Barbara Hambly - 01 Those Who Hunt The Night

He came shamblingly, without Ysidro's invisibility and without Ysidro's deadly grace, and Asher breathed again.

"And you are...?"

The vampire stopped a few feet from him, staring at him with glint-ing eyes under a narrow, craggy brow. "Bully Joe Davies is me name," he said, in an accent which Asher placed within half a mile of New Lambeth Cut. He licked his lips, showing his fangs disquietingly, a nervous gesture which, after Ysidro's poise, made him seem incredibly gauche. Truculently he added, "You cry out or make a noise and I'll suck you dry afore the cat can lick her ear."

Asher studied him for a moment with deliberate contempt. He was a man in his twenties, long-armed, raw-boned, and awkward-looking in a black suit that did not fit well-that hard little nut of a face would have looked more at home above the corduroy work pants and frieze jacket of a mill hand or docker. Black hair was slicked back under a five-shilling derby; there was blood under the uncut nails.

"If you didn't have some reason to speak to me, I assume you would have done that already," Asher retorted. "Days ago, in fact... Why have you been following me?"

Davies took a step closer. The smell of old blood in his clothes was repulsive. When he spoke his whisper was rank as a enamel house. "That toff Ysidro-he gone?"

Asher's every sense of danger came alert. "I haven't the faintest idea," he said coldly. "He could have followed me back here. We parted rather abruptly. I haven't seen or heard him, but then, one doesn't."

Bully Joe threw a swift glance around him, and Asher saw fear gleam in his bloodshot blue eyes. He edged closer still, his long-nailed fingers picking at Asher's sleeve, his voice lowered to a hoarse breath. "Has he spoke of me?" he whispered. "Does he know of me?"

With an effort Asher kept the surge of overwhelming curiosity out of his voice. "Shouldn't he?"

The hand closed around his arm, reminding Asher of that other tenet of vampire lore-that they had the strength of ten men. Ysidro cer-tainly had. "If you speak of me, if you say aught of me, I'll kill you," Davies breathed. "They'd kill me, they would-Grippen, and that chilly Papist bastard Ysidro-if they knew about me, knew Calvaire had made me. First, I thought it was Grippen and the others what done for Calvaire. Then I heard them others had been killed-Neddy Ham-mersmith and Lottie. Christ, they was Grippen's own get! Sodding bas-tard'd never kill his own! And now I'm being followed, being watched..."

"By whom?" Asher demanded sharply. "How do you know?"

"Dammit, you think I'd be askin' a mortal man if I knowed that?" Bully Joe swung around, twisting his hands, his hard face contorting with rage rooted in fear, and Asher fought not to step away from him, not to show his own fear. "Summat's after me, I tell you! And I hear the others talking- Coo, ain't that a tickler? I can stand acrost the street in the shadows and hear every word they says! And they say there's some bloke killin' us wi' a stake in the heart, just like in them old books, and lettin' the sun in! You gotta protect me, same as you're helpin' the others..."

His hands closed around Asher's sleeve again, and Asher thought fast. "I will protect you," he said, "if you'll help me, answer my ques-tions. Who are you? Why do the others want to kill you?"

The calm authority in his voice seemed to quieten Davies, but the vampire's reply was still sulky and impatient. "I told you, I'm Calvaire's get, Grippen's the Master of London. None of the Others'11 dare get a fledgling wi'out his say-so. Grippen don't want none in Lon-don but his own get, his own slaves..

."

"But Calvaire wasn't Grippen's get."

Davies shook his head, goaded, weary, confused. "Narh. He come in from Paris, he said, though he talked English like a regular man. He made me, said I'd live forever, have all the gelt I wanted, never die! He never said it'd be like this!" Desperation crept into his tone. "For a month now I been livin' from pillar to post, never sleepin' the same place twicet! Hidin' from Grippen, hidin' from Ysidro... Calvaire said he'd take care of me, show me what I got to know! But it's all gone wrong nowf Everything's all dinnin' and burnin' in my ears, smellin' the blood of every livin' soul..."

He broke off, licking his lips, his burning eyes fixing on Asher's throat, like a drunkard forgetting his thought in midsentence. Slowly, thickly, he whispered, "I killed a girl last night-Chink girl, down by the Limehouse-and I don't dare hunt another for a couple o' days at least. But my brain's burain' for it! I dunno how the others do it, kill and not get the flatties down on 'em..."

Asher felt the hand tighten again around his arm, begin to draw him inexorably closer to that twisted, fanged face. With deliberate calm, he asked, "And now you're being followed?"

Davies flinched, as if he'd been shaken from sleep; he loosed his grip and stepped back, wiping his lips with a hand that shook. "I dunno," he whispered. "Sometimes it's like I can feel summat in the night, watchin' me, and I'll turn around and there's nuthin'! Other times... I dunno." He shook his head, his lip lifting back from stained yellow fangs.

"I don't want to die! I died once already. I went through it with Calvaire! I wouldn't of let him do this to me, 'cept that I didn't want to die! Christ Jesus, I didn't know it'd be like this!"

There was a noise at the end of the alley. Davies swung around, his hand tightening with bone-crushing force on Asher's elbow. Through the pain, Asher was still interested to note that no sweat stood out on the vampire's white face. A man and a teen-age boy stood momentarily framed in the lighter slot of the alley's mouth, the boy looking coyly away as the man bent his head down. Then, as if they heard Asher's involuntary gasp of pain, they paused, peering sightlessly into the dark-ness. After an uneasy moment they moved away.

Davies let go of his arm, wiped his lips again. "I got to go," he said, his voice thick.

It was Asher's turn to catch at his sleeve. "Can you take me to Calvaire's lodgings?"

"Not tonight." The vampire glanced nervously around and flexed his big hands. "I ain't killed yet tonight and I need it bad. Just bein' this close to you turns my brain wi' the wantin' of it. Like me dad, when he gets the cravin' for the gin." He shot a quick, sullen glance at Asher, daring him to disapprove or to show fear.

Asher had dealt with enough drunkards and addicts to know that, if he did either, Bully Joe might very well kill him from sheer pique. He was uncomfortably aware, too, of Ysidro's warning, and of how long the interview had lasted already. What effect would that psychic pungence have on a mind not oriented, not taught how to handle the influx of new sensation?

"Tomorrow night, then?"

"Late," Davies said, his eyes turning once again to the alley mouth. "I'll come here and wait for you, after I been and killed. Seems like, until I do, I can't properly think. I'll keep away from the coppers somehow. It keeps hurtin' at me and hurtin' at me. Christ, I saw my sister last night-Madge, the

youngest, sixteen she is. She'll still come and see me, look for me-she don't know what happened to me, nor why I left me old lodgings, nor nuthin'. I hadn't killed yet, and by God it was all I could do to keep from sinkin' my fangs into her!

"You seen the others," he went on, with a gesture of helpless rage which seemed to abort itself midsweep into a kind of futile wave. "You talked to other vamps, now, you must have. Are they all like this? Killin' the ones they love, just because they're handy-like? Calvaire said he'd teach me, tell me, help me to get on, but he's dead now. And the one that done for him is comin' after me..."

He swung wildly around at another sound, but it was only a girl, sixteen or so and plain as an old boot, stepping, candle in hand, out into an areaway from the tradesmen's door of one of the houses that backed onto the alley. Asher heard the flap of a shaken rag and the spattering of crumbs on the cement and, beside him, the soft hiss of the vampire's murmured, "Ahhh..." In the faint reflection of the light, Asher saw the young man's eyes, blue and shallow in life, blaze with the strange inner fire of the Undead.