Those Who Hunt the Night (James Asher #1)

Those Who Hunt the Night (James Asher #1) Page 16

Lydia's two lodging-house rooms were, like every place else where Lydia resided for more than a day or so, awash with papers, notebooks, and journals-the tedious minutiae of her search for the vampire's tracks: gas company records, all noted in her neat hand; electrical usage; and newspaper stories, thousands of them. Asher felt an uneasy creeping at the back of his neck when he saw, in addition to transcribed details of old crimes, the two accounts of the Limehouse Murders. Names and addresses were noted also-Lydia had clearly gone through the parish rolls with a sieve, correlating property purchases and wills and coming up with the names of a small but indisputable number of persons over the years who had somehow ne-glected to die.

Traced out in those terms, he wondered why the Earls of Ernchester hadn't come under suspicion before. Anomalies of property exchange and ownership splotched the family records like a blood trail. Houses were bought, leased, and sold to people who never surfaced in the records again-houses which were never willed to anyone nor subse-quently sold. Other discrepancies were noted-fictitious persons who bought property, but never made wills, and interlocking wills spanning suspiciously long periods of time. Tacked to the greenish cabbage-rose paper of one wall was an Ordinance Survey map of London and its suburbs, sprinkled with red-, green-, and blue-headed drawing pins. Lists of addresses. Lists of names. He found Anthea Farren's on two of them, Lotta Harshaw's, Edward Hammersmith's, and Lionel Grip-pen's, along with many others. There were clipped photographs of Ber-tie Westmorland, his brother the Honorable Evelyn, mammoth and smiling in football gear of Gloucester College colors, arm in arm with a beaming Dennis Blaydon, Thomas Gobey, Paul Farringdon, and dozens of others, and one blurred and yellow tabloid clip of a blonde-haired woman who might have been Lotta herself.

Like Lydia's desk at home, the little writing desk was a spilling chaos of notes, among which he found the letter he'd written in Ysidro's cellar in Paris, forwarded from Oxford, its seals intact. Beside it, likewise intact, was the telegram he had sent earlier that day, and beneath them both the London Standard, spread out to the story of the second massa-cre in the Limehouse.

That, it appeared, was the last thing she had read before she left.

Fear clenched the pit of his stomach, the dreadful sinking sensation he'd had in Pretoria, when he knew he'd been blown, and after it, cold and deadly anger.

Grippen.

When she hadn't heard from him, she'd gone vampire hunting on her own.

Lydia, no, he thought, aghast at the foolhardiness of it. It was hard to imagine Lydia being rash enough to undertake such an expedition alone, and yet.,.

She had promised him, yes-but that had been before he himself had disappeared. Before the "Limehouse Vampire" had begun its rampages. For all she knew, he could have been dead in Paris-and he was, in fact, extraordinarily lucky not to be. She had obviously realized that for once, unwittingly, Fleet Street hyperbole was telling nothing but the unvarnished facts; for all she knew, whatever she had learned or de-duced might have been the only help the mortal population of London was going to get.

Like many researchers, Lydia was cold-blooded-as a rule the softer-hearted altruists went into general practice. But at heart, it took a streak of self-sacrifice to enter the medical field at all. He had never known Lydia to break a promise, but at that point she might very well have believed that a daylight investigation was "safe."

What had Ysidro said? That vampires were generally aware of vam-pire hunters? All it would take would be for Grippen to become aware of her, to know whom to look for in the masses of London.

He made another swift survey of the room.

In the desk he found things he knew Lydia had not formerly pos-sessed-a small silver knife, a revolver loaded-he broke it open to see -with silver-nosed bullets. In her bedroom she had set up a small chemical apparatus, a microscope, a Bunsen burner, and a quantity of garlic, as well as a bottle of something which, uncorked, was a pungently obvious garlic distillate.

For all his gentleman-adventurer tamperings with the Department, Asher was first and last a scholar and had arranged to track the vam-pires with scholarship. Lydia, the doctor, would use medical means for her defense.

