Strange Practice

by Vivian Shaw

  He leaned his chin on his hand, watching raindrops creep down the glass. Again and again in the course of introspection he would come up against the same question: Why, if he loathed his existence so profoundly, did he struggle so hard to hold on to it? Why not rid the world of a monster and himself of a tiresome burden? Why, when the blue-eyed monks attacked him, when he was half-mad with pain, so ill he could hardly stand, had he come here for assistance? It would have been simpler to let the poison do its work. Simpler, and perhaps better for everyone.

  But then Ruthven would not have been warned of the danger, a little quiet voice said in his mind. You did that much good, at least.

  It wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough.

  Varney heaved a sigh so melancholy it actually fogged the windowpane for a moment. He had to leave, and the sooner the better. First thing in the morning, he would make his apologies and tender his profound gratitude, and then he would leave them and find another of his lairs to hide in while he regained his strength.

  Before morning, the rain had grown colder—cold enough to rime the edges of street signs and lampposts with ice, glaze the pavements with a thin layer of it, reduce the remaining plants in window boxes to limp sogginess. London never looked at its best in winter, except for those brief mornings when overnight snows had iced each cornice and roof peak, lending the metropolis a spurious and fleeting purity. Today it was particularly unprepossessing. Waking to find himself warmly tucked in the vast and comfortable bed, Varney contemplated the world outside and considered that perhaps he might put off relocation just a little bit longer.

  When he made it down to the kitchen, Greta and Ruthven were already up, and Varney stood for a moment just outside the doorway. Looking in.

  “Very stylish,” Greta was telling Ruthven, who hadn’t bothered dressing; he was plying the toaster in a heavily quilted and embroidered silk robe that made him look like a short, exceptionally pallid Mughal emperor. “You ought to have a matching nightcap,” she added.

  “Nightcaps are for people with drafty bedrooms.” Ruthven looked over his shoulder and smiled at Varney. “Good morning. Well, not a particularly good morning, the furnace is misbehaving, but we’re all still functioning and nobody else appears to have made the papers for being murdered overnight. Could be worse.” Varney realized belatedly that it was, in fact, a good deal colder in here than usual.

  He came into the kitchen and stopped, awkwardly, not knowing what to do with himself.

  “Did you sleep all right?” Greta wanted to know, looking up at him, arms wrapped around herself against the chill. She was in jeans and a faded Cambridge sweatshirt, and looked about eighteen with her hair escaping from its band. Her eyes were blue-grey, sympathetic; innocent of makeup, her lashes were dark gold, and caught the light. “Ruthven says he had bad dreams.”

  “Quite well, thank you. I really ought to take my leave,” Varney said, trying not to notice that she had the faint marks of pillowcase wrinkles printed on one cheek. “I have trespassed on your kindness long enough, Ruthven, and—”

  Another voice cut in. “We’re all trespassing on his kindness, but thankfully he appears to have a lot of it.”

  Varney turned to see August Cranswell leaning in the doorway with his arms folded. “And frankly,” Cranswell continued, “I’m not about to go out into the nasty wider world until we have some clearer idea of what the hell those idiots in the robes are actually up to. I’d say that goes double for you guys.”

  Ruthven quirked an eyebrow at him, then turned to retrieve the toast and set it into its rack. “You make a valid point,” he said. “Greta’s young man sent over the results of his tests last night, Varney, and it looks as if the poison these people are using is even nastier than we had reason to believe.”

  “He’s not my young man,” she pointed out, and Varney was aware of having had to squash another sudden surge of murderous animosity. He was generally pretty good at controlling it while he was fully conscious—being woken up was evidently still sometimes enough to set it off—but just now it had flared up like a brief and intense physical pain, a stab of completely idiotic jealousy, and just as quickly faded back to nothing.

