III.
The following day was uneventful. Dante woke by mid-morning with a roaring headache and the realization that The Miss Margaret would sail in one day, and here he was, a pathetic mess of a demon! Iago felt somewhat guilty, and he told Dante so, and that made Dante feel perhaps a bit better. An admission of guilt from Iago Wick was something like sighting a unicorn and a dodo bird having a picnic together.
It was a blindingly sunny day in Marlow—something the city did not often witness, even in the summer months—and so daylight lingered. When darkness finally shrouded the city, there was a sudden knock upon the front door. It was a distinctly angry knock, and Iago, long versed in such things, would not have been surprised to see a pitch fork-toting angry mob on the other side. Oh, the good ol’ days in merry old England…
Unsurprisingly, however, Lord Oleander and his motley crew waited on the other side of the door, thoroughly fuming, though Iago didn’t know why.
“You bastard, what have you done?” Lord Oleander snarled.
“Let’s see. I’ve tended to Mr. Lovelace, read a bit of Milton to pass the time…” Iago sighed. Dante came to stand behind him, and the protective Conjure came to stand behind Dante.
“I’m not playing your games, demon,” Oleander said. “I speak of Lady Eustacia.”
“What about her?” Iago asked.
“She is missing,” said the strong man vampire. “She was taken from her coffin. We can find no trace of her, and when we try to connect to her within our minds, there are only brief glimpses, shapes. She has been taken and surrounded by charms to ward us off.”
“You needn’t tell him, Lord Zephyr,” Lord Oleander said. “He is the one who took her. Invite me in!” he bellowed.
“Excuse me?” Iago said.
“Invite me in!!”
Iago blinked. “No. …I’m curious—did you think that would work?”
“Then, come out here into the darkness. Face us!”
“That is an equally mad proposition,” Iago said. “I did not take Lady Eustacia. I have been in this house all day. If you’re looking for her, I suggest…” Suddenly, he remembered Michael Locksley the last night he had seen him. He babbled madly as Iago left. I will have her. I will have her. “Lucifer Below… the clerk.”
“What?” Lord Oleander spat.
“He took her. What a powerful thing is love… or perhaps lust, more appropriately.” Iago nodded. “His devotion to her is absurd. Michael Locksley is who you seek. He proclaimed he would have her. I did not believe him. But a man in love is the brashest and most foolish creature on all the planet.”
“You lie.”
“I do not. Despite what you may believe about demons, I am an honest man.” Iago paused. “Relatively, at least. When you attempt to connect with her, to share her thoughts, what do you see? Anything at all. I can help you find her.”
“You would help us?” Lord Oleander asked.
“I wish to put an end to this, don’t I? Lady Eustacia and I cannot reach an agreement if a jilted lover has pinned her to the ground with a wooden stake.”
The vampires bashfully conceded, the youngest of the four looking to his shoes as though he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar again. Iago didn’t wish to consider what a vampire might keep in a cookie jar.
“Mark my words,” Iago said. “It is Locksley who has taken her. Now, tell me. What do you see? I would assume he’s not so dimwitted as to take her back to his home.”
Lord Zephyr closed his eyes. “It’s not too clear. It’s dark. There’s a lamp. A large tree? The tree… The bark is strange. There are, perhaps, carvings.”
“Lovers’ Lane,” Dante said. “At the edge of the park, closer to the river, the trail leads off into the woods to a secluded glade. It’s nearly half a mile’s walk. They call it Lovers’ Lane.”
“Well, he may have kidnapped her, but at least he’s a true romantic about it,” Iago sighed. “Vampires, allow me to retrieve your queen. This is my score. I must settle it, and we don’t want Locksley to feel threatened. If he knew enough that he could lure your queen away from you, then there’s no telling what else he has up his sleeve.” The vampires reluctantly agreed—even Lord Oleander, who looked even more sour than usual: an outstanding feat on his part. Iago turned to Dante. “Mr. Lovelace, would you like to accompany me to Lovers’ Lane?”
“Why, Mr. Wick, I thought you’d never ask,” Dante said with a grin.