Medical journals stacked every horizontal surface in the room and peeked from beneath the tumbled coverlets of the bed-he had long grown used to her habit of sleeping with books. Slips of note paper marked them, and the briefest perusal showed him they all contained articles dealing with either speculations on blood pathologies which could have been the source of vampire legends, case studies of patho-logically related increases in psychic abilities, or obscure blood disor-ders. On the nightstand he found a hypodermic syringe, and a brown velvet case containing ten ampoules of silver nitrate.

It took him a few moments to realize what finding all this meant.

It meant that she had none of it with her when she left-or was taken.

Quietly, Asher returned to the sitting room, where the landlady was standing, gazing around her in bafflement at the storm of papers and notes and the warlike battle map of London. She was a little brown woman with a neat figure, a few years younger than Asher, she took one look at his face and said, "I'll fetch you some sherry, sir."

"Thank you." Asher sat down quietly at Lydia's desk. If there was any residual weakness in him, he wasn't aware of it now.

He had put his life back together after Pretoria, knotted up the frayed strings of whatever seventeen years with the Department had left of his soul, and had gone on. Long ago, he had loved a girl in Vienna, during the dozen or more journeys there to collect information, and, leaving her, had betrayed her in such a way that she would be distracted from her growing suspicions of him. It had been one of the most difficult things he had ever done. But he had made his choice and had patiently put his life to rights afterward, though it had been years before he could sit through certain songs.

If Lydia was dead, he did not think he would be able to undertake that patient process again.

Then a bitter rictus of a smile pulled at his mouth, as he remembered Ysidro in Elysee's salon, saying, "Fear nothing, mistress. I do not for-get," and the vampire's grip like a manacle on his wrist. The vampires just might make the whole question academic. And if they'd harmed Lydia, he thought, with chilly calm, they would have to.

Unhurriedly, he examined Lydia's lists again.

Many addresses had one star beside them; only two had two.

One was Ernchester House.

The other was an old townhouse near Great Portland Street, an area he dimly associated with dingy Georgian terraces which had seen better days. The house in question had been bought freehold in 1754 by some relation of the sixth Earl of Ernchester, and deeded in gift to Dr. Lionel Grippen.

The sun hung above Harrow Hill, a blurred orange disk in the pall of factory soot, as his cab rattled west. It was several degrees yet above the roofline-plenty of time, Asher thought. He wondered if Lydia had other silver weapons, if she'd gone out completely unarmed-or if, for that matter, she'd gone out at all. Grippen could just as easily have broken into the place some night and taken her. How had he known who she was and where to find her? Stop this, he told himself, as the walks through Hyde Park returned to his mind like an accusatory bloodstain on a carpet. There'll be time for this later. And, just as firmly, he refused to contemplate what thatlater would constitute.

The house at 17 Monck Circle, like its neighbors, wore the air of having come down in the world. They were tall houses of brown stone, rising flush out of the pavement-servants' entrances in the back, Asher noted mentally as he paid off his cabby.

Good, he thought. Nothing like a little privacy when breaking and entering.

He observed the tightly shuttered windows as he strolled past it, looking for the inevitable entrance to the mews. It had once been gated, but the gates had long since been taken down and only their rusted posts remained, bolted to the dingy bricks. Just within the narrow lane, a closed carriage stood, a brougham such as doctors drove. He made a mental note of caution against a possible witness or bar to a quick escape and edged past it, jingling his picklocks in his pocket. He won-dered whether Grippen would be able to sense him in his sleep.

If, for that matter, Grippen were here at all. Charles Farren had mentioned owning the building to which he'd been taken after the fiasco at Ernchester House, plus another, a few streets away; Lydia's more intensive research had turned up several others owned by aliases for the same pair. From things Ysidro had said, he gathered the Spaniard changed his sleeping place frequently-a somewhat uncomfortable mode of living, even for a year, Asher knew from his own experiences abroad. He wondered whether vampires did not simply perish of care-lessness when the pressure of pretending to be human grew unbearable.

Except for a few, he thought. Brother Anthony the Minorite had gone quietly mad instead.

And- who? Tulloch the Scot, haunting the churchyards of St. Germain? Elizabeth the Fair, who had drunk the tainted blood of Plague victims? The incalculable Rhys, who had not been seen since 1666? Or some other, more ancient vampire still, hiding in London until his very legend was eradicated...

