Those Who Hunt the Night: A James Asher Novel

by Barbara Hambly

  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 invisibly 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, silently, 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 London …

  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 tangling 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 hisback 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 armin 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 disappointed.”

  “You’re surprised at me?” Asher moved to sit up, but Blaydon scrambled 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 illnesses 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 battened onto his 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 grayish face. Had Asher had two good hands and not been in the finalthroes 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 people.”

  “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 one oughtn’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 frantic; his hands were shaking on the gun. “You stabbed him with a knife made of silver. That silver’s runningthrough 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 disease, had grown—but so, it seemed, had the vampire’s feverish, monstrous 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 shoulder, “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,” Asherreplied 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. “Your what?”

  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, incongruous in tweed jacket and flannel bags. Its arms hung grotesquely from the jacket sleeves, and the clawed hands Asher remembered were partially wrapped in bandages, stained dark with the oozing infection beneath.

  “Don’t you recognize him, James?” Blaydon asked, his voice thin and curiously soft. “It’s Dennis.”

  “Dear God.” Even as he whispered the words, Asher was conscious that, now that he knew who it was, he could recognize that short, straight little nose. It was certainly all that remained of a godlike beauty—that and the lobeless ears. The vampire was several inches taller than Dennis had been. That, too, must have hurt. Asher felt stunned, as if he had been struck over the head, not knowing what to do or say—pitying, horrified, and aware of the baleful glitter of hate in Dennis’ eyes.

  “You’re glad, aren’t you?” The deformation caused by the growth of his fangs caused Dennis to mumble almostunintelligibly. With his blotted handkerchief he patted at his chin again. “Glad to see me like this. You hope Lydia will see me like this, too, don’t you? But she won’t. She’s not going to see me ’til I’m better.”

  “Of course she won’t, Dennis,” Blaydon said reassuringly. “And you’ll be better soon. I’ll find a serum to make you better…”

  Slowly, the shocked stillness seemed to break in Asher’s veins with the horrible throb of stirring blood. “Where is she?”

  “That won’t matter to you,” the vampire said. “You’re never going to see her again.”

  Asher heaved himself up, his whole body screaming in pain, and reached to catch Blaydon’s lapel. “Where is she?!”

  He was slammed back against the floor as if he’d been hit by a swinging anvil before he was even aware Dennis had moved. Darkness blurred in front of his eyes, and he tasted blood in his mouth and nose. Somewhere he heard Blaydon say sharply, “Dennis, no!” like a spinster calling off a savage dog, and felt the dark crush of Dennis’ mind on his, as he had at Grippen’s. Shadow blotted the light above him; that dim, barking voice went on, “He’s concerned about her, of course he is…”

  “I want him.”

  He was fighting unconsciousness, the reek of decaying flesh filling his nostrils as the thing bent over him.

  “And you’ll have him, of course you will.” It was strange to hear the fear in Blaydon’s voice—Blaydon who had always been ready to spit in Satan’s eye or God’s. “But I need him now, Dennis. Let him be.”

  “He’ll tell us where the others are,” Dennis growled, and a drop of something—drool or pus—fell on the back of Asher’s neck. “You said we needed to trap him so he’d tell…”

  “Yes, but we have a live vampire now, Dennis…”

  “When can I have him?” Eagerness suffused the slurring voice. “I’m hurting, Dad, the thirst is killing me. That girl last night wasn’t near enough, and you got most of it. Dad, I can smell him through the coffin wood, smell both their blood…”

  “Please, my boy. Please be patient.” Blaydon’s voice came closer, gently drawing his vampire son away. “I have another plan, a better plan, now, but your getting well depends on both of them being alive, at least until tonight. I—I—Do what you need to do to—to make yourself comfortable—but please, don’t touch either of them.”

  The voices faded and blurred as Asher slid toward darkness. He heard Lydia’s name. “… perfectly safe, you know I’d never do anything to hurt her. Now fetch me some brandy, please. I’m sure James needs it.”

  Sinking into unconsciousness, Asher was sure James needed it, too.

  The taste of the brandy revived him, coughing. He’d been propped up against the coffin again—Blaydon, glass in hand, was staring at the red teeth marks still visible on his throat through the open collar of his shirt. Dennis stood by the closed door, a cut-glass decanter of brandy in his knotty fingers. Asher supposed he should be flattered that they considered him still capable of rushing Blaydon.

