Strange Practice

by Vivian Shaw

  He is nodding, eagerly. “Will the fire not spread, Lord?”

  Let it. Now the thing allows some of its pleasure and amusement into its voice. Oh, it has been so long since the last time it razed a city, such a long while since the last time it fed anywhere near so well; this will be even more delicious than it had foreseen. Its tools’ devotion to their code of purifying this world of evil is both lovely and peculiarly useful for its own purposes. I have set my face against this city for evil, and not for good, and give it into your hand, it tells him, in the words of the book he has spent his life studying. You shall destroy it utterly, and burn the towers of this place with fire, and all that are therein. Let it spread. Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into Hell, for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.

  “When shall it be done?”

  It considers. First call your brothers back from their work, and let them make ready with prayer and meditation. When the time is right I will set your new tasks upon you. Now the voice is warmer than ever, genuinely pleased, anticipatory. By the end of the seventh day, which is the Lord’s day, My will shall be done, and you shall—all—know peace.

  CHAPTER 11

  When Greta woke up, fully clothed but shoeless, there was a note leaning against the glass of water on the bedside table. Forgive the presumption. R.

  She sat up, the movement accompanied by a fusillade of cracks from her spine, and winced. Being carried off to bed like a kid who’d stayed up past her bedtime was admittedly to be preferred over spending the night sleeping where she’d dozed off at the dinner table, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t embarrassing. At least she’d managed to outlast Cranswell, who had drifted off in the middle of an increasingly incoherent conversation with Fass about what did and did not rate as part of the binary Heaven–Hell balance.

  Six hours of sleep was not even near enough to make up for the past several days, but it at least made her able to think a little straighter, pushing away some of the fatigue poisons and the dull, formless dread.

  She swung her legs off the bed and got up stiffly, padding over to the window to notice that it wasn’t raining and that a weak, watery sun was even trying to poke its way through the clouds, for the first time all week. Slightly cheered up, Greta went to check on her latest patient and found Ruthven sitting by the burned monk’s bed reading, yesterday’s tie loosened, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Some of his hair had even escaped its usual aerodynamic styling process and drooped over his forehead. Absurdly and suddenly she wished she could draw, wanting to catch the scene on paper: Casual Dracula.

  “I’ve been watching since about three in the morning,” he said, not looking up at her until he’d marked his page in the book he was reading. “No change for the worse. He woke up twice and asked for water, mumbled a lot of stuff about damnation and the reprobate and eternal suffering, and went right back to sleep. If that’s what this is. Unconsciousness, sleep, I don’t know.”

  Greta came over to put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said. After a moment he covered her hand with his own, and smiled up at her. The smile was only a little worn round the edges. He had color in his face; his lips were faintly pink. “You’re being wonderful about all of this, Ruthven. Thanks for looking after him, despite—”

  “Despite everything,” Ruthven finished for her. “Yes, well. One tries, you know. One does one’s best. I went out to eat after you’d conked out, so Fass took the first watch, but I took over and sent him to bed when I got home. Varney, I think, didn’t quite trust himself not to come over all murderous in the middle of the night, and sensibly stayed far away.”

  Something was kicking her brain. “Where did we even get to last night? I remember them talking about entities that don’t belong to either God or the Devil, and you were trying to explain electronics to me and Sir Francis and it wasn’t working.”

  “More or less. Fass was telling me a bit about his version of magic after you’d dozed off. He says it works very much the same way as electromagnetism. Similarly enough that there are—oh, laws, and equations and things describing its behavior, which under other circumstances I’d want to learn a great deal more about.” He shrugged. “The point is that there’s a lot of overlap between physics and magic, and that suggests to me that perhaps whatever’s turned this poor bastard into what he is now is using the rectifier and the radiation it puts out to transmit its power. The same way a radio transmitter works.”

  Greta raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s using the UV light to … what, control them?”

  “Something like that. Radio transmitters encode information by modulating a carrier wave’s amplitude or frequency. My theory is that this … thing, whatever it is, the intelligence behind all the attacks … is altering the output of the rectifier via magic, so that it can directly influence people who are exposed to it.”

  “Is that even possible?” she asked, wishing she knew more about physics.

  “I don’t know. It sounds vaguely plausible to me, but Fass will be able to confirm it when he wakes up.”

  “I bet he’ll be happy to go on at great length about it. But the end result is, what, that these Gladius Sancti guys actually get something tangible out of their idol worship other than a lovely warm sense of self-righteousness?”

  “Yes,” said Ruthven. “They get turned into tools.”

  He closed his eyes, opened them slowly. They were very pale in this light, the black-rimmed irises cold and clear like little silver bowls of ice. “Imagine you’ve prayed all your life,” he continued, “that you’ve been taught to pray, taught to believe that you must give praise in prayer and that you are not to expect the blessing of hearing anything ever answer back—that expecting anything to reply to you is hubris and wickedness—but one day there’s this little voice, this still small voice, that does reply. And you believe it and you love it and you worship it, just as you have been taught to all your life … and it shows you wonderful things inside your head, and takes away your fear and pain. And it tells you how to make things … and where to go … and what to do to people with those things, once you get there.”