Until, perhaps, Calvaire had turned him up?

Asher soft-footed his way down the nearly deserted mews, counting cottages and coach houses. Many of these were long empty of the horses and carriages they'd originally housed, transformed into storage or let out for a few shillings. The one attached to Number Seventeen was crumbling and dirty, the doors sagging on rotted hinges, the windows broken. The door into the yard stood ajar.

Asher's hair prickled on his head as he stepped closer. He could see the two stout padlocks on the inside of the gate, and beyond it, across a tiny yard cluttered with old boxes and decaying furniture, to the house. Moss grew on the paving blocks, on the steps of the sunken areaway, and around the outhouse. No servants had used that kitchen for de-cades, at least. Above the kitchen, two sets of long French windows gaped mournful and black-the rest of the windows were shuttered.

The rational man, the twentieth-century Englishman, stirred in a faint reflex of protest at the obvious conclusion, but in his heart Asher felt no doubt. The place was the obvious haunt of vampires.

And the gate was open. He glanced back at the brougham, standing unobtrusively in the lane, waiting..

For whom?

As if to reassure him, the bay hack between the brougham's shafts shook its mane and chewed thoughtfully on its bit. The last broken fragments of the setting sunlight glinted on the bridle brasses.

Did vampires go driving in the afternoons?

He could think of one that might.

Something seemed to tighten inside of him as he slipped into the ruined and weedy yard. If he and Lydia could find this place, someone else certainly could-unless, of course, Ysidro was somehow right after all, and Grippen himself was able to get about by day.

Either way, he was on the verge of this riddle's dark heart, and, he reflected, probably in a great deal of danger.

There was a good chance that Lydia was in that house.

He crossed the yard cautiously. If the day stalker-be it Grippen or Tulloch the Scot or some nameless ancient-were there, the vampire could hear him whatever he did. There were two of them, he remem-bered-he'd have to watch his back, as much as one could against vampires. And one of them, at least, was mad.

He stepped up onto the little terrace to the left of the areaway and forced one of the long windows, gritting his teeth at the sharp click as the latch gave back. Shielded behind the corner of the embrasure, he waited for a long time, listening. Distantly he heard something fall, somewhere in the house-then the panicked flurry of thudding footfalls.

Heading for the carriage, he thought, and then, No vampire's feet sound like that. A human accomplice? Given Calvaire's penchant for confiding in prospective victims, it was logical. Was Grippen's body even now searing, crumbing to ashes in some upper room as the last dim rays of the evening sun streamed through the broken shut-ters...?

Asher found himself hoping so for his own sake, even as he tracked those fleeing footfalls with his ears. The stairs would debouch into the front hall; from there, the killer could leave by either the front or the back. He could slip through the half-open window, intercept him before he left the house...

But he drew back at the thought of entering those dense shadows beyond the window, and that probably saved his life. He was in the act of turning away to try to intercept the fugitive by the carriage when a hand shot out the window from the dimness of the house. It moved impossibly fast, catching him by the arm in a grip that crushed flesh and bone, dragging him toward the interior gloom with terrifying force. In the fading daylight, he got a confused impression of a leprous white talon, bulging sinews and misshapen knots of knuckles, and nails like claws, while the creature inside the house was still only a monstrous blur of white framed in the window's darkness. As a second hand reached out to seize him around the back of the neck, Asher flicked one of the silver knives into his hand from his ulster pocket and slashed at the corded wrist.

Blood scorched him as if he'd been splattered with steaming water. The shriek from the darkness within was nothing human, a raw scream of animal rage and pain. He twisted from the loosened grip before he could be flung, as Grippen had once flung him stunningly against the wall, and dragged at his revolver, firing at the vague shape that came bursting from the dark beyond the French doors.

It flickered, changed, moving with unfollowable speed; he felt some-thing behind him and turned to slash again with the knife still in his left hand. The vampire was behind him, the slanting final sunlight turning its skull-face ghastly-a vampire beyond all doubt, but what it had been before was hard to guess. Under the pulled-back lips the fangs were huge, broken tusks that had gouged seeping furrows into the pustuled skin of its chin. It screamed again and fell back, clutching at the cut Asher had opened in its palm, glaring at him with immense eyes, blue, staring, pupils swollen with inhuman hate.

