The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life

by Talbot, Michael

  A twig snapped on the walk outside the house.

  I turned to see that a light had come on in the little house. Someone was moving about I stealthily slipped into the shadows beside the shed. The front door opened. In the faint and misty lamplight I saw a figure round the corner of the house. A woman. It was difficult making out her features. She seemed young, slight of frame. I caught a glimpse of her face as she passed by the light of the window. Yes... she appeared frightened, but her brow was determined. She held her skirt up to pass through the dewy convolvulus and poppies. She paused in a clearing in the garden.

  I heard her voice, but it was too low to determine what she was saying. She was speaking to someone. A large bush blocked my view. I wanted to move to get a better look. But dare I? Was she a vampire? Would she detect the slightest squeak of grass beneath my shoes?

  Another voice sounded. A low murmur.

  I had to see. I moved like a cat slowly leaning into a pounce. I scarcely breathed. The infinitesimal rustling of my shirt seemed thundering. It took an eternity before I gained a better vantage. At last, among the foliage of the bush I saw the woman and her companion standing in the garden. The moonlight shone full upon his face, that same innocent face.

  Niccolo.

  I knew at once what was happening. Oh... I did not know the purpose, the complete meaning of the design, but I knew what was transpiring there in that garden. That woman was being drawn into a mysterious world, allured by a guileless youth. And she was in danger of her life. Soon they would prey on her worries, riddle her with doubt and fear; until she destroyed this little shed. And herself. I recalled the words of the woman at des Esseintes’s party: I wished to purchase a gift, a stereopticon, to give to a woman. She lay in her deathbed... and I wished to raise her spirits. I met her in the darkness and placed the magic lantern in her hands.

  A game was being played. A cruel and enigmatic riddle of the Sphinx.

  For what purpose?

  A test?

  An amusement?

  The woman raised her voice. “But why... why?” I heard her gasp. To no avail. Niccolo melted into the night. I could not see her expression, but I knew it was wrought with concern. As she lifted her skirt to return to the house I stepped out of my hiding place.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  She turned quickly. She considered running.

  I approached within a few feet of her.

  “Monsieur?”Her voice faltered. She reached to a small silver cross around her neck.

  “Mademoiselle, I do not know who you are. I do not know what that incredible young man has told you, or what you have hidden in this little shed. But I do know one thing.”

  Her frightened eyes searched my face.

  “I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you to trust no one. You are in great danger. You must choose no allies but yourself. That boy who was just here, that angelic boy. He can enchant you with his tales. Some of the things he says are true, but he spins a web of lies and manipulations. You must get away from here. Before it is too late, go somewhere for a few weeks where you and your work will be safe.”

  I could tell she was stunned by the urgency of my voice. She tightened the chain of the crucifix until it bit into her neck. She was wondering. Dare she believe me? Dare she accept? She trembled, her dark eyes madly trying to penetrate what lay hidden in my face. She turned quickly and rushed back into the house.

  In fear for my own safety I swiftly made my retreat from Rue de la Glacière. I spent the remainder of the evening huddled behind the rectory of an old church. It was scarcely twenty minutes after I had left the woman in the garden that I heard the pealing of the bells of Notre-Dame. Was it a coincidence? How deeply did the hierarchy of their power extend? Was the baleful tolling of the bells another cipher, an alarm meant for special ears?

  I waited for dawn before I ventured out of my hiding place. As soon as the first haberdashery was open, with some of my remaining money I outfitted myself in a respectable suit and proceeded to the Prefecture. The desk clerks who had seen me the night before were off duty. I presented myself as Lady Dunaway’s physician and she was released in my care. I had already wired Cook to learn what name Ursula had registered under. Expectedly, Lady Dunaway was incandescent, and we fought like Kilkenny cats all the way to the Hotel Madeleine. When we reached the address the bell captain directed us to her room, and when the door opened we discovered Ursula standing beside a wickerwork portmanteau and a walking stick protruding from a sausage roll of tartan-plaid traveling rug.

