Accursed (39 page)

Tamara stared at her butler, this man who worked for her, but who had also become a friend to herself and her brother. She tried to put all her surprise and disapproval into her gaze, but Farris steadfastly refused to meet her eyes. Instead he stubbornly stared at Nigel, awaiting some response.

The silence in the room was palpable. This was the very library where she and William had spent long days and nights, poring over every volume of supernatural lore and occult instruction they could lay hands upon, trying to teach themselves mastery over the powers they had inherited.

Those had been terrifying times, and yet they had also been among the most exciting, the most tangibly real days of her life, for in that time Tamara had realized that in some horrifying way, a dream had come true for her. She had always believed herself destined for a life beyond the constraints of society. Something of consequence. She had received all she had desired, and learned to fear it, as well.

“Farris—” she began.

“You know, Tamara,” Nigel interrupted, still examining the talisman. “I have endured the doubts and suspicions, even the animosity of your brother and your ghostly confidants, because despite outward appearances I do have a certain respect for them.”

He picked up one of the white candles and angled it so that its dripping wax fell onto the bronze figure of Vishnu, cooling quickly and hardening in place.

“I will not, however, allow myself to be denigrated by the
help.
” The vampire sneered, his eyes going crimson in the gloom, and his fangs glistening in the candlelight. “So you’d best rein in this yapping dog of a servant . . . that is, if you wish to continue to enjoy his services.”

Farris’s face grew ruddy with anger, and he took several more steps into the room with that cast-iron pot in his hands.

“Now, see here!” he began.

“That will be enough, Farris!” Tamara snapped, silencing the man immediately. He had the good sense to look chastened, but she could practically see steam rising from his ears.

Tamara pushed away the books she had been searching through and stood up from the study desk. Atop it stood a bronze lion William had once accidentally brought to life. Such amusing times were a distant memory at the moment, however. She picked up an apple that sat on the edge of the desk and opened and closed her fingers around it; then she crossed her arms and regarded them both.

“Why men run this world is a mystery for the ages,” she said. A lock of hair had fallen across her eyes, and she blew it away with a puff of breath. “Nigel, you know well how staunch an ally Farris has proven since we first engaged him as our butler here at Ludlow House. He is as much a part of our crusade to defend Albion as any of us. He never shirks a fight, and has shown unmatched courage in the face of terrors that would have made lesser men soil their drawers and bawl like infants.”

Farris stood a bit taller, lifting his chin proudly.

“And you, my friend,” she continued, casting a harsh glance toward her butler. “Mr. Townsend combats an affliction, but he has acquitted himself admirably as our ally in the past. Regardless of what mutterings you might hear issuing from my brother’s mouth, or your own superstitions, he would risk his life for yours simply because we are all allies in this struggle. Whatever prejudices you have, you must rise above them, or you are of no use to me.”

Nigel raised an eyebrow and regarded her carefully for a long moment, then turned to Farris.

“Well, bring it here, then. We shall see if your household skills extend to the kitchen.”

Farris hesitated only a moment. Clearly Nigel’s jest did not sit well with him. Then the butler looked at Tamara, nodded once, and strode to the desk she had so recently vacated. He set the iron pot down upon the wood, paying little heed to whether it might scorch the surface.

“I did just as you asked,” he informed them both, gesturing into the pot. “Several branches from a yew tree, a spool of white yarn, three red ribbons, and . . .” He looked a bit regretful, and shot another glance at Tamara. “A photograph of the late Sir Ludlow Swift.”

Tamara peered into the pot. There was no trace of the ingredients Farris had just described. He had set them on fire inside that iron vessel and let it sit upon the stove as they burned. All that remained was a substantial amount of dark gray ash.

“All right,” Nigel allowed. “Now, Tamara. The apple, please?”

She picked up a small, sharp knife from the desktop, and plunged it into the fruit. The smell of it was pungent and delicious as its juice slid down the skin, making her fingers sticky. Tamara glanced at Nigel, who was continuing to coat Gupta’s Vishnu talisman, rolling the candle between his fingers and letting the melted wax drop onto the arcane artifact.

“Only one seed?” she asked. “Are you sure about that?”

“We seek one man. Therefore, only one seed,” Nigel confirmed. “The talisman is linked eternally to Gupta by his previous possession, and the link between your grandfather and the Protector of Bharath was strong. We’re simply going to follow it.”

“So you’ve said,” Tamara replied, “though it still seems difficult to visualize.”

Nigel smiled. “Let’s stop trying, then.”

He set the candlestick down and held out his free hand to Tamara. She used the tip of the knife to pry a single seed from within the apple. Nigel glanced at Farris and the pot of ashes, then looked back at Tamara.

“You’re the real magician here, Tamara. Prepare the map, please.”

With a nod, she turned to Farris. “Would you mind spreading that on the floor?”

“On the . . . ?” The man looked stupefied.

“Yes, yes,” Tamara said, hurrying him with a gesture. “There, where we’ve cleared a space. Right upon the wood. Don’t worry about embers. I can put a fire out fairly quickly, if I have to. Just spread it out into a square or a rectangle, as large as you can without spreading it too thin.”

As Farris did so, she set the sliced apple on the desktop, and began to reach for the book she had last held, only to pause as she realized how sticky her fingers still were from the fruit. Tamara glanced around for something to clean them and, seeing nothing, began to lick them.

A flash of memory went through her mind, of the way she had debased herself with John Haversham. In the same moment this memory brought an embarrassing flush to her cheeks and a rush of arousal. Glancing in his direction, she caught sight of Nigel watching her lick her fingers.

