House of Corruption (17 page)

“I’ve spent many days,” he said, “pondering why (Mister) Tukebote would make such a long and expensive journey. I can only deduce Miss Carlovec’s claim of her father is an honest one. You said he too is cursed, and he is dying?” I told him that was her claim. “Then this penanggalen must have a vested interest in seeing him well again. What sort of hold would her father have on such a creature?”

It was a good question. I do not know if there could be anything Miss Carlovec would say that could satisfy me, but I must try. We have not spoken much since leaving New Orleans, much less concerning these issues at any length. We continue to spend very little time in each other’s company. I will broach the subject tonight.

Addendum (9:15 p.m.)

As the poet once said, “All schemes of love and war end at a woman’s locked door.” Such was the case when I arrived at her cabin. She would not respond to my inquiry. I admit to a bit of intrusion as I pressed my ear and heard her distressed sounds in the throes of nightmare.

I shall ask her tomorrow.

Saturday, October 25 — Atlantic Crossing

Spoke with Miss Carlovec at breakfast. This was our first full conversation since New Orleans. It provided no insight. I treated her poorly last week, and I doubt she’s forgiven it.

Her valet, she said, was a loyal addition to her father’s retinue. London-born, raised in Singapore and served a number of influential citizens during his eighteen-year career. She continues to assert his integrity. She fully believes it was his shell, powered by Arté’s vampire, rather than the man himself.

I would like to consider myself a man of some insight, empathetic to a degree, and I was very careful in watching Miss Carlovec’s behavior. Either the thought of this vampire is incredulous to her, or she is a very fine actress.

Perhaps she is what she claims—an innocent, fooled by devilish machinations. If so, then I have been unduly hard on her.

Addendum (12:37 a.m.)

Cannot lower my guard. Not for her.

Addendum (4:13 a.m.)

Closer still.

17

Reynard, Savoy and Grant stretched out upon plush leather chairs, the gentlemen’s lounge empty of other guests that late hour. Stewards left them cold canapés and aspic, an array of bottles in ice, glasses within reach, and the privacy they demanded. Wide windows allowed an excellent view past the deck and over the moon-glazed ocean, but their conversation commanded their full attention. 

“Our quarry is a chameleon,” Savoy said, “as long as hosts are at its disposal. I can suppose that this creature has used plenty of bodies in its quest to find the source of your remission. It would explain the attempt to use poor Bill Tourney—aborted, I would guess, when our friend Mister Grant stumbled upon the scene.”

“So it used Freddie Burlington instead,” Reynard said, with distaste. Freddie’s funeral had been three days earlier, and he had missed it. “You saw him with your own eyes. You saw no difference?”

“We both saw him,” Savoy said. “Miss Carlovec was in her valet’s presence for many months without suspicion. A man’s blood, his cells and membranes—the penanggalen must be subject to the chemical and physical forces the body once enjoyed. It must have some conscious or unconscious control over its muscles to resemble the original.”

“But I saw her—his—face change,” Grant said.

“It may require effort to maintain the host’s features, but upon feeding or transfer to another host that illusion is discarded. Folklore recalls many a maiden who has fallen prey to vampiric advances, only to see upon the swooning moment of her death, the horrible creature in its reality.”

Reynard laughed. “Honestly, Arté. How can you say that with a straight face?”

“It does no harm to offer conjecture.”

Reynard raised his eyebrows and craned his head to include Grant in his incredulity. Grant would have none of it. He was convinced. Reynard felt the odd man out as he drained a tall glass of sherry with a hearty gulp, poured more of the red liquid into another glass, and lifted it in Grant’s direction.

“Thanks, but no,” Grant said.

“A teetotaler. Wonderful. I do not trust a man who does not drink.”

“Don’t trust a man who does.”

Reynard shrugged, draining the glass with a loud swallow. “This excursion ought to keep you from the noose a good while longer.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“So, it’s my sister,” Reynard said. “She is a pretty thing, aye?”

Savoy coughed.

Reynard poured himself another sherry. “Artémius pays your expenses. You’ve proven yourself a fine lackey, and you’ve the bruises to prove it, but every mile is another further from your fate. I figure you’re with us until we find a port where you can...how might you cowboys say it? Mosey off?”

