Incarnation (33 page)

A low sigh escaped him. He struggled to sit up. At once, Marco moved to assist him. At the sight of a Protector being so helpful, Mordred raised a brow. “Truly, this is a night of
miracles.” He glanced toward the drawn curtains. “It is night, isn’t it? Or close to?”

“It will be dark in an hour to so, sir,” Stoker replied. His deference surprised me until I remembered that he was one of Gladstone’s men. Whatever mistakes the Lion of Parliament had made, he at least understood Mordred’s role in protecting the realm from both human foes and the vampires themselves. A role he was about to be called on to play yet again.

“Lady Blanche will be here soon,” I said. “She aspires to take your place, therefore is unlikely to welcome your return.”

Mordred cast me an amused glance. “You think not? Ah, love, so frail as to shatter on the altar of ambition.” Shrewdly, he added, “How far has she gone?”

“She has used the stone table,” Marco said.

Mordred stiffened. He was sitting up by then, having swung his legs over the side of the table. Though the blanket still covered most of him, I could see that his condition was somewhat improved. His healing powers were astounding, but perhaps I should not have been surprised. The ability to regenerate tissue and organs, and to fight off illness or infection of all kind, is fundamental to the longevity of my kind.

“I possess no such thing,” he said. “Nor would I ever allow one in this realm.”

“Nonetheless, she installed one at the Bagatelle,” Marco replied, “no doubt drawing on legends of vampires in other parts of the world. Harley Langworthe was her first victim, but he is not likely to be the last unless she can be stopped.”

“Then we had best do so,” Mordred said. To me, he added, “We will talk later, Lucy. No doubt you have many questions. I will endeavor to provide the answers, but first—” He held out
a long, slender hand to Marco, who helped him rise. With a faint smile, the king of the vampires said, “If it’s all the same to you, I would prefer not to meet my rebellious subjects while wrapped in a blanket.”

Such were the resources available at the Golden Dawn that when Mordred returned to the library a short time later—having left in the company of Marco and Stoker, leaving me alternately to pace back and forth or slump disconsolately in a chair—he was garbed far more fittingly. Although the trousers, waistcoat, shirt, and cutaway frock coat that had been found for him were all a trifle large for his shrunken frame, he looked remarkably better than the being who had emerged from Bedlam only a short time before.

Gratified though I was to see that, I was not entirely fooled. The connection between us made me aware of how weak he was still and of how determined he was to hide it. There was really only one remedy. I was girding myself to mention it when a shout of alarm stopped me.

A dozen or so vampires were at the threshold, led by a woman in white, the sentinels on the roof had reported. Unlike the Watchers and the Brownshirts, beings who did not breathe would not be deterred by an application of gas no matter how potent. Other measures would be needed, but before they could be attempted Mordred strode into the entry hall. He brushed past the startled members of the society, flung open the door, and stepped outside.

The street beyond was empty except for the delegation of vampires. Not a single light shone in any of the nearby houses. The inhabitants had likely fled or were huddled in the basements. But just out of sight, I could hear a low,
constant rumbling, the combined sounds of many vehicles and masses of men only waiting for the order to advance. Dirigibles floated overhead, and off toward the river I heard the clatter of the new armored diesel boats. London had the feeling of a city under siege, bereft of all normal life, hanging poised on the edge of a war that could bring only destruction and defeat to all those foolish enough to take up arms in its misguided cause.

At Mordred’s appearance, the others behind Lady Blanche fell silent. Felix was not in evidence, but I did see several that I recognized from the Bagatelle, including those who had clustered most avidly around the stone table. They were less eager to press forward now, instead leaving it to Lady Blanche to do so. To her credit, the flash of shock that flitted across her face was quickly masked. She held out her arms in apparent joy. Her features, admittedly quite beautiful, seemed to glow with the same opalescence as the pearls around her neck.

“My lord, at last! How we have all yearned for your return! Your absence has left us bereft. To find you again is more than we have dared to hope.”

It was a graceful speech and prettily made, but I was not fooled. She had come expecting to find the pitiful figure taken from Bedlam. Instead, she confronted the king who had held sway over her and all her kind for centuries. The sovereign she had dared to imagine that she could replace, and who had now returned to claim what was his and his alone.

Mordred smiled. He lifted a hand in gracious acknowledgment of his subjects. “Yet here I am, dear Blanche, whole and intact. How could you have feared otherwise? You—all of you—know my power. I made each of you, and to me you owe your absolute loyalty.”

Blanche’s mouth worked with the effort to swallow her dismay. But she was not to be so easily discouraged. “Come with us, lord. Let us welcome you properly in more fitting circumstances. Surely you do not wish to tarry among these humans when your own kind wait to serve you?”

At once, the others took up the idea, calling out to him to come with them. For a moment, I feared that he might agree, but instead he shook his head.

“In time, but for now I will linger here among my friends—” He turned to where Marco, Stoker, and I stood directly behind him in the open door. “My
friends
”—he stressed the word—“who recovered me from where I had been hidden and brought me here safely.”

As he spoke, Lady Blanche turned her gaze on me. For a moment, the mask dropped. I saw the full fury of her malevolence but I did not flinch. Since witnessing her savagery at the stone table, I understood that she would go to any lengths to supplant Mordred. I stood in her way, and for that she would have her vengeance, or not. Only one of us was likely to survive what was coming. I accepted that it might not be me but that would not be for lack of effort. I would do everything possible to stop her once and for all regardless of how that fit with Mordred’s own plans.

