by Kat Ross
“Filthy weather out there, milady, you must be half-frozen. Shall I draw a hot bath?”
“Yes, please. It might be the last I get for days. And pack a trunk, if you would. My warmest things.”
“Where are you going, milady?”
“The Kingdom of Romania. Three days’ worth of clothes should be adequate. Nothing fancy. I intend to travel light.”
Claudine didn’t bat an eyelash. She was used to her mistress leaving at the drop of a hat.
“Will you take me along, milady?” she asked hopefully.
Vivienne smiled. “Not this time, Claudine. But I promise to send you a postcard.”
“Very good, milady,” she said with a sigh.
While the tub was filling, Vivienne climbed up to the top floor and opened the door to Anne’s room, where she paused for a long moment. It was large and gave a fine view of Green Park but held few hints about the woman who lived there. The vanity was bare of powder or cosmetics. There were no photographs or keepsakes on the bedside table. In fact, it looked almost exactly as it had when she’d first moved her things to Park Place a year before. The only personal item was Anne’s violin, which lay in a case on the window seat. She was passionate about her music, but she wouldn’t have taken it along.
One of the wooden panels protruded slightly from the wall. Vivienne pressed it and it sprang open, revealing a secret bookshelf. She suspected this was why Anne chose the room. It held a small library of volumes on folklore and witchcraft. They were scholarly works one might find in any decent library and Vivienne never understood why Anne kept them hidden away, as though she were ashamed of them.
Vivienne traced her fingertips across one of the shelves. There were gaps where Anne had taken books with her — the most pertinent ones, she assumed. But she found one called Transylvanian Superstitions written by Emily Gerard and published only four years before. Vivienne flipped through the pages. They were well-worn, with creases on some of the pages, as though Anne had read it many times. Perhaps that was why she’d left it behind.
Vivienne tucked the book under her arm and closed the panel.
If anyone had harmed Anne…. Well, she would hunt them to the ends of the earth.
And so would Alec Lawrence.
For the first time in days, Vivienne opened herself to her daēva. She could sense him through the gold cuff around her wrist. He wore its match and little short of death could break the bond between them. Alec was well, though she felt the old ache in his leg. She wished she could send him a message, but the bond didn’t work that way. And the farther he was, the fainter the sensations were.
Vivienne missed him more than she’d expected. Rather desperately, in fact. As much as she was loath to admit it, Alec was a part of her. But she wouldn’t drive herself mad with worry over him, too. Alec Lawrence knew how to take care of himself.
He should be here, she thought angrily, though there was little real heat in it. He never went off on his own. But he had, and now she couldn’t find him when she needed him. First Alec, then Anne. The sudden conviction that everything was falling apart sent a chill down her spine.
“There’s a ferry service leaving for the Hook of Holland from Harwich in six hours,” Nathaniel said from the doorway. “We can just make it if we go straight away.”
Vivienne turned. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For everything.”
He came forward and folded his arms around her. He smelled pleasantly of aftershave and a hint of brandy. “It was rather mad that she went off unaccompanied,” Nathaniel said. “Not because she’s a woman,” he added hastily. “But I thought you agents worked in pairs. I’m surprised Mr. Sidgwick would approve it.”
Vivienne almost told him the truth then, that Anne was much more than she seemed, and Alec too, but it wasn’t her secret to reveal.
“She’s handled cases alone before. He had no reason to think it wasn’t routine.”
Nathaniel gave a mirthless laugh. “Not everyone would consider three brutal murders routine, darling. Well, I suppose I’d better help Quimby pack my things. We should get to the terminal at Liverpool Street as soon as possible. The train leaves at 8:30.”
Vivienne took a quick bath and chose a blue woolen dress suitable for hard travel. Then she opened a valise and packed an assortment of iron blades wrapped in cloth. Two were short swords for close-quarter combat, as well five others of varying lengths she could stow in specially tailored slits in her bodice.
