Incarnation (13 page)

His mouth tightened. “Dee records that she came from a noble family of ancient lineage that rose in rebellion against the crown in the thirteenth century and was destroyed. She was the only survivor, and then only because she begged Mordred to transform her. He had his reasons for agreeing, I suppose. She is, after all, very beautiful. She aspires to be his consort, but he has always kept her at arm’s length, perhaps because he does not trust her thirst for power.”

Was that what lay at the heart of all of this, a spurned woman turning on the lover who had failed to give her what she regarded as her due? I thought it unlikely, but I understood Marco’s warning not to underestimate Lady Blanche.

“Could she have taken him unawares?” I asked. “Overcome him in some way?”

“I would not have thought that possible, but then I didn’t anticipate any of this.”

I was silent for several moments, staring out the window of the carriage. Everywhere along our route, men and boys were up on ladders hanging red, white, and blue bunting in preparations for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations that were
almost upon us. Sixty years Victoria had reigned, an eon by human standards. She had come into a world still largely lit by fire and powered by muscle, where wealth was won by sword and sail. She would ride to her Jubilee past electric streetlights that were steadily replacing the gas variety and within sight of steam boats plying the Thames. The time needed to cross the Atlantic had shrunk from weeks to days, and as for the new weaponry . . . I preferred not to think of the carnage it could wreak. Or of what another sixty years would bring if conflict did break out between humans and vampires. What would London be then? The wreck of a haunted city in which only ghosts and vanished dreams still dwelled?

How much did the queen empress know about the danger confronting her realm? She emerged so rarely from the magnificent Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, built by her beloved consort, Prince Albert, for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and preserved ever since by his widow as a monument to their love. Mired in permanent mourning, seeped in the rituals of death, she likely had no concept of the threat hanging over all. But she was an old, fallible human woman whereas I was . . . something new, different, even possibly unique. A weapon forged by Mordred for a very specific purpose and yet for all that still my own self. The clarity of that truth shone in the darkness, guiding me onward.

Turning back to Marco, I found him watching me not with the cold assessment I would have expected from a man forced into an alliance with a creature such as myself, but rather with what gave every appearance of genuine concern.

Against the sudden tightness of my throat, I said, “I have begun to wonder if Mordred may have created me as a means of saving himself.” Before he could reply, I went on quickly.
“I am possessed by a compulsion to find him as well as by the ability to sense his presence. I cannot explain either, but I suspect that he could.”

Rather than dismiss the notion, as a part of me hoped that he would do, Marco surprised me. Nodding, he said, “I have had the same thought. For him to transform you without your agreement, in contradiction of the principles by which he has existed for centuries, he truly must have regarded his situation as desperate. From what you have sensed of him, we must do the same.”

For the first time, I heard behind Marco’s strength and confidence a hint of his own dread of what would happen if we failed to prevent war between humans and vampires. As though he anticipated the final moments of his life crushed beneath the anguish of all humanity, the crying out of so many lost souls that his own would be lacerated by their suffering. On impulse, I put my hand over his. At once, his warm, strong fingers curled around mine. At his touch, such longing flowed through me . . . I cannot give words to it—not for lack of them, poetry sings in my spirit as it does in all of my kind even those who wish to be deaf to it—but because even now, after all that has transpired, some things are so fragile, so perfect, so necessary to the fabric of existence, that to speak of them risks that they will shatter like crystal struck by a single, soaring note whose very beauty is destruction.

The chill that had accompanied me out of the grave from which I had crawled to my rebirth and had hung about me ever since, a taunting shroud reminding me of all I had lost, abruptly vanished. In the space of his heartbeat, I was warm again.

The carriage swayed around a corner onto Fleet Street. Our
bodies touched, resting against one another until too soon we were righted once again. Recalled to ourselves, we moved a little apart, our fingers the last to yield. I looked away, forcing myself to concentrate on anything other than the yearning his nearness provoked.

Moments passed before Marco slid open the window behind the driver, admitting a breath of sooty air, and gave instructions to stop in the next street. Having descended from the carriage, we walked along a short passage adjacent to the Temple Church until we came to a two-story structure that, alone among the surrounding brick and stone buildings, still retained the plaster and crossed timber exterior of its Tudor origins. A sign in front read Serjeant’s Inn, the term referring to an ancient order of civil servants charged with managing the courts.

Black-robed barristers came and went through its low, arched door, stopping to chat with one another. An aura of great age hung about the place. I wondered if Dee had frequented it.

“If you ever need a place of safety,” Marco said, “or to get word to me, come here. The proprietor is . . . trustworthy.”

His nearness, the warmth of his powerful body, and his voice all combined to distract me mightily. In an effort to regain some modicum of self-control, I forced myself to study the inn, but with scant result. Behind its deep-set windows, it gave away few secrets. That I might turn to it as a place of refuge seemed unlikely. That I would find a welcome there seemed even less plausible.

We walked past the arched door and turned down a narrow lane that ran alongside the inn. A few yards in we came to a second door. Marco produced a key. Moments later, we were
standing in a small but pleasantly furnished office. The light within had a greenish tinge, filtering as it did through windows with leaded panes that were filled with bubbles, the breath of glassmakers now long dead. I looked around slowly. In addition to a plain but functional desk and tall bookcases filled with legal tomes, a cot was set up to one side next to a wardrobe.

“Someone lives here?” I asked.

“My brother, Nicolas. I had hoped to find him in, but he may be in court at this hour.”