  Ruthven’s voice was slick with acid, and she blinked down at him. “You … really hate this, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, and got up, book in hand. “I really hate this. I’ll put the kettle on and go to check on the ghouls, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Wordless, she stood aside to let him go by.

  Ruthven had never talked very much about his distant past, but she knew he had lived and died at the end of the sixteenth century—a time when belief in some form of Christianity would have been pretty much universal in this part of the world. Greta thought it was entirely possible that he could see more clearly from the perspective of the Gladius Sancti than she would ever be able to.

  She held a roughly agnostic position with regard to the existence of deities. That a great many supernatural beings existed was self-evident to Greta; that an omniscient and omnipotent and benevolent creator was in charge was somewhat less so, based on the chaotic and disorganized nature of the universe. Nor did she feel any desire to pray or attend services, although she had never considered people who did to be particularly foolish or misguided; it was simply a part of other people’s lives that she did not share. Trying to imagine what it would be like to have truly believed in something, truly and honestly experienced faith, was difficult for her. Trying to imagine what it would be like, as a believer, to hear the voice of God was something close to impossible.

  Witnessing the intensity of Ruthven’s loathing for the thing that had taken such advantage of these people’s belief made Greta just a little glad she didn’t know what it was like.

  She pushed away the thought, with effort, and turned her attention to the man in the bed. The fact that Greta herself had been allowed to sleep through the night was encouraging; either Ruthven or Fastitocalon would have woken her if his condition had deteriorated overnight. In fact, he was rather be
tter than she had expected, and she thought again of the cut healing to a pink, shiny line of scar as she and Anna watched. Whatever is doing this to these people takes care of its belongings, she thought. To some extent.

  I wonder if it knows he’s here.

  Greta wished she hadn’t just thought that. She started another bag of IV fluids dripping slowly, gave him another dose of antibiotics, and checked the dressings on his wounds—which were noticeably further along in the healing process than they had been twelve hours before. She was changing one of the dressings when his eyes opened: just a slit of blue light.

  “Back with us?” she said quietly. “Ruthven said you had a pretty quiet night.”

  The slits widened, and she saw his ruined eyes move, tracking her. Clinically she knew perfectly well that there was no way he should have been able to see a damn thing other than vague areas of dark and less-dark, and even that much was highly unlikely, but he was looking right at her nonetheless.

  God, but this was so fucking creepy.

  Greta kept her face straight, the careful, noncommittal bedside expression reassuring in its familiarity. After a moment he tried to say something, the tip of a dry tongue creeping over cracked lips, and managed it on the second attempt. “Where?”

  “You’re safe. You’re safe and nobody is going to hurt you,” she said, and reached over for the glass of water on the bedside table. Somebody—Ruthven, presumably—had located an actual bendy straw to put in it, and Greta’s chest ached with a sudden clutch of fondness for the small kind thought. She held the glass for the monk to drink; the awful eyes slipped half-closed again in relief, or possibly even pleasure. Then he sighed a little, a faint wheezing sigh that she thought was the weariest damn sound she had ever heard.

  She set the glass aside. This time when his eyes opened, they opened all the way, trained on her face, and she imagined she could feel the blue light itself touching her skin as they widened in visible recognition. He made a nasty hitching noise in his throat, shrinking away from her.

  “You,” he said. It was barely audible. “I know you. The wicked, whose day is come.”

  “Yes, I know,” Greta said, feeling approximately a thousand years old. “It’s all right. I know. You were sent to get rid of me.”

  “Give them … according to their deeds … and according to the wickedness of their en-endeavors,” he rasped. “For by fire and by his sword … will the Lord plead with all flesh … and the slain of the Lord shall be many.”

  She said nothing, looking down at him, and he winced and closed his eyes as if rebuked, and carried on. “But when the righteous … turneth away from his righteousness … and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to … all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?”

  “I don’t know,” Greta told him, gently. The words were familiar, as if she’d heard them before, and more than once. He turned his head on the pillow in a slow and deliberate negation.

  “All his righteousness … that he hath done … shall not be mentioned: In his trespass that he hath trespassed … and in his sin that he hath sinned … in them shall he die.”

  There was a game Greta and her father had played a long time ago in which you had to hold a complete conversation using only quotations from books or plays, and the first person who couldn’t come up with a line—any line—to carry on the discussion conceded defeat. Greta, who had been a voracious reader from an early age, had enjoyed it much more than Scrabble. Neither she nor Wilfert had used Bible quotes to any great extent, lacking the necessary stock of memorized phrases, but as Greta looked down at her patient she thought she could recognize a highly experienced player of the game.

  “You didn’t commit iniquity,” she told him, not ungently. “You might have meant to kill me, but you didn’t do it. That’s a mortal sin you did not commit. Trespass, well, you did break into my car, but I suppose that’s a bit beside the point. We found you in the church, my friend and I, and brought you here to treat your wounds.”

  That seemed to puzzle him, and he looked up at her uncertainly.

