The Seeker

by Martyn Taylor

  “You may call me ‘Paul’,” the vampire said, taking out another biscuit to give to his dog, who woofed his appreciation and then chewed on his treat, making a sound like a prime carnivore crunching open a bone to get at the marrow. “His name is ‘Cyrano’, by the way.”

  Call said nothing, but shivered. It could just be a coincidence, not that he believed in coincidences.

  “Before you tell me what you are doing here, Mr Call, so far from your bailiwick, so far from the endless demands of your calling, I must tell you that I know exactly who you are and what you do. I have met several Seekers in my time, and you will be the first to walk away from the encounter alive.”

  “Oh well, that’s a relief,” Call laughed, trying to inject some humour into his tone and failing entirely. “I’m not here on official business…”

  “If you were we should not be having this conversation and you would be completely unaware of my presence in this city, right up until the moment I killed you.”

  Call wished he could puncture this vampire’s armour of total self-confidence and believe by reminding him that it was, in fact, he who had found him, and left an invitation, but knew that would be unwise. Then there was the fact he had never had that snowball’s chance in hell of harming Cyrano or Roxane, so what chance would he have against this one who was four times older, wiser and more powerful than they were. If he’d believed in gods Paul was as near to one as he would ever encounter. “You have my gratitude for your forbearance. The fact of the matter is that I am here on behalf of one of your creations.”

  The atmosphere became even colder, if anything. Call was amazed to look at the other occupants of the gardens enjoying their summer while he was in the middle of the Arctic.

  “A Seeker risking himself on behalf of a vampire is unprecedented.”

  Call shrugged. “Just because it’s always been done that way doesn’t mean that’s the way it always has to be.”

  “Oh, so you’re an iconoclast.”

  “If you will.”

  “What does Richard Mercer want of me now? Or is he calling himself De Merlay these days?”

  “Richard..? He calls himself Cyrano these days, as I believe you know full well. He wants nothing of you. He’s dead.” The Roman sat even more upright, as though he had just been touched by something electric. Call felt a satisfaction he had taken the vampire by surprise. “It is a long story, but he walked into the fire.”

  The vampire did not look at him. “And you know this, how?” The satisfaction drained out of Call just as quickly as it had filled him. There was no guarantee that he would walk away from Paul the Roman alive, whatever he had said.

  “I know because I was there.”

  The vampire turned towards him, just a little and the atmosphere grew more gravid with threat. “You know because you pushed him.”

  “If you think I am capable of making something like Cyrano do anything it didn’t want to, even given the state he was in at the time, you have a vastly inflated sense of my capacities.” Call shook his head and closed his eyes, remembering those final moments in The Russia House. “Actually, I tried to stop him. I had a lot of success with that.”

  The silence in which they sat together staring out at unseen perspectives was the precise opposite of comfortable and companionable, despite the impression they would have given to anyone observing them. Not that there was anyone observing them, or capable of observing them unless Paul willed them to see.

  “You say ‘the state he was in’. What state was my child in? How did he get into that state?”

  Call took a deep breath and then began to tell him the story. As he spoke he had no idea what impact this might have on the Roman. He eventually got to being carried out of the burning Russia House by Roxane and stopped speaking. The silence following this was even more intense and ominous than the one that had preceded his story.

  For the first time since beginning to speak he glanced towards the vampire and was astonished to see a single tear seemingly frozen on his cheek. Wondering, disbelieving, he reached out very slowly to touch that tear, to see if it was real, only for Paul to wipe it away roughly with the heel of his hand.

  “I can still shed tears, Seeker,” he whispered. “I may display all the vulnerability of an ambulatory Bass Rock but my heart is still human. I still feel. I still regret waste and tragedy.”

  Call could not see how one less super vampire could be considered wasteful or tragic but kept the opinion to himself and hoped Paul had not developed the ability to actually read minds over the centuries.

  “Why did Roxane send you in her place?”

  “She asked me to do her a favour. I did not ask why.”

  “What does she want from me?”

  Call glanced at the vampire, thinking he might as well try to read the face of Sir Walter on the monument. Paul’s face was utterly impassive now the tears were dried. “I think you know what she wants.”

  “Humour me. Pretend I am a stupid, selfish old man who has devoted far too much of his time to his own, minute concerns for far too long. Pretend I have no insight into the workings of a mind I have not encountered in four centuries.”

  If he wanted to put it that way. “She wants you to take back what you gave her.”

  The vampire’s head slowly tilted forward until his chin rested on his chest. He looked to have taken the weight of the world on his shoulders. The dog sat up and looked at him intently, making a pained, whining sound in its throat. Paul’s hand slipped of his thigh and hung down loosely by his side, near its head, and Cyrano licked at it gingerly, not much reassured, still making that same noise of concern.

  “The gift I give, once given, cannot be returned. She knows that.”

  Once a vampire, always a vampire, until the very end thought Call. Death was the blood drinker’s only way to leave the state. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” he said.