Lovers’ Lane had something of an eerie quality to it when the moon was high and there was a damp chill to the air. It was a little less the stuff of romantic trysts and a little more the stuff of Grimm’s fairy tales. Iago and Dante walked with an easy tread until they saw a warm light glowing up ahead. Dante then followed a woolier path to their right so that they might properly execute their plan of escape.
At the end of Lovers’ Lane, the Vampire Queen struggled weakly against the ropes around her wrists. She wore a highly detrimental and equally unfashionable string of garlic around her neck. Charms to subdue her hung from the branches, and she leaned against the old tree where starry-eyed lovers carved their initials before they indulged in less chaste activities in the glade.
From where Iago watched twenty feet away, Lady Eustacia looked tired and angry. Michael Locksley sat before her, spouting love poems. It was not the tryst that perhaps Locksley had wanted, but he was, with the help of Byron and The Bard, going to make the best of the situation. Even Iago had to admit, he was giving her everything he had, hands flailing and eyelids fluttering like a five-and-dime store Romeo.
“Is this your idea of a romantic evening, Mr. Locksley?” Iago asked as he came upon the glade. Locksley jumped to his feet. Lady Eustacia’s eyes widened in an appeal for help.
“I… well, yes. I think this evening is going well, don’t you, my dear?” Locksley asked of Lady Eustacia.
“You can have his soul, Wick. I will rip out his throat!” Lady Eustacia growled as fiercely as she could in her weakened state.
“You see?” Locksley said pathetically. “Just a lovers’ quarrel. Playful banter, even.”
“We may have different definitions of the word playful,” Iago said.
“We shall run away together,” Locksley insisted. “She will change her mind. She will love me. Such matters can take time, can’t they, my dearest Eustacia?”
Lady Eustacia growled deep in her throat.
Locksley gave a nervous grin. “I do love it when you growl, my dear.”
“Mr. Locksley,” Iago said tenderly as he approached the clerk, “you cannot force someone to love you. Not even all the power of Hell can do that, for it would always be false. Would you want that? A false love is worse than never having love at all.”
“You told me, demon, that I could win her heart!”
“Could being the operative word, Mr. Locksley! I gave you the tools. You have grossly misused them,” Iago said before adding, “And, understandably, words mean little to a person who has been kidnapped. Actions speak louder, et cetera.”
“No!” Locksley insisted manically. “I promise I can win her heart.” He dropped to the ground beside her, cleared his throat, and placed a dramatic hand to his chest before addressing her. “Oh vampire, vampire. Wherefore art thou vampire?”
“Wherefore art thou a dimwitted swine?!” Lady Eustacia spat. “Untie me, Mr. Wick. Remove this garlic.”
Iago merely raised a hand, but at the smallest movement, Locksley shook his head. He reached into his jacket to retrieve a long and unfriendly-looking stake, as ideal for pitching a tent as it was for obliterating the blood-sucking undead. “No,” Locksley said gravely and stood again. “Don’t touch her.”
Lady Eustacia grew quiet, curling up on the ground. Her eyes were beginning to look a bit glassy, Iago noticed. She was growing weaker. Iago raised both hands in surrender and said, “Now, now, we needn’t do anything foolish, Mr. Locksley. I understand. However, I don’t think your words or your… stake have wooed the lady.”
Locksley frowned deeply at the idea that he would not win the heart of his lady love, as though the very concept that he might not succeed had never even occurred to him.
The clerk turned to the vampire, stake raised and eyes glistening. “Do you love me? Did you ever love me? Could you ever love me?” His voice was drenched in melodrama. However, now that he was suitably armed, he had completely lost whatever shred of Romeo charm he had previously possessed.
“Listen to me, Mr. Locksley,” Iago said. “You sold your soul, correct? Hell, thus, awaits.” Locksley grimaced. He apparently hadn’t considered all the fire and brimstone that came along with selling his soul, either. “However, you’ve been given the tools to woo someone willing to be wooed. Use that gift. Live a full life with one who loves you in return. You’ll find that person, but I am afraid it’s not Lady Eustacia.”