As for the rest of it, Claudine managed to cram everything into a single trunk. Before it was latched, Vivienne took a small oval portrait in a silver frame from her vanity.
It showed a serious-looking young woman who appeared no older than her late twenties. Her auburn hair was loosely upswept, covering ears that stuck out a bit. She wore a high-necked grey dress. Anne rarely smiled and she wasn’t doing so in the picture. She had a small, straight nose dusted with freckles and a pointy chin, but the most remarkable feature was her eyes, which were large and unsettling.
It was the only photograph of Anne that Vivienne had.
She slipped it into the trunk, along with two small carved wooden figurines. The first was a woman with the skin of a crocodile, her patron, Innunu. The second, Kavi, had nine arms, each wielding a flail.
Vivienne worshipped the old gods and she could use all the luck she could find.
And hour later, they were racing in a carriage through the dark streets of London.
“We’ll find her, Viv,” Nathaniel said cheerfully, though she heard an edge to his voice.
Vivienne gave him a wan smile. “Of course we will.”
2
The night crossing to Hoek Van Holland was not an experience Vivienne cared to repeat. Nathaniel seemed unaffected by the violent pitching of the ferry, but she clung to the rail, wishing for death. She’d never liked ships, but at least her last voyage with Alec had been on a Trans-Atlantic luxury liner. The Richard Young was a 240-foot paddle steamer that waddled through the troughs of the Channel like a fat dowager with a gouty leg.
Half the passengers in the lounge were in a similar state and she couldn’t bear to listen to their retching, though it was freezing on deck. Nathaniel gamely kept her company, distracting her with amusing stories about country life, and Vivienne was very glad he’d come.
Once on the train to Munich, she collapsed into their first class compartment and slept until they changed for another line to Vienna, and thence to Buda-Pesth. The train arrived near to midnight and they spent the night in a hotel near the station, then caught a local to Brasov early the next morning.
Fields and forests raced by out the window, broken by the occasional medieval walled town. Vivienne had the sense of moving back in time to a land untouched by the modern world. She stretched, wishing for coffee, and dug out the book she’d taken from Anne’s room. It was a slim volume, bound in cloth with gold lettering.
Nathaniel had propped his long legs on the seat next to her and sat drowsing beneath the brim of his hat. Despite four days of constant travel, he somehow managed to look fresh as an English rose. Vivienne started reading and barked a laugh.
His sapphire eyes flickered open.
“Listen to this. ‘Transylvania might well be termed the land of superstition, for nowhere else does this curious crooked plant of delusion flourish as persistently and in such bewildering variety. It would almost seem as though the whole species of demons, pixies, witches, and hobgoblins, driven from the rest of Europe by the wand of science, had taken refuge within this mountain rampart, well aware that here they would find secure lurking-places, whence they might defy their persecutors yet awhile.’”
He raised an eyebrow. “One can hardly blame them. These poor people have been invaded by one army or another for centuries. I suppose clinging to the old ways is a tactic of quiet resistance.”
“They’re a proud people,” Vivienne agreed. “I’m glad they finally gained their independence. It can’t have been fun to live between the ja
ws of the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. Not to mention the Mongols, Goths, Huns and assorted other hordes.”
Vivienne herself had met Genghis Khan briefly — and under inauspicious circumstances — when she and Alec were trying to close a Greater Gate to the underworld in Samarkand in 1220 and the Khan arrived to sack the place. It was another experience she’d not care to repeat.
“Do you think there’s any truth in it?” Nathaniel wondered. “Witches and hobgoblins and the like?”
“Of course there is,” she murmured. “They just have most of the details wrong.”
“Such as?”
Vivienne laid the book on her lap. “Ghouls are the spirits of restless dead who linger in the Dominion, the veil between the living world and what lies beyond. They have different names in different cultures. In Spain, they’re called brujas. Your medieval ancestors called them incubus or succubus. In the Philippines, mandurugo. In Germany, nachzehrer. There are literally hundreds of words for the same thing. But ghouls don’t appear randomly.”