She dropped her hands quickly, wiping any remaining apple juice on her skirts. Nigel gave her a lopsided, playful grin and smiled. But it was innocent enough, and Tamara allowed herself a nervous, rueful chuckle, then shook her head.

Then she picked up the book.

As Farris finished spreading the ashes upon the floor, she opened the pages to the one she had marked. Nigel had found the appropriate spell for her, and she had practiced the old Celtic pronunciation. Now she took a deep breath and intoned the words. Her voice was soft, yet she spoke strongly, enunciating carefully.

Farris wore a grave expression as he stepped back to watch, and as Tamara repeated the words a third and then a fourth time, he gasped in amazement and stared down at the ashes on the floor.

At the map.

For that was what they had become. Every single ember, every grain of ash that had been in that pot, had shifted position slightly. And now what lay upon the wooden floor was a light covering that showed, in sharp detail, the entirety of the city of London. Every street, many structures, most of the major landmarks were there. There were no names, of course, but to any true resident of the city, they were unnecessary.

This was London.

Tamara smiled proudly and closed the book, then glanced at Nigel.

“Well?”

The vampire altered the position of the items in his hands. Now he held the candle beneath the wax-coated talisman, which still vaguely held its shape. The flame flickered up and began to melt the wax again. Nigel crouched over a small saucer he had placed on the floor. Upon it lay the single apple seed. He allowed the white wax to drip from Gupta’s talisman onto the seed, coating it.

“If he has managed to return to this plane of existence, this spell will locate him. If he is dead, the wax will turn black. If he is still beyond this realm . . . the spell will tell us, though it will take a much stronger bit of magic to locate him then.

“We’ll start simply.”

Nigel set the candle and talisman aside, and waited for the wax to dry on the seed. It took only a moment.

Tamara watched in fascination as Nigel picked up the wax-coated seed, studied the ashen map upon the floor, and then set the seed down at a place on the map that roughly approximated their current location, at Ludlow House.

Then, of its own volition, the waxen seed began to glide across the floor, moving through the ashen streets of London in search of Tipu Gupta.

T
HE FILTHY WATER
of the Thames churned ever onward, but the wind had turned blessedly to the south, carrying the stink of the river away.

The old man was known only as Arun to those who worked the docks, and he wandered now among them. He passed slowly by the endless warehouses, leaning on a hand-carved stick that had been a gift from one of the women he had cured, whose sinister pregnancy he had terminated with a wave of his hand. The woman had been afflicted, but the demonic parasites had not fully taken root within her womb, and he was able to save her.

She had gotten sick, vomiting up the most hideous green and black bile imaginable, but her swollen belly had gone flat, and she had been spared the fate of so many other ragged women living in these poverty-stricken districts.

But it was little enough. He might alleviate the suffering of a handful, but they were merely symptoms. The plague was still spreading, a curse that transformed his own people, yet would have far greater consequences than to kill a handful of poor fools tainted by their yearning for the land of their birth.

No, he had to do more.

Dozens of men had been twisted and transformed by the curse, by the touch of Shiva, and he knew it was up to him to exterminate them all before the evil could spread even farther. He paused along the river and closed his eyes. Breathing deeply, he caught the scent he had been searching for. No wolf or hound could have tracked it, but he was attuned to it from a lifetime of tasting the arcane.

Eyes flickering open, the old man wavered a bit, and then pressed on. The London Docks lay ahead. Masts loomed almost spectrally in the night-black sky and the moist curtain of mist that always seemed to enshroud the river on these spring evenings, merging forever with the smoke that belched from towering chimneys.

He had visited London many times in his life, but he had never stayed very long. Duty had always called him home. How strange, then, that now—at the end of his life—duty would call him here one last time.

How many ships were docked here? Thirty? Fifty? A vast forest of masts loomed in the semi-darkness. And there were other docks than these. How many vessels floated in the waters of the Thames this night? He could only begin to imagine.

The old man continued onward, and soon found himself among the bustle of sailors preparing for departure. They spared him nary a glance as they shouted to one another. Mariners of all stripes, grizzled old men with the sea in their eyes and faces as weathered as the hull of an ancient ship, young boys with no other means of survival than to take to the sea. There were black faces and brown, including some of his own countrymen. He wondered if they missed the hot sun and golden sands of Calcutta. They hoisted pigs and horses on board, and crate after crate of stores for the journey.

The mates shouted to one another, the only form of communication they seemed to know, these sailors. They shouldered heavy casks with remarkable ease, and set about Herculean tasks as though there were nothing extraordinary at all about their stamina. For to them there was not. These were seafaring men, and their journey was more than just beginning, it was never-ending.

A Babel of languages swirled around the old man as he maneuvered among the crews of several vessels. Russians and Swedes and Danes and Americans, Spaniards and Frenchmen and Egyptians and Chinamen. This was a culture all its own, one they shared. He considered how much the world could learn from an hour spent in the confluence of the London Docks, among filthy laborers and wandering the mazes of Wapping and Shadwell.

But such was not to be, for men of consequence would be loath to sully themselves with such an excursion. And what would they see if they did make the effort? The value of the place, the richness of it would be lost on them. All they would find were the rotting boards and loose, slime-encrusted cables, and the despicable and suspicious characters who lurked about, feeding off of the industry of the place or picking the castoffs from the garbage and from the mudflats. Anything to scrape a few shillings together for a bit of drink or a roll with one of the slatternly women whose lives had led them to the numbing, purgatorial existence of the prostitute.