  Without a word spoken we raced toward one another and embraced. All of the anger I had felt seemed unimportant. It was a strange sensation feeling the solidity of her flesh and bones beneath my hands. It must have been quite some time since I had embraced her so, because for some reason I realized, as if for the first time, it was no longer the solidity of a young girl, but a woman. I thought back to the closeness we had once shared. I stepped away and looked at her.

  She seemed older. Her red hair fell loosely over her shoulders, flowing and abundant, and caught the sunlight in a way that reminded me of her mother. I did not remember its being so wavy, but then again I was not in the habit of seeing it before she had done it up. I was impressed anew by her beauty. Her long neck, round face, and large eyes still possessed a determined and melancholy cast. Her dress, however, had undergone a further transformation. She now wore the full uniform of the New Woman, a bold denial of conservative female fashion. Her skirt was a dark blue with a bright red belt, and she wore a full blue-and-white-striped blouse with a tiny lace collar.

  “Father,” she finally said, “what are you doing with her?” She tossed an irreverent nod at my companion. Lady Dunaway, still in her muddied evening gown and an overcoat given to her at the Prefecture, stiffened and bristled.

  “Why shouldn’t I be with her?” I asked. “Not that we haven’t had our differences. But we’re still in this together.” I noticed a copy of The Continental Time Tables resting on the bed. A grim thought passed through my mind. “Ursula, you weren’t leaving while we were still prisoners?”

  She appeared hurt, but not surprised by my remark. “No, Father.” She picked up a letter resting on the portmanteau and handed it to me. “It’s to the Sûreté de Police,” she went on. “Inside I’ve explained to them all of the criminal details of the case and told them to contact Inspector Inglethorpe of Scotland Yard for confirmation. I did not find it necessary to add that Monsieur des Esseintes was a vampire.”

  “But why the deliberation, Ursula? Why didn’t you do this the first evening I saw you?”

  Lady Dunaway’s ears pricked.

  “I’ve been living in a world of confusion. I had to think about everything.”

  I glanced again at the traveling paraphernalia. “And where are you going now?”

  She was sad, but determined, even affectionately apologetic. “It’s not what you think, Father; but I’m going to follow Niccolo. He booked passage this morning at the Gare de Lyon.”

  My heart sank. I had just regained her. I did not want to lose her.

  “Niccolo!” Lady Dunaway cried. “What do you know of Niccolo?”

  “Enough,” Ursula said. “For two consecutive evenings now I’ve followed him after he’s left a human household at 24 Rue de la Glacière. Last night I trailed him from there to the Gare de Lyon.”

  “Gare de Lyon?” I said. “Do you know where he’s going?”

  “Where does anyone go from the Gare de Lyon? To the Mediterranean. To Italy, I presume.”

  Lady Dunaway was lost in alarm. All of the blood had run out of her face. “What was he doing at 24 Rue de la Glacière?”

  “I’m not quite sure,” I returned. She was expecting a reply from Ursula, and Lady Dunaway turned to me in shock. Her mind seemed to be racing ahead, making other connections.

  “I was also there last night, but I did not see Ursula. I went there after I placed you in safekeeping at the Prefecture. As for what Niccolo was
doing, he was speaking with a young woman in the garden. I suspect he was playing a game of the mind, spinning Gordian knots. I wanted to warn her, but how does one warn against such a chimerical and undefined danger? The same way Niccolo admonished you. I told her to trust no one. Nothing is as it seems. I told her to get away from here.”

  “How did you know the address?” she demanded incredulously.

  “Ursula visited me through the sewers.”

  She gripped my arm, and even through the glove her hand was clammy with shock. “Why wasn’t I told?” she gasped. At first the intensity of her reaction surprised me, but then I realized. The occurrences at 24 Rue de la Glacière seemed to have unknown and fearful meaning for Lady Dunaway. What was her one vulnerability, the nerve that would invoke such a response from her? Her son. Had the meeting in the garden at 24 Rue de la Glacière somehow involved the safety of her son? Emotion raged in her face. “How could you interfere without confiding in me?”