The psychic impact was flattening. Asher felt as if his mind had been struck by a falling tree, dizziness and disorientation almost swamping his consciousness. He tried to fling the dead darkness off him, even as the thing seized him again and bore him back against the house wall, its grip wrapping over his gun hand and crushing the bones. He cried out as the revolver slipped from his fingers-the thing caught his knife wrist, then flinched back with another scream...

Silver,Asher thought, the silver chain. With his knife, he slashed at the thing again.

With another shriek of agonized fury, it caught his sleeve, pulled him forward, and slammed him back against the wall again with such vio-lence that, in spite of his effort to keep his chin down, Asher's head cracked against the bricks. His concentration slipped, breaking, though he fought to hold it, knowing, if he let the vampire's mind get control of his, he was surely dead.

A voice shouted something. The vampire slammed him against the wall once more, and his vision blurred, pain swamping his mind under a dreaming tide of gray. He clung to the pain that was already screaming from his right arm, forcing himself to remain aware...

A name. The voice was shouting a name.

He tried to remember it, tried to cling to the pain of his broken wrist, as he slipped to the ground. He was dimly aware of the dampness of the bricks beneath his cheek and the murky sweetness of crushed leaves in his nostrils.

Whistling shrieks cut the air, and footfalls thudded closer. He hurt all over, his back and left wrist as well as his right, but his left hand would answer, closing around the knife hilt, though he knew he was outnum-bered. The newspaper description of the savagery of the multiple murders came back to him, and the glaring horror of the vampire-thing's eyes.

"Nay, then, what's all this?"

"You all right, sir?"

He managed to raise himself to one elbow in time to confront the two blue-clothed giants that materialized out of the dusk. London's finest, he thought groggily. The sun had slipped behind Harrow Hill, The twilight was cold in his bones.

"No," he replied, as one of the bobbies helped him to sit up. "I think my wrist is broken."

"Gorblimey, sir, what the 'ell..."

"I was coming to visit friends of mine in this house. I think I sur-prised burglars in the act. One of them attacked me but there were two -they were driving a brougham..."

One bobby glanced at the other-they were both big, pink-faced men, one from Yorkshire by his speech and the other a sharp-featured Lon-doner. Asher couldn't help picturing the look of sardonic calculation Ysidro would give them. 'That one as passed us, driving fit to kill, I'll bet."

"Bay gelding, white off-fore stocking," Asher reported automatically. "He dropped this, Charley," the London-born officer said, picking up Asher's revolver; the Yorkshireman glanced at it, then at the bloodied knife still in Asher's hand. "You allus go calling armed, sir?"

"Not invariably," Asher said with a shaky grin. "My friend-Dr. Grippen-collects odd weapons. This one was sold to me as an antique, and I wanted his opinion on it." He winced; his right hand was begin-ning to swell and throb agonizingly, the stretched skin turning bluish black; his left was bruising badly.

"Best send for doctor, Bob," the Yorkshireman said. "Come inside, sir," he added, as Bob hastened off down the path. "Happen they heard no one was to home."

Asher glanced about him at the silent drawing room as they entered. "I'm not so sure of that."

Heavy seventeenth-century furniture loomed at them through the dense shadows of the drawing room; here and there, metal gleamed, or glass. The bobby Charley steered Asher to a massive oak chair. "Best wait here, sir," he said, "You do look like you been right through the mill." But there wasn't wholehearted solicitude in his tone-Asher knew the man didn't quite believe his story. It scarcely mattered at this point. What mattered was that he had backup and a good reason for searching the house for Lydia. With luck, the killers had destroyed Grippen and hadn't discovered her, if she were here... "What did you say your friend's name was, sir?" "The owner of the house is Dr, Grippen," Asher said. "My name is Professor James Asher-I'm a Lecturer at New College, Oxford." He held his swollen hand propped against his chest; the throbbing went down his arm, and his head was beginning to ache. He fumbled a card from his pocket. "I was supposed to meet him here this afternoon."

