Victorian Vampire 2: The Madness of Priests

Prologue

In which a woman is rescued, a captain is felled, and some of the origins of our tale are revealed.

London, May and June, 1869

"Beautiful, isn’t she?" Lady Ophelia Merritt’s voice never quite traveled above a whisper, sounding more like a breeze through silk than anything else. "Like fine china."

"Yes, I suppose." Victoria, for her part, had relatively little patience for Ophelia’s constant infatuations. Every week, it seemed, she produced another man or woman who had caught her fancy. This one had the bluest eyes, that one the fairest skin--since Helen of Troy, if you were to believe her hyperbole. The next had the voice of an angel, one that age could never be allowed to spoil. Each one a pretty fancy that kept Lady Merritt rapt for nights on end.

And that was the rub, of course. She would spend nights, not the centuries she professed, admiring her latest protégé, devouring every facet of his beauty, every note of her voice. Then, inevitably, she would tire of the thing and it would be up to Victoria to dispose of it. What had been irreplaceable would become first irritating and then insupportable, and then Victoria would arrive to take care of the unpleasantness.

"Her name is Emma." Ophelia was staring out the open window onto the terrace in the back of her home on Park Lane in Mayfair, the most fashionable address in the West End. The front of the house was perforce rather stern, all the better to keep out certain prying eyes, but the façade hid one of the finest gardens in all of London. The terrace granted visitors a view of the tight hedge maze and concealed lawn west of the house, dotted with gas lamps and other conveniences. Such as shadows deep enough for every kindred in the city to play their games.

"Where did you find her, milady?" Victoria had no real interest in this creature, but her social better expected the question and she had no desire to be petulant tonight. Let the great dame of London’s undead have her distractions and let Victoria get on with her business.

"She came with Monsieur Pachard. A bauble he acquired from acquaintances in County Durham, if I understand correctly." Lady Merritt smiled. "Don’t be so surprised, dear child, he and I have much in common."

Victoria felt her blood rising, the bitter sting of bile joining it. This would complicate matters when the time came. It took her several seconds of gazing at nothing in particular before she could speak again without betraying herself. She realized, of course, that she could hide very little from Ophelia Merritt--but the key was never to say anything. Feelings were never as important as words. Finally, Victoria felt her voice was sufficiently icy and spoke again. "What can I do for you tonight?"

"Oh, yes." Ophelia’s voice took on the sour tone of a child reminded that it had to come in from the garden. "Michael. He’s proved tiresome."

Another toy, another grave.

* * *

"And what do you see for me, holy man?" Prince-Regent Valerius smiled at the blond man, showing only the hint of his fine teeth. "A thousand years of glorious rule?"

Lady Merritt felt a delicious tension bunch in her innards and, satisfyingly, heard young Emma gasp in the next room. The young woman had tasted her blood only twice and already the bond was strong. The tension she felt, though, had more to do with the implications of the prince-regent’s question. A faux pas tonight could be very unpleasant indeed.

Valerius had now sat as London’s preeminent vampire for seventy years, ever since Prince Mithras had departed for parts unknown. He’d acted as seneschal before that time , but always in the shadow of the ancient monster who claimed the name of a Persian god. No longer. Under Valerius’s regency, the city had weathered an unpleasant outbreak of sectarian violence among its undead twenty years ago and shortly thereafter hosted the Great Exposition that confirmed it as the center of the civilized world. Valerius had helped usher the city into modernity and cemented new and lasting relationships among the sophisticated predators who stalked its nights.

The social gathering tonight, for example, would have been unthinkable under the more backward-looking rule of Prince Mithras. In those nights, the Tremere order was banished from London and the blood-wizards hid in the shadows of County Durham or simply remained out of England altogether. Tonight, Monsieur Pachard, who had first brought darling Emma into this house, was a guest of honor and acted as the representative of his order in Valerius’s court. And neither was he the only Tremere present. The insufferable Doctor Bainbridge was about as well, probably stuffing his abnormally tolerant gullet with the pastries and meats set out for those guests best described as entertainment.