  This is ridiculous, he told himself, you scarcely know her, but all the good sense in all the world could not stop Varney’s wretchedly traitorous instincts. If he were not so focused on the problem at hand he might have passed a few not unenjoyable days daydreaming about Greta Helsing and reminding himself of all the very many reasons he should not be doing so, but they had things to do, damn it, and Varney was so tired of his own predictable and infuriating predilections.

  “He’s a handy acquaintance who happens to have access to a mass spectrometer,” Greta was saying. “And while I don’t really want to venture out at all today, I do need to go up to Crouch End and deal with the car.”

  Cranswell frowned at her. “What if there’s more of them?”

  “I hardly think they’re going to make another attempt the same exact way as before,” she said. “Although you can feel free to come with me if you think I need protecting.”

  “I don’t think it’d help,” Ruthven told her. “No offense intended, Cranswell, but of the ambulatory members of the current household, you’re not exactly the best equipped to deal with murderous attackers, supernatural or otherwise.” He gave Cranswell a rueful, apologetic look.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, I can’t throw people across rooms with one hand or anything like you guys, but we know that poison compound isn’t designed to drop humans with the slightest contact, right? What if you get stabbed, Ruthven?”

  “I don’t intend to. I can’t take Greta to sort out her car, anyway; I’ve got to be here to let the central-heating person into the cellar.”

  He turned back to the toaster, and it was Varney who watched Greta first blink and then turn colors rapidly, and then look awkward. It was not an expression he had seen on that face before. Tiredness, yes, intent focus and concern, but not embarrassment.

  “Um,” she said. “About that. I … may have told Kree-akh he and his people could shelter in your basement. It’s possible they’re already there. I’m sorry, Ruthven.”

  Ruthven turned to look at her. “May have? Why would they need shelter?”

  “It’s—Kree-akh came to see me yesterday,” Greta said, still looking cross with herself, “and said he and his immediate tribe had been driven out of their encampment. By human-looking things that had blue eyes, and that could see in the dark, and did not smell like humans. Two of Kree-akh’s people were killed.”

  “Killed?” Ruthven repeated. “Good God. Is—Are the rest of them all right? Was he hurt?”

  “He said they were—well, not all right, no, but safe. For now. He wasn’t harmed in the attack himself. But the—the blue-eyed men were dressed like monks, he said. It has to be related to all of this, to Varney’s attack, to the man in my car.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry, Ruthven, I should have told everyone last night, but it got driven right out of my head by the mass-spec results.”

  “Mm,” said Ruthven, eyes narrowed. “No harm done. Of course the ghouls can stay in the basement. I just hope they don’t encounter the furnace people. It is so draining having to thrall panicky repairpersons into forgetting the things they have just witnessed.”

  “I really am sorry,” Greta said. “I don’t normally volunteer other people’s houses as sanctuary.”

  “No, well. You were quite right. I’m glad you made the offer,” he said, straightening up. “But this is getting more complicated by the minute. Look, come with me and see if they are down there yet, and if so we can all have a nice talk about what they saw and what the hell to do next. Then you go up and sort out your car, and get that business over with, and come back afterward. If Fass is feeling up to it I’d suggest he accompany you; I have to stay here and deal with the furnace.”

  Greta nodded, finishing her toast and licking butter off her fingers, and Varney had to look away in something of a
hurry. “All right. And I do need to go over to the clinic again this afternoon, if nothing else dramatic transpires: I have a job to do.”

  “Me, too,” said Cranswell, “but they’re not expecting me in the office this week. I want to do more research in Ruthven’s library.” He was also lounging at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, wearing a bathrobe over boxers and a T-shirt, and to Varney showed absolutely no sign of wanting to move. The contrast between him and Dr. Helsing was difficult to ignore.

  Humans, thought Varney, watching Cranswell stir another spoonful of sugar into his mug, are remarkably variable.

  Which made them, of course, remarkably difficult to deal with.

  The cellars of the Embankment house were extensive, containing quite a lot of cobwebby racks of wine bottles as well as the recalcitrant furnace. Greta had been down here once or twice to fetch a particular bottle, but she had always felt somewhat uneasy in the damp cellar chill. As if something was looking over her shoulder, and plotting how best to wall her up inside a niche.