The clerk still looked sadly, pathetically to Lady Eustacia. Iago put on a comforting smile despite the fact that he—a thousand-year-old minion of Lucifer—was presently playing mediator to a lovesick human and an infantile vampire queen. Lucifer Below, if word of this ever made it back to Hell…!
Locksley’s lip quivered. “No. I can’t.” And at once, he was upon her. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and placed the stake against her chest. Lady Eustacia tensed and squeezed her eyes shut. He hugged her, pressed his doughy cheek against hers and rubbed against her like a drunken cat. “She has consumed my every thought! I cannot live without her. And so, she cannot live without me.”
Terror gripped Iago’s heart at the very notion that he should be tracked by vampires for the next century or more because he was the fool who let the Morgans’ queen die at the hands of some soppy clerk skewered by Cupid’s arrow. Iago made to intervene but stopped when a voice came from the trees.
“What a splendid idea, Michael Locksley. We were about to propose Lady Eustacia’s murder, as well. My, what a coincidence.”
One by one, a group of figures emerged from the shadows surrounding them. Most wore plain tweed and linen clothing, and in the center stood the servant who had accompanied Lord Oleander the night before when Dante had been poisoned. Galloway was his name, Iago recalled. That’s what Oleander had called him, and now Mr. Galloway smiled smugly. Iago looked into their eyes, empty and glassy. They were all servants, half man and half machine.
Well, almost all of them. Dante stood among them, a gun which likely contained bullets laced with holy water pointed at his back. The demons’ plan would no longer be effective. Iago had not exactly been looking for a chance to improvise that evening, but when life hands you cybernetic servants…
“My faithful servants,” Lady Eustacia said uneasily. “You’ve come to save your queen…?”
Galloway gave an absurdly grand bow, and the others snickered. “Afraid not, Your Majesty,” he said.
Iago arched a brow and looked to the servant, DeGracey, who leaned heavily upon his cane. “So, this was the meaning of your sudden fit outside the cigar shop. Change is coming. Our world will begin anew. You never believed you would be turned. You were planning an uprising.”
The servant in question looked adoringly to Galloway. “I cannot help that there are times when my leader’s words come to my lips unbidden.”
Michael Locksley, trembling, dropped his stake to the ground and rose to his feet. Lady Eustacia squirmed like a worm in red lace. “You… you want to kill her?” Locksley asked. “You lied to me.”
“You had spoken to them?” Iago asked. “When?”
“These people helped me find Lady Eustacia. They told me they wanted to help me because they were champions of true love,” Locksley said.
Iago deflated in a sigh. “Mr. Locksley,” he began, “did you know your picture is in the dictionary?”
Locksley blinked. “Really? Where?”
Galloway gave a brittle snicker. “We knew Mr. Locksley was smitten with Lady Eustacia. He had already purchased a book on the subject of vampires in an attempt to track her. However, we knew he would be unsuccessful, and so, we intervened.”
“We gave him a few helpful hints, as it were,” said a red-headed woman in green linen.
“Gave the daytime guard over the family a sleeping draught,” said DeGracey, the man with the cane.
“And so, if Mr. Locksley was unsuccessful, we would be able to sit and watch while our vampire masters devoured him, and we would wait until the next opportunity,” Galloway explained. “We are patient.”
“Very patient,” they all said at once.
Lady Eustacia recoiled. Her voice was tremulous. “How long have you been planning such an uprising? I trusted you. We all trusted you!”
“Since long before Roland was killed. Imagine our delight when he bestowed the position of Queen upon a callow child,” Galloway said with a sneer. Lady Eustacia looked a bit indignant, but she could not argue. “It made things very simple. And now, here we are at the end of Lovers’ Lane, dear lady.”
Michael Locksley, a simple man who once had a simple life, could obviously no longer stomach cybernetic servant uprisings and vampire queens in distress. He pushed past Iago and staggered away in the direction of town. He cried for help only once before he was knocked to the ground by a servant’s bullet. He fell into a thorny thicket with a strangled warble.
“Well,” Iago began, “it seems as though you have political matters to tend to, Lady Eustacia.” He realized now that the servants were circling them like mad, grinning, and unfashionably dressed vultures. “Why commit regicide?” he asked.