"Your Grace, Father Anatole is a practitioner of mysteries, not political intrigues." Stephen Lenoir stepped forward as he spoke, and Lady Merritt knew that he saw the danger as well. And good that he did, since he had brought this Anatole to London in the first place. Lenoir cut, as always, a dashing figure in his black-as-night evening suit. His hair matched the fabric so well she had to assume the one had been tinted to match the other.

"But Mr. Lenoir," Prince-Regent Valerius said, "surely we are all enlightened enough in this age of reason to listen without judgment to such entertainments. Or do you purport to reintroduce the superstitions of the past into this city?"

Lady Merritt smiled. The prince-regent had a skill at weaving these traps of paradoxical rhetoric. Vampires, creatures who lived without life, who fed on blood and burned to ash by the light of the sun, discussing the merits of reason versus spirituality was an elegant snare indeed. Valerius had built much of his rule on the basis of squarely entering the age of modernity--for Lenoir or his guest to challenge that would be dangerous. But then again, the prince-regent had requested a scrying.

"As you say, Your Grace," Lenoir said with a mild bow. "For the purposes of your amusement, then." He turned to the guest. "If you would oblige, Father Anatole?"

"Bien sûr, mon prince."

The mystic was, as his kind often were, somewhat disheveled. His long blond hair had the unkempt look of a traveler or a colonial and his simple frock looked like that of a Catholic monk. A long string of rosary beads weighted with a brass Egyptian cross hung at his neck, adding to his monastic appearance. His eyes, a deep blue, burned with the light of madness unimagined, a powerful enticement to creatures such as those assembled here tonight, who felt they could imagine it all.

He closed his eyelids for what would have been a heartbeat had any of the players in this little drama had beating hearts. Then he opened them again to reveal eyes gone purely white as his irises turned to look inside. He spouted a bevy of words in languages Lady Merritt could not comprehend--a standard prelude to his predictions, it seemed--and began.

"I see a king… cursed and alone… He wanders alone through trees scented with violets…"

Whispers began already. Could the king be the absent Prince Mithras? Or was it Valerius himself? Or another, perhaps?

"The king enters a room and it is a shambles… Trash and jewels are scattered everywhere… He roars and his lost armies rally to him from the very earth… Together, they battle against the enemy… the pretender…"

All the whispering died with that last word. Was the mad French priest calling Valerius a pretender to his face?

"The king is victorious… But during the battle, he passes by a thorn-bush and is scratched… In the thorn bush, there is a viper and it bites him deeply… The king sits on his throne, but he is sick and the kingdom withers before his eyes…."

Suddenly the cleric’s eyes were clear again, blue and piercing, staring straight at Valerius. "This is what I see, my prince."

Well, Lady Merritt thought, I doubt I shall invite Mr. Lenoir again.

Emma had outlasted the other favorites, thank providence, and so Victoria had had the time to gather information about the girl who would inevitably become hers to dispose of. She’d very quickly grown tired of Lady Merritt’s tendency to go through protégés, but had never before thought it worth disobeying her own patron in London for it. Indeed, Ophelia Merritt had welcomed her seven years ago when she’d arrived by transatlantic clipper from Halifax after a harrowing escape from the destructive war consuming the American states she’d nested in for a great deal of time. For that, Victoria owed Lady Merritt a great deal--the Good Lord only knew what her reception might have been had she been forced to try Paris.

Still, the matter of Emma was different. The mildest amount of research had revealed that her birth name was not Emma Druhill, but Emiliana Ducheski. She was the daughter of an inbred clan of misplaced Slavs who had survived under the careful eye of the warlocks of House Tremere for some centuries. Even if Monsieur Pachard, the Tremere envoy in London, had intended Emma as a gift for Lady Merritt, discarding her would be an embarrassment. If, as Victoria believed, the Tremere had plans for young Emma, then it would be significantly more awkward.

Lady Merritt, as one of the grande dames of London’s night society, would be hard to attack directly, of course. Victoria would make for a much more palatable target, a way to hurt Merritt without causing a breakdown of the traditions. Victoria was anxious to make sure that did not come to pass.