  How could she ask such a question? She commanded such a sense of utter vindication I nearly answered her. But I did not. I had other concerns.

  “Ursula, why do you want to follow Niccolo? It’s not because you want to be taken into the world of the vampire. Otherwise, why didn’t you just present yourself at Monsieur des Esseintes’s door?”

  “Well?” Lady Dunaway repeated.

  Ursula’s expression fell a little.

  “Believe me,” I said, “my only concern has been and always will be your safety and well-being. Is there any chance that you might believe I’m honestly worried about you?”

  Lady Dunaway’s fingers dug deeper into my arm. “Ursula, I don’t want you to go.”

  Lady Dunaway flew into a rage. “Well!”

  I turned to the older woman. I could not help but feel it was a little pathetic—we were both so deeply and desperately concerned for our children. “How can you ask that after what you have done? We had an agreement, you and I, but you abandoned it. Your only concern was your own child. Once you found out Ambrose was safe, you clung that one discovery to your bosom and allowed nothing else within your trust. You let des Esseintes use Ambrose to divide us. Don’t you see how he manipulated you?”

  “Oh, Father!” Ursula reproached.

  I looked into the older woman’s eyes one last time before I turned to my daughter. She held her weathered expression with nobility. I could not help having compassion for the depth and conviction of her instincts.

  Ursula spoke. “Don’t you know? It’s what I wanted to tell you the night I visited you, but we argued instead. But surely you must know by now.” She expelled her breath resentfully as the words blurted out of her lips. “There is no Ambrose.”

  XXIII

  I looked at Lady Dunaway.

  “Is this true?”

  She remained mute, but the unflinching steadiness of her gaze told me her reply.

  “How did you find this out?” I asked Ursula. The two women glared at each other.

  “Through the papers, of course. One would think the kidnapping of the son of a British lord would receive as much attention in the press as the kidnapping of the daughter of a prominent physician. Imagine my surprise when I could find no mention of it Imagine my further surprise when I discovered Lord Dunaway is listed as having no children in the Social Register.”

  I don’t know what I felt at that moment. What a fool I had been. I had unquestioningly allowed a total stranger to become my closest confidante. I now had no idea what manner of creature, good or evil, lurked behind that most sincere and uncalculating face. “Who are you?” I said, stepping back, reading fearful new meaning in the large and powerful arms, the alien qualities of the woman. “What possible reason has caused you to deceive me as well? Are you working for Lodovico?”

  Was she still another incredible and inhuman species of being—not vampire, but something quite as strange—an automaton, a further mental oddity working in alliance with the master race? Nothing could shock me. No possibility would be too unbelievable. A hint of movement passed beneath the ominous camouflage of the overcoat.

  “Leberecht,” she murmured cryptically as she wrung her hands together. “I must wire Leberecht.” She paced anxiously toward the window as both Ursula and I stepped back, wondering what was going to happen next.

  “Who are you?” I repeated.

  “What’s in a name?” she asked impassively. She demanded no absolution. She began to pace again and then stopped, looked at us, and glared. “I lied. Your daughter has done her research well. I really was talking to the music-box bird when you overheard me in the playroom. I purposefully did not quell your suspicions because I did not want you to know the truth—that there is no Ambrose. There never was.”

  She showed signs of resuming her pacing when she realized we were still aghast. “Oh, come now, Dr. Gladstone, is there any use in my telling the truth? I might ask the same question you inquired of your daughter. Is there any possibility that you could ever accept what I said?”

  “Only if you give me the chance.”

