The Kindred of Darkness (23 page)

Circling the house, he found the remains the bricklayers had left: clots of mortar near the kitchen door, boards smeared with its grayish residue, a huge area near the stables of broken bricks and scattered fragments and dust.

About a third of the house, it looked like, had been sealed. Something to tell Grippen, though Heaven knew how many other places Colwich had purchased for his ‘friend'.

And though the last sunlight still gilded the house's absurd pinnacles and roof crests, shadow filled the garden, like the dark waters of a deadly pool.
It's time to get out of here NOW.

He stood leaning against the newel post of the kitchen steps, trying to get his breath.
Damn Grippen
…

The peach tree and the broken spot in the wall seemed miles away. The cab around by the gate seemed unthinkably distant.
Get away from here. If he's here he'll be awake, waiting in the darkness of the house. Waiting until it's dark enough to emerge
…

If I try to walk now I'll fall
.

For a long time he stood, gathering his strength and watching color fade from the sky.

He made it to the back of the garden. Saw the peach trees – there were four of them – beyond the snarl of overgrown rose bushes and waist-high weeds. With evening, mist was rising from the marshes, and the damp chilled him to the bone.
Another minute before I try the wall
…

A man stood beneath the peach tree as Asher emerged from the overgrown hedges, raised a pistol as Asher made a move to plunge back into cover. ‘Don't try it.'

It was Mr Three-and-Ninepenny Bowler. His voice had the flat accent of the American West.

Damn blast bugger
…

‘Your cab's gone anyway,' Bowler Hat added. ‘If we make a deal, I'll drive you back to town. If not …' He shrugged. ‘My name's Wirt. You'll be John Grant, that's staying at Porton's Hotel? I want a word with you.'

‘N
ot here.' Asher lifted his hand in a gesture of peace, started toward the wall, and Wirt stepped in front of him again, pistol raised.

‘I think here is fine.'

‘Trust me,' said Asher. ‘It's not. We need to get back to town—'

‘Where you got friends? I don't think so. And I'm not a hundred per cent sure one of the other boys isn't on your trail as well. Five hundred dollars is a lot of dough.'

‘Five hundred dollars for what?'

‘For a vampire.' Wirt spoke as if the answer was written on a sandwich board across his chest and Asher had neglected to read it. ‘That's your racket, ain't it?' He nodded in the direction of the house. ‘They really real?'

‘If we remain here,' replied Asher grimly, ‘we run the risk of finding that out.'
I don't know what the hell you're talking about
, he was fairly certain, would only prolong a discussion that needed to be concluded – or moved to another venue – without delay.

‘Good.' Wirt grinned, and shifted to block Asher as he took a step toward the wall again. ‘He's the man I really want to talk to – or are there lady vampires as well?'

‘There are. And I promise you, you don't.'

‘Oh, I think he'll listen to what I've got to say.' Keeping his pistol trained on Asher, Wirt glanced around him at the darkening garden, as if expecting Count Dracula to emerge from the house at any moment in a silk-lined cloak. ‘It's a straight business proposition, and if Mr Armistead's willing to pay five hundred dollars just for an introduction, you can bet the salary's gonna be worth it.'

‘
Salary?
'

Asher knew he should be shocked, but he wasn't. What he chiefly felt – besides growing fear of what he was nearly certain whispered in the night around them – was disgust.

‘Sure. Say, can they really turn into bats? Though how turning into a bat's going to help 'em deal with strikers in the mines is more than I can figure, unless Mr Armistead plans to use him as a spy. You know personally, I thought he'd read too many of those books he buys – you know he's got about four copies of that one about the ten gents?'

‘The
Liber Gente Tenebrarum
?'

‘That's the one,' said Wirt. ‘But the old man didn't get that rich bein' crazy. He'll sit up all night in that strongroom of his, with this book in front of him and a pile of dictionaries on the desk, French and Latin and Spanish and what-all. Crazy. But he tells me – and I'm pretty sure he told a couple of the other boys – five hundred dollars if I can bring him a vampire to talk to. And if he's gonna feed him on those socialist bastards from the WFM, more power to him. I'm sick of dealin' with those whinin' rats.'