The gravity of the problem came to light when Victoria uncovered, with the help of her manservant Cedric, that Emma Ducheski had in fact been married to a Captain James Blake of the 12th Hussars shortly before her introduction to Lady Merritt. Blake had spent the last two months in Africa, as part of an action in Ethiopia, but would surely discover the alarming change in his bride’s condition upon his return. Although the union seemed to be one of those not uncommon matches between the heiress of a wealthy commercial family and the son of a less-than-solvent viscount, the letter Cedric had intercepted seemed to be heartfelt. More importantly, there was a good chance that Pachard, in his constant quest to establish legitimacy for his order, had engineered the union in order to gain access to the aristocracy. All the more reason to forestall any unpleasant fate for the girl.

Thus, Victoria put pen to paper. Little Mary-Elizabeth did a fine job of serving as an escritoire, laying bare-backed on the cotton sheets of Victoria’s bed in her house on Charlotte Place. The girl, barely into womanhood, was a marvelous creature and she suppressed little giggles as the pen strokes through paper tickled her back and Victoria’s hand brushed her bottom. Victoria felt urges more immediate than the safety of Emma Ducheski rise in her, but kept her head about her. First the letter, then there would be time for the pleasures of feeding.

My Dear Capt. Blake, she began. I have it on good authority that your duty keeps you from your darling wife’s side, but I urge you to return….

*          *            *

"Be quiet, you foolish thing!" It was almost July and the time had come. Emma Blake was not making things any easier, however. She was still besotted with Lady Merritt, the woman who’d used her body and soul for nigh on six weeks and then suddenly grown cruel and cold. She was insisting that Victoria return her to the house on Park Lane, confident that her mistress would welcome her back with open arms.

Finally, Victoria had to clamp her hand over the woman’s mouth lest her screams alert some Peeler or other bothersome fool. Cedric was guiding their carriage, a heavy black coach, across Blackfriars Bridge and into the Southwark Borough, a warren of cutthroats and ne’er-do-wells whom Victoria knew not to trust with the opportunity to make mischief.

Of course , she was coming here to find one of the worst of the lot.

"Think of your husband, girl," Victoria hissed, releasing the pressure on the girl’s mouth lest she suffocate. "He is coming for you."

A flicker of confusion passed across the young woman’s face. "James? But he died…"

Panic seeped into Victoria’s veins, but she kept it from her face. Might James Blake be dead already? If so, all was lost. "Who told you that?"

"Milady."

Victoria relaxed. "She lied. She wanted to have all your attention for herself. James Blake is alive and well."

"No," the girl said stubbornly. "Why should I believe you? You are the liar here."

"Think what you want, girl. The evidence of your own eyes will show you the truth soon enough." Victoria’s thoughts completed the sentence for her: I hope.

The carriage stopped in what passed for a square in the Borough, namely a tight knot of three streets and four alleys, with an alehouse and a workhouse-cum-brothel facing each other across the way. The carriage took up much of the available muddy space.

Victoria pushed open the shutter on the window by her head and looked out at the workhouse. She waited, listening to the noise from the tavern across the way, and the grunts of a prostitute and her client making use of one of the alleys. In the many years since she had last needed to take a breath, Victoria had discovered that her senses had grown much sharper than those of a mortal woman. Become a nocturnal predator, she could--when she put her mind to it--see with the acuity of an owl and hear like a great cat. Thus, she was not altogether shocked that she saw Samuel coming.

Samuel was new to both the blood and the city. The former condition meant he was still perfecting the compensations that came with damnation. The curse had caused a sort of pestilence in his flesh, making it resemble one of the countless sick who clogged hospices during outbreaks of disease. Most people do their best to ignore such disgusting folk and Samuel had discovered how to enhance that effect. Unless he did something obvious, most people never had any idea he was there.

Victoria Ash, however, was not most people. She had dealt, once upon a time, with a true mistress of this trick, the undead street urchin Clotille who had watched all of Paris’s intrigues unseen. That was several lifetimes ago, but Victoria’s acute senses still allowed her to see--or at least sense--a novice like Samuel approach. She was aware that the fog and the shadows seemed a little too thick in a corner or down an alley and a deep instinct born of simple survival told her something was within them.