  Without further argument she said: “Your daughter might also tell you that the Social Register lists Lord Dunaway’s wife as Sarah. In truth, I have no idea what Lucien and Sarah’s matrimonial life is like. As for myself, my real name is Hespeth von Neefe, M. D., D. Ph., D. Lit. I am a member of that disparaged and ridiculed breed, the vampire hunter.”

  She stood proudly after reciting the words, as one who had just revealed the Gospel to the pagans.

  “How do I know you are telling the truth?”

  She spied a fountain pen on the bureau, dipped it in ink, and scrawled across a piece of stationery: Dr. Leberecht Weber, University of Vienna. “You may ask Dr. Weber of my credentials.”

  “Who will vouch for Dr. Weber’s credentials?”

  “The University of Vienna as well as half of the academic world,” she said indignantly. “He is a renowned philologist and folklorist. Naturally, the university knows nothing of his pursuit of the vampire.”

  Dr. von Neefe proceeded to draw a picture of what it meant to be a vampire hunter that was quite contrary to what I was prepared for. I had assumed that she and her colleagues carried stakes and hated Niccolo and his kind, but nothing was farther from the truth. The network of vampire hunters consisted largely of scholars and a few wealthy eccentrics. They knew the vampire existed. They studied their historical traces, and the actual rare meeting between mortal and vampire. Most of all, however, they were drawn to and enchanted by the vampire. The rabble may have viewed the vampire as loathsome and monstrous, but to the well-fed and intellectual upper classes their world was a glittering ultima Thule. They hunted the vampire because they envied them. They were drawn to them out of a sort of romantic vision, as any scholar might be drawn to his field of pursuit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about yourself in the beginning?” I asked when she had finished.

  “You wouldn’t have taken me seriously. It was much more expedient to appeal to your emotions.”

  “Do you think I will take you seriously now?”

  “I believe you will.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have been through a great deal. We have been through a great deal. The unbelievable has become a part of your everyday life. I think you are much more willing to believe me when I tell you I am deadly serious in my line of work. I think you can now understand what it means when I say I am haunted by Niccolo and Lodovico. You see, my uncle was a vampire hunter, as my grandfather before him. My grandfather actually met Niccolo briefly, in Vienna. My grandfather’s crumbling diary describes in detail the same youthful and disarming face we know today. Look and see.”

  She withdrew the locket from around her neck and opened it to display a painted miniature and an engraving. The miniature was of a craggy and moonstruck old gentleman with ruffled white hair and porkchop sideburns. The engraving was in a style reminiscent of the old German masters. The subject was undeniably Niccolo.

  “You s
ee, I am on an ancestral spiritual quest. I am motivated by a desire perhaps even more deeply felt than your own.”

  “What of Niccolo’s warning? Did you make that up?”

  “No,” she said distantly. “It is true it was not delivered to me, but I did not make it up. It was given to my grandfather one snowy evening in that city of the harpsichord and the waltz.”

  “What do you know of the vampire that I”—I looked at Ursula—“we don’t know?”

  The tension in the air had lessened. The haggard woman walked over to a chair before the window and sat down. “Very little, I think. Dr. Weber and I have scoured the genealogies of kings and the graves of a hundred famous men and women. We and our colleagues have discovered the names of a dozen or so suspect personalities. For example, there are some who believe the entity who was to become Sir Francis Bacon has appeared throughout history under a number of different identities. They cite evidence that his funeral in 1626 was a mock funeral and assert that he later appeared in Germany under the name of Johann Valentin Andreae. It is true engravings of Andreae and Sir Francis Bacon are uncannily similar, but who can say? The exact dates of births and deaths before the nineteenth century are limited to parish records, and even these are sketchy and difficult to track down.”

  She looked at me with uncertainty. “You recall des Esseintes spoke of the references in the first English translation of the Bible to the vampire or lamya. It was Sir Francis Bacon who edited the King James version of the Bible and changed all references of the vampire to ‘sea monsters.’” She searched for the fountain pen once again and scribbled a note to herself. “I must wire that to Leberecht.”