WFM
, thought Asher.
Western Federation of Miners
.

At least two men who've tried to unionize his mines have met with convenient ‘accidents'
, Sophister had told him.

‘Good,' he said. ‘Fine. You go right up that driveway and knock on the front door—'

‘Not so fast.' The detective stepped in front of him again, gun trained, and Asher could see he was both able and willing to use it. ‘You're comin' with me. That pretty-boy kid of Millward's – he hire you to do his legwork? You and the red-haired dame? Old Millward showed me the door pretty fast, but I knew if I followed his boy he'd lead me someplace.'

‘Where he'll lead you is an early grave. These are not people you want to meet.'

‘Bub, anybody in Denver'll tell you that for five hundred dollars, Blackie Wirt'll kiss the Devil's ass. There's a lantern down by the foot of that tree.' He dug with one hand in his pocket and tossed Asher a box of matches. ‘How about you light it up and the two of us walk up and knock on the front door together? Then if nobody's home, you can come along with me and talk to Mr Armistead yourself.'

Asher gauged the gathering dusk and wondered if he had the speed to make it to the wall. He had little concern that Titus Armistead would actually succeed in hiring a vampire to kill off strikers in his mines. Even Damien Zahorec, standing like a shadow within the man's very gates, wasn't about to declare himself, and having seen in Peking what could come of working alliances between the living and the Undead, Asher didn't blame him in the slightest. But once he, James Asher, stood revealed as a vampire hunter – and as Lydia's husband – there was little chance that Lydia could get clear of the situation before Zahorec killed her.

The American flicked his pistol barrel toward Asher, nodded at the lantern. ‘Light it. And don't think I wouldn't shoot you over it because there ain't a soul for a mile around and I'm betting nobody knows you're here. I took down the addresses of those places you went this afternoon so there's not a reason in the world you're worth keeping alive.'

He's seen Lydia, too
. Asher knelt beside the lantern.
Whether he kills me or just leaves me lying with a hole in me for Zahorec to find, the next person he'll look for is Seabury's ‘red-haired dame'. It won't be half a day before word that she's hunting him will get to Zahorec
…

With a sidelong slash of his foot he sent the lantern spinning away and dove for the nearest dark cloud of laurels. The pistol crashed, Asher stumbled, dizzy, scrambled to his feet again …

Behind him, Wirt yelled in shock and terror, and in the same instant icy and powerful hands closed around Asher's arms. Reflective eyes glimmered in the darkness and a cultured voice said, ‘Well, well, well. What have we here?'

‘You'll catch your death, sitting out here, ma'am.' Ellen handed Lydia the coat she'd asked for – a quilted silk cocoon-style with a collar of trailing monkey fur – and a heavy woolen shawl to wrap on over it, her square face lined with concern in the reflected glow of the kitchen windows.

‘I'm all right.'

‘No, you're not,' retorted the servant. ‘You didn't have hardly a thing for tea and there's a fog coming up.' And, when Lydia neither replied, nor moved on the white-painted bench beneath the garden arbor, she added more gently, ‘I know it's hard for you, ma'am, being in the house. It's hard for me, too. And for Cook and Mrs Brock and us all, walking past the door of the nursery a dozen times a day—'

‘It's all right.' Lydia held up her hand to silence the reminder, but of course Ellen would never be silenced.

‘But you worrying yourself into your sickbed isn't going to help anything. Mr James will take care of it. You know he will.'

I know he will
…

If he survives himself
.

The chalk-white pallor, the sunken look of his eyes, tore her like broken glass twisting in a cut.
This is war … I took a wound
.

We parted at four-thirty. How long would it take him to see those places, and come here
?

For the past hour, sitting here in the garden, every passing footfall in Holywell Street had brought her heart up leaping.

Now dark had fallen, and it wasn't her husband for whom she waited.

‘I'll be in in a little while.'