I had not known that he had a brother, but then I suspected that there was a great deal I did not know about Marco. I was drawn to him in ways I could scarcely understand, a yearning not merely of the flesh but of the heart and spirit as well.

Determined to conceal my unseemly thoughts, I asked, “He is a barrister?”

“Among other things. He also owns this inn.”

Where he apparently chose to live rather than occupy lodgings more in keeping with a man of his stature.

As though anticipating my question, Marco said, “Nicolas likes his privacy. We should be going. Another time, I’ll introduce you.”

Leaving, I noticed a photograph on a small side table. Two young men stood side by side, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they smiled for the camera. One was clearly Marco, yet he appeared so carefree that I had trouble reconciling him with the determined man I was coming to know. The other was—

“Is that your brother?” I asked.

Marco hesitated before glancing at the photograph. His tone was softer than I had heard before. “Yes, that’s Nicolas before—” Abruptly, he caught himself. His face hardened. “Never mind. We should go.”

I stepped back into the lane, but my thoughts remained on the two seemingly untroubled young men. What had happened to change at least one of them so drastically and why did the other choose to isolate himself in the back room of an inn away from family and friends?

At another time, I might have been so bold as to ask Marco, but graver matters weighed on us both. We continued on foot, keeping alert for the sudden appearance of any Watchers, until we reached the griffin statue. There we parted, but not before Marco took my hand and, looking deeply into my eyes, said, “Tomorrow at noon without fail, all right?”

A rush of warmth coiled through me. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but the memory lingered.

“I will be here.” I made to draw away, but he was not quite ready to release me.

Without warning, he said, “Do you remember anything of the night we met?”

I hadn’t, but just then the memory flooded back, momentarily overwhelming all else. His hand at my waist, the music soaring around us, and myself, smiling, laughing. He had said something amusing, but that was not the source of my pleasure. It was him, the sensation he evoked, trembling on the edge of a cliff, about to unfurl my wings and somehow knowing that he would not let me fall.

“I remember waltzing,” I replied. “It was Strauss, I think.”

“‘Danube Maiden,’ one of his better efforts. What else do you recall?”

“Very little. Fragments. When I try to fit them together, they fly apart again.”

“I am sorry to hear that. . . . Sorry for all of it.”

My fingers curled around his. “I don’t understand.”

He took a breath and let it out slowly. Softly, he said, “I was there that night because I had learned that Mordred was stalking you. I had no idea why, but I went to warn him off. It was arrogance on my part. I should have known that no mere warning from me would stop him. If only I had realized—”

If only he had. We could be standing there as a man and a woman without the shadow of all that lay between us. But also without any real means of defeating the danger that threatened to destroy everyone and everything.

“What if you had? What hope would there be now of finding Mordred?”

“You can’t just forgive him like that. Think of what he took from you.”

Resentment rose in me. Of Mordred and what he had done, but equally of Marco and his unwillingness to see beyond the limits of humanity.

“I do think of it, far too often. But I am also aware of what he gave. Nothing is as simple as we might like, but perhaps that is all to the good.”

Before he could reply, I turned and hurried toward the Bagatelle. Near the stone passageway, I paused and looked back. Marco had not moved, nor had he looked away. I continued to feel his gaze until I pushed open the door and once again entered the confines of the club. I was greeted by a heavy stillness that suited my mood all too well.

Determined to take advantage of the remaining hours of daylight, and equally resolved not to think about Marco, I hurried to explore the premises, quickly discovering that the large main room gave way to numerous other gilded chambers. Many of these were given over to card playing, roulette, and other forms of gambling, but some seemed intended for
pursuits of a more private nature. Moving on, I was surprised to stumble across a small library lined with floor-to-ceiling cases that were filled in turn with leather-bound volumes. Lady Blanche had not impressed me as one inclined to intellectual pursuits, but perhaps I had done her an injustice.

At quick glance, the books seemed to have to do mainly with history and science, the latter including Charles Darwin’s controversial work
On the Origin of Species
. Almost four decades after its publication, the theory that species are created through a process of natural selection favoring those fittest for survival remained the subject of much debate. My father, for example, found the idea entirely reasonable, whereas my mother thought it was appalling. I had possessed no opinion of the matter whatsoever, but now, in my new form, I saw it in a different light. Ruthless though it might be, Darwin’s theory was all too evidently correct. Vampires—beings stronger, swifter, and vastly longer lived—might already have driven humans into extinction had they not needed them to feed upon. Was that what the future held, a world devastated by war in which the remaining humans were kept as cattle to be bred for slaughter?

The thought sickened me. I shoved the book back onto the shelf with such force as to dislodge another nearby. Straightening it, I noticed the engraving on the spine.
Comparative Longevity of Diverse Species
by Dr. Sebastian de Vere. Next to it was another volume by the same author:
Cellular Degeneration: Catalyst of Mortality
.

The titles of the books meant nothing to me beyond the fact that I recognized the name of the man Marco and I had encountered at the headquarters of the Golden Dawn, the same man who had sent the Watchers after us.

Before I could ponder that too deeply, I recalled that time was passing swiftly. From what I had seen, the club possessed many more rooms. If I was to have any chance of determining whether Mordred was present, I would have to act quickly.

Yet I got no farther than the door when it opened suddenly. Dapper in a suit of burgundy velvet so dark it looked almost black, Felix Deschamps stared at me in surprise.

CHAPTER 10