  The Roman sat deathly still for what seemed like an age. Eventually he stood up, trembling as though his muscles had to adjust to his change of position, then he turned to walk away the way he had come.

  “What do I tell Roxane?” Call asked to the Roman’s back.

  “Tell her I will make the necessary preparations.” The vampire did not turn to speak to him, and Call suspected he ‘heard’ the message in his mind rather than with his ears.

  “What does that mean?”

  The vampire stopped, stood still for a moment, and then turned around. His expression had not changed at all, and for a moment Call wondered whether he was still able to change. “She will tell you what that means, Seeker. If she believes you need to know. Ask nothing more of me.”

  Several arguments sprang towards Call’s lips, but he had good sense to keep them to himself, simply nodding and watching as the vampire walked away through the crowd that was completely oblivious to his presence, even when he walked within a hand’s-breadth of them. He wondered what reaction there would be if they did realise what manner of creature walked among them, a combination of disbelief and hysteria, he imagined. So, it was probably for the best that Paul the Roman kept himself veiled from their sight. It was just as much of a shock for Call to realise their reactions would be the same if they knew what he was.

  He sat where he was on the bench for a long time, enjoying the afternoon sun warming him through, the relaxed, relaxing atmosphere of the park at play, feeling the teeth grinding stress melt out of him, knowing he could look forward to just a few more hours of this relief, this release, before the train took him back to London. He allowed himself to drowse, to drift, until a sudden sensation of intense cold brought him back to full awareness.

  “I could have killed you before you knew anything about it,” the vampire sneered, looking down on him. “Some Seeker you are.”

  Call yawned. “If you wanted to kill me, Roman, there is nothing I could ever do to prevent you. What is it the Olympics have for their motto, ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius?”

  “Faster, highe
r, stronger,” the vampire muttered.

  “That’s right. Now, I could produce Dirty Harry’s famous .44 Magnum and try to put a bullet between your eyes, it would just bounce off. I know that. You know that. Besides, if you were going to kill me you would have done it already.”

  The vampire nodded. “I am unused to having to deal with anyone who knows me for what I really am. There is nobody in this city who knows what I am, not even those very few who are what I am, what I used to be. That is the way I like it. On those very, very few occasions I am compelled to feed I do so far, far away from here. I do not believe in shitting on my own doorstep, as I believe your nation of poets would put it today.”

  Call laughed, and wiped away a tear with his hand. A nation of poets, oh yes indeed. When he could see again the vampire was gone. He sat back, taking in the crowds having whatever passed for fun with them. Eventually he couldn’t take any more of their fun without hitting someone, without running the risk of drawing his blades from beneath his jacket and killing one or more of the revellers.

  They were only people, after all, ordinary people utterly ignorant of who moved among them and what they might do to them if they chose. He could not shed his desire to at least try to put an end to the Roman. Surely he had to try, even if it meant his own death? Instead, he walked briskly to the station and bought a first class ticket on the next train back to London, and bugger the expense. He wasn’t paying. Roxane was. She was paying for everything.

  The return train journey was interminable to him, a passage into the darkest, unending night when he had only just become re-accustomed to living in the light. He wanted to go home and pull his duvet over his head. Instead of which he called Roxane, said “It’s done” before she could even answer and hit the ‘disconnect’ icon. Only then did he go to bed. He may have wept himself to sleep. He never remembered.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  When he received the note – written on heavy, hand-made paper just like her previous one – Call did not know what to do. It consisted of a map reference, a date in three days’ time, and the single word ‘midnight’.

  As far as invitations went, it was hardly the most commanding he had ever received. His first reaction was to screw it up into a ball and toss it into the kitchen waste. His second was to retrieve it, smooth it out on the kitchen table and pore over it until his eyes hurt.

  He got out his computer and found where the map reference would take him, right in the middle of Windsor Great Park. He then did a little more research and discovered the park had once been the centre of the greatest forest in England.

  How was he supposed to be there at midnight?

  His eventual answer was to leave early and go to the park by public transport, losing himself in the trees as night fell and everyone else left. Then he got out his brand new phone and used its GPS app to make his way to the grid reference, always afraid that he would trip over something in the darkness and break his ankle, telling himself that in a lifetime of stupid ideas, this ranked pretty close to the top of the list.

  When he arrived, though, what he found took his breath away, a huge clearing that was almost circular, with grass that looked as though it had been cropped by a hundred generations of sheep and in the very centre of it an oak tree that was the largest tree he had ever seen, one that could have doubled for Yggdrasil itself. He went over to it and sat down in a bole amongst exposed roots, making himself as comfortable as he could to wait out the time until midnight.

  The alarm on his phone roused him and when he regained his full awareness the atmosphere in the forest clearing was like nothing Call had ever experienced. He knew that the night he had left behind to come there had been clouded over with an ever present threat of rain, yet the sky above him was completely clear.

  A full moon hung there above the horizon made by the trees, bone white, the shadows it cast dark as tar. Stars glittered in their billions in that sky, each one distinct and ineffable, clearer than he had ever seen before or even imagined.