Nevertheless, she let him reveal himself. To his credit, he did so without the usual fanfare of such displays. He did not jump out at Victoria and her charge for the sake of a cheap shock. Instead, he just appeared, like a detail seen but unnoticed up until that point.

"You have it?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. "I always pay my debts." With that she opened the door and pushed Emma Blake bodily into the mud.

The girl screamed. "What? But--"

She was cut off as Samuel dragged her bodily into the whorehouse where he made his nest.

Part One

London, August and September, 1888

In which hunters of diverse types seek their prey

Chapter One

Tomb robbery, it seemed, came easily to Lt. Malcolm Seward. Indeed, the lock popped open without much effort, and he couldn’t help but wonder just what his facility for sacrilege might imply about his character. In light of his activities over the last few months, vandalizing the offices of Pritchett & Sons Undertakers of Coggeshall, Essex should seem only a minor transgression, but he was still nervous.

"Quickly now," said the man with Seward, "before we are seen." Like the lieutenant, this man was dressed in simple, dark-colored country clothes--looking something like a gentleman returning late from the hunt (although it was early in the season). In fact, he was a viscount--James, Lord Blake to be precise--and although the scandal would be far greater were he to be discovered in the midst of such a burglary, it had been his idea.

The two men slipped in through the back door of the undertaker’s. That door gave onto a small courtyard whose stone wall they had both clambered over, so Seward hoped they would not be seen. Surely no one would notice the absence of the padlock on the outside latch. He hoped.

The door was a service entrance, and the room behind it was not dressed in the proper, somber ways of deep mourning like the front of the shop surely was. Indeed, Mr. Pritchett would use the examples on display in his storefront to help families decide on the specifics of their service, interment and observances. Instead, the back store was a utilitarian space, where the paraphernalia of death was stacked in rows on shelves or in large boxes. It all seemed much less proper and much more commercial as Seward and Lord Blake crept through the tight rows of mortuary knickknacks. A rack of black broadcloth suits--ready for those who had no proper attire in life but needed it in death--stood opposite shelves filled with box –upon box of cards. The cards were blank save for the pre-printed border designs, ready to receive the details of a service. They would be sent to a printer’s shop to have those inscribed upon them. In the corner of the room, on a tall wooden tripod, stood the large box of a photographic camera. Mr. Pritchett must serve several well-to-do clients ready to have daguerreotype mourning cards made of their beloved dead before the interment.

"Through here." Blake pointed at a large set of double doors at the far end of the cluttered space, near the hallway leading to the front of the business. Another padlock dangled from a heavy chain wrapped through iron rings in the wooden doors.

Seward still had the pry bar he’d used on the outside lock, and he brought it to bear anew. The padlock itself was awkwardly placed for the bar’s use, but one of the rings in the doors offered better prospects. He slipped the end of the bar through the ring, dug it into the edge of the door and pushed out. As he’d suspected, the wood had suffered some rot and after a few seconds of effort, the ring slowly came out. A small shower of sawdust and the clanging of the chain and lock accompanied its liberation.

The two men froze at the sound, hoping the undertakers sleeping upstairs wouldn’t wake. After several minutes of hearing nothing but their own breathing, they relaxed. Opening the door, they headed down the shallow slope into the facility’s small, cold cellar.

Like the storage room, this basement was cluttered. In fact, it seemed that supplies from above had migrated down into the cold for want of more room. More boxes crowded along one wall. In the corner were two fresh blocks of ice slowly sweating down into drip pans. That, added to the fact that the room’s floor was a full six feet below ground, kept the air positively chilled. After all, this was where they kept the corpses.

There were two of them this night, both sitting in caskets and ready for burial the next day. The first, in a tiny white coffin, was a child. Seward, who’d arrived from London the previous day, had overheard talk of a village girl dead from fever and this was evidently that child. "Rest in peace," he whispered, and turned to the other casket.

This one was full sized, of black-painted oak with brass fittings. Seward himself had helped the deceased’s brother Harold choose it. The man inside was Seward’s brother-in-law, John Claremont. Three nights previous, Seward and Blake (along with Seward’s poor widowed sister, Joanna) had witnessed the man’s murder. Now, they were here to guarantee its permanence.

