The Iscariot Sanction (41 page)

‘I still do not understand how I can be a “pureblood”,’ Lillian said. ‘If de Montfort is not of the Blood Royal, then surely he could not make me so.’

‘Even now, under such immense trials, your enquiring mind does you credit, Agent Hardwick. Where, indeed, did de Montfort acquire the Blood Royal for the transformation? You said he transfused his own blood into you, which means he must have imbibed the Blood Royal first. But that is dangerous for one of our kind—unpalatable, at best. Legend has it that the blood of the elders is so powerful, a single cupful can cure disease and heal grievous wounds… or strike one dead on the spot. There are manuscripts locked away in the vaults of the Vatican itself, supposedly written by those who witnessed Judas Iscariot’s ascension—or destruction, if you like—and those fables would make your toes curl. There are probably three or four people in the world who have read those suppressed tomes, and I am one of them.’

‘You have entered the Vatican’s vaults?’ Lillian was almost impressed. Such a thing was unheard of, and the more fervent esoteric groups of London spoke of the vaults in tones of reverence and awe. Indeed, Pope Leo XIII had made Rome almost free of the Riftborn taint, supposedly through means inherited from the occult lore locked within those very vaults. Lore that he was, allegedly, unwilling to share.

‘A lifetime ago, when I was striving to understand my own nature.’ Lillian frowned, as Cherleten continued. ‘You see, my dear, there is a reason that the Order is so well versed in vampire lore. Why we know how to preserve your flesh and make you look human.’ He pinched his hands to his eyes, and removed the lenses that covered each of them, and when he looked again at her, his eyes glittered violet in the dim light of the office.

Lillian stepped back. She could not comprehend what he had shown her.

‘No, I am not one of them, nor could I ever be,’ he said, answering a question that she had not asked.

‘Then… what are you?’

‘The Knights Iscariot would call me an abomination. Do not worry, my dear, I am no interloper—Sir Toby knows, and has since the beginning. Smythe is one of a select few medical personnel who is trusted to attend me. I am not sure about your father… perhaps that’s why he dislikes me.’

‘De Montfort… you know him?’

‘Good lord, no. Understand, all of Apollo Lycea’s knowledge of the vampires comes through study—primarily of me. We have not treated with them, and nor would we, had they not forced our hand. We had thought their activities restricted to the most remote parts of Britain, and with the Riftborn posing the greater threat, we rather mistakenly let the vampires grow too bold. It was only when your brother uncovered de Montfort’s plans in Hyde that we realised just how bold.

‘What I mean to say is that I have never returned to the race that sired me, nor ever wished to. If they knew me—knew my true nature—they would kill me, without question, for I represent an abomination in their eyes. You see, my mother was the concubine of one of the Blood Royal—an inbred, imbecilic creature, half-vampire, half-human, kept in chains in some crumbling ruin in France. My father, while still a young man, came across this wretch while on the Grand Tour. He was lucky he found the lair during daylight hours, by all accounts, for the vampires within were sleeping. He took the woman away, and made her a servant in his household. As time went on, my father grew old and fat, and more than a little mad. The concubine, on the other hand, aged but slowly, and despite her… condition… came to be more attractive to the aging Lord Cherleten. Eventually, as was so often the way in those times, he had his way with the woman during a night of drunken excess, and the product of that coupling was… me.’

Cherleten held out a case, and Lillian took a cigarette from it without thinking. Etiquette be damned.

‘So, you are… human? For the most part?’ Lillian asked, lighting her cigarette and drawing on it eagerly. The sensation was not unpleasant, though very different from how it had felt in her former life.

‘The taint of the vampire is strong. By day I find myself lethargic, by night I am invigorated. I can see things with these eyes that other men cannot—I know you see them too, although that can be our little secret for now. And yet, for all the advantages of my birth, I rot. I age more slowly than a normal man, but age I do. I have lived for almost a hundred years, and for half of that time I have relied on unguents, arsenic powder, and the attentions of the finest physicians in the land to stop my body falling apart. The Awakening was a blessing for me, I can tell you, for only through the endeavours of the Intuitionists has my condition been made bearable.’

