The Fall of the House of Cabal (32 page)

That much was acuity, but Horst's vision was also honed to be that of a predator and thus very sensitive to motion. Something moving in an otherwise static environment appeared to him as a brilliant glowing smear of movement against a still-life painting. He had seen such a smear as he glanced down a narrow way by one of the many theatres along Charing Cross Road. Acting without the benefit of thought—an ability that was nothing to do with his vampiric state—he walked down what would have been an alley but for the impressive architecture flanking it.

‘Hullo?' he called ahead. If he had been merely human, he would not have been quite so open in his approach, but being a monster of sorts gave him all manner of unexpected edges in disagreements of the punching and stabbing sort. If a human rounded the corner with murder in their heart and a cricket bat, carving knife, cavalry sabre, or revolver in their hand, he was confident he could outmanoeuvre them and render them unarmed at the cost of no more than possibly accidentally breaking their arm, depending on the force necessary to dissuade them, or possibly tear off a couple of fingers if they got in the way.

No raging maniac or frightened citizen turned the corner in response to his call, so he rounded it himself and found them waiting there. ‘Oh, dear,' he said.

It was a girl, or had been a girl of perhaps eight or nine years of age. Whatever age it had been, it was hers permanently now, for she was plainly dead.

‘Hullo there,' said Horst, crouching so as not to cut quite such an imposing figure. ‘My name's Horst. Who are you, then?'

The ghost blinked at him through eyes that were just dark smudges on a grey face. ‘You can see me?' Her accent was of the East End, which was in keeping with the cheap linen dress she wore that had seen better days even before it became the garb of a little dead girl.

‘Yes, I can. Why? Is that unusual?'

‘They can't see us, the livers'—she pronounced it as the bird of Liverpool,
Lye-ver
—‘not normal, they can't. I follow 'em about sometimes, but they just say stuff like “Gettin' cold, ain't it?” an' “I fink somebody jus' walked on me grave” an' that. They never sees me, though, or 'ears me, or nuthin'.' She managed to communicate suspicion by scrunching up the darkness that was once her eyes. ‘You is a liver, ain't ya?'

Horst shrugged. ‘I don't think I am, technically. Look.' He bared his teeth and pointed at them illustratively as he extended them.

‘Lumme,' she said. ‘You're a leech, int' ya?'

He put his fangs away. ‘I've been called that. I prefer “vampire” to “leech”, and “Horst” to “vampire”.'

The girl did not seem overly astonished to be in the company of a self-confessed vampire. ‘Me name's Minty.' She curtseyed.

Horst rose and bowed low. ‘I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Minty.'

The ghost giggled. ‘You're silly.'

‘I've been called that as well.' He looked to the sky. ‘I think night has more or less arrived. Would I be right in thinking we should be off the streets?'

Minty sniffed. ‘S'pose. You still got flesh, you could get 'urt.'

‘But not you?'

She shook her head. ‘Nuffin' 'urts me no more. I'm past pain now.' She nodded with the certainty of the young, a state now set in amber. ‘That's good, innit?'

‘It's a silver lining, true.' He didn't feel it necessary or diplomatic to point out the darkness of the cloud that bore that lining. He looked around for a bolthole. ‘There's a tea shop over there. We can…'

‘There's a pub over there,' said Minty with far more emphasis, and headed to an alehouse on the corner, just across the way. ‘Me mum didn't 'old wiv me goin' in pubs,' she explained as Horst tested the door and found it unlocked. ‘'Cept to get me dad for 'is dinner. But me mum din't drink, not at all.'

‘Really?' Horst was hardly listening to her, instead attuning his senses to the new environment. It was musty, and there was the distant smell of old decay from the direction of the taproom, so after he had ushered Minty in and closed the door after her, he settled in the saloon.

‘So, Minty. I am a stranger here.'

‘You talk funny. I've 'eard sailors wot talk like you. Are you a Kraut or somethin'?'

‘I was born in Germany, yes. But I grew up in England, and I'm naturalised now.' The blank eyes were blanker than usual. ‘That means I am English now, even if I sound like a—'

‘Kraut.'

‘A German, yes. What I mean, though, is that I'm not very clear on why London is dead. How did this happen?'

