Barbara Hambly - 01 Those Who Hunt The Night

"There were some-two or three, a master vampire and her fledg-lings-at one time in Edinburgh, but Edinburgh is a small town; late in the seventeenth century the witch-hunters found the places where they hid their coffins. There are some in Liverpool now, and in that packed, crass, and stinking cesspit of factories and slums that has spread like cancer across the north." He shook his head. "But it is a young town, and does not offer the hiding places that London does."

"Who's after you?" Asher asked.

The champagne-colored eyes avoided his own. "We don't know."

"I should think that with your powers..."

"So should I." The eyes returned to his, again level and cool as the soft voice. "But that does not seem to be the case. Someone has been killing the vampires of London."

Asher raised one thick brow. "Why does that surprise you?"

"Because we do not know who it is."

"The people you kill don't know who you are," Asher pointed out.

"Not invariably," the vampire agreed. "But when they do, or when a friend, or a lover, or a member of their family guesses what has hap-pened to them, as occasionally chances, we usually have warning of their suspicions. We see them poking about the places where their loved ones were wont to meet their killers-for it is a frequent practice of vampires to befriend their victims, sometimes for months before the kill -or the churchyards where they were buried. Most of us have good memories for faces, for names, and for details-we have much leisure, you understand, in which to study the human race. These would-be vampire hunters in general take several weeks to bring themselves to believe what has happened, to harden their resolve, and in that time we often see them."

"And dispose of them," Asher asked caustically, "as you disposed of their friends?"

"Dios,no." That flexible smile touched his face again, for one instant; this time Asher saw the flicker of genuine amusement in the pale, ironic eyes. "You see, time is always on our side. We have only to melt into the shadows, to change our haunts and the places where we sleep for five years, or ten, or twenty. It is astounding how quickly the living forget. But this time..." He shook his head. "Four of us have died. Their coffins were opened, the light of the sun permitted to stream in and reduce their flesh to ashes. The murders were done by daylight-there was nothing any vampire could have done to prevent them, or to catch the one who did them. It was this that decided me to hire help."

"To hire help," Asher said slowly. "Why should I..." He stopped, remembering the still gaslight of the library shining on Lydia 's unbound red hair.

"Precisely," Ysidro said. "And don't pretend you did not know that you were hired to kill by other killers in the days when you took the Queen's Coin. Wherein lies the difference between the Empire, which holds its immortality in many men's consciousness, and the vampire, who holds it in one?"

It could have been a rhetorical question, but there was not that inflec-tion in the vampire's voice, and he waited afterward for an answer.

"Perhaps in the fact that the Empire never blackmailed me into serv-ing it?"

"Did it not?" There was the faintest movement of one of those curv-ing brows-like the smile, the bleached echo of what had once been a human mannerism. "Did you not serve it out of that peculiarly English brand of sentimentalism that cherishes sodden lawns and the skyline of Oxford and even the yammering dialects of your peasants? Did you not risk your own life and take those of others, so that ' England would remain England '-as if, without Maxim guns and submarines, it would somehow attach itself to the fabric of Germany or Spain? And when this ceased to be a consideration for you, did you not turn your back in disgust upon what you had done like a man falling out of love?

"We need a man who can move about in the daylight as well as in the hours of darkness, who is acquainted with the techniques of research and the nuances of legend, as well as with the skills of a killer and a spy. We merely agree with your late Queen as to the choice of the man."

Asher studied him for a long moment under the jumpy glare of the gas jet in its pierced metal sheath. The face was smooth and unwrinkled and hard, the slender body poised and balanced like a young man's in its well-tailored gray suit. But the jeweled eyes held in them an expres-sion beyond denning, the knowledge of one who has seen three and a half centuries of human folly and human sin reel gigglingly by; they were the eyes of one who was once human, but is no longer.

"You're not telling me everything," he said.

"Did your Foreign Office?" Ysidro inquired. "And I am telling you this, James. We will hire you, we will pay you, but if you betray us, in word or in deed, there will be no place on this earth where you or your lady Lydia will be safe from us, ever. I hope you believe that, for both your sakes."

Asher folded his hands, settled his shoulders back into the worn plush. "You hope I believe it for your own sake as well. In the night you're powerful, but by daylight you seem to be curiously easy to kill."

"So," the vampire murmured. For an instant his delicate mouth tightened; then the expression, if expression it was, smoothed away, and the pale eyes lost some of their focus, as if that ancient soul sank momentarily into its dreams. Though the whole car vibrated with the rush of the dark rails beneath their feet, Asher had a sense of terrible silence, like a monster waiting in absolute stillness for its prey.

Then he heard a hesitant step in the corridor, a woman's, though traffic up and down the narrow passage had long ceased. The compart-ment door slid open without a knock. Framed in the slot of brown oak and gaslight stood the woman who had watched over her two sleeping children on the platform, staring before her like a sleepwalker.

Ysidro said nothing; but, as if he had invited her in, the woman closed the door behind her. Stepping carefully with the swaying of the train, she came to sit on the edge of the seat at the vampire's side.

"I- I'm here," she stammered in a tiny voice, her eyes glassy under straight, thin lashes. "Who-why...

?"

"It is nothing you need trouble about,bellisima" Ysidro whispered, putting out one slim hand in its black glove to touch her face. "Nothing at all."

"No," she whispered mechanically. "Nothing at all." Her dress was of shabby red cloth, clean but very old, the fabric several times turned; she wore a flat black straw hat, and a purple scarf round her neck against the cold. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five- Lydia's age-and had once been pretty, Asher thought, before ceaseless worry had graven those petty lines around her mouth and eyes. Tersely he said, "All right, you've made your point..."

"Have I?" The delicate black fingers drew forth the wooden pin that held the hat to the tight screw of fair hair; caressingly, like a lover's, they began to work loose the pins from the hair itself. "In all the rather silly legends about us, no one ever seems to have pinpointed the true nature of the vampire's power-a kind of mesmerism, as they used to call it, an influence over the minds of humans and, to some extent, beasts. Though I am not sure into which category this creature would fall..."

"Send her away." Asher found his own voice was thick, his own mind seeming clogged, as if he, too, were half dreaming. He made as if to rise, but it was like contemplating getting out of bed too early on a foggy morning-far easier to remain where he was. He was aware of Ysidro's glance on him, sidelong under long, straight eyelashes nearly white.

"She was only along in one of the third-class carriages, she and her daughters." With slow care the vampire unwound the purple scarf, letting it slither heedless to the carriage floor; unfastened the cheap celluloid buttons of the woman's collar. "I could have summoned her from anywhere on the train, or, had she not been on it, I could have stood on the platform at Paddington and called her; and believe me, James, she would have gotten the money somehow and come. Do you believe that?"