Charley studied the card, then secreted it in his tunic, somewhat reassured by this proof of gentility. "Right, sir. Just you rest yourself here. I'll have a bit of a look about."

Asher leaned back in the chair, fighting to remain conscious as the policeman left the darkening room. The shock of the fight was coming over him, clouding his mind, and his whole body ached. The face of the daylight vampire swam before his thoughts, queerly colorless as Ysidro's was, but not smooth and dry-looking-rather it was swollen, puffy, pustulant. Thin rags of fair hair had clung to the scalp; he tried to recall eyebrows and could not-only those huge teeth, grotesque and outsize, and the staring hatred of the blue eyes.

Forcing his mind back to alertness, he fished the picklocks from his coat pocket-clumsily, for he had to reach across his body to do so- and placed them inconspicuously on a blackwood sideboard near the French doors. He guessed he would be under enough suspicion without having those found on his person. Staggering back to the chair, he mentally began ticking off details: brown jacket, corduroy or tweed, countrified and incongruous on that massive shape; and lobeless ears, oddly ordinary given the deformation of the rest of the face. He glanced at his left arm. Blood was staining the claw rips in the coat sleeve.

Dear God, was that what vampires became, if they lived long enough? Was that what the Plague, mixing with God only knew what other organisms of the vampire syndrome, could do? Would he, at the last, have to track down and kill Ysidro, to prevent him from turning into that?

He realized he was singularly lucky to be still alive.

The name, he thought. The voice had shouted a name, just as his head had cracked against the wall. His recollection was blurry, drown-ing under shock and pain and the weight of the vampire's dark mind. Then there was the rattle of harness, the clatter of retreating wheels...

The images faded as his consciousness slipped toward darkness.

"You!"

A powerful hand grabbed him and thrust him back against the back of the chair. His mind cleared, and he saw Grippen looming in the shadows of the now-dark room.

Still holding his swollen right hand to his chest, Asher said wearily, "Let me alone, Lionel. The killer was here. Grippen...!" For the vampire had turned sharply and, had Asher not seized the corner of his cloak, would have been already halfway to the stairs. Grippen whirled back, his scarred face dark with impatient fury. Quietly, Asher said, "The red-haired girl."

"What red-haired girl? Let go, man!"

The cloak was gone from his grip-even his unbroken left hand hadn't much strength to it. Asher got to his feet, fighting a surge of dizziness as he strode after the vampire up the stairs.

He found Grippen in one of the upper bedrooms, an attic chamber that had at one time housed the maids. He had to light one of the bedroom candles before ascending the narrow stair, no easy feat with only one workable hand; though the vaguest twilight still lingered out-side, the windows of all the attics had been boarded shut, and the place was dark as pitch. He could hear nothing of the bobby Charley moving about the upper regions of the house. Presumably he was lying in one of the bedrooms in a trance cast by the master vampire's mind. That unnatural slumber pressed on his own consciousness as he staggered up the stairs. The pain in his broken wrist helped.

In the darkness he heard Grippen whisper, "Christ's bowels," un-voiced as the wind. The candle gleam caught a velvety sheen from his spreading cloak, and beyond it something glinted, polished gold-the brass mountings of a casket.

There was a coffin in the attic.

Asher stumbled forward into the room. As he did so his foot brushed something on the floor that scraped... a crowbar. Grippen was kneeling beside the coffin, staring in shock at what lay within. Asher's glance went to the window; the boards were gouged but intact. The killers must have been just starting that part of the operation, he thought, when his own footfalls had drawn them from their task.

Grippen whispered again, "Sweet Jesu."

Asher came silently to his side.

Chloe Winterdon lay in the coffin, her head tilted to one side among the pillowing mounds of her gilt hair, her mouth open, fangs bared in her colorless gums, her eyes staring in frozen horror. She was clearly dead, almost withered-looking, the white flesh sunken back onto her bones.

Only slightly bloodied, the pounded end of a stake protruded from between her breasts.

Ragged white punctures marked her throat.

Quietly, Grippen said, "Her blood has all been drained."