The Kindred of Darkness (30 page)

‘More.' Asher wrenched his arm with deliberate lack of expertise out of the other man's grip. He took Armistead's hand in his and slapped the currency back into the gloved palm. ‘Did you get to the part where it talks about how they'll offer you whatever you most desire, if
you
work for
them
and not the other way around? How they'll appear to you to be whatever you most trust? How they'll kill you – and your family – sooner than risk anyone guessing who and what they are?'

‘I got that part from your pal Millward.' He held out the money to him again between two fingers of his hand. ‘Who don't look to be doin' much better than you are for cash, pal. And you leave my family out of it. All I'm askin' for is a name, not a sermon. Believe me, I'll set it all up. If I can fix Standard Oil and the Chicago police force, I can fix a couple of spooks. I know what I'm doin'.'

‘You haven't the faintest idea.' And turning, Asher strode off along Newman Row as the chapel clock sounded five.

Enough time, he thought, to meet Lydia at the fallback rendezvous in Finsbury Square. He was looking around for a cab when a four-wheeler drew up beside him. The door opened and Ned Seabury sprang out. ‘Mr Barton, I've been—'

He stammered to a halt, stared at Asher disbelievingly. ‘
Professor Asher?
'

DAMN it!

Asher put on his most cantankerous expression and glared at him. ‘Never heard of either of 'em, young man, but—'

Someone was behind him and he realized too late it was a trap. He started to turn when a hand grabbed him from behind and a rag was clapped over his nose and mouth, and he smelled chloroform as Seabury and another man (
it has to be Millward
) shoved him into the cab as his brain closed down into darkness.

D
inner was one of those interminable affairs that began with two kinds of soup and proceeded to eleven courses thereafter. Lydia, the mere chaperone of one of Cece Armistead's twelve bridesmaids, was relegated to a seat two-thirds of the way down Wycliffe House's dining room, next to Terence Winterson, who could talk of little but what a smashing girl Emily was and how difficult it was to purchase decent haberdashery outside of London.

Around Winterson's shoulder, Lydia glimpsed Cece, ablaze in her diamond collar, seated blushingly across from the black-and-white block of Lord Colwich. He seemed as restless as he had that morning at the flower show, his gestures wide and slightly jerky …
More cocaine?

Her glance went to the dove-colored midsummer twilight beyond the windows.

Colwich's voice drifted down to her, rather too loudly expanding upon the beauties of the family grouse moor at Kynnoch to Seaton Wycliffe – or at least Lydia assumed that was Lady May's cousin, since he was in about the right place for him, and was of about the correct shape and size. Without her spectacles, it was impossible to tell who was who up at that end of the table. In any case, Colwich didn't seem even to notice the absence of Ned Seabury.

The man who, of all others, he would have wished at his wedding.

Lydia wondered, if she should go up to him now and look into those blue eyes, what would she see?

But she didn't dare.

It was enough to know he was here, and would be going to the ballet afterwards with the family party.

She took a deep breath. Jamie, she reflected, would almost certainly take her to task about her plans for the rest of the evening …
But if Jamie wanted to order me to go back to the hotel once dinner is done, he could have taken more trouble to come to the rendezvous this afternoon
.

Across the table, the Honorable Reggie Wredemere elaborated in excruciating detail how the settlement of Cece Armistead's three million dollars had been finally worked out between her father's lawyers and those of the Honorable Reggie's uncle the Earl. (‘And a damned insult it was, too! If I were Noel I'd have torn the thing up and thrown it in his face!')

‘Well, it's a bit late for him to back out now, isn't it?' crooned Valentina, aglitter with the diamonds that had belonged to Lydia's mother. ‘Somebody's got to pay for the redecorations Noel's had done to that underground meditation chapel of his …'

St Mary Westbourne is in the next street
, Lydia remembered, her heart beginning to pound.
And Dallaby House is only three streets from here. Once it gets fully dark
…

She set down her oyster-fork, her hands trembling too badly to wield the delicate little instrument. She wondered if Ysidro would be hunting tonight, and how she might reach him.

