01 Those Who Hunt The Night ja-1

by Barbara Hambly

  And he was gone, in a momentary blink of distracted consciousness that made Asher curse his own lapse of guard.

  He was aware that the vampire was right, however. The strain of the night was telling on him. It would have done so, even had his body not been struggling with the aftereffects of his attack by the Paris

  vampires or with the shock of the struggle at Grippen's and the pain of his broken hand. The novocaine was beginning to wear off, and his arm in its sung throbbed damnably at every step he took. That alone would be enough to disrupt the concentration that was still his only possible defense against the ancient vampire's soundless approach.

  He was conscious, too, of what Ysidro was doing for him. The vam-pire, though visibly edgy-or as visibly edgy as Ysidro ever got- throughout the walk down the silent streets from Bruton Place to Queen Anne Street, had never seemed to consider the option of not accompanying him. Perhaps it was simply because he knew that Asher would neither abandon his search for Lydia, nor have the strength to defeat the killer alone, should he meet it. But Asher suspected that, like the oddly gentle charm of his faded and cynical smile, the honor of an antique nobleman lingered in him still. He might be arrogant and high-handed and be, as Lydia had blithely calculated, a murderer thousands of times over, but he would not abandon his responsibilities to his liege man or his liege man's wife. This was more than could be said of Grippen or the Farrens, who had informed him, with varying degrees of tact, that the location of new boltholes for themselves took absolute precedence over any possible fate of Lydia's.

  And all of this, in spite of the ironic fact that Simon could not even touch the problematical protection of a silver chain.

  If Lydia could root out all-or almost all-of the vampires' hiding places, Asher thought, settling himself back on the hay bales and draw-ing his ulster clumsily up over his shoulders again, there was a good chance Blaydon and whatever vampire he was working with could do so, too, particularly if Calvaire had revealed any information to his prospective partner in power as to their whereabouts. He wondered whether he himself could remain awake to mount guard over whatever blown refuge Ysidro would be forced to take come dawn. Fatigue weighed down his mind, and he fought to keep it clear. He doubted his ability, even if Simon would admit him to the place...

  A man's hacking, tubercular cough snapped him out of sleep with cold sweat on his face. Whirling, clawing at his pocket for the revolver he recalled a split-second later Ysidro had taken, he saw it was just a stableman, ambling back from a privy at the end of the mews. A dog barked. Lights were on in one or two of the coachmen's rooms above the stables. The smell of dawn was in the air.

  Heart pounding, breath coming fast with interrupted sleep, Asher fumbled for his watch.

  By the reflected radiance of those few lanterns now burning in coach house and cottage windows, he saw it was nearly five. Beside him on the hay, Simon's black cloak still lay like a sleeping animal. Small and cold, something tightened down inside of him. It was, of course, possible that the vampire had simply abandoned Asher and the cloak and gone to ground somewhere when he sensed the far-off approach of the day.

  Asher did not for a moment believe this. Dread sank through him like a swallow of poison. Dawn was getting close.

  Over the years, Asher had picked up a fine selection of curses in twelve living and four dead languages, including Basque and Finno-Ugric. He repeated them all as he slid the ulster from his shoulders, left it draped like a corpse over the hay, and slipped through the close, dark warmth of the stable and into Blaydon's back garden.

  Exhaustion was fighting the screaming of every nerve in his body as he stood for a moment knee-deep in sodden weeds, looking up at that silent house. He wondered if it was imagination, or if there was the faintest glow of light in the dark sky and if the few outbuildings, the glass-paned extension that comprised

  the kitchen, and the dripping, naked tree seemed clearer than they had? He was straining with spent nerves and clouded senses to catch sight of the invisible, to pick up footfalls which even to vampires were inaudible, to be aware of what-ever it was he sensed, drifting like the passage of a diffuse shadow through the darkness of the mews behind him.

  How much daylight could a vampire of Simon's age stand? How long before his flesh would ignite like a torch?

  The silver knife in his left hand, he slipped toward the looming black wall of the house.

  There was a street lamp nearby, and enough light filtered down for him to make out that the kitchen was deserted, as was the breakfast room whose window looked out onto the garden. The cellar had two windows, just at ground level; they were closed, but not barred or even latched. The hackles prickled on his neck at the mere thought of going into that house.