"Are you certain this is necessary, Colonel?" Seward had served in the 12th Hussars under Lord Blake’s command and had never lost the habit of referring to him by rank.

"No." Blake signaled for Seward to help him raise the lid of the coffin. "There’s very little of which I am certain in these affairs, Seward, but I for one am not ready to take any risks."

"But--"

"Come, boy!" Blake’s shout reverberated in the small, cold chamber and brought both men up short. He continued in a harsh whisper. "I’ve seen my wife fallen to these creatures and perhaps my daughter too. I won’t have other innocents damned because I failed to act. Will you?"

That was the question, wasn’t it? Just how far would Seward go to protect those he cared for? Or even to succeed in his own ambitions? He’d faced the horrors of the battlefield in Egypt and the Sudan and they had changed him, made him harder. Since his return to England the previous winter, every day had brought another dark truth for him to deal with, another challenge to overcome. His sister’s life was destroyed. His lover’s soul was in jeopardy. The unthinkable was now not only thinkable, but doable. He lifted the casket’s lid.

John Claremont was dressed in the black wool suit Seward and his sister had picked out the day before. His flesh was puffy and wan, covered in a layer of undertaker’s makeup. He looked neither rested nor peaceful. He simply looked dead. "What now?"

"Open his jacket, vest and shirt," Blake said. "So we can see his chest." While Seward did so, Lord Blake opened the small tool bag and began fishing around for items.

"Alright," Seward said. His brother-in-law’s chest was pale and terrible. A large angry wound, sewn shut with black catgut, showed where the killing blow had emerged. John Claremont had been stabbed in the back, the tip of the long thin blade emerging between two ribs. The wound on his back was surely more dreadful.

"First, the talismans." As Blake fished various items out of the tool bag, Seward wondered just what strange doors had opened in the colonel’s mind since tragedy had visited his family. This was the same man, after all, who had railed against superstitions of all sorts for as long as Seward had known him. The lieutenant marveled as he quickly cut the threads keeping Claremont’s lips sealed, and drew out the man’s tongue. Onto it he placed a dry circle of unleavened bread--a communion wafer. Seward didn’t want to know just where he had got that item. Then, onto Claremont’s eyes, Lord Blake placed two large copper pennies. Finally, he pried open the man’s hand and slipped in a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.

"The fifty-first psalm," Blake said, holding up a page obviously taken from that same book. "We will use it to cover the damage of the next stage."

Seward didn’t speak as Blake bent over to retrieve other items from the tool bag.

"This," Blake said, "requires a stronger hand than mine." With that he handed a large mallet and a sharpened wooden stake to Seward.

"Good Lord…"

"It is necessary, Seward. It wasn’t so long ago those damned souls who killed themselves had this done to their bodies by law. And were buried at a crossroads. That was for the same purpose as ours: so they would stay in their graves."

"Claremont didn’t kill himself," Seward said, but he knew the argument was futile. The murderer had been a cursed man, able to heal grievous wounds and endowed with terrible strength, and as far as they could tell, the servant of an even more terrible beast. If there was a chance that John Claremont could be caught in the damned state of undeath, they had to act.

Seward placed to the stake over the man’s heart, just adjacent to the place where the knife-blade had protruded, and readied the mallet. While Blake read from the psalm, he drew back.

"Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me," Blake read. "Cast me not away from thy presence: and take not thy holy Spirit from me."

Seward brought the mallet down once, twice, and three times more.

*   *   *

John Claremont’s body found its final rest in a small country graveyard in the farmlands just east of Coggeshall. The funeral and interment were dour, simple affairs. It was the second week of August but just a touch of the coming autumn decided to visit the skies for the occasion, in the form of banks of gray clouds that dropped a cold mist on the ceremony. The vicar spoke the required words to lead the mourning, and his appreciations of John, a local man who had made good in London and brought respectability to his family, were honest, if rather unmoving. The clergyman made little mention of the circumstances of Mr. Claremont’s death, saying only that he had been taken before his time.

