by Amber Benson
To her surprise, they were not alone. Martha, the maid who practically ran the Swift household, was there along with Sophia’s own lady’s maid, Elvira.
“See here,” Elvira said, instinctively keeping her voice low. “What is this about?”
Bodicea shot her a dark look. “Follow me.”
Her tone made it clear she would brook no argument, so when she floated toward the stairs, the women fell in behind her. Martha seemed grimly serious yet calm enough. Elvira, on the other hand . . . she had seen things she could not explain, but Sophia believed that this was the first time she had been so blatantly presented with the existence of ghosts as an inescapable truth. She had no idea what had been said to her maid before Bodicea had woken her, but Elvira’s eyes were wide with shock, and she was entirely docile, a word that had likely never before been attached to the woman.
As they started down the stairs, following the specter, the silence of the house was broken by the howling of a madman. The screams of Henry Swift floated down to them. Beside Sophia, Elvira whimpered and grabbed hold of her employer’s arm. Despite her own fear, Sophia found herself patting the woman’s hands to soothe her, and escorting her as though Elvira were the mistress and she the maid.
Sophia had seen the cruel, slavering, vicious thing Henry Swift had become, had heard him speak with the voice of the demon, the glint of evil in his eyes. But she had never heard him shriek like this, as though he fully intended to scream until Henry’s heart burst, or his throat became too raw to utter a sound.
“What is it, Bodicea? Please, tell me what’s happening!”
The specter continued to descend the stairs. It was Martha who turned to Sophia after a moment’s hesitation.
“We should be perfectly safe, miss. Nothing can come in after us, and . . . Oblis . . . himself making all that racket in the nursery . . . he’s trapped there, just as if he were behind bars.”
“Then . . . ,” Sophia began, frowning as they reached the bottom of the steps. She looked after Bodicea, who paused at last, then at the two older servant women. “Why are we going wherever it is we are going?”
Bodicea floated back to her. The queen had been so tall in life that she had to gaze downward to look into Sophia’s eyes. Her aspect was ominous.
“We have the utmost confidence in the spells that are binding the demon now. The Protectors have learned from their own past errors. But Oblis has not been without a guardian since his captivity began, and if I am to leave you here in the house with him, we must take precautions.”
Sophia regarded her evenly, mustering courage she did not feel. “Precautions,” she repeated.
“This way,” Bodicea commanded.
She led them from the foyer deep into the back of the house, past parlor and drawing room, dining room and kitchen, and a small study that seemed to have been unused for some time. Sophia thought they passed the hall to the atrium, but was not sure. The house always seemed larger to her than she remembered.
There was a tall, imposingly thick ironwood door at the rear of the house that did not seem to match any of the other décor. Bodicea did not hesitate a moment, drifting through it.
Sophia hugged herself. The lunatic screams of the demon should have been inaudible all the way down here, but somehow she could still hear him, and her skin prickled with revulsion and dread.
She opened the door.
The spectral queen awaited within. The room was an arsenal, filled with swords and daggers, double-bladed battle-axes, longbows, and quivers full of arrows, crossbows, and armored gauntlets.
“Farris and William completed this sanctuary only recently. The door and walls are reinforced with iron. There are dried provisions on that shelf in the corner. If the demon were to get free, you would still be safe here. Oblis is a Vapor; he has no substance save the body he inhabits. Yes, he is remarkably strong, and indeed he may levitate. But he cannot translocate, and this room is built well enough that he will not be able to enter, as long as you do not open the door.
“So you will stay here, until the Swifts return. I do not abandon my post lightly. Lord Nelson came specifically to call me to my duty, and I will not ignore the call. But you will be safe, as long as you remain here.”
Sophia stared at her. None of this felt right to her. How confident could William be of the spells binding Oblis into the nursery if he and Farris bothered to build this room? Certainly it would be helpful in other circumstances, as well, but they had to have had Oblis in mind while doing the work. Which meant they had allowed for the possibility of his escape.
