Valerian pulled me into a corner. He hunkered down to open his sack, drawing out a long, curved sword I had never seen before. Meeting my gaze, he explained, “It was Naimah’s.” He unsheathed the slender scimitar from its scabbard, pausing for a moment as it winked in the light as if impishly acknowledging its handler. “We should get everything in place now. Sebastian has assured us there are no servants about.”
Sebastian had braved his dislike of Mrs. Danby, deftly targeting her pride in knowing all that was to be known in the neighborhood, to learn that none of the Holt Manor staff lived in.
I fished in my own bag, taking out what I needed for my work. “All right, then. Where should we look for his bower? In the bedrooms?”
Valerian gave me a strange look. “I would wager the cellars are a more likely place.”
Of course. “Right,” I agreed.
We started toward the back of the house but I was suddenly overcome by an attack of anxiety and I stopped, pulling on Valerian’s arm. “Hold on one moment. Should we wait for the signal from Father Luke?”
“No. They will go ahead.” He peered at me, concerned. “Do you not remember, they need not wait for us. We discussed this, Emma.”
Yes. I remembered now. I shook my head, wondering why I had gotten confused.
Valerian leaned in to speak softly. “The orchids. You are already feeling the effects, as am I.”
I suddenly felt as if all my strength, my clarity, my focus were flowing out of me, leaving me weak and disoriented.
But Valerian was beside me. His strong grip on my shoulder reassured me. “We will feel better in a moment,” he said, giving me a bracing look. “Wait for Father Luke and Sebastian.”
I smiled and nodded. Once the orchids were destroyed, we could conduct our search for Ruthven’s resting place in these waning hours of daylight.
But our hopes were in vain.
A voice cut into the air, filling the room, making us jump as it rose up and rebounded around us. “Ah. . . . Here she is. My sister has come to me at last.”
Suddington stood before us, having materialized out of the gathering darkness in the space of a few heartbeats. I cringed, feeling unnaturally nervous. I should have seen him coming. That was one of my gifts. The damnable orchids were confounding me!
He reached for me imploringly, smiling a lascivious welcome. “Yes, my sweet Emma. She with the face that launched a thousand ships.” He laughed, clapping his hands together in delight. “Did you never guess my little jest? Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?”
Valerian shouldered me aside, inserting himself between us as Suddington’s voice rang out. “And burnt the topless towers of Illium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.” Here he grinned, and the cracks of his guise showed in a terrible leer. “Ah, Marlowe, he understood things. Did you never wonder at that phrase, and the next, Her lips suck forth my soul . . .”
Without preamble or reply, Valerian raised his scimitar.
Suddington appeared unperturbed. “Are you not a fan of Mister Christopher Marlowe? I knew him, you know.” He grinned triumphantly. “I admired him so. I would follow him about, see every one of his plays as they were staged. Ah, but Doctor Faustus . . . that was a work of genius. To sell one’s soul for the promise of immortality. You see what I mean, that he knew things?” He smiled almost dreamily. “At any rate, I like to think so.”
He mused pleasantly, as if we were seated in a parlor leisurely sipping tea, “Those days, you cannot imagine such greatness as those among whom I walked. When I was changed, I wanted to take that capacity for beautiful language and make it mine. And so I did.”
“You are saying you fed from him.” There was disbelief in Valerian’s tone.
Suddington lifted his chin. “I have elevated myself through the centuries, through him and many others. Oh, such stories I could tell.”
“Save your stories,” I interjected. The truth was, I could not bear to hear his voice. It was causing me to remember the attacks he perpetrated on me, and I felt my flesh cringe and crawl.
Suddington peered at me, caught completely unawares by my rejection of his great oratory. My outburst seemed to have a deleterious effect on him, and this gave me an idea.
I rode the wave of boldness that had come over me. “I am not interested in your delusions of superiority. Evil is not elevated. It does not even require much imagination, nor does it need intellect. Its only requirement is a soulless heart, and that is not so uncommon.”