  This was the epitome of the night sky, perfect, everything still, everything silent but for the pounding of the blood in Call’s ears. Yet the air was full, distantly vibrating, as though it brimmed with pregnancy, promise, anticipation. Whatever was approaching was sufficiently momentous to make the whole of creation take in a deep breath, and hold it.

  He used the huge oak tree to lever himself to his feet. The effort made the sky turn around him until he made his heart rate slow. Then he looked about himself. Call had never been in a forest before, let alone the Great Forest. This was how almost all of England looked before Henry built his navy, most of Britain even. He felt as though he had lived there in past times. Yet the familiarity was a façade, he knew.

  The moonlight was too bright, too illuminating. The shadows it cast were too concealing. He sensed the occupiers of the forest out there in the darkness, those he expected to find – deer and rabbits and squirrels, foxes and all manner of birds, creatures alive without being conscious in a way he could understand – and those around whom he had to be cautious, those that might comprehend him and consciously decide to destroy him, those who were old when this oak tree was still an acorn, and this was by far the largest, oldest tree in the forest.

  The hairs on the back of his neck and hands bristled. In the life he had known up until now he was as near the top of the food chain as made no difference. Here, now, he was as close to the top of that food chain as he would be if he jumped into a pool of great white sharks with blood in their senses.

  A horn sounded, distant and clear and summoning. Even though Call had never heard a hunting horn before he knew the sound for what it was, felt his heart beat a little faster. It could have sounded immediately behind him or farther away than he could imagine and he would have heard it just the same.

  He did not hear it with his ears, but with other senses he had not previously known he possessed – and perhaps he was imagining them now. With similarly overlooked senses he was aware of the throng approaching the glade in response to the horn, creatures stepping lightly upon the ground, whatever their apparent size or bulk, and some were very large indeed. He was aware of a pair of bears, male and female, of a huge deer with a spread of horns almost twice the span of his arms, which had to be an Irish Elk. Boars snuffled and trotted along paths only they could see. Then there were the wolves…

  The creatures did not so much walk into the glade as materialise, as though they had always been there and were now permitting him to see them. He began to distinguish animal forms and human forms and forms that were both animal and human and neither. The white glare of the moonlight prevented him making out individual features. All of which he could be certain was that he had never seen so many eyes so bright concentrating completely on him.

  A corridor formed between the creatures and three figures moved through it towards him, walking in a slow, stately way,and he almost believed their feet were not touching the ground. The figure in the middle was obviously Roxane, dressed in a plain white cotton gown covering her from neck to toe. Her hair flowed loose and in the moonlight she seemed to have a river of silver flowing over her shoulders.

  She had never looked so beautiful, although without her mirrored glasses that same bright light turned her eyes into black, featureless pits in the white of her skin drawn tight over her skull. For some reason this disturbed him in ways he did not understand. Nevertheless, he knew those hidden eyes were fixed on him when she smiled, and he smiled in return, although the expression came from his brain rather than his heart.

  As they moved closer he saw that her arms were actually being held by the figures on either side of her, as though they were afraid she might try to abscond or lack the strength to reach their destination.

  The figure to her right was a Minotaur, a bare chested man with the head of a bull, hugely built with leather straps cross crossing his magnificently muscled torso and highly polished metal tines on the points of his horns.

  Even though th
e night was warm, his exhaled breaths snorted mistily out of his nostrils. He exuded a sensation of raw, almost unbridled primordial power, a temper barely kept in check, a very frail human disguise flung over the beast within. He was twice Roxane’s height, more than three times her bulk. He was intimidation walking on two very strong legs.

  By comparison, the figure on her left was just a very tall man, about the same height as the Minotaur but nothing like as robustly built, clearly human but for the antlers growing out of his forehead. Call could not begin to guess how many points there were but knew he was the buck, the daddy, the alpha male in this forest. He was dressed head to toe in tanned buckskin with his blond hair drawn back between his antlers and flowing down his back as far as his knees.

  As they approached Call saw the man had the calmest, coldest pale blue eyes, and used them to weigh him in the balance and, Call believed, find him distinctly wanting. He smiled at Call the way the leader of the pack smiled at a panting, exhausted deer lying in the long grass, a broken leg condemning it to its inevitable death. Even so, he took the offered hand when the man stepped forward to greet him.

  “Robert Call, I am…”

  “Herne the Hunter,” Call interrupted, not sure how he know the name but confident the knowledge was true.

  Herne nodded and released Call’s hand, his own falling to rest on the carved bone hilt of the knife hanging at his waist. The scabbard reached down to his knee, and most men would have considered the blade a good yard of sword rather than a knife. Call was coldly aware that he had come to this place without his weapons, and that they would probably be no use to him even if he had.

  Roxane stepped forward until she was almost touching Call. She reached up and drew the tips of her fingers down his cheek. It was a most tender gesture yet he felt as though he was being pawed by a statue. His stomach squirmed that he should feel that way.