And now she was going to be left here, locked in with two middle-aged women whose combat experience likely consisted of killing the odd rat or two in the kitchen.
The things she had said to William earlier came back to haunt her now. She had assured him that she wanted this life, that she would rather live with these dangers than without him.
It pleased her to discover that she had meant every word.
But that did not assuage her terror.
“Bodicea, I don’t think that—”
“Lock the door,” the ghost replied, and with those words her insubstantial image fluttered as though on a breeze, and she was gone.
Elvira stared at the place where she had been, mouth agape, and then took several steps toward the back of the room, shaking her head. Martha met Sophia’s gaze with a firm nod. Sophia returned it, and strode quickly to the heavy door. With her hand on the bolt, she swung it shut.
Just before it bumped heavily into place, the sound of the shrieking came again, muffled but inescapable. It sounded joyful to her, as though Oblis knew they were alone down here, hiding from him behind locked doors, armed with medieval weapons. In fear of him, despite his bonds.
It sounded like a madman’s glee.
Sophia drew a shuddering breath, bit her lower lip, and threw her weight against the door, sliding the bolt home.
And she could still hear him.
CROUCHED IN THE lee of a thick stand of shrubbery, Nigel Townsend uttered a throaty laugh. It came up from deep within him, unbidden, and he bared his fangs.
The Rakshasa had been moving through the palace gardens, and he had intercepted their attack. There were more of them, out in the fog, or perhaps the other figures he had seen were the Children of Kali. But he was not concerned with the others, for the moment. Only these.
The filthy animals that had set after him in the garden, like wolves on the veldt.
What they did not understand was that he was a vampire, and vampires were not prey. Never prey. Even cornered, as he was, by three slavering demons with piss-yellow eyes and rows of ivory needles for teeth, he was the predator. There had been four of them, after all, but the corpse of the fourth lay a dozen yards away, its chest shattered and its heart torn out. Its blood stained Nigel’s hands and clothes. The scent of it was maddening, and drew the laughter from him, brought his own monstrousness to the fore.
The vampire was risen.
The Rakshasa stood to their greatest height as if unfolding from the crouch they usually moved in. That was their stalking pose, Nigel thought, but this . . . this was the way they showed their animalistic dominance, before they attacked. The fog drifted languidly past them, moist air clinging to their patches of leathery skin and the filthy, matted hair that covered most of their bodies. Their long talons were like knives, and the three of them began to close in on him, raising their claws as if to promise evisceration.
Nigel brought his own hands up. The nails had elongated into claws of his own. “You’re not the only ones with pretty blades, lads. Not at all.”
They paused and threw back their heads, as if having taken offense. The howls that came out of their stinking maws began almost like those of ordinary animals, but then broke into a series of those unnerving, barking laughs. One by one the three demons lowered themselves again into their stalking pose and continued to move in slowly, pacing from side to side, keeping his back up against the shrubs that s
cratched against him.
Nigel only sneered.
“Fools. Have you never seen one of my kind before? You lot are demons. Evil, that’s true. But you haven’t the first clue about real cruelty. Only humans understand that. If you’d caught me with the others, with the Swifts or their phantom comrades at my side, you might’ve had a chance at me. I would’ve been fighting the monster in myself as much as I’d have been fighting you.
“But you caught me alone, with no one to see my true nature. That was your mistake.”
Then the red hunger of the beast raged up inside him and his grin became a different sort of howl. A battle cry. He gnashed his jaws and darted toward the Rakshasa to his right. It flinched backward, attempting to dodge, but it had not been Nigel’s target. As he lunged, one of the others reached for him, claws slashing down.
It was what he had expected. With the one on his right off balance, he sidestepped the other’s attack, grabbed hold of its arm, and wrapped the arm around himself almost as though they were dancing. Spinning, he slammed himself against the demon, crashing into that filthy fur . . . too close to it for the other two to attack.