“You’re free to think what you want.” Grant replied.

“You’d stay among our damned fellowship for…what?” He gave a terse smile. “You’ve seen what I am.”

“I have.”

“And that doesn’t shake your faith and doubt your God.”

“
Reynard
,” Savoy whispered.

“I know what you are,” Grant said.

“You know what I am capable of doing.”

“I’ve seen it.”

“And that doesn’t bother a man of honor like yourself.”

Grant paused, the color draining from the knuckles of his fingers knit tightly together in his lap. “You’re right; Mister Savoy has treated me fair, and I mean to help. My reasons are m’own.”

“Not for me, surely.”

“Not particularly.” Grant took a breath. “I could’ve easily put a bullet in your brain and left a long time ago. From everything I seen, as you say, you might deserve it. Hopefully you’ll behave yourself.”

Reynard opened his mouth. Savoy’s teacup suddenly fell off the table, struck the floor and broke into three pieces. It was followed by his dish and spoon, the lot clattering loudly to the floor. “My apologies,” he said, crouching to dab at the growing spots of brown liquid on the carpet. He spoke quickly as he scrubbed. “I have spent a good deal of time studying the mythologies of Miss Carlovec’s homeland, the various indigenous beliefs, whatever information I could find in Boston. I have spoken with her at length.”

“And?” Reynard asked.

Savoy returned to his seat. “
And
I have found striking similarities to tales found all around the world. Faith and vampirism are closely linked. Most supernatural manifestations are fueled by one’s faith that he is, in fact, a monster, that he wants or deserves his condition.”

“I did not ask for this,” Reynard said, managing a hard look at Grant.

“True,” Savoy said. “Your condition reorganizes your body until your resources are inexorably depleted—one cannot help but be a ravening creature. Yet it is still you, Renny. It is your hair, your blood, your bones. If it is still you, then your reason and ethics must also remain...albeit pushed aside in some darker place.”

“I am a murderer,” Reynard said, his voice low, glancing at Grant. “I deserve a bullet, correct? Are those my ethics?”

“That was the animal, acting against you.”

“It is a disease.”

“Of a kind, yes.”

“I cannot command influenza to step aside.”

“The origins are demonic,” Savoy said, “and must conform to certain spiritual laws. Mankind must be free to choose; none, no matter their actions, have ever fully lost that right. Your disease may be crippling, pervasive, but you have been changed.” He paused. “Either by my bullet or its violent removal, you are different now.”

“I did not choose this,” Reynard said. “I did not choose it for my sister. There was no free will. God saw fit to—”

“God had nothing to do with this,” Savoy said. “Yes, you are burdened by the sins of another man, but such demonic conditions are as much of the mind as the physical body. A man afflicted by lycanthropy is subject to law, such as the penanggalen must be. Ordinary things such as silver or wolfsbane, once benign, now have great power because the folktales, or one’s sworn religion, say they
should
. This creature used silver and aconite against you. It knows the folklore. It traveled for months in the guise of Mister Tukebote. It expelled so much effort, so much time and money and risk to find you, to take the bullet from your chest.”

“It should have gone after
you
,” Reynard said. “You made the bloody thing.”

Savoy offered a sardonic grin. “Indeed. I can only deduce she did not know about the bullet until very late in the game. All it knew is that
you
had it. And
you
still have it.”

“Why?”

“Because it
believes
. It accepts the limitations of its condition, and the condition of Master Carlovec. It must have been a creature of faith once...a Christian, I suspect, devout. I never told you what I threw in Mister Tukebote’s face at Metairie. The liquid that seemed to burn his skin?”

“Acid,” Grant said.

“Water. Not even blessed. In my secular role I doubt my authority to consecrate is still valid. Yet when I cast it into its face with all the confidence of a priest...
it
believed it was blessed—and you saw the effect.”

“So what else might it believe?” Grant asked.

“Exactly.”

18

From Liverpool they used coach and train and boat, working their way across the Channel southward to Calais, train to Paris, Lyon. In three days they entered the arid, rocky hills of France’s Provence region.