His smile returned, if a bit stiffly—how human these creatures could be—as his hands swept outward. “I could tell you of beauty, of pleasure . . .”
I knew at once I was in trouble, recoiling as memory of his physical touch flooded me. Where were Sebastian and Father Luke? I needed to be at my full strength!
Two things saved me. One was Valerian pressing his fingers against my side. Second was my pride, which forbade me to back down, no matter my fears. “You are just a vampire,” I told him swiftly, cutting him off, glad my voice did not waver. “In life, your name was George Smythe, and you were a murderer who preyed on young girls weaker than yourself to feel strong and powerful. Even now you are weak, insignificant, filled with the need for others to admire you, revere you.”
His eyes grew hard, small pinpoints of hot coal glowing rage at me. The sight of his brewing rage gave me pause. I wanted him agitated, but I knew full well I was prodding a bear I could not tame. The line I trod was a fine one.
“I wonder why you have need for such boasting. I would guess for all your seductions and promises of unsurpassed pleasure, you never partake of the flesh—not as you are, of course. You used the Irish boy as your surrogate for the consummation of desire. But even as a man, were you ever able to satisfy a woman’s carnal demands?”
His facial muscles twitched. I had struck upon it, then. What, I wondered, was I supposed to do now? I felt a little cowed by the madness I saw in him.
“Emma, have a care . . .” Valerian muttered under his breath.
But there was no turning back, and no other choice that I could see. “There is, at the heart of your compulsions, simply the same sickness and evil that ruled you when you were human. You must kill, but not simply to feed. You boast of love, but in truth you despise these poor victims for they cannot give you what you need. No one can.”
His mouth curled, and to my shock I saw his jaw tremble. I felt my stomach flip, knowing I’d struck exactly on the truth and wondering what I’d wrought.
The air charged instantly. Valerian grasped my wrist, a gesture of warning. I pressed on. “Now you are a vampire, and since you will never die, you have consigned yourself to an eternity of this cycle, ever coming to the same end. Rejection, terror, disgust—”
“I am a god!” he thundered, but the power of his boast was undermined by a whining, desperate quality to his voice.
“You are a worm,” I countered, riding this mad wave of boldness that had taken me over. It was reckless, even desperate; I might not have my Dhampir powers, but I had my tongue. And my hatred. “A very bad man made eternal by the vampire transformation.”
“You dare . . .” But it was not fury that shook in his voice; it was disbelief.
“I shall dare much more before this night is out. I am no longer in thrall to your spell. We found the dracula chimaera you hid in my room. I crushed it under my heel. It still had traces of blood inside it, the blood you fed it to make the charm. The only question I have is, was the blood yours or your victims? How does this magic work?”
He reared, his face contorting into an expression of horror. It was as if I’d just told him of the death of his beloved child. “You! You have vexed me all along. I should have destroyed you. Damn my ambition, to want you as I did.” His eyes glittered malevolently as he studied Valerian and me, and I saw something dawn on his features. “Oh. Oh, look at the two of you. I see it now, why did I not realize it before?” He squinted at me, a chilling leer spreading over his face. How
had I once thought him charming? “You already love, my dear,” he said, sliding the words out with a sneer. “That is why I could not have you. Of course. There is nothing more mighty on all the earth than love, you know. That is why I use it. But I could not corrupt you. How that perplexed me in the beginning. You were so unattainable.”
The vampire fumed at me. Then he grinned. “But you were not completely immune, were you? No. You should know—” he turned to Valerian, “—she was not uninterested.”
I flushed, feeling a hot wave of embarrassment. But I had to keep him engaged. “I think you flatter yourself.” That was a lie. Suddington knew it and it incensed him.
He leveled a finger at me and squinted as his lips curled in a derisive sneer. “I know I do not. True, you resisted. The night of the dinner party, you were able to rebuke me when I brought you among my orchids and tried to kiss you. Then, when I tried to take you—do you remember, that time on the road?—I wanted to show you what I could do, what I could give, and you would not let me . . .” His voice choked off, as if grief and rage made it impossible to continue.