If the demon had had a moment to act, it might have crushed him to death then, shattering his chest and his cold, black heart. But its jaundiced eyes went wide with surprise, and Nigel reached up with one powerful hand and forced its head down toward him as though to kiss.
Ravenous with bloodlust and fury he opened his jaws impossibly wide, each of his teeth now extending to a sliver point. Then he tore out the Rakshasa’s throat with a moist, ripping noise and the tug of muscle and tendon. Its black blood sprayed his face even as he shoved it away, turning to drop back into a crouch, facing the other two. He spat leathery flesh and sinew onto the ground.
Warriors—human or supernatural—would have been given pause. But the Rakshasa were not warriors at all. Just demons. Filthy vermin from some dark netherworld, doing the bidding of their mistress. Even so, they hesitated. Their chests rose and fell with fetid exhalations and then they began to move from side to side again, searching for an opening, for the perfect moment to attack.
Nigel did not intend to give them a chance.
The creature to his left looked younger and stronger, so he leaped at that one. It was quick, and it snatched him out of the air, claws gripping his throat, trying to choke him even as it brought its other arm around to plunge its long talons like knives into his chest. Pain seared him like fire blazing across his flesh and in the bones and organs of his upper torso. The demon was satisfied with its work and it let out another of those hyena laughs.
The vampire reached up then and grabbed its lower jaw, slicing off the tip of his left ring finger on its teeth as he tore that mandible from its roots with a pop of bone. The thing’s screeching was pitiful as he ripped the remnants of skin that still connected it, and then the jawbone was in his hands.
The Rakshasa let him go, reeling away from him and staggering, dropping to its knees as black blood flowed over its chest.
“If you want to kill something like me, you’ll have to do better than that,” Nigel growled.
Something shimmered unearthly blue in the fog behind the screaming, suffering Rakshasa, and Nigel frowned when he saw that it was Byron. The specter rushed through the fog toward him with no trace of the pretty, clever words or fanciful pretense that were his hallmarks. Nigel knew instantly that something had gone horribly wrong. Yet even as Byron whipped toward him through the fog, he heard the shifting, leathery noise of the Rakshasa behind him making one final assault.
He spun and brought the stolen jawbone around in an arc, using it as a weapon. The rows of jagged fangs glistened in the damp air and he felt as though he were in a dream as he twisted through that gray-orange cloud of mist . . . and then he slashed the surviving Rakshasa across the face with its brother’s own fangs, carving flesh and puncturing those eyes, which spurted yellow pus that sizzled on his skin like acid.
It shrieked, blinded, and he slipped around behind it and quickly snapped its neck, dropping the demon to the ground. The one with no lower jaw was still bleeding, still wailing, and it began to twitch. It would die soon, but Nigel would let it suffer.
There were other things afoot.
He ran through the fog to meet Byron, the ghost nearly passing through him in the thickness of that cloud.
“What is it?” Nigel demanded, all manner of terrible imaginings in his mind. “What’s happened?”
The very fabric of the ghost, his spectral essence, seemed to roil with emotion. He brought his hands to his face, fingers bent as though he meant to tear at himself in grief. There was such horror in his eyes that the red beast living in Nigel’s heart, that berserker soul in him, withdrew, and the part of him that was still human faltered. He had no need to breathe, yet still he held his breath.
“Tamara,” Byron said, frantic. “The girl was there, Priya, and Tamara’s been injured. Badly. You must come quickly.” And then, the worst of it, the words that tumbled out of Byron with more anguish than Nigel had ever heard in a voice. “And I cannot help, cannot touch her, not even just to lend her comfort.”
The ache that leaped into Nigel’s heart astonished him. He was not in love with the girl, not that. But he loved her just the same. It felt, in that moment, almost as though he were alive again . . . alive enough to feel the acute emotion that made humanity an utter joy and total anguish.
