she couldn’t sleep. Too much was weighing on her mind. A sennight ago she was rendezvousing with Jon in a secluded lane at Vauxhall Gardens to tell him her mother had passed on, and that she must return to Cornwall. There hadn’t even been time to grieve properly. Her tears were not solely for her mother; they were for her whole circumstance, which nagged at her conscience. She had never been a watering pot. If she must succumb, her mother deserved all of her tears now.

She had always been strong and brave in dire circumstances. Now Cassandra was terrified. Just the other evening, while watching from the window of her room at the boardinghouse as Jon took his leave, she’d seen the tall, dark-haired, silver-eyed man she loved—the man she longed to spend the rest of her life with—change into the form of a huge black wolf before her very eyes and bound off into the night. He was infected, too. What did it
mean? Was it a permanent condition? Would she never be herself again?
Herself
. Cassandra Thorpe did not know who that was anymore.

She had heard of things such as this, mostly in made-up tales meant to frighten children. Surely vampires weren’t real—but the creature that had attacked her was real enough. She would never forget his ugliness: the chalk-white skin veined with blue, stretched over bones whose shape was clearly visible through the skin; the redrimmed iridescent eyes, black as sin, that she dared not look into, for they foxed her, sunken into hollows so deep he resembled a cadaver; the teeth, protruding—the yellowed fangs, like a viper’s, long and curved, stained pink with the residue of stale blood. She shuddered, remembering his thinness, how he was draped in the impeccable style of the season, from beaver hat to polished Hessian boots. For all their style, the togs hung awry on that emaciated frame. He’d seemed so frail, and yet was possessed of greater strength than she had ever encountered.

That was what had stunned her. It had taken her by surprise. He took her to the ground as easily as he would have tossed down a broom straw. Though she fought him like a tigress, she could not prevail against that strength—against the strange, hypnotic magnetism of those obsidian eyes. She could not prevent the greasy fangs from penetrating her flesh. She would never forget the feel of his bones through the superfine coat, so brittle and stiff, as if they had no flesh upon them. She shuddered, recalling the fetid stench of his breath, the cold slime of his drool, like acid dripping on her skin, the paralyzing pain of those needle-sharp fangs at the moment of penetration, when the blood thundered in her veins, pounded at her temples, shuddered through her thumping
heart, roaring in her ears. If Jon hadn’t come when he did . . . she couldn’t imagine what would have become of her.

Her heart was racing now, just as it had then, as she relived those moments that had changed her life forever. She threw back the counterpane and swung her feet to the floor. Padding to the window, she peered through the musty draperies at the tor below, silvered in the moonlight. It was still some time until dawn, and she was wide awake. Above, the out-of-round three-quarter moon shone down through a hazy halo in the summer sky. It didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real.

She turned away from the window. The house was still. Bates and his wife had doubtless long since retired. She’d promised Jon she would remain in her room until daybreak, but what harm to browse through the Abbey while no one was about? What better time to acquaint herself with her new home, for this was where she would live once she and Jon were wed, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t be coming back to the Abbey yet. He would no doubt be closeted with the vicar until the wee hours. Without giving it a second thought, she took up the candlestick, turned the key in the lock, and stepped out into the cool, dank hall.

Ancestral portraits lined the gallery walls, their subjects glaring at her as she passed. She hadn’t bothered to slip on her shoes, and the carpet, a series of Persian runners, felt strange beneath her feet—so tactile it was almost painful to tread them barefoot. Touch was another of her heightened senses. She followed the paisley-patterned runners to the broad staircase carpeted in a Persian design that effectually matched them, and descended to the first floor.