  This was foolish and she knew it, but she was still glad Ruthven went first. He stopped just inside the doorway, sniffing, and sighed. Greta could just about pick up the smell of carrion herself, and there were shufflings and mutterings from the darkness at the bottom of the steps. It’s bad, she thought to herself, it’s really bad, if Kree-akh actually took me up on that offer so quickly. He must have had little choice.

  “Well,” said Ruthven, hands on hips, staring down into the dark. Greta could make out multiple sets of red pinpoints of light now, looking back at them. “I wish I’d had more notice. I could have tidied the place up a bit, but—welcome, now that you’re here. How many of you are there?”

  More shuffling and hissing conversations in ghoulish, and then the cobwebbed lightbulb in the center of the ceiling clicked on. Twelve ghouls stood—or huddled—in a rough circle around Kree-akh, who let go of the light’s dangling cord.

  Greta knew that both they and Ruthven could see perfectly well in almost complete darkness. The light was a concession to her own human handicaps, and she felt slightly touched, in an embarrassing sort of way. “Thank you,” Kree-akh said. “Your … protection is appreciated.”

  Most of the ghouls were young adults; a few were middle-aged, and there was one very elderly individual. One of the younger ones was carrying a bundle on her back that set up a thin little wailing. Greta watched as she unwrapped the bundle to reveal a very small ghoullet: Tiny greenish arms waved uncoordinatedly. Beside her Ruthven caught his breath.

  “It’s quite all right,” he said, sounding rather astonished. “I’m … happy to help. What do you need by way of accommodations?”

  The ghoul with the baby was bouncing it on a skeletal hip, trying to quiet the wailing, and shot Kree-akh an apologetic look. The chieftain sighed, turning his attention back to Ruthven. “Water,” he said, “clean water, and any meat scraps you don’t need.”

  “I can do better than that,” Ruthven said, and turned to her. “Greta, help me fetch blankets and look in the freezer for anything that might suit our guests. I’m going to put on a kettle. Do any of you need medical attention?” he added, to the ghouls.

  “Not urgently,” said Kree-akh. He had his arm around the young ghoul, said something to her in their language. Greta wondered if the ghoullet was his child or grandchild, and how old it was, and remembered him in her office saying I lost two young ones. “But the thought is kind,” he added.

  “Kind, nothing,” said Ruthven. “I want you to tell me all about what happened, if you are willing, but for the moment let’s get you settled and safe—and if you could please not show yourselves to the furnace repairperson if and when they arrive I would profoundly appreciate it.”

  “We are good at hiding,” Kree-akh said, as drily as a ghoul could manage. The baby was winding down to whimpers and hiccups, not in full cry, and Greta thought he looked more than a little relieved. “Perhaps less good at not being heard; but we are good at hiding.”

  Greta pushed away her curiosity—she would have loved a chance to examine an infant ghoul, she’d never seen one before—and went back up the stairs to fetch blankets and supplies. The house had taken on a subtly different air with the advent of each new group of occupants. It was no longer simply the impersonal, gorgeous mansion of an aristocrat. Now it was something slightly more like a castle, a fortification to retreat within. A small and complicated little world.

  She still didn’t know what to do about any of this, or where it was going. Greta was a scientist both by training and inclination, and not knowing was not an acceptable state; the difference between this situation and any she had experienced before was that she also did not know where to even begin looking for answers.

  First things first, she told herself. Crouch End. The car. Cross that off the list of things to worry about, and perhaps someone else will have thought of something by the time you get back. At least Varney’s recovery proves that the poison isn’t necessarily fatal, and these monk people are vulnerable to an extent. They can be hurt.

  She thought, seeing again Kree-akh in the slanting shadows of the cellar light, with his arm around the young mother and her child, that she would be eminently okay with hurting the Gladius Sancti, Hippocratic oath or no Hippocratic oath.