‘This… this will happen to me?’ Lillian asked, feeling somewhat selfish at the question.

‘That depends on whether or not the Iscariot Sanction is as potent as de Montfort claimed. If you are a highborn vampire now, then your flesh will necrotise, but you will also undergo other physical transformations over the years. And you will grow stronger too. If you are lucky, you might even glean some of those Majestic skills as evinced by the likes of de Montfort.’

‘Lucky?’ Lillian thought of Arthur. He had never seemed particularly blessed by his so-called gifts.

‘It does not come to us all,’ Cherleten explained. ‘A pity, for the ability to control the vampires’ servants would be rather useful, don’t you think?’

‘You said there would be… other transformations?’

‘Yes. The more immediate ones, whether you are of the Blood Royal or of both human and vampire parentage, like me—are rather unpleasant, I am afraid. You have already started to be inured to physical pain; eventually you shall feel none whatsoever. That in itself can have a strange effect on the mind—the loss of physical sensation almost always accompanies a loss of empathy. For one such as I, who has never truly known the finer feelings of the human species… it is hard to comprehend. I imagine it will cause you some distress, until you lose the ability to feel even that, of course.’

‘Go on,’ Lillian said.

‘I am afraid, my dear, that your hair shall fall out, and then your teeth.’

‘My teeth?’ Lillian was aghast.

‘They are an inefficient means of extracting blood. Highborns of great age invariably develop interesting new mechanisms for feeding, although they have rarely been seen, and certainly never studied. Think of it much like a child shedding its milk teeth and growing a stronger set.’

‘I do not want to think of it at all,’ Lillian said, stubbing out her cigarette. She did think of it, though.

‘I’m am afraid you must. When it happens, we shall of course provide you with a set of false teeth, like mine.’ He tapped his front teeth proudly. ‘You’d never tell the difference. But for the purposes of feeding, well…’

‘Feeding? Is there no other way? I mean, must I…’

‘My dear, you have never stopped. I am sorry to break this to you so indelicately, but while you have been sleeping we have been transfusing you with blood. It is the only reason you are not flying about trying to kill my staff.’

Lillian gripped the desk, for fear she might faint.

‘I would rather die than drink blood,’ she said.

‘And die you would; but your body will not allow it. If you do not feed, you will lose yourself in a frenzy until your thirst is sated. Go long enough without blood, and you would become one of those pale-skinned hunters you despise so much—halfway between highborn and the mindless ghouls that follow them. It is a fate that awaits us all, if the proper precautions are not taken.’

Lillian held her head. Her brain had started to pound in her skull.

‘Eventually, you will learn to control your thirst. We shall provide you with needles, much like a Majestic might use etherium. Or you could do what the Knights Iscariot do, although it is a little… crude.’

‘What is it?’

‘They use a feeding tube. I rather fear you may have seen one first hand. It attaches inside their mouths by means of small metal clamps, and the other end is affixed to the vein of their victim. The vampire—or a servant, more usually—pumps the blood directly through the tube, into their master’s throat. A human can be completely drained in minutes—the capacity of the vampire to consume blood is really quite extraordinary…’

She thought of the vampire woman on the royal train, who had used such a device to so rapidly drain the prince’s valet of blood before her very eyes.

‘I am going to be sick,’ she said.

‘I am afraid that is quite impossible. There is nothing inside you, you see. You have not eaten—although there is nothing stopping you from doing so if you desire. Only, you are losing the capacity to enjoy food and drink, and hunger for nothing but blood. And blood is absorbed by the vampire physiognomy so completely as to be miraculous. It invigorates and nourishes, until it is used up, and dissolves to nothingness. When that happens, we grow weak, and must feed again. The younger the vampire, the more frequently they must sate this hunger. Hence we have transfused you daily, although the frequency will lessen soon enough.’

‘Must it be human blood?’

‘No, not for the purposes of mere sustenance. But human blood, for reasons unknown to us, is the only kind that truly sates the hunger, and imbues us with our vitality. I suppose we must be related species after all, for Smythe calls our blood “compatible”.’

‘And you? You drink… blood.’