  “I suppose I’m wicked to some extent,” Greta said. “Most people are. But on the whole I rather think it’s your brethren who are workers of iniquity, if they’re the ones who have been murdering people. ‘Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth,’” she added, completely unable to stop herself, “‘but blood flies upward and bedews the heavens.’”

  He blinked.

  “Book of Webster, Duchess of Malfi.”

  He did a bit more blinking, and Greta had to smile. “I mean it,” she said. “If they threw you out, you’re the better for it. They were not … doing God’s work.”

  He looked terribly confused. “The land is full of … adulterers,” he said after a moment, as if searching for imperfectly memorized words. “Because of swearing the … the land mourneth … the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up … and their course is evil, and their force is … not right?” His voice rose a little at the end, a question.

  “Well, there are lots of adulterers around,” Greta said. “And lots of wicked people in general. People lie and cheat and steal and commit murder and have wars and refuse to give help to the people who need it. But that doesn’t mean you ought to go around killing them and reciting the King James for justification.”

  “But …” His expression changed, as Greta watched. “But the enemies of the Lord shall perish, and the workers of iniquity be scattered.”

  “I daresay the Lord will sort that out on his own time,” she said. “Here’s another one: ‘Hypocrisy is woven of a fine small thread, subtler than Vulcan’s engine.’ Don’t you think it seems a little … backward, perhaps … to run around committing mortal sins in order to cleanse the world of sin and evil?”

  “We are commanded,” he said. “The Voice of God.”

  She nodded. “What if it isn’t, though? What if it isn’t God at all, but something else?”

  He screwed up his face—which had to hurt his burns, Greta knew—and shook his head firmly. “That’s blasphemy.”

  At least they weren’t playing the Quotation Game anymore. “What if it’s something that’s pretending to be the Voice, and making you do its dirty work?”

  “No!” he said, miserably, and again, softer: “No.”

  Greta sat back, not willing to push him any further right now. “Never mind,” she said, more gently. “You’re safe here, like I said, and we’ll take care of you, even if they did cast you out of their ranks. Don’t worry about it now.”

  “Excommunicated,” he mumbled, but with less distress.

  “Okay, excommunicated. I know it matters to you, but it doesn’t change anything for us. We’ll help you no matter what.”

  He looked up at her and despite the horrible blue-blank eyes, Greta thought she could see something like hope in his face, just for a moment, before his expression returned to one of pain and grief. He really couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, she thought.

  When he spoke again his voice had changed. It was no longer the voice of someone playing a memorized part, but someone tired and hurt and frightened. “Eyes hurt,” he mumbled. “Everything hurts. Where are we?”

  “Victoria Embankment,” she said. “In a house belonging to one of my good friends. I’m going to give you something for the pain.”

  “Embankment. Chelsea,” he said. Greta blinked.

  “Same riverbank, yes.”

  “Chelsea,” he said again. “Something about … Chelsea. Can’t remember …”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Relax. It’ll come back to you.” She hoped, anyway. She hoped some things that were a bit more useful came back to him. There was another of those faint sighs, and the hand that was least damaged rose and drifted across the bed in her direction. She stayed where she was, letting his fever-hot fingers find and touch hers, letting him grip her hand.

  “Cold hands,” he said. “I’m on fire. Don’t … do
n’t make me go back, I can’t, I can’t bear that hum …”

  “They won’t find you. You’re safe here,” she said, wondering again if it was true. If any of them were actually safe here, if this man’s colleagues—or the thing that was running them—were aware of his location.

  “Who was …” His breathing was getting faster. “Man. White face, black hair. Gave me water.”

  “Easy,” Greta said, trying to put as much calm in her voice as she could. “It’s all right. That’s just Ruthven. It’s his house.”

  “Demon?”

  “No, just a vampire.”

  This seemed to confuse him. “Unclean. Spirit of the dead, a devil.”

  “Well, it depends on your point of view,” she was saying, but he squeezed her hand weakly and she shut up.

  “In … danger.”

  “What, from him? I assure you, you’ve got the wrong end of the stake there—”

  “No,” and now he sounded slightly irritated and much more with it. “He’s in danger. You. All … all of you. They want you dead.”

  Greta stared down at him, a mangled collection of scars in the shape of a man. Again the unwelcome thought surfaced: What else might be looking back at her from behind that face?

  They want you dead.

  “We need your help,” she said, aware of how small her voice was. “Please. Tell me what you know.”

  “Can’t remember,” he said, closing his eyes tight. “Can’t … Blue light and that humming and it, the—the Lord, the Voice of the Lord spoke unto him …”

  “Unto who?”

  “Brother. Brother … Johann?” The effort of trying to remember was telling on him. Greta bit down on her questions.

  “All right. Don’t worry about it now,” she said. “It will come back. Just rest, okay? You’re safe here. We’ll protect you.”

  He seemed about to protest, but just subsided, breathing hard. Greta got up and went around the bed to inject the dose of pain medication into his IV. Soon enough his face relaxed as the stuff took hold.