‘Yer a leech. 'Ow can you not know?'

‘I didn't become a le … a vampire here. I do understand you, don't I? You're saying lots of people here became vampires?'

‘An' ghosties an' ghoulies an' deaders an' ravens an' stuff.'

‘Ghouls?' The ghouls that had helped them in the battle with Ratuth Slabuth had simply seemed to vanish after the retreat. Johannes had told him after his own encounter with the ghouls in the Dreamlands that they had paths into their warrens everywhere, invisible to anything but their eyes. That may be so; as already mentioned, Horst's senses were well beyond the norm, yet he had seen no other turnings from the tunnel that had brought them here. Then again, from the few pithy comments his brother had made about something called ‘the Five Ways', that may well have been because they weren't supposed to see them. All this was a living dream, all of dead London, and even the ghost of a little girl standing blinking patiently at him in the saloon of an abandoned pub. He was still Horst, though, and he felt sorry for Minty, though she was no more real than a character in a book.

‘It were the curse, weren't it?' she said, he hoped, rhetorically. ‘The ravens flew away from the tower an' we was all cursed and died.' For illustration, she gripped her throat and made a horribly death-rattling sound. ‘Ecchhhhhhhhh … I sounded just like that when I went, I did. Glad to go, too. Been coughin' up blood all night an' it were really tirin'.' She stopped throttling herself and grinned. Horst could see a gap in her teeth where a new one was growing in. ‘I don't get tired no more. An' I can go in pubs an' nobody cares.'

Horst had distantly heard of some legend associated with the ravens at the Tower of London. ‘Doesn't that legend say that if the ravens die out or leave, the crown falls and Britain with it?'

‘Yus. The crown fell off of the Queen's 'ed when she was doin' a thing in Westminster. The ravens 'ad gorn, and there was a right fuss, but the Queen said it was all'—Minty adopted a highly pitched posh voice, apparently the tone of royalty—‘
it is all soupy-stitious nonsense. We will just get some more ravens, won't we? Yeah
. So she was talking to all the genklemen at Parliament an' she 'ad 'er crown on.
It gives me great pleasure to launch this Parliament and all what sail in it. Oooh, I've come over all funny
.' Minty gripped her throat. ‘
Ecchhhhhhhhhhhh …
Fell down the steps, an' her crown fell orft, and then the genklemen went
Ecchhhhhhhhh …
an' everybody died. An' some of 'em came back as monsters an' that. An' the 'ole city was dead after a couple of days an' I'm a ghost.' She shrugged. ‘Wish I'd got to be a leech. Could still touch stuff, then. Wish I could do that.' She looked at her hands, as grey and undefined as mist with smudges for fingers. ‘This ain't fair, bein' a ghosty.'

‘Being a vampire isn't all fun and games, either, I have to tell you. Being dead generally isn't a wonderful experience. That's assuming you know about it at all. Do you have anyone to talk to usually? Any ghosty friends?'

She shook her head. ‘Not many as died ended up as ghosties. I sees 'em about sometimes, but I stays away. Some of 'em 'ave gone a bit mad, all wailin' an' carryin' on. People wiv bodies can't 'urt me, but maybe
they
can. Don't wanna risk it, do I?' She looked speculatively at Horst. ‘'Ave you got any leech friends?'

‘No. I'm here in London with family and acquaintances; they're a mixed lot but none of them are vampires. In fact, I was walking up towards Tottenham Court Road with my brother and his friend when I saw you. I hope they'll be all right.' He nodded with reasonably justified certainty. ‘They'll be fine.'

‘Are they livers? Alive, I means? Town's dangerous for livers 'less they're in a big gang. They might get in trouble.'

Horst gave a rueful smile. ‘I'd be astonished if they didn't. I'm not so very worried, though. The lady is apparently technically dead but somehow alive. And she's a witch.'

‘A witch?' Minty's eye smudges grew big. ‘Is your bruvva a wizard or summat?'

‘No. Well, yes, but don't call him that. Yes, he's a sort of wizard, and worse.'

‘Worse?' Minty said it breathlessly. In a city of horrors, it took quite a lot to impress her these days, but Horst was managing it.

‘Uh-huh. He's a
scientist
.'