  CHAPTER 9

  Fastitocalon had borrowed one of Ruthven’s coats, too short in the sleeves but at least warmer than anything he currently owned. Greta sat squashed next to him on the bus, which was hot and bright and crowded, full of life. It was unquestionably comforting, even if she did feel mildly carsick. Being somewhere this normal and ordinary, full of normal ordinary people who didn’t have magic powers and couldn’t turn into other things, and whose eyes didn’t glow in the dark, was a luxury Greta had not honestly considered before now.

  It was also really, really hard to make herself think constructively about what was actually happening, from the viewpoint of this bus seat. The whole miserable, terrifying business seemed as remote and impossible as a dream, and she knew it wasn’t, and she didn’t know what to do …

  “I hate this,” she said, almost to herself.

  Beside her Fastitocalon blinked out of a doze. “Mm?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Sorry. Go back to sleep. There’s four stops left.”

  He looked at her closely, peculiarly intent. “It’s not nothing,” he said. “What’s the matter? I am very deliberately not reading your mind, by the way, so you have to actually tell me.”

  That got a small, not very mirthful chuckle out of her. She welcomed the faint constant sensation of never being entirely alone, the awareness of his presence nearby; since her father’s death Fastitocalon had been watching over her in Wilfert’s place. It was a consideration she appreciated. “It’s just—I’m not good with not being able to sort things out, Fass. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m for. I don’t necessarily know how to fix everything to start with, but I can find out. There are processes by which I can actually gain understanding, but with this … there’s no way in. I don’t know what to do and I want to so very much.”

  Greta hadn’t actually meant to say all of that, but it had come tumbling out in a flood, too fast to snatch back the words. “They’ve murdered eleven humans that we know of, nearly murdered Varney, driven Kree-akh and his people from their homes and murdered two of them as well, and—the surviving ghouls are holed up in Ruthven’s basement and one of them has a baby, and I want to do something, Fass, I want to stop this happening.”

  He nodded, simply. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I do too. It’s—there’s so much we don’t know. Simpler to consider what we know it’s not, and go from there.”

  “Well, it’s not ordinary wildtype humans,” Greta said. “Whatever has happened to them has changed them, I don’t know to what extent but it’s very obviously an alteration.”

  “Quite. And the change, or the author of the change, is neither angelic nor demonic in nature,” he said, and she blinked at him. />
  “What? How do you know?”

  “I can sense these things,” Fastitocalon told her solemnly, tapping his temple with a finger. “Truly my powers are vast. No, it’s just that—well, angelic, or heavenly, objects or entities are immediately recognizable to the right type of vision. They’re covered in a sort of sparkly golden dust and make me break out in hives. Demonic and infernal stuff is just as recognizable, only I’m not violently allergic to the sparkles, and they’re red rather than gold.”

  She thought again of how many times she’d wanted to ask what are you. Fastitocalon smiled a little and continued: “In any case I know it didn’t come here from either Heaven or Hell, because it would have tripped the monitoring stations and someone would be doing something about it, which they do not seem to be.”

  As he had described it to Cranswell the night before, the balance thing was key. Which was why every major city and locus of metaphysical importance was monitored by both sides, all the time. A dedicated operative was stationed at each point to keep an eye on the equipment that measured disturbances in reality. “If anything had come through recently, it would have registered,” Fastitocalon said. “And been summarily dealt with. No, I think that this is definitely supernatural, but nonbinary.”

  She was still trying to picture these monitoring stations, and getting a sort of vague mental image of geology postdocs watching seismographs, which didn’t at all gibe with her mental image of Hell. The idea that there could be anything supernatural that wasn’t associated with either of the major players was just as difficult to fit her head around. Flickers of barely remembered Lovecraft came to mind: things that dwelled in the darkness beyond reality, blind idiot gods dancing endlessly to maddening thin flute music, shuffling and stamping on and on as the wheels of eternity ground toward the heat death of the universe.