She closed her eyes briefly, and behind the lids seemed to see those crooked, staggering characters, spelling out all that she had asked to know about Lionel Grippen's lairs.

Miranda
…

She had consulted Uncle Richard's
Ordnance Survey of Great Britain
at Halfdene House. Of Grippen's properties, only one – a farm called Tufton, a few miles beyond St Albans – lay close enough to a railway line that Nan Wellit would have heard the trains go by.

The footman replaced her oysters Florentine with t
imbale du jambon farcie
; Terence Winterson asked her, What did Lady Halfdene think of his suit? He thought if he could not marry Emily he would very likely die.

Lydia poked once or twice at her timbale, and tried to formulate a reply. She'd wired the information about Tufton Farm to James at Oxford, not knowing where else to send it. The thought of what she proposed to do tonight terrified her (
but it's almost perfectly safe this early, with everyone at the ballet
), but her sense of urgency – of not knowing how much time she had left before something frightful happened to Miranda and Nan – pressed on her like a nightmare.

Poor Noel
.

And poor Ned
.

At eight-thirty, when the coaches came to the door to transport everyone to the ballet, Lydia found herself sharing – as she'd hoped – with Julia Thwaite, Terence Winterson, Lady Priscilla Sidford (sixteen, and in awe of Emily's Worth gown), Lady Priss's aunt Vorena, and Emily. The presence of Aunt Vorena relieved Lydia of any sense of guilt (
though Aunt Isobel will still kill me if I don't make it to the ballet by the end
…) when, halfway to Leicester Square, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, curse! My bracelet – I left it in the downstairs washroom at Wycliffe! I know I did …'

Aunt Vorena's placid retort – ‘Surely Lady May's footmen will put it aside' – was nearly drowned in the shrill cries of the three younger ladies of the party.

‘I won't feel right if something should happen.' Lydia turned on her seat, and rapped at the window of the coach. ‘Curtis, I'm
devastated
, but could you stop a moment and let me out? I must take a cab back to the house—'

‘Mrs Asher!' cried Aunt Vorena. ‘You'll never—'

‘Now, it's perfectly respectable. Yes, Curtis, I mean it, please stop …'

‘It's all right, Mrs Sidford,' soothed Winterson, ‘I'll be happy to escort Mrs Asher …'

After ten minutes of argument, Lydia was on the pavement in her gold-and-turquoise silk, while young Mr Winterson hailed a jarvey from the press now jamming Piccadilly. ‘I'm quite all right,' she assured him. ‘Honestly—'

‘It would be no trouble at all—'

‘Emily would never forgive me if you missed the ballet.' Lydia gathered the silken billows of her coat and climbed into the cab. ‘Go along now … I'll be at the theater in just twenty minutes …'

As soon as the Sidford carriage worked its way back into the flow of traffic, Lydia turned to slide open the driver's window behind her, and called out, ‘Excuse me, sir … could you make that Walton Street instead?'

Pain woke Asher. Seeping cold, lantern glare, the reek of gin and sewage almost drowning the chloroform still clinging to his mustache.

But mostly pain.

He tried to roll over and gave it up instantly. His legs were trapped; it felt like his right ankle was broken, under the crushing weight of …

He blinked at it, barely visible in the clammy darkness. Stone blocks, with traces of ancient carving – Roman?

What the
…?

He twisted a little where he lay on the broken tiles of an old floor, saw pillars holding up a roof that was lost in blackness overhead, and a portion of what had been a fresco, nearly obliterated with time and damp. A dark lantern burned six feet from where he lay.

The skin of his face stung, where someone had ripped away the concealing plumage of false whiskers. The fake eyeglasses were gone, too. His shirt collar was open, as were the cuffs of his sleeves. The silver chains had been taken.

‘Millward!' he shouted. ‘Millward, God damn you!'

‘No, Professor Asher.' Osric Millward stepped through a low door in the wall to his right. ‘God damn
you
.' He had a rifle in one hand, an American Winchester. His hawk-like face set like stone. Movement to his left caught Asher's eye. Seabury and another man – scarcely a boy, in a plum-colored Eton jacket, grim but visibly scared – stepped from the ruins of what had been another doorway.