*   *   *

Zarenyia was not edifying to look upon as she slept, if it was indeed sleep as mortals know it. She had stopped breathing a little while before. As soon as Leonie Barrow had noticed, she had attempted to restart the cycle on inhalations and exhalations so beloved of aerobic organisms. She had some first aid training, and so attempted the kiss of life. This did not prove a success as a medical technique, although it had an unexpected corollary in that Miss Barrow found herself unexpectedly overcome and had to sit down for a while with a silly smile upon her face and unexpected vistas in her mind.

Zarenyia began breathing again, but only long enough to murmur, ‘Naughty girl,' before stopping again. Leonie belatedly realised that drawing breath was merely a habit for the devil, and useful for talking, but otherwise an affectation. Her colour remained good, and the pulse in her neck still showed as regular but perhaps weaker than it ought to be.

Unable to make herself useful as a nurse, Leonie instead busied herself by checking the security of the gallery. It was well locked up, by and large, but there was nothing that could be done for the shattered lock in the main door, or to make the tall windows that flanked it any less breakable. She paused by one of the windows and looked out across Trafalgar Square. She had been through the real thing several times in her life, and it had never been anything but furiously busy, full of tourists taking in the sights and Londoners cursing them for it. Seeing it entirely devoid of life and, worse yet, likely to remain so but for she and her companions was one of the most remarkable sights of her life. Well, that and the last night of the Brothers Cabal Carnival. And the business with the
Princess Hortense
. Actually, she had to concede that she had seen several very remarkable sights in her life, and every instance had been to do with Johannes Cabal in some capacity. The sights had never been enjoyable, true, but they were undeniably remarkable.

It was also curious how the city seemed to illuminate itself. There may well have been a brilliant full moon in the heavens, but it was impossible to tell through the thick, high cloud that choked the sky from horizon to horizon. The buildings themselves seemed illuminated by a deep midnight blue projected from an unseen source. It reminded her of how stage sets were artfully illuminated in the theatre when a nocturnal scene was called for. That in turn reminded her of her small triumph in the sadly non-existent city of Sepulchre. She missed the place, with its remarkable architecture, its sense of having been thrown together to be interesting rather than functional, and best of all its endemic crime problem. She had a feeling that even the lowliest crook there was capable of committing apparently impossible crimes that required the ratiocinations of a great detective. The Great Detective. She smiled to herself: that had felt good; she couldn't deny it. If only the real world could be so obliging. Fewer knocks to the head with a cudgel and more arcane poisons from the Mysterious Orient. That would make her very happy.

She looked up at the sound of a cry from the square. A man was running across the paving stones as a jackrabbit runs from the hounds. A moment later the hounds arrived. A gang of six men were pursuing the first in a group that turned into a skirmish line as they harried him towards the base of the column. They were laughing and view-holloaing at one another like public schoolboys as they cut off their prey's retreat and closed the noose around him. Leonie did not like the way this was developing at all. She picked up the shotgun from where she had left it leaning by the window and considered it. It held five cartridges. She would have to get closer to stand a decent chance of scoring solid hits, and there was no guarantee that she would hit with every shell. It seemed unlikely that she would have a chance to reload. And what if they were carrying firearms, too?

As she calculated the odds, time was running out for the hunted man. She opened the door a crack and was able to hear the confrontation across the strangely still night air.

‘I never dun nuffin' to you!' The man was garbling in terror. ‘Leave me alone! Ain't there 'orrors enough in this place?'

‘Oh, my God, Rupert, did you hear that?' One of the pursuers was somehow managing to drawl even while recovering his breath. ‘A double negative and a dropped aspirate. Killing him would be a mercy to the Queen's English.'

‘Queen's dead, old boy,' said another. ‘Well,
sort
of dead, at any rate.'

Leonie suddenly recognised the easy resort to cries of ‘Tally-ho!' and ‘Yoiks!' These were City gents, gone feral.

‘I know a way out of the city!' said the trapped man. ‘I can lead you out, like!'

‘Lead us out?' More laughter. ‘Why would we want to leave London? Have you seen the rest of the country? Absolutely ghastly; full of people who can't enunciate properly. No, no, no. Simply won't do. We're happy here. We know where there are some absolutely splendid wine cellars, and we can do as we like.'