In realizing that, I realized something else as well. The compulsion that Mordred had placed on me had run its course. In freeing him, I had freed myself. As we stepped back inside the Golden Dawn, I could not help but wonder where my newfound liberty would lead me.

Tantalizing though that prospect was, there were more immediate concerns. Barely had we reached the library that Mordred slumped and would have fallen had not Marco caught
him. Helped to a chair, the vampire king was unable to speak for several moments.

“You’ve overdone,” Stoker said. “Best you rest for now.”

Mordred lifted his head and looked at him. The red light flashed in his eyes. “Rest won’t help.” His gaze shifted to me. “I need to feed.”

CHAPTER 25

F
elix had told me that vampires sometimes shared blood in small amounts as an act of intimacy. But he had also said that it was forbidden to feed on our own kind because doing so would give access to the power of the vampire who had turned the one being fed upon.

As I met Mordred’s gaze, an unpleasant thought occurred to me. I had been incarnated as his ultimate defense against de Vere. If everything else went wrong and he was captured, I would be compelled to find and free him, exactly as I had done. To that end, he had been willing to create a halfling, the very creature who, if legend was to be believed, was a threat to all vampires. But was that the extent of Mordred’s plans for me? Was I in effect a repository for the power he now intended to reclaim?

All this passed through my mind in far less time than needed to recount it. Mere seconds elapsed before I became aware that Marco’s hand was drifting toward the vampire heart concealed beneath his shirtfront.

Mordred gleaned his intent at the same time that I did. With a faint smile, he said, “Be easy, Protector, I mean her no harm.”

“Perhaps you mean her no more,” Marco corrected. “Surely, you have inflicted enough.”

In the glow of the few lamps we had lit, Mordred sat half revealed in shadows. His long, pale face had the purity found in medieval statues of saints, a comparison that no doubt would have amused him greatly.

“We can debate the morality of what I did at another time, assuming that we are all still here to do so. For now, I have to hope that none of you believe that Lady Blanche has gone meekly away and will give us no more trouble. She is primed to act, and when she does, the forces that de Vere and his allies have assembled—the Watchers, the Brownshirts, and the like—will be unleashed. The war between humans and vampires will have begun. It will not end until civilization itself is destroyed.”

Marco did not disagree, but he did say, “I will spare you the trouble of arguing that the good of the individual must be sacrificed for the good of the many or anything of that sort. Even so, you do need to feed. Therefore—”

“No!” I was not absolutely certain what Marco intended, but I feared that he meant to offer himself. Such was the nature of my feelings for him that I could not bear the thought of him doing so.

“We need your strength as much as we need Mordred’s,” I insisted. “And if we fail, if war does come, humans will have to depend on Protectors more than ever.”

We stood, armored in our determination that no harm should come to the other, until Mordred said, “Very touching, children, and I do hope that you have an opportunity to explore all that passion seething under the surface, but neither of you is a solution to my problem.”

His gaze shifted to Stoker, who had taken up a position near the windows and was observing us with the bright-eyed interest that writers display as they experience life vicariously, sopping up bits of it for later use. More than ever, I feared he was planning another book.

“I’ve read your magnum opus,” Mordred said.

In the midst of stroking his beard, Stoker froze. “Have you really? Well . . . imagine that. . . . Never occurred to me actually.” He straightened, took a breath, and asked, “What did you think of it?”

“It was . . . amusing. A tad disjointed here and there but I liked the bit with the dog.”

At once, Stoker brightened. “Did you? I rather liked that myself. It was my idea, you know, not suggested by anyone.”

“I thought it might be. Rather difficult, I imagine, writing to order as it were. Was Gladstone a very demanding editor?”

“Actually, I don’t think he read any of it, but certain of his staff were . . . well, let’s just say they showed little sensibility for the novelist’s art.”

“How tiresome of them. If you wouldn’t mind a suggestion—”

“I’d be delighted. Quite stuck at the moment, if I may say, for what to do next. Bit of pressure from the publisher and all that.”

Mordred’s nod communicated both sympathy and understanding. Anyone would have thought that he had labored to bring forth an opus of his own, and for all I know he had. “What you need is the personal touch. I think we can agree that nothing replaces actual experience.”

Stoker opened his mouth to reply, no doubt in ringing affirmation, only to shut it abruptly when he perceived—rather
belatedly, I thought—the direction in which the conversation was going.

“Oh, I say . . . you don’t mean—”

“It’s entirely up to you,” Mordred assured him swiftly. “On the one hand, you can gain invaluable insights into the entire vampire-human relationship while doing a great service for the realm, or on the other . . . I’ve already mentioned the destruction of civilization, haven’t I? I’d just as soon not belabor it.”

“How much would you take?” Marco asked that, not Stoker. The Irishman was too busy opening and closing his mouth rather like a fish to say anything at all.

Aware as I was that Marco and Stoker were both members of the Golden Dawn and, if not friends, at least amicable associates, and moreover that Marco was a Protector, his willingness to entertain even the idea of what Mordred wanted surprised me. Yet with the benefit of a few moments’ thought, I realized that there was no better option. In a sense, Stoker’s presence in the library that night had already decided the matter. Only the details remained to be worked out.