“Come,” he said simply, and then he raced through the fog. He could hear other things moving about the gardens, crashing through greenery and snapping tree branches as they moved toward the palace, but he no longer cared about the queen or about Albion. Not in that moment. The queen could bugger off.
Byron sailed through the air beside him, utterly transparent despite the bright shade of his velvet coat. How often had Nigel thought him a fool? And yet in their shared fear for Tamara, they were joined in a manner neither was accustomed to.
They left the gardens behind and raced for the corner of the palace in sight of Constitution Hill, the place where Nigel had left her—and damn you for doing it, you fool, he thought. For just a moment the fog cleared, and he saw her on the ground up ahead, slumped on her side with a pair of Kali’s Children looming above her unmoving form. He thought he could hear their hiss, but it might merely have been the wind and the dark magic of that damnable fog.
Then the mist shrouded the palace again, and it was several long seconds during which he was sure they must be eviscerating her before he and Byron emerged again, a dozen feet from where Tamara lay.
The accursed monstrosities that stood above her were dead, turned to volcanic glass by sorcerous flames. Tamara’s right hand was outstretched toward them, frozen in the act of casting that spell. It had been too much for her, though, and she had fallen unconscious from the effort.
Nigel rushed to her. Unthinkingly he lashed out, shattering the glass creatures in his frustration and fear. A shard of glass carved a gash in his arm, but he barely flinched at the pain as he dropped to his knees beside her, scooping her up.
Her blood soaked through his trousers, warm and sticky. The wound in her shoulder was small and could be easily patched, but the puncture in her abdomen was not so simple. The blood bubbled from it, drenching her dress and her jacket.
He was a vampire, cursed with the taint of Hell, of a horror to which God turned a blind eye. All of the gods, in fact. Nigel Townsend had not uttered a prayer to any deity in many years.
Tonight, he whispered a prayer to the heavens.
“Do something!” Byron cried. “You must! Look at the wound! She’s going to die unless you can heal her.”
“I . . . I’ve never studied healing magic. I can’t—”
The poet could be shrill at times. Not now. He slid his fingers into Nigel’s hair and yanked back his head. “You worthless bastard, with all that you owe these children and their grandfather’s memory . . . you do something!”
The specter’s touch was only a reminder
that Nigel himself was not human. He glared at Byron until the ghost faltered and released him, glancing away shamefacedly.
“It’s . . . Nigel, I’m sorry, but it’s Tamara.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I can see her, Byron. I smell her blood! I . . .”
And an idea came to him. A very dark idea. The red beast inside him trembled with anticipation at the thought. Nigel narrowed his gaze and a low rumble came up from his throat as he stared at Tamara. There was a way to save her.
A way . . .
His nostrils flared with the scent of her, and he squeezed his eyes closed and twisted his head away, fresh sorrow and torment drowning him as he recalled the last time he had been faced with such a choice. Her name had been Louise, a young girl who worked onstage as part of Ludlow’s magic act. She had discovered Nigel’s true nature and fallen in love with him, and he with her. Yet the lure of what he was had tempted her. She saw romance and real magic in him, when he knew that it was only monstrousness and death. She had pleaded with him to make her like him and then, when he refused, she had slit her wrists. Louise had wanted to love him forever, but Nigel would not damn her to an eternity of bloodlust and darkness.
He had let her die.
There was no way he could allow the same thing to happen to Tamara, and yet once again he would not give in to the temptation to create another like him, to give her damnation instead of death.
“No,” he said grimly.
There came more hissing from the fog, and the laughter of at least one more Rakshasa. The vampire turned and glared at Byron.
“Hold them off. Whatever it costs you, hold them off.”
Black tree branches could be seen thrusting like skeletal fingers clawing from the fog, right through Byron’s body. He was silhouetted in that fog. Insubstantial and yet with more presence than Nigel had ever given him credit for.
“They won’t touch her,” the poet vowed.
Then he was off, flitting through the fog.
Nigel turned to Tamara, her blood still soaking through the knees of his trousers, and he slapped her.