Authors: Kat Richardson
So I was standing in the dim cellar among the smells of damp wood and spilled beer, waiting for an audience. It didn’t feel like the first time I’d met with Edward at the After Dark club in Seattle. I’d been naive and lucky then, however scared and ballsy. This time I knew better and I was a lot more frightened. I hoped the delay wasn’t an indication of bad things and I camouflaged my fears in boredom and the discomfort of being in the same clothes I’d been wearing for two days. At least the shower and washer in the boat worked well enough, but I still missed my suitcase and figured I’d never see it again.
Idly staring around the room, I could detect the Grey outline of a door in the stone foundation wall, charmed to appear solid to most people. I pretended not to notice. I sat on a stack of beer kegs and rolled my eyes, yawning for the benefit of my single “escort,” a demi-vamp who seemed to be named Dez and who didn’t quite ignore me but didn’t say much, either. He boiled with unfocused anger and frustration that seemed to have nothing to do with me. Not all demi-vamps are thrilled about their station in life or addicted to the rush I’m told they get from whatever it is that keeps them hovering halfway between one state and the next. The unsure ones, like Dez, don’t survive very long.
The restless energy of the room shifted, steadied, and flushed a bloody crimson, reeking of carnage. The suffering ghosts moaned and flickered out, washed away by the influx. Dez stiffened and turned his attention toward the magic doorway as it sparkled and faded to let someone in.
The sound of shoes on stone stairs preceded the appearance of another male vampire. At least, I assumed he was a vampire, since he presented himself with authority, though he didn’t have the same aura or look as any vampire I’d met before—even the asetem. He had the strangest eyes I’d ever encountered: silver, pupilless discs that seemed to float in the sclera like coins on a sheen of oil. He was whippet thin and wore a long brick red coat over a dark suit that seemed to have come from some other time and place, though in the glimpse I had of it, I couldn’t tell where or when. He had a double aura I’d never seen before: one pure black, relieved by jagged sparks of red; the other a shifting maze of silver planes.
He glanced at me and then at Dez and pointed at me with a jabbing motion. “Search her. Then you come downstairs with us.” His was a strange accent with stretched vowels and soft consonants.
He made an ironic little bow to me and then stepped back into the darkness of the concealed doorway. But I could see his unearthly eyes gleaming in the shadow as Dez stepped close to me.
I raised my arms and let Dez pat me down. He was just short of overly familiar in his thoroughness and stiffened as his hand fell on the hard object I’d tucked into the back of my waistband. He yanked it out and brought it out in front of us.
“It’s my cell phone,” I stated, a bit snappish for effect.
Which it was. Closed and quiet, hardly a threat.
Dez held it toward the vampire in the doorway. I saw the dismissive flap of his hand in the dark. I rolled my eyes and took it back.
“Thanks so much,” I said, tucking the phone back into the place I normally holstered my pistol. It felt comfortable there and it was out of the way.
Dez finished the pat down, leaving my wallet and my father’s puzzle unmolested in my pockets, and then escorted me toward the concealed stairs. The eerie-eyed vampire preceded us down the steep stone steps. It felt like we were descending a tilted well. Once again I had a sense of water nearby that rose as we went down below its unseen surface, and the sounds I’d thought came from the clerk’s well swelled as we continued. We passed through layer on layer of ghosts, descending by centuries until even the Roman soldiers patrolling a phantom riverside were far above our heads. By the time we reached the bottom, the sound was much too loud to be another well, but there was no sign of real water other than some clinging moisture and moss on the walls.
We went down a twisted, arched passage and stepped out into a large, vaulted stone chamber that was lit entirely by candles as long and wide as my arm. I wondered if it was the same place where Barnaby had seen the broken amphorae. Energy seemed to lie at its edges like a live thing held leashed and ready. The room had the intense feel of a place meant for rituals that shouldn’t see the light of day.