  He stepped back into the yard, looking up at the first-floor windows above. Even from here, he thought that the one over the kitchen was barred.

  He was shivering all over now, the predawn darkness seeming to press on him with whispering threat. Like Hyacinthe, he thought, who could summon him to open his barred retreat to her, though the sane part of his mind knew she would kill him when he did. But there was no time, now, to do anything else.

  Empty crates, dark with dampness and bearing the stenciled names of various purveyors of scientific equipment, had been stacked near the kitchen door. Cursing in the remoter Slav tongues, Asher hooked his good hand around a drain pipe and used the crates to help himself up to the windows above.

  The nearer window, open a slit at top and bottom, showed him the dark shapes of a workbench and the glint of glass; from it drifted a fetid reek which repulsed him, a whiff of chemicals underlain by the stink of organic rot. Beneath the barred window was only an ornamental ledge, and he exercised a number of plain Anglo-Saxon monosyllables as he disengaged his broken hand from its sling and hooked the tips of his swollen fingers over the grimy brickwork to edge himself along. At least, he thought wryly, this was one place where heknew the ancient vampire, the Plague vampire-if Plague it was-couldn't sneak up on him from behind. It was small comfort.

  The room behind the bars was very small, an extension, like the kitchen below it, added onto the house after its original construction, and bare save for a single coffin in its center. The glow from the mews nearby dimly showed the coffin itself closed. Asher couldn't be sure in the dark-moreover there was a pane of glass between his face and the bars-but he thought the bars themselves had a silvery gleam in the faint twilight of coming dawn.

  In twenty minutes it was going to be too late to do anything.

  Worn out, Asher leaned his forehead against the wet glass. More than he had ever done, even in the darkness of the Paris alley with Grippen's teeth in his throat, he wished he was back in Oxford, in bed with Lydia, with nothing more to look forward to than buttered eggs for breakfast and another day of dealing with undergraduate inanities. Whether Hor-ace Blaydon was in the house or not-and he might have been in the cellar, waiting-there was no telling where the vampire was.

  But even as the thought went through Asher's mind, he was easing himself back along the slimy ledge to the laboratory window. He, at least, could combat the thing with silver, something Ysidro was ironi-cally helpless to do. But that, of course, was the reason the vampire had employed him in the first place.

  His heart beat quicker at the thought of Lydia. The hostages thatmortals give to fortune, Ysidro had said of the red-haired girl then lying deathlike in their unnaturally silent house.

  The laboratory window yielded silently to his gentle touch. Did the ancient vampire report home for the day? Was that, in fact, its coffin, protected from the other vampires by the silver bars on the window, as Asher had been protected in Paris by the silver lock on the door? But in that case, why avoid the daylight?

  It crossed his mind, as he eased himself through the window into the dark laboratory, to wonder how much Dennis knew about what was going on, and if he could somehow turn that young man's raging energy and love for Lydia to good account. It was unlikely th
at Blaydon's partner was holding him hostage somewhere-physically to hold some-one prisoner required a great deal of time, care, and energy, as Ysidro undoubtedly knew. Asher could probably find Dennis at his rooms at the Guards' Club... The thought lasted rather less time than a rip-ple on a very small pond. Though he doubted Blaydon had informed his son of what was going on, it was only because the pathologist was shrewd enough to realize that Dennis' stupid impulsiveness would make him a useless ally for either side.

  The smell in the laboratory was foul, with an under-reek of rotting blood. Gritting his teeth, Asher lifted his right hand back into its damp and filth-splotched sling with his left. He felt his way around the wall, where the floor would be less likely to creak, his fingers gliding over the surfaces of tables, chairs, and cabinets. The door at the far side of the room opened without a sound.

  So far, so good. If the vampire was here, watching him in visibly from the darkness, this was all useless, of course; the pounding of his heart alone sounded loud enough for even mortal ears to hear. But he did not know whether the creature was here, and on his silence his life and Ysidro's might depend.

  How much time? he wondered. How much light?