  Without speaking, Blaydon lifted Asher’s left wrist and pushed back the torn shirt sleeve to study the wounds there among the blackened finger marks of Dennis’ grip.

  “What did they do to you?”

  Asher drew a deep bream and disengaged his hand to wipe at the blood trickling from his nose into his mustache and down the side of his face. “It was a misunderstanding.”

  “What did they do to you?” Blaydon seized his arm,shaking him urgently. “Did they only drink your blood—or was it something more?”

  His dewlaps were quivering with the trembling of his chin; Asher stared up at him, eyes narrowing. “If it was anything more, I’d be dead now.”

  “Would you?” His voice lowered, but he could not keep from it that unholy eagerness, that sudden urgency barely restrained. “Your specialty was comparative folklore, James. You know about such things. Is it true that if your blood is drunk by a vampire—a true vampire—you become one yourself when you die? Is that how it’s done?”

  Something about the greedy gleam in his eye raised the hackles on Asher’s neck. “I should think Dennis could tell you that,” he said slowly. “What do you mean, ‘a true vampire’?” His eyes went past him to Dennis, monstrous, deformed. “Why do you say it is your doing that Dennis is as he is?”

  A flush crept up under Blaydon’s pasty skin, and his little blue eyes shifted quickly away.

  In a low voice Asher went on, “What is it you want with a vampire’s blood? Why draw it out with a needle as well as letting Dennis drink of it? Why is Dennis as he is and not like the other vampires? Did Calvaire or whatever vampire made Dennis have some infection that he passed along? Or … ?”

  “It is in the blood, isn’t it?” Blaydon said, still not looking at him. “The organism or constellation of organisms, virus or serum or chemical, that causes vampirism. Isn’t it?” His voice rose, verging once more on a cry. “Isn’t it?”

  “Lydia thinks so.”

  Blaydon’s mouth tightened up like a trap at the mention of Lydia, and his eyes shifted nervously under Asher’s silent gaze. “She—she recognized me, you see. At the Daily Mail offices, when I was looking for clippings and clues. I’d run out of clues about the whereabouts of the othervampires. I had to have more. She’d read my articles, too. She was already looking for a doctor. She said it was
obvious I’d be prepared to believe in a vampire as a medical phenomenon where others wouldn’t. Dennis said he saw her once in London, while he was following that fledgling of Calvaire’s. He couldn’t follow her then, but when she came snooping about here … Dennis caught her…” He laughed like a crow cawing. “Slip of a schoolgirl, and she’s cleverer than the lot of us. She guessed at once what I’d done.”

  “You created artificial vampirism.”

  Asher did not ask it as a question, and Blaydon only blew out his breath in a sigh, as if relieved that he did not have to hide it any longer.

  “It didn’t start out that way.” His voice was weary, almost pleading. “I swear it didn’t. You know, James—of course you know—that it’s only a matter of time before war comes with Germany and her allies. The Kaiser’s spoiling for it. Oh, yes, I’ve heard the rumors about you and about where and how you spend your Long Vacations. You know the urgency of the matter. So don’t come all righteous with me over what you’ve only done yourself in a different way. I dare say you’ve caused the deaths of well over twenty-four men, and in just as good a cause.”

  Blaydon took a deep breath, turning the half-filled brandy glass in his hands. “You know—or perhaps you don’t—that, in addition to my work with viruses, for a long time my interest has been in physical causes of so-called psychic phenomena. For a time, I believed, along with Peterkin and Freiborg, that such things could be bred in. God knows how many mediums and table tappers I tested over the years! And I came to the conclusion that it has to be some alteration in the brain chemistry that gives these people their so-called powers: a heightening of thesenses; an extrasensory awareness; and that incredible, intangible grasp on the minds of other men.

  “Now, you can understand the need to be able to duplicate such powers at will. You’ve worked in Intelligence, James. Think what a corps of such men, dedicated to the good of England, could be in the war that we all know is coming! I tried hard to isolate that factor, to little avail. And then Dennis introduced me to Valentin Calvaire. He’d met Calvaire through a mutual friend…”