“Let me guess. Necromancers.”
She laughed and dug out her Oxford Ovals. Nathaniel leaned over to light her cigarette with a match. “So you do know something.”
“I overheard Alec and Cyrus talking in the drawing room,” he admitted.
Vivienne blew a thin stream of smoke toward the window. “Yes, necromancers. Their power derives from human captives. When a captive dies, a ghoul comes through. Sometimes a wight. And when a necromancer dies, a revenant is born.”
“Revenant?”
She made a face. “They’re even nastier.”
“So … a large number of ghouls in a given area is a sign there’s a necro hanging about?”
“Often, yes, but not always. Once loosed, the creatures will travel until they’re caught and beheaded. But here’s the worst part. After they’ve consumed a few pints of blood, they gain the ability to mimic their victims. If you don’t know the signs to watch for it can be hard to tell the difference until it’s too late.”
“That’s what happened with the Queen?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Now there’s a special division of Scotland Yard devoted to hunting them down. The S.P.R. works as a consulting agency in tandem with the Dominion Branch.”
Nathaniel looked impressed. “Go on.”
“I wondered if there might be a necromancer behind the killings in Mara Vardac, but it doesn’t really fit their modus operandi. And ghouls drain their victims dry, but I’ve never seen one tear a throat out.”
His smile died. “That’s what happened in this village we’re going to?”
Vivienne nodded.
“What do you think it is, then?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure the locals have their own explanation.” She opened the book and flipped through the pages. “Here we are. The people of the Carpathians call ghouls nosferatu, blood-suckers. ‘The living vampire is in general the illegitimate offspring of two illegitimate persons, but even a flawless pedigree will not ensure anyone against the intrusion of a vampire into his family vault, since every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent people till the spirit has been exorcised, either by opening the grave of the person suspected and driving a stake through the corpse, or firing a pistol shot into the coffin. In very obstinate cases it is further recommended to cut off the head and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic, or to extract the heart and burn it, strewing the ashes over the grave.’”
She closed the book. “That sounds like a standard ghoul. And I see they’re familiar with the head-chopping part. The garlic is nonsense.”
He patted the pocket of his greatcoat. “Well, I brought my Beaumont-Adams revolver in case we need to shoot up any coffins.”
Vivienne laughed. “I feel ever so much better.”
“Don’t mock, darling,” he said with a wounded expression. “I happen to be a crack shot.”
A few minutes later, the train pulled into the town of Satinari. Nathaniel and Vivienne collected their luggage and paid a lanky teenaged boy to guide them to a tavern near the station. Like many of the larger houses, the walls and window frames had been painted with intricate, colorful designs, giving the inn a quaint gingerbread aspect. A few men in long wool coats drank beer at tables inside, casting surly glances as they approached the mistress of the place. Her eyes widened a little at the sight of Vivienne’s brown skin, but she wiped her hands on her apron and bustled forward with a polite smile. Nathaniel greeted her in German, which she understood. But when he asked about hiring a carriage to go to Mara Vardac, she crossed herself and looked alarmed.
“Oh no, you mustn’t go there, sir,” she said in broken German. “It is a bad place. Very bad.”
Nathaniel glanced at Vivienne. “We know about the attacks,” he said gently. “We’ve come on official business. To help.”
She didn’t reply, only crossed herself again and turned away.
“Please, good mistress. A friend of ours disappeared. An English girl….” Nathaniel trailed off. The woman had retreated to the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
He looked over at the men, who’d buried their noses in the mugs of beer.
“I have money,” he announced, pulling out a thick wad of Romanian banknotes. “Fifty leu to the gentleman who takes us to Mara Vardac.”
It was a princely sum. The men shifted, eyeing each other.
“A hundred.”
“I’ll take you.” The oldest of the bunch rose on unsteady legs. He had a red, bulbous nose and his coat was worn and patched. He spoke in Magyar, which Vivienne had a smattering of. She knew dozens of languages, and hundreds of local dialects, though she tended to forget the ones she didn’t use often.