Galloway rolled his shoulders, and Iago noticed that everyone else did, as well. Alone, he began to pick at the pale skin on one hand. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a neat and artful seam about his wrist where false skin met human flesh, and he sank his fingernails into the synthetic meat. “We have been manipulated and changed… enhanced, they might say… by these blood-sucking beasts.” Galloway peeled back the flesh to reveal the mechanical hand underneath. He threw blobs of faux flesh to the ground until his true hand was revealed, all metallic joints and digits. It took something truly gruesome to disgust a vampire, but it was enough to make Lady Eustacia grimace.
Galloway flexed his metal fingers and continued, “My hands were deemed unsatisfactory. I was given these, covered by synthetic skin. Vampires are passionate aesthetes. Though our clothes are plain, our bodies must be flawless works of art. And yet, we still must be vaguely human. They say they still value the heart which comes with human servants. No. They value the fear, the desperation, the need to please one’s master to save oneself. One who is fully machine cannot display such emotion.” A strange smile twisted his lips, and he reached for the sad nosegay at his lapel. He gripped it in metal fingers and then carefully twisted the mechanical hand at the wrist until it came free. The flesh was cauterized and calloused at the dull stump of his arm. The flowers remained pinched perfectly between metal thumb and forefinger. “We were not the masters of our own future. No longer. Now, we shall have control.”
Galloway bowed once more to his queen and offered her the mechanical hand, flowers and all. She recoiled, and his grin broadened. He said, “You must perish, too, demons.”
“Why?” Dante asked as they pushed him into the circle. “These matters don’t concern us.”
“You will tell the others,” Galloway said and attached his hand again. “We are counting on chaos as the vampires scrap to determine who will take her place. Lady Eustacia will perish without naming an heir. Another hideous error on her part, but in that chaos, we will rise.”
“We will rise,” they all said at once.
Iago smelled holy water on the air. There were about fifteen of them; they could probably manage the ritual to send two demons back to Hell. “I understand,” Iago began carefully. “To be bound to servitude is a detestable lot.”
“One which you definitely do not understand,” Galloway spat.
“We are bound to Lucifer, are we not? We demons exist only to serve H
im. We might toil and craft disasters and temptations which we feel are our own masterpieces, but they are not. In the end, we work only for Hell,” Iago said. “We understand.”
The words tasted blasphemous upon Iago’s tongue, and what felt even stranger was how true they rang.
“You have our sympathy,” Galloway said with a shallow bow, and they all bowed similarly. “However, I have been waiting for this since my rebirth. I apologize in advance for your return to Hell. I hope your senses are not too terribly addled by the descent.”
Lucifer Below, Iago realized, they were blinking in time. Never had so innocuous an action been so utterly horrifying. Lady Eustacia squirmed to the middle of the circle. Dante helped her to her feet despite the ropes around her wrists and ankles, and he held her steady against him. Always a gentleman, even as they were facing doom.
Iago watched them carefully, the way their fingers twitched in time, the way they swayed at once. What had the man with the cane said? Sometimes his leader’s words came to his lips unbidden. Iago said, “You say you have been waiting since your rebirth.”
“Indeed.”
“Have the others waited similarly?” Iago asked, turning to give them all a good look. The one holding the gun still pointed it toward them.
They all answered at once, “Indeed.” The circle around them grew smaller.
Dante pressed his back to Iago’s, still holding Lady Eustacia close. “A little like that incident with the werewolves in London,” he said.
“No,” Iago answered, “this situation is not nearly as—”
“If you say hairy, Iago Wick, so help me…” Dante warned.
Iago perceived something just at the edge of his line of sight. If he didn’t know better, he would have said that was Michael Locksley, tiptoeing rather sloppily through the underbrush. And indeed, it was. The clerk held his hand firmly to his shoulder. Iago could not say he had faith in Locksley to save them, but perhaps he could make use of the injured clerk. Iago held Galloway’s empty gaze and said, “Then you shall eliminate us, and I do not blame you. As I said, I understand.”
Iago Wick and the Vampire Queen Page 5