I waited. I was curious, I admit. I wanted to know why he had singled me out. Valerian’s hand on my wrist tensed, but he remained silent as well.
When Suddington spoke again, it was with something of a wail. “Why could you not see how it would have been so perfect? But you fought me. You denied me . . .” His face crumpled with sadness and frustration for a moment. Then he snapped his head up, his mood changed again to renewed anger. “Then I realized what you were. I’d never met the Dhampir before. Little vampire. And I could not have you, not as I wanted, because he was there before me.” He pinned Valerian with a malevolent glare, then his quicksilver thoughts shifted again and he laughed. “How rich! Marius’s half-made brat and a child of Lliam!”
Valerian cut him off, demanding sharply, “Where did you learn of the power of the orchid?”
Suddington threw his head back and glared at Valerian. “Why should I tell you?”
It was the wrong approach, I saw immediately. But I had seen how to get under this vampire’s skin.
I angled my head toward Valerian. “Do not bother. He probably stole it. He is no better than a common thief.”
I had been right to prick his pride. Suddington snapped his head toward me, his smile melting like wax. “You think you know so much! It was a gift. Long ago, my father—and your father, too!—the son of the great Dracula, picked me. He saw my work. He knew me, and he bestowed his favor on me.”
“And how did you distinguish yourself so much that he ‘picked you’?” I made the doubt in my voice drip from every word. “He has made over other vampires, surely. I do not think you were so special.”
“Ah, but you are wrong!” he announced proudly. “There is power in taking a life, but it is not as simple as mere murder. You will never know how great and important it is what I alone can do. I select these girls, elevate them, take them to heights of passion and love. The sacrifice of their lives is beautiful in the end, joyous even. This is what Lliam understood. It is why I was given the gift.”
“He uses you,” Valerian cut in sharply, his tone unimpressed. He had picked up on my game, seen how disconcerted my taunts had rendered our foe. “You are merely a tool for him.”
“That is not true!” Suddington countered, his lips trembling with rage.
“If he thought so highly of you, why are you not by his side?” Valerian glanced over at me as if we shared a joke at the vampire’s expense.
I picked up his lead. “Oh, I have no doubt you are useful. But as to your strange and terribly perverse . . . proclivities, I dare say those have no true admirer save yourself.” I cocked my head at him. “That is the trouble, isn’t it? No one really has ever been able to understand you. Not even the great Lliam.”
“A god, indeed!” Valerian threw the insult with a derisive huff.
Suddington’s entire body trembled. Our ability to distract him had finally run its course. He began to change, and as he did so he drew his hands up over his head. I saw his talons grow, glinting in the fast-dimming light, and wondered if Valerian and I had made a fatal miscalculation. What had happened to Father Luke? Had he and Sebastian been waylaid somehow, prevented from the crucial task we’d set for them?
A terrible thought occurred to me. Had it been we who had fallen into the vampire’s trap? Without the ability to sense, to probe, and the quick reflexes and keen accuracy that were part of my Dhampir nature, I would be no match for the vampire, even with Valerian by my side.
We both watched in horror as the monster took form, turning its wedge-shaped head toward us. Its maw was open, the saliva glinting wetly on the bone-white fangs bared for our admiration.
I looked to Valerian, caught his gaze. He gave me a quick nod, then moved in that impossibly swift way he had when he unleashed the vampire in him. I had not seen that he had opened a vial of holy water he’d secreted in his pocket, but he threw it now. It landed on the vampire, who cried out and flew backward, scalded where the holy water came in contact with its leathery skin. Smoke shimmered on its flesh and the smell of burnt carcass rose to choke me, bringing up bile to the back of my throat.
Valerian turned sideways, putting his back to mine. We would fight together; I with my stake in one hand and a large silver cross in the other, and he with his scimitar.
The vampire staggered under the effects of the holy water, and turned toward us, smoke rising from its nostrils. Its eyes blazed, dead and black and hot. I cannot say I was unaffected by the grotesque sight of it in its natural form. A vampire is a demon, a monster, unmatched in its abilities to invoke horror. The sight of it was awesome, terrible, and although I was prepared for this, I was not immune to the fear it inspired, especially as I was keenly aware of the orchids all around me, breathing their sickening spell into the air, inhibiting my powers.