  The door of that small room over the kitchen was reinforced with steel and massively bolted from the outside. The bolt made the faintest of whispered clicks as he eased it over. Beyond, in the wan glow of the street lamp somewhere outside, the room lay bare and empty, except for the closed coffin.

  Arizona Landscape with Apaches, he thought, remembering the old Indian-fighter's sketch. He took a deep breath and strode swiftly, si-lently, across to the coffin's side.

  The sky beyond the barred window was distinctly lighter than it had been. They'd have to run for cover, he thought-after three hundred and fifty years, Ysidro would doubtless know every bolthole in Lon-don

  If it were Ysidro, and not the day stalker, who lay in that coffin.

  The lid was heavy and fitted close. It was an effort to raise it with one hand. As Asher lifted it clear, Ysidro turned and flinched, trying to shield his face with his shirt-sleeved arms, his long, ghostly hair tan-gling over the coffin's dark lining beneath his head. "No..."

  Behind him, Asher heard the door close and the bolts slide home. He was too tired, too spent, even to curse; he had thrown on the longest of long shots and lost.

  "Close it." The long fingers that covered the vampire's eyes were shaking; beneath them Asher could see the white-lashed eyes shut in pain. The light voice was sunk to a whisper, shivering, like his hands, under

  the strain of exhaustion and despair, "Please, close it. There is nothing we can do."

  Knowing he was right, Asher obeyed. Whether he had been brought here forcibly, lured, or driven, once the doors had been locked behind him, there was literally nothing Don Simon could have done but take the only refuge available against the coming daylight. He slumped, bracing his back against the casket, knowing he should keep watch and knowing there wasn't a hope in the nine circles of Hell of his being able to remain awake to do so.

  He was asleep before the first sunlight came into the room.

  Nineteen

  Asher floated groggily to the surface from the murky depths of sleep, through a gray awareness of hands pawing at him, pulling open his collar to unfasten the protective silver chain from around his throat, stripping off his jacket to rifle the pockets. Oddly, his chief consciousness was of the sound of the man's breath, the hoarse breath of the elderly. Then, like spreading poison, the agony of his swollen arm began, shooting out a root system of pain to every nerve of his body.

  In spite of himself, he groaned and opened his eyes in time to see Horace Blaydon back away from him, fumbling with a revolver in one hand while he pocketed the silver chains and knife with the other.

  "Don't call out," Blaydon said quickly. "The party wall on this side's soundproofed-the house on the other side has been empty for months,"

  For a long instant there was silence between the two men. Asher lay tiredly back against the coffin, blinking in the chilly daylight that flooded the room, his swollen arm in its filthy sling cradled to his chest, clothes smutched with grime and rainwater, sweat-damp hair hanging down into hard brown eyes that were not the eyes of an Oxford don. Blaydon's hand on the gun wobbled for a moment. He brought up the other to steady it, and his wide-lipped mouth pinched.

  "James, I really am sorry to see you here." It was, as the Americans said, a fair-to-middling imitation of his old arrogant bark, but only fair-to-middling. "I must say I'm surprised at you-surprised and disap-pointed."

  "You'resurprised atme?" Asher moved to sit up, but Blaydon scram-bled back a yard or so on his knees, gun leveled, and Asher sank down once more, gritting his teeth. The novocaine had well and truly worn off. His hand felt as if it had been pulped with a hammer, and his whole body ached with the stiffening of every muscle that had been twisted and bruised in the encounter with the vampire in Grippen's unkempt yard.

  And yet, for all he must look like a bitten-up tomcat, he thought Blaydon looked worse.

  Horace Blaydon had always been a healthy man, scorning the ill-nesses he studied, bluff and active despite some sixty years. He was nearly as tall as his beefy son; against his shock of white hair, his face had been ruddy with youth. That ruddiness was gone, and with it the crispness of his hair and all his former air of springy vitality; he seemed flaccid and broken. It crossed Asher's mind to wonder whether Blaydon's vampire partner had in some moment of desperation bat-tened ontoHis veins.

  But no. It was more-or less-than that.