In fact, Father Bethel knew very little about how John Claremont had died. All he had been told was that the man was murdered by an intruder in his own home, a fine house in Chelsea. The vicar assumed that it had been a case of burglary, an attempt to steal the receipts of Mr. Claremont’s latest business dealing, or to take what plate, jewels and other valuables might be in the house. At the request of Lord Blake, the casket remained closed during the service. Blake had been, it seemed, a friend of the now-widowed Mrs. Claremont during her childhood, when she had lived in Egypt, and he was now present to lend his support to her. He’d communicated to Father Bethel that poor Mrs. Claremont’s condition was so fragile that viewing her husband’s body was a medical risk. The priest was not wholly comfortable with this limitation on the proprieties of mourning, but Lord Blake was a respected man of station and a veteran of colonial campaigns, so he deferred to him.

The attendance that unseasonably cold afternoon was not numerous. Mrs. Joanna Claremont, the widow, was there in full mourning attire, of course, but she was visibly overwrought. She leaned on her brother, Lt. Malcolm Seward, who stood out in the dashing blue uniform of the Royal Horse Guards, the regiment entrusted with guarding Buckingham Palace. He wore a black armband as a sign of mourning. The other prestigious guest was the aforementioned Lord Blake. Nearby was Dr. Harold Claremont, elder brother of the deceased. He had not been overfond of Lord Blake’s request for a closed casket either, but he too had deferred to the viscount’s superior station.

Beyond that, all the attendees were women. Mrs. Enid Claremont, the deceased’s mother, had been widowed twelve years previously and now laid her youngest son to rest. By her side were her two daughters, Mrs. Margaret Cunningham (whose husband Terrence was first mate on a merchant marine vessel currently sailing the Sea of Japan) and the unmarried Elizabeth Claremont. The latter had charge of Millicent, John and Joanna’s infant daughter. Finally, Mrs. Sarah Claremont, wife of Dr. Claremont, stood with her husband. With the exception of Lt. Seward, all wore black from head to toe, many resorting to wool cloaks to stave off the rain and wind.

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy," Father Bethel said, not needing to consult his prayer book, "to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground."

The men helped lower the closed casket into the hole the gravediggers had prepared, and Joanna Claremont’s sobs began to mount in volume. Without her brother to lean on, she swayed.

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." As was his practice at such moments, Bethel looked at the small gaggle of mourners before completing the prayer for the dead, hoping to bring a sense of reassurance with his words. "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life."

Lt. Seward and Lord Blake exchanged a cold look, and Father Bethel could not shake the intuition that to them, the concept of eternal life had lost its comforting air.

*   *   *

Dr. Gerald Watson Scott opened his asylum near Highgate after returning from India in 1879. He had practiced medicine in Delhi and Bombay during his "colonial adventure," as his sister Elizabeth insisted on calling his attempt to find fortune in the East. That attempt had lasted almost ten years, during which time he had faced hardship after hardship. Despite all the pretense of recreating the gentility of English country life in the tropics, and the fact that in India servants were even more plentiful (and even more invisible) than in the mother country, there simply was less distance in the colonies between the salons of well-heeled Englishmen and the savagery of the natural world. Dr. Scott had once flirted with the Romantic attraction to the natural, with the longing for the purity of experience unfiltered by society or industry. India had cured him of all that. This was a place in which the hinterland crawled right up and into the city; in which a country trip involved tigers and cobras.

As a medical man, Dr. Scott saw firsthand the ravages of tropical life. The diseases that laughed at his science, the infections and ailments that seemed to conspire against his every effort. Colonies of lepers, outbreaks of influenza and malaria, and a heat that addled the brain and rotted the flesh--it was enough to drive a man to madness. And drive him to that it had, during the hellish monsoon season of 1875. There, when the rains were beating down on Bombay with relentless glee day after day and week after week, when the line between air and water seemed as blurry as that between sleep and wakefulness, he’d felt something in his mind give way.