‘I have, and may do again, as necessity dictates, although I must stress that there is no need for either of us to kill for it. With the imbibing of blood comes the greatest pleasure a vampire can experience—the
only
true pleasure. But it is a base and primitive sensation, one that we can rise above, should we desire. What separates me—and, I hope, you—from the Knights Iscariot is that very desire; the wish to embrace our human nature, rather than our inhuman one. The wish to live in society, and not in the shadows.’

‘But de Montfort seeks to bring the Knights Iscariot out of the shadows, to create his own society.’

‘And he will fail, because there is no world in which human and vampire can exist peacefully. The Knights Iscariot themselves might say it is the wolf lying down with the lamb. I myself think it is the wolf and the lion, for both species are bloodthirsty, and would kill the other given the chance.’

‘One is far stronger than the other,’ Lillian said.

‘And the other is more numerous, and just as cunning. But answer me this, Agent Hardwick—which are you?’

‘Wolf or lion? Or human or vampire?’

Cherleten only smiled.

‘I barely understand my own mind,’ she said, deciding that honesty was the best policy. ‘I hate de Montfort. I hold on to that hate as I hold on to my own self. But do I feel kinship with my fellow man? In just a short space of time, I feel I have lost all ties to my former life. I remember my mother and father, my brother… I feel loyalty to them still. But do I love them? I do not think I can love any more, Lord Cherleten. And even that terrible, desolate realisation stirs nothing within me.’

‘Loyalty is a fine start,’ said Cherleten. ‘It has kept me in the light, and from the darkness, though I have often trod a fine line, I confess, and a solitary one, too. I am not a good man, Agent Hardwick, but I am a loyal one. You will find, as I have, that our kind is predisposed towards meanness of spirit and even downright cruelty, but we are not incapable of free thought. The Knights Iscariot
choose
murder, chaos, and treason, just as I choose to oppose it.

‘I can offer you scant reassurance right now. But I tell you this: if hate is the only thing we can feel, and I believe you are right, at least for now, then you should well hold it tight. It is your talisman. You are still Lillian Hardwick; but you are defined now by what you are not, rather than by what you are.’

‘But you have been defined by what you are. Had you not been born the heir to a fortune… what would Lord Cherleten be then?

Cherleten appeared amused at Lillian’s audacity. ‘That is a question, isn’t it? One that we need never know the answer to.’

Lillian thought of the pallid, bestial monsters, stooped and clawed, that fed on the flesh of the deceased. Beneath Cherleten’s mask of rank and title and gentility, beneath the arsenic powder and formaldehyde, the red-haired wig, the teeth made of ivory… was he fending off degeneracy of the most heinous kind?

‘Are you still loyal to the Order, Agent Hardwick?’ Cherleten asked.

‘I am. Or, at least, I would rather be, than the alternative.’

‘That is good enough. For now.’

‘Good enough for what?’

‘To begin your training. You must learn to use your new abilities to your advantage. Your heightened senses, your strength and speed.’

‘I do not feel stronger,’ Lillian said.

‘But you are, relatively speaking. Your muscles do not feel fatigue like a human’s, and therefore you can perform feats beyond your normal endurance. To push too hard, however, is to do yourself an injury, although even that will heal rapidly enough. A gunshot or blade in a vital area will put you down, and hurt like bally-ho, but you will recover in time from most wounds. Just try not to get shot in the head or decapitated. Even those wretched ghouls can’t come back from that.

‘You have not had the opportunity to put yourself to any test as yet, but believe me, you will be surprised. Though you are not physically faster than you were, your reactions will make you appear so. You can see danger coming almost before it happens, and avoid it accordingly.’

‘I have seen the monsters dash out of the way of a bullet,’ Lillian mused.

‘Because they saw and heard your finger tighten on the trigger, and began to move even before your shot fired. You will do this too, with time and training.’

‘How much time will I need? How much longer must I spend here?’

‘It has been decreed that, for as long as Prince Leopold is in the hands of the enemy, we cannot take any unnecessary risks.’

Lillian narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean, by releasing me, you may be unleashing a traitor into your midst.’

‘I did not say that.’

‘You did not have to, Lord Cherleten. And who issued this decree? You?’