Reynard spent much of the journey alone, sequestering himself in whatever empty compartment he could find. He watched for hours out the window as the train passed through little towns, through rolling hills carved with orchards and vineyards. He recalled fragments of memories of no real significance: running along dirt roads, the smell of olive oil and cinnamon, dusty summer afternoons, the white-washed planks of a tall fence, aged faces of relatives long since buried.

He remembered the day Father announced their move to Montreal; Reynard had run off and cried that day—alone, so father would not see. Now, back home for the first time in many years, the familiar landscape offered no comfort. The simple pleasures he once knew felt shrouded, as if his old happiness had been a lie, as fallow as the dead fields that blurred past the train’s window.

The further south they travelled, his growing anxiety became a dread. He feared what they might find once they intercepted the
Kalabakang
, what he might say to Lasha when they found her. Would she slap him? Scream? Would she refuse to come close? His tension became nearly unbearable as the train eased past white, rocky hillocks, the earth rich and red, the air pungent with the smell of the sea. He read the same newspaper articles over and over again. He found scratch paper and a pencil and scribbled—circle upon circle upon circle—to ignore the fluttering madness as he imagined all possible futures.

Hurry
, he wanted to tell the conductor.
My sister is waiting.

When the train lurched into Marseille’s Gare St. Charles late in the afternoon, Reynard was one of the first to descend upon the platform. He was the first of his party to discover the broadsheet, to read the awful headline:

LE BATEAU DE LA MORT ARRIVE AU VIEUX PORT!

“‘The steamer
Kalabakang
, registered out of Singapore, was found adrift three miles south-southwest from Château d’If,’” Savoy translated as he, Reynard, Grant and Kiria rode together in a brougham down Canebíere Avenue. “‘Towed into shore by a Corsican trawler, authorities have since moored the doomed ship near Le Quai de la Tourette for examination.’”

“It cannot be true,” Kiria said. “It cannot.”

Reynard glanced past the curtains and watched the flow of pedestrians, forcing himself to ignore the smell of her growing emotion.

As France’s largest port, Marseille held a French flavor with a North African spirit, a city growing steadily against the Mediterranean. At one turn one might see half-timber and plaster apartments like in Dijon, or tall, narrow brick-and-stone
maisons
with their iron-lace railings like in Paris, or fountains of Grecian figures spouting water like many in Lyon. Yet one might also hear the drums and shrill whistles of Moroccan musicians, see women in black shawls and tinkling jewelry, or pass a cluster of buildings the color of sandstone, the shops sporting wicker baskets filled with peanuts or figs or brassware like so many markets in Cairo.

The city was alive and breathing, the mongers and beggars and well-dressed debutantes, a silent truce among the disparate cultures. Reynard hated the disinterest of the city streets, all those thousands who lived casually this day—for everyone aboard the
Kalabakang
, including his sister, might be dead. Newsboys still hawked their broadsheets and earned money at the expense of others, those suffering grief for their dead—

“‘At least twenty bodies have been recovered,’” Savoy continued. “‘The remains of seventeen men and three women were confirmed by Inspector Jean Pourry earlier today. Victims were discovered from the bridge to the...’” He showed the page to Reynard. “What is
cargaison
?”

“Hold,” Reynard said.

“Ah, yes. Obviously. ‘Victims were discovered from the bridge to the hold, where one victim apparently attempted to hide.’”

“Horrible,” Kiria said.

“How many were in the
Kalabakang
’s compliment?” Savoy asked.

“Twenty-one, at least on the journey to Boston,” she said, “which included myself, Mister Tukebote, my secretary Miss Lourdes—” Her hands clutched at her mouth. “Oh God,
no
. She’d remained in Boston to visit a cousin in Philadelphia. I do hope.” She pressed both hands to her cheeks. “Oh
please
, let her still be in America.”

They said no more after that.

The brougham sidled off the avenue, crossed Le Quai des Belges and continued along the north end of Vieux Port. It soon deposited them at the quay, the driver ordered to transport their luggage to the
Hotel Vauban
across the harbor, and with a crack of the whip the horses and coach pulled away.