Barbara Hambly - 01 Those Who Hunt The Night

"Do you think he followed us in the mews?"

"I am sure of it. I felt-sensed-I don't know. A presence in the night, once or twice... He took me from behind, before I even knew he was there." He tilted his head, angling to see if he could reach through to the lock, his hooked profile white against the darkness outside, like a colorless orchid. "But I had been listening for days for things I am not certain I ever truly heard. Fear makes it very difficult to judge." Asher wondered how long it had been since Ysidro had admit-ted to fear. Looking at that slender, insubstantial shape in its white shirt, gray trousers, and vest, he had the odd sense that he was dealing now with the original Don Simon Ysidro, rather than with the vampire the man had become.

"Merde alors." Ysidro stepped back from the bars, shaking a burned finger. "Curious that Blaydon did not wish his son to learn how vam-pires are made. It is a sensible precaution to keep him under his control, but..." He paused, tipping his head a little to listen. "He's gone."

He had not needed to speak; for the last few moments, Asher had heard Blaydon's hurrying steps vibrating the floors of the house, his querulous voice calling dimly, "Dennis? Dennis..."

Cold flooded over him as he suddenly understood.

"He's gone to get Lydia."

Then the cold was swept away by a heat of rage that burned out all pain, all exhaustion, and all despair.

"That's why he listened. He wanted to know how to create a fledgling."

"Sangre de Dios" In a single fluid move Ysidro stripped out of his gray waistcoat, wrapping it around his hand. Asher, knowing already what the vampire meant to do, clumsily unslung his arm and pulled off his own. It was gone from his grasp before he was aware the vampire had moved; Ysidro was back at the window, using the fabric to muffle his hands against the silver of the bars. For a moment he strained, shadows jumping on the ropy white muscle of his forearms, then he let go of the bars and backed away, rubbing his hands as if in pain.

"No good. Metallurgy has vastly improved since the days when we had the strength of ten, and I cannot grip them long enough. If we could dig into the masonry around them and dislodge them..." His pale gaze flicked swiftly around the prison, touching Asher. "Curst be the man who decreed gentlemen should wear braces and not belts with large, fierce metal buckles, as they did in my day..."

"He'd have taken them." Asher was kneeling beside the coffin. "He thought of that. The handles have been removed. I noticed when I opened it that there were no corner braces or other metal fittings."

Ysidro cursed dispassionately, archaically, and in several languages. Asher eased his arm gingerly back into its sling, and remembered the isolation of that big house on the downs, miles from the nearest habita-tion. "Dennis must know it's the only way he'll have her now."

"If it works," the vampire said, not moving, but his eyes traveling again over the room. "If, as you think, the vampire state is caused by organisms-which I myself do not believe-it may still not be transmit-table in this artificial form, even by a master who understands what he is doing, a description that scarcely fits our friend."

"That doesn't mean he won't kill her trying," Anger filled him at his own helplessness, at Blaydon, at Dennis, at Ysidro, and at the other vampires who were hiding God knew where. "Maybe I can reach the lock... if we could force it, we could call for help..."

"Your fingers would not have the strength to pull it from the case-ment."

Asher cursed, then said, "How soon can he get there? It's forty miles or so to the Peaks-he obviously can't take the train..."

"He will run. A vampire can run throughout the night, untiring. Verdammnis, is there no metal in this room larger than the buckles on braces? Were we women, at least we would have corset stays..."

"Here." Asher sat suddenly on the lid of the coffin and pulled off one of his shoes with his good hand. He tossed it to the startled vampire, who plucked it out of the air without seeming to move. "Is your strength of ten men up to ripping apart the sole leather? Because there should be a three-inch shank of tempered steel supporting the instep. It's how men's shoes are made."

"Thus I am served," Ysidro muttered through his teeth, as his long white fingers ripped apart the leather with terrifying ease, "for scorning the arts of mechanics. Where is this place? I was unaware there were peaks of any sort on this island..."

"There aren't. It's in the chalk downs back of Oxford, sheep country. Blaydon's wife's father built the

place when he came into his money in the forties. Blaydon stayed there 'til his wife died. He had rooms at his college when he was teaching..."

"You know the way, then?" Ysidro was working at the window, his hands muffled in both waistcoats against accidental contact with the bars. The harsh scrape of metal on cement was like the steady rasping of a saw.

"Of course. I was there a number of times, though not in the past seven years."

The vampire paused, listening. A dim vibration through the floor spoke of a door closing. Softly Ysidro said, "He is in the garden now, calling; he sounds afraid." Their eyes met, Asher's hard with rage, Ysidro's inscrutable. Listen as he would, Asher heard no sound of the house door closing, or of returning footfalls on floor or stair. "He's gone."

Impossibly swift and strong, Ysidro resumed his digging, while he petitioned God to visit Blaydon's armpits with the lice of a shipful of sailors, and his belly with worms, in the archaic, lisping Spanish of the conquistadors. Switching to English, he added, "We can get horses from the mews..."

"A motorcycle will be faster, and we won't need remounts. Mine's in the shed at my lodgings; I've tinkered with it enough that it's more reliable than most." With his good hand and his teeth, Asher gingerly tightened the bandages around his splints, sweat standing out suddenly on his forehead with the renewed shock of the pain. "Do you need help?"

"What I need is an iron crow and a few slabs of guncotton, not the problematical assistance of a crippled old spy. Unless you have sud-denly acquired the ability to bend steel bars, stay where you are and rest."

Asher was only too glad to do so. The swelling had spread up his arm nearly to the elbow; he felt dizzy and a little sick. He could still flex his first two fingers after a fashion-enough, he hoped, to work the throttle lever on the Indian, at any rate.

How fast could a vampire run? He'd seen Ysidro and Grippen move with incredible swiftness. Could that speed be sustained, as Ysidro said, untiring through the night? The scraping of the metal continued... It seemed to be taking forever.

"Dios!" Simon stepped back from the window, shaking loose the cloth from around his hands and rubbing his wrists. His teeth gritting against the pain, he said, "The bar is loose but I cannot grip it. My hands weaken already; that much silver burns, even through the cloth."

"Here." Asher kicked off his other shoe out of the irrational human dislike of uneven footgear, and came to the window. The bar was very loose in the socket, now chipped away from the cement; with his single good hand, he shifted it back and forth, twisting and pulling until it came free. Ysidro wrapped his arm again, and gingerly angled it through to tear off the window's complicated latch and force the case-ment up.

"Can you get through that?"

Asher gauged the resultant gap. "I think so."

It was a difficult wriggle, with one arm barely usable and nothing on the other side but the narrow ledge. The vampire steadied and braced him through as best he could, but once his arm inadvertently brushed one of the remaining bars, and Asher felt the grip spasm and slack. "It's all right, I've got a footing," he