The boy must have been driving the cab
.

He knew exactly where he was. The Roman merchants' house that survived beneath the crypts of St Rood in the City.

‘I've suspected for a long time that vampires use the living as their agents,' said Millward. ‘I know they threaten, coax, bribe … They can command the mad, as they command wild beasts. They can bribe the venal, who don't know and don't want to know why their employers want what they want. They can seduce women –' he shrugged dismissively – ‘and cow the weak, the degenerate, the superstitious: Lascars and Italians and Negroes. But for a true man, a white man in command of his faculties, to serve them, knowing what they are – faugh!'

Shame scorched Asher despite his fury.

‘And for a long time I've known that this is the only way to catch them.' Millward's deep voice echoed among the broken columns, the wet darkness smelling of sewage and rats. ‘Underground, where they hide – but among the streams and hidden rivers which will blunt their perceptions, limit their movements.' He slapped his rifle. ‘I can hit a moving target by lantern-light at a distance of a hundred feet. So can Ned, and Roddy there. But from the first I knew we needed living bait. I think a man who'd take money to lead Armistead to vampires is an appropriate choice – and I can't say I was shocked to learn it was you.'

‘It would have been appropriate,' said Asher slowly, ‘had my dealings with the London nest been prompted by greed, or love of power, rather than duress.'

‘What duress?' demanded Seabury shrilly. ‘When Mrs Asher spoke of your “dealings” with the Undead, it sounded a great deal more like the understanding that comes from collaboration.'

‘That's because you weren't paying attention. All that concerned you was to rescue your friend Noel from the clutches of Cece Armistead and her vampire lover – not to find out how deep Noel's involvement with that lover might be.'

‘That's a—'

‘If Mrs Asher wasn't frank with your assistant about the threat the Master of London is holding over our heads –' Asher turned back to Millward – ‘it was because she suspected he'd do exactly what he did do: renege on his sworn word and tell you everything.'

‘And why not?' retorted Millward haughtily. ‘I know what the fresh bite on your arm means. Had your dealings with the Undead been those of an honest man, you would have taken me into partnership from the beginning. Instead you go straight to that poisonous American thug, Armistead, and give him what he seeks: a means to introduce the curse of these vile things to a new continent – two new continents! – which have never known the fear of the dark hours …'

‘How do you know that?' Asher tried to shift his left leg beneath the stones, but the pain in his right stopped him, gasping, from even the attempt. ‘How do you know there aren't vampires in every American city already, who don't need to go to work for Armistead any more than Cece's vampire lover does? I told Armistead to have nothing to do with the Undead; that his plan was a stupid one – something he didn't want to hear. I refrained from telling him that both his daughter and his prospective son-in-law were working for a vampire, possibly under duress, though it didn't sound like it to me any more than ours did to Seabury—'

Seabury reached him in three strides. ‘You know nothing about it! Noel would never—'

‘Check his bank account.'

The younger man lashed out with a vicious kick, which Asher dodged while he hooked Seabury's other leg from under him. Seabury flipped backward and Asher caught his rifle as he fell, tried to twist to cover Millward and gasped in shock at the agony in his trapped leg. Young Roddy sprang forward, jerked the weapon from Asher's weakened grip and kicked him. Millward fired – Asher heard the shrill crack as the bullet ricocheted off the tile of the floor yards away – and Roddy scrambled back, tripping over Seabury. The two of them retreated in haste, leaving Asher half-unconscious on the broken floor.

He heard Millward say, ‘It's eight o'clock.'

‘If Noel gave money to the vampire it's because that bitch made him …'

‘We'll talk about it later, Ned. The Fleet's just beyond that wall.'

Asher didn't bother opening his eyes. He knew where the ancient river ran in its bricked-in bed.

‘So they'll be coming from the opposite way. Be ready for them.'

And if you think a silver bullet is going to stop Lionel Grippen – or Damien Zahorec – you're in for a nasty surprise
. Asher debated about warning them but couldn't speak, almost nauseated from the pain in his leg and ribs and head.