‘You'll be in in fifteen minutes,' retorted Ellen darkly. ‘Which is when your supper will be on the table. And if you're not I'll come out here and fetch you.'

She crunched back up the gravel path to the house. Lydia folded her hands in the extravagant fur of her sleeves, and closed her eyes.
Simon, please come. Please
.

The thought of going back into the house – of climbing the stairs, of passing the door of Miranda's darkened nursery – was more than she could stand. She felt that she would almost rather get blankets and sleep out here in the garden, and take her chances with bronchitis …

She's with living guardians
, she tried to remind herself.
The publican from Stepney would surely have been in a position to find a woman to take care of Miranda
…

‘Mistress?'

The voice spoke so softly she wasn't sure for a moment whether it was inside her mind alone, but when she put on her spectacles and turned her head, Don Simon Ysidro, arms folded, stood in the darkness of the arbor at her side.

She held out her hand to him and he took it, fingers strong and cold.

‘Grippen wouldn't kill Jamie, would he? Even if he found him prowling around one of his lairs?'

‘Having enlisted you to find Zahorec, he would be a great fool if he did.' The vampire seated himself beside her. ‘Whatever else can be said of him, Lionel Grippen is no fool. Did he hurt him,' he went on, as if he read the events of last night in the emphasis she had put on the word
kill
, ‘to “teach him a lesson”? A thing he is fond of doing, to the living whom he uses as his tools, though often they recall nothing of it later, save their fear.'

Lydia nodded, and poured out to him James' account of last night's encounter with Grippen. ‘He wanted to divert Grippen's attention from me to himself, so that I can search for places where they may be keeping Miranda. Do you think Grippen even intends to return her safely?'

‘At the moment I see no reason why he would not.' As always, Don Simon's voice was calm as a frozen lake. Lydia wondered if it had been so in life.

‘And Nan?'

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘She is old enough to recognize her captors.'

Lydia shook her head mutely. The thought of another death on her conscience – as Margaret Potton's had been on it for four years now – was more than she could bear.

The calm yellow eyes returned her gaze, without attempting a reply. Then: ‘I take it James has not yet returned?'

‘He was going to look at three of Zahorec's lairs.' She handed him her notes of the addresses. ‘That was this afternoon.'

‘Then I see no reason for Lionel to harm him. This I take to be fruit of your encounters with Mr Rolleston?
Three
of them?'

‘That we know of so far.' She wiped her eyes. ‘Colwich bought them for him. I think Colwich has to be hiding him at Dallaby House. Cece told me there was an underground chapel there, that's supposed to be connected to an old priory …'

‘St Mary Westbourne.' Ysidro glanced up. ‘Grippen might well have a trouble to sense him there because of the underground river below it. As for Mistress Wellit …' A pin-scratch trace of disapproval touched the corner of his mouth. ‘Will you go down to London again tomorrow, and wait, at six, in the café of the Metropole as before, wearing once more your green dress?'

‘So you can induce some other frightful
creature
to do my bidding, under the impression that I'm Queen Mab in disguise?'

Something – distaste, disgust, wariness – moved behind the sulfur-yellow eyes. ‘Has this Rolleston spoke amiss to you?'

‘No,' said Lydia quickly. Though the vampire's voice changed not a whisper, what she glimpsed in his expression was truly frightening. ‘No, he has never been anything but polite and respectful. But he … he's
loathsome
.'

Long hands folded, he seemed to be considering what he could say.

‘I understand,' Lydia stammered, ‘that he's probably the only one you could find at Barclays who … who could be got to do your bidding. I mean, if it's discovered he's handing out information about clients' banking activity … He's certainly not anyone I'd hire for
anything
. It's just that … He's admitted himself that he's done frightful things.'

‘So he has.' Simon's glance met hers through long white lashes. ‘But I promise you, Mistress, he shall not make a nuisance of himself. And when you have learned from him all that you will, he shall return to the place from whence he came, and trouble you no more.'

‘Don't hurt him.'

In the vampire's silence she read what was in his mind.