That was exactly what it was thinking, for it said, “My precious orchids protect me. You destroyed one of my favorites, my most powerful child, my lovely little dracula. But I have others. They are all around me, protecting me.”
“That is how you walk in daylight.” My eyes darted to the left and the right, searching for any sign of Father Luke or Sebastian. Where were they, I wondered desperately. I kept talking; it was my only chance to delay until help could arrive. “You consume food. Like the vrykolakas.”
He made a sound, a twisted, awful laughter, filled with glee and pride. “Yes, the magic of the orchids is powerful.” He pointed a finger at me almost playfully. “You are not used to it. I have had years and years to learn how to use its gift without sacrificing my strength. You see, you think me mad. But I am far more clever than you know.”
It grinned, and my courage all but deserted me. I wrestled with the sudden certainty that Valerian and I were advancing into a trap. But there was nowhere else to go.
And then . . . and then my joy knew no bounds, for the first faint trace of smoke reached my nostrils. I saw with great satisfaction the vampire’s threatening stance freeze.
His head jerked, the holes in his skull-like head twitching as it caught the acrid scent of fire. “My orchids!” he cried, the sound echoing through the vaulted room.
Immediately, I felt an infusion of strength, as though I had been released from a choking hold. The cursed flowers must be dying quickly. My limbs moved easier, my mind sprang free, my thoughts no longer encumbered.
I immediately leaped into action, lunging forward and aiming my stake for his heart. The vampire saw me at the last moment and struck out at me, deflecting the blow. The force of his powerful swipe knocked me into a spin. But Valerian absorbed the movement. With both hands gripping the scimitar, he heaved the great sword up and around in a mighty swing. The blow landed perfectly, slicing cleanly through the muscle-corded neck of the monster, and we spun together again, Valerian and I. It was like a ballet, as if we had the ability to predict each other’s movements before we knew our own. This time my stake found the
heart of the beast and Valerian broke away, raising his foot to plant it squarely in the creature’s gut, sending the twisted gargoyle form reeling. It came down with a thunderous crash just as the crisp, crackling sounds of fire began snapping in the air around us.
“Move quickly,” Valerian commanded.
“But the fire will get him—”
“No, we cannot trust it. Grab the salt in my bag.”
“But I . . .” I stopped arguing as I saw the vampire’s body twitch, a clawed hand scrabbling at the shaft of the stake. I had not hit the heart.
I scrambled to do as Valerian bid. I handed him the salt, and as he worked to pour it into the open wounds, both on the body and the neck, the disembodied voice of the vampire rose up around me, laughing. Ruthven—the Cyprian Queen, the man who had lived and killed under the name of Smythe, the creature whose centuries-old reign of terror was now at an end . . . it laughed.
I grabbed the stake and pulled it out. Taking more careful aim, I positioned it better and readied myself to drive it in. Smoke was gathering around us as the fire devoured the old timbers.
“Hurry,” Valerian urged.
But I could not silence the laughter. I stood, looming over the desiccated corpse. “What do you find so funny, fiend?” I challenged.
“Fools!” The words swelled in the laughter, not issuing from the slack mouth on the severed head but coming through the air, in my head, clear and distinct. “You may destroy me, but you shall pay. Oh, my sister, you love poorly in this brat of Marius’s line. He will bring you more suffering than a legion of my kind. All your life will be woe.”
“Emma!” Valerian’s voice was desperate.
I drove my stake into Ruthven’s heart and the taunts ceased as a great cry rose into the air, wild and filled with anguish. The vampire stared at me with those horrible, dead eyes of his bulging with shock, outrage, disbelief as it clawed the air to get to me. It bared its fangs and for a moment a sliver of panic pared off a piece of my heart as the thought flashed through my mind that perhaps it had some secret reserve, a trick I had not foreseen.
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