The room, shrouded with the roiling stink of vampires and their restless red-and-black auras, was unevenly five-sided, and arched doorways cut the walls on all sides. We’d entered on the shortest wall, and directly opposite, in the apex of the crooked pentagon’s crown, was a low wooden platform. One of the other arches looked onto the back of the platform at one end. A handful of vampires, demi-vamps, and Red Guard assistants stood around the edges of the room, watching us with a coil of eldritch yellow light beneath their feet. Within the darkened arches, eyes gleamed orange like hellfire from pale smudges.
Two male vampires were waiting for us on the dais, one seated and smiling just a touch, the other standing back a little, his expression one of panic barely held in check. He was bowed down by something, and I could see a bend of yellow light around his body. I wondered who he was and why he seemed to be held prisoner there. I knew I’d interrupted the usual flow of business and I hoped the strange tableau indicated nothing sinister to my purpose, but I wouldn’t have bet on it.
The seated vampire stood up as we drew near. He looked more like someone you’d expect to be running the local stevedores’ union than a film vampire—stocky, heavy featured, scarred on face and hands, self-conscious in his tailored suit. My unsettling escort stopped at the edge of the platform and glared at Dez and then stepped aside while Dez faded back to the wall.
The husky one from the chair shot an uneasy glance at the silver-eyed vampire. Then he gave me a hollow smile and took half a step forward, closing the distance between us to a couple of feet. With the platform giving him added height, I was still tall enough to see the frightened vampire over his shoulder, but just barely.
“Miss Blaine,” the one nearest me started. “Pleased you’ve come round. We all hoped as you’d be here sooner. I’m Henry Glick.” He emphasized “hope” as if I’d disappointed him. His accent was working-class, with the Hs softened almost to silence.
I took Glick’s proffered hand with reluctance. I was under no illusion that this was a social visit, but I needed to be polite if I was petitioning his aid. I hated the touch of vampires, though his was much cooler and less nauseating than most. I still took my hand back as quickly as good manners allowed and stepped away a little.
I glanced at the cowering creature behind him. “Have I interrupted something?”
“Not so much. Don’t pay that any mind.” But as he said it, his gaze slipped to the side and his mouth was stiff, like someone telling an uncomfortable lie.
“Mr. Glick,” I started. “I came here on behalf of a . . . former Brother of St. James. I know there’s no great love between St. John and St. James’s, but I think we may be of use to each other.”
“How’s that?” Glick asked, licking his lips. A nervous gesture.
“I’m a stranger here, so I’m not entirely sure of the situation, but I suspect there’s been a change of management up the street at St. James. Is that true?”
“Ah. Yeah. Clever way o’ putting it.”
So we’d guessed right about a power grab at St. James’s. That didn’t cheer me, since it was probably Alice who’d snatched the reins. I felt eyes on me and a chill that pushed through my body, sharp as a knife. A frown creased my face and I tried to clear it away, not wanting to offend the man I was going to ask for help. The resulting expression must have been stiff.
“I believe your rival up the street,” I continued, slower, trying to feel my way through the shoals of the situation, “has taken a friend of my employer and a friend of mine prisoner. I’d like to get them back and I think the only way to do it will be to take the current Primate of St. James down.”
“Why would you think I’d help you?”
I felt as if I were dragging every syllable from him.
I used the information Marsden had provided. “Because I believe the Primate of St. James has brought the asetem-ankh-astet to your doorstep. She’s violated the covenant set long ago among the three clans of London. Asetem are supposed to stay south of the Thames, aren’t they? Yet I saw them only a couple of nights ago not a hundred feet from the doors of St. James’s church.”
“True it is, Miss Blaine. That was the covenant. And the asetem do roam in Clerkenwell, but we—”
“Then why haven’t you done anything about it?” I asked, losing a bit of my patience.