The years of struggle to maintain the decorum expected of a medical man finally ended and a profound sense of release overcame him. The dreary, dank reality of his clinic gave way to the fantastic truth of a world without logic or certainty. He imagined that opium smokers used the poppy to enter this plane, this ecstatic mindscape in which the peeling plaster of a ceiling became a roadmap to the hidden lands, and the screams of a man whose gangrenous foot was being amputated merged with the bars of a divine symphony.

The madness lasted until the rains ended and probably cost the lives of three patients. For when the sole doctor in a private clinic goes mad, who is to tell? How could the Hindu carpenter, sent by his Welsh master to the medicine-wallah because of a rusted nail that had embedded itself in his foot, know that Dr. Scott would understand that the man’s heart was poisoning his soul and should be removed? Or the gouty baronet know his nightly medicines would involve strychnine in doses made to slay one of the pachyderms so prevalent in this mad land? Or the half-breed child of an unusually decent cavalryman know that his fever would be diagnosed as the result of the traumas of a too-bright world, and cured by the simple method of blinding with a poker?

When the dementia lifted with the first rays of pure sunlight, tinted an almost-green by the humidity still redolent in the air, Dr. Scott realized with full and frank honesty just what he had done. The gaping maw of his madness opened up again at that point, and he teetered on its edge. He refused to fall in, however, and instead decided that he must turn to the ailments of the mind. For if India had done this to him, then it must have done it to others. The next year he opened a small, discreet asylum dedicated to such victims.

The rains returned, of course, and with them Dr. Scott’s demons. But this time he had the devils of others’ minds to contend with and he found that the work was enough to keep his world in focus through the diluvian months. He made plans, however, to return to England and take his work with him. The Duke of Avon’s cousin had benefited from Scott’s ministrations and so His Grace had seen fit to sponsor the establishment of an asylum in Highgate, with the understanding that patients of high birth required more discreet care than they could receive in Bedlam and other such institutions. Dr. Scott had thus spent the last nine years providing just that sort of care, gaining friends in Whitehall, in Buckingham, and in many of the finest homes on Park Lane. He still refused, however, to go outside in the rain and spent most of London’s wet winters and springs holed up in his office with the shades drawn. There was no need to mention that to Lord Blake or Lt. Seward, however, who had come to visit him this August afternoon .

"Her case is not so unusual, milord." Scott glanced at his notes before continuing. "Mrs. Claremont has suffered a very serious shock, after all."

"My sister," Malcolm Seward interrupted, "saw her husband murdered before her very eyes, doctor."

"Yes, quite." Scott closed his leather-bound folder, masking the sheaf of hand-written notations within, and turned his attention on Seward. "All I wish to establish in your minds, Lieutenant,"--he glanced toward Lord Blake--"milord, is that the feminine constitution is susceptible to damage under such conditions. Especially when a woman sees her husband, the man who takes over the place of strong male from her father, slain in such a gruesome manner, it is natural for her to retreat from a reality suddenly become too harsh."

"She must remember, doctor." Lord Blake spoke like a man accustomed to command. His gray hair was cut short and his mustache finely waxed. Despite being in eveningwear, he seemed like a man ready for war.

"I understand your concern for Mrs. Claremont, milord--"

Blake stood and approached Dr. Scott, who sat behind a large desk he’d had shipped back from India. The details of his preliminary evaluation of Mrs. Claremont were in the closed leather folder on the large mahogany surface.

"This goes beyond Mrs. Claremont, Doctor." Blake’s voice was cold and hard. "The man who murdered her husband was no random ruffian."

"The details of her case are of course vital…"

Blake waved him to silence. "My own daughter has disappeared, doctor. She is at risk and I must find her. Joanna Claremont knows where she his and whom she is with, but she refuses to speak. All she does is sob!"

"I will of course do my best, milord, but her alienation is extreme. As I said, having seen her husband killed and now buried has reduced her to an infantile state. This is a woman we are speaking of and being closer, from a mental perspective, to infants than we, they are more likely to retreat. We must coax her out of her crib if we are to get the answers you seek, milord."

"Action, not words, Dr. Scott. Joanna Claremont knows something of the whereabouts of my daughter Regina and I will know what, retreat from reality or no."

Dr. Scott felt the