  The pathologist wet his lips, "At least I've done what I've done for a good cause." He shifted the gun in his hands, as if they were damp with the sweat that Asher could see shining in the pale daylight on his gray-ish face. Had Asher had two good hands and not been in the final throes of fatigue, he would have gone for it, but there was something in the haunted nervousness of the man that told him he'd shoot without a second thought. "I-I had to do what I did, what I am doing. It's for the common good..."

  "Your vampire partner murdered twenty-four people for the common good?" He was surprised at the calm of his own voice.

  "They were worthless people-really worthless-the scum of the streets, prostitutes, Chinese. I told him, I instructed him specially, only to take people who were no good to anyone; bad people, wicked peo-ple."

  "And- leaving aside his qualifications to judge such things-that makes it all right?"

  "No, no, of course not." Blaydon's braying tone reminded him of Dennis, halfheartedly protesting at the Guards' Club that of course oneoughtn't to burn Boer farmsteads to cripple the commandos' hold on the countryside, but war was, after all, war... "But we had to do something. The vampires were going deeper and deeper into hiding, and the craving was getting worse. It used to be he could go for weeks-now within days he needs blood, and it... it seems to be accelerating still more rapidly. I'd followed up every clue from the papers I'd been able to find in Calvaire's rooms, and Hammersmith's..."

  "So you gave your blessing to your partner to go hunting at large in Manchester and London?"

  "He would have died!" There was genuine pain and desperation in his voice. "When he gets these cravings, he isn't responsible for what he does! I-I didn't know about Manchester 'til afterward... For a month, he's been living in Hell, and now you've made him worse."

  "Me?"

  "You wounded him." Blaydon's voice was low, hoarse, almost fran-tic; his hands were shaking on the gun. "You stabbed him with a knife made of silver. That silver's running through him like an infection, like gangrene and fever. I can't stop it. It's exacerbating his condition; he needs more and more blood to fight it, to even hold it at bay. Oh, I understand you were frightened by his appearance, but..."

  "I was fighting for my life," Asher said dryly, "in case you weren't noticing."

  "I'm sorry, James, I really am..."

  Behind him, the door opened. Framed in it stood the vampire.

  Blaydon was right
, thought Asher. That aura of leprousness, of dis-ease, had grown-but so, it seemed, had the vampire's feverish, mon-strous power. Standing in the full sunlight, it seemed hardly human anymore. The moist white skin glinted with shiny patches of decay; most of the faded hair was gone from its peeling scalp. On the pimple-splattered jaw, the weals of the overgrown teeth were still seeping a colorless pus mixed with blood, and the creature, with incongruous daintiness, pulled a white handkerchief from the pocket of its tweed jacket to pat at the glistening runnels. Huge, blue, and glaring, its eyes fixed on Asher with bitter malice.

  Still keeping his gun leveled on Asher, Blaydon asked over his shoul-der, "Any sign of others?"

  The thing shook its head. Another shred of hair fell from its balding scalp, drifting like milkweed to the broad tweed shoulder.

  "Not in the daytime, surely," Asher remarked.

  "Not vampires, no," Blaydon said. "But they might well have hired other humans than you, James. Though how decent men could bring themselves to alliance with murderers..."

  "I think your own house has a bit too much glass in its construction for you to start chucking stones about," Asher replied thinly, and Blaydon's mouth tightened with a sudden spasm of rage.

  "That's different!" There was the edge to his voice of a man pressed too far, almost to the verge of hysterics.

  Asher was too weary to care. "Isn't it always?"

  The voice slipped up into the next register. "You know nothing about it!" With an effort, the pathologist got a hold on himself again; the vampire, behind him, spared him not a glance, but Asher was uneasily aware of that greedy, vicious gaze on his unprotected throat. Blaydon's voice was shaky, but quieter, as he said, "It isn't his fault. It was my doing, my experiment, you see."

  Asher shifted up onto one elbow, his eyes narrowing. "Yourwhat? " The vampire stepped forward to stand at Blaydon's side. The old man got to his feet; for all his height, the thing loomed over him still, only a few inches taller, but monstrous in its breadth and bulk, incon-gruous in tweed jacket and flannel bags. Its arms hung grotesquely from the jacket sleeves, and the clawed hands Asher remembered were par-tially wrapped in bandages, stained dark with the oozing infection be-neath.