The apparently trapped vampire behind Glick writhed and looked down at the floor and then back up at me as if he were trying to direct my eyes to something, but I couldn’t risk pulling my attention away from Glick long enough to study the slick-looking patch of stone he stared at.
Glick sighed, his shoulders sagging. “Because I’m no longer the Primate of St. John.” He shot a glance over his shoulder, and something stirred in the shadows of the nearest arch. “She is.”
“Harper, dear. You were just a day too late,” said a female voice, and then it giggled with a greater measure of madness than Chastity’s unbalanced laughter had contained.
Most of the arches filled with the pale white presence of the asetem-ankh-astet as they stepped into the verges of the light, their orange-glowing eyes dimming in the room’s illumination. The coil of yellow power around the edge of the room shivered and crept higher up the walls, closing the room in a protective circle. I looked toward the empty arch behind the platform where the voice came from.
A slender female strolled out of the darkness, dragging it with her like a train. Alice. She wore some kind of skintight black stuff that looked more like bandages or a winding sheet than clothing, leaving only her head, forearms, and feet uncovered. A bright red choker circled her throat, dangling ruby beads on glowing white skin. Her eyes burned from shadowed sockets above lips stained the deep wine color of a fresh bruise. Wine: that had been the color of her hair when last I’d seen her in Seattle—staked through the chest on the floor of the burning house. Now her hair had gone the dark auburn of dried blood.
“Imagine, trying to suborn my underlings like that,” she said. “Naughty, naughty,” she added, her voice resonant with pressure against the old geas between us. The geas was a magical compulsion between us; one I’d forced her into so she’d let me live if I let her get to Edward. It bound us both equally. I should have wondered harder about the lingering effect of the geas that kept me from speaking of certain things, or doing them, after I’d presumed her dead. But I hadn’t, and now I was going to pay for that.
A dark-haired, bearded man stepped out of the arch behind her and stopped a few paces back, watching the show. A phantom black strand of magic unreeled between him and Alice while another reached out to touch the spooky-eyed creature beside me. A third strand, white and heavier than the others, stretched between the creature and Alice, closing the unnatural triangle. The new man seemed familiar. . . . He carried his own cloud of ugliness that boiled with glimpses of tormented, crying faces. Then I remembered where I’d seen him before. “Ezra?” I asked.
He gave a small, crooked smile and tilted his head. “Ah, no. But how would you know? I am Simeon. My apprentice left this world long ago. But he was useful in making me as you see me now. Before he died, we discovered a great deal about the making of clay men and the binding of souls, which has been invaluable in my work here. I’m wroth with you for destroying my golem. It was a masterpiece.”
He’d made the golem of Will. I cringed, thinking of what must have been done to make it so big, strong, and real. Real enough to fool Michael; strong enough to walk around for a week or more.
My stomach curdled and I tasted bile in the back of my mouth as more pieces fell into place. Blood and bandages, a sorcerer below St. John’s, and Alice up and walking where she shouldn’t have been. Alice must have been the creature in the jars filled with blood. I wondered how he’d done it, how he’d stitched her back together, and how—
The word slipped out. “How?”
Alice had strolled to Glick’s side and then half a step past him, eclipsing him. She raised one hand toward the silver-eyed creature beside me. “Kreanou,” she murmured. “Very good.”
Kreanou—was that a name or a title?—made a sound a lot like a growl and pinned his spooky gaze on her as if he would devour her in a single bite if he had the chance. But he didn’t move.
Alice smirked. She was on the dais, several steps above me, so she could look down at me. It was barely enough extra height: We were almost eye to eye.
“How did I survive the fire? The Pharaohn, of course. Wygan followed me to the house. But not for me, Harper. For you.” A minute sharpness in her voice gave her fury and bitterness away. “He wanted to be sure you’d survive whatever happened. You have no idea how often he’s looked over your shoulder, or for how long. Like a guardian angel.” She gave her mad giggle once again, her eyes glittering. “Or maybe I should say, ‘like a guardian beast’?”