His friends shook their heads. A low-pitched but heated argument broke out. The old man wouldn’t be dissuaded, tugging his sleeve from their grasping fingers. One of them muttered something about drunk fools and made a sign to ward off evil.
“They say it is too late in the day,” Vivienne murmured. “That no amount of money is worth being caught out after dark near Mara Vardac.”
Nathaniel frowned. “Well, it’s hardly noon. How far is it anyway?”
“Only seven or eight miles, I think.”
The man led them to a farm wagon behind the inn. He fetched a pair of roan horses from the stable and they all squeezed onto the bench. He cracked the whip and the cart lurched off at a brisk pace, passing through the town and up a narrow road that climbed into the foothills. The snows of late January had given way to a thaw and patches of green showed in the fallow fields and orchards. It was a spectacular countryside, riven by deep gorges and heavily wooded slopes of pine and spruce.
“Thank you for agreeing to take us,” Nathaniel said companionably in German.
The man grunted, staring straight ahead, the brim of his black hat pulled low.
“We plan to stay the night. I suppose there’s an inn?”
Vivienne translated the words to Magyar, though she knew he’d understood.
“Lock your door,” the driver muttered. “And pray to Saint George to preserve you ’til dawn comes.”
Vivienne relayed his reply to Nathaniel, who gave a respectful nod. “What do you think would disturb us?” he ventured.
The driver merely hunched his shoulders and gripped the reins with gnarled hands, driving the horses to greater speed.
The sun was bright, the sky blue, yet Vivienne felt a sense of foreboding as they left Satinari behind and ascended into the higher passes. The land grew more rugged and wild, the forests thick and dark. They passed above the thaw line. A blanket of snow covered the road with no sign that any other travelers had passed this way in weeks.
The driver kept glancing anxiously at the sun, cracking the whip above the poor horses’ heads as it began descending to the west. The cart raced along, taking the curves at perilous speeds. Foam flecked the beasts’ flanks, their brea
th plumed white in the air, and Vivienne was about to object that it would do them no good if the cart overturned when they rounded a bend in the road and Mara Vardac came into view. The driver let out a sigh of relief and slackened his grip on the reins.
At first glance, it looked no different from any of the other tiny villages Vivienne had seen from the train. Two dozen whitewashed houses with tile roofs nestled in an open valley, a vista of snowy mountains rearing up to the north. There was a small church and a smithy with smoke coming from the forge. But as they approached, she saw the village was enclosed by a palisade of sharpened stakes, the wood still green. Stumps at the edge of the forest signaled where the trees had been felled.
The driver passed through an opening in the palisade and guided the cart down the main street, pulling up abruptly in front of an inn. It was an ancient-looking building made of mortared stones with a sagging roof. Nathaniel jumped down and offered Vivienne his hand. Faces watched from the windows of nearby houses, but no children played outside and the whole place had a desolate air.
The driver helped unload their trunks in an obvious bid to see them on their way as fast as possible. He quickly saw to the horses, filling a bucket of water from the well and rubbing them down with a musty blanket, every movement fraught with impatience. The instant Nathaniel handed him the banknotes, he climbed back onto the cart, not even bothering to count them. The journey had sobered him up, and she saw pity in his eyes as he gave them a final glance.
“Isten vigyázzon rád,” he muttered.
God watch over you.
He shook the reins and the cart raced away toward the pass leading back down to Satinari.
“Charming fellow,” Nathaniel grunted, hefting a trunk in each hand.
“He meant well. He’s just frightened.” Vivienne looked around. The faces had disappeared, but she saw curtains twitch and felt sure they were still being watched. “They all are.”
The inn was dim inside and empty of custom, though a dozen tables and chairs were scattered through the common room. Heavy wooden beams, black with age, supported a low roof. The great hearth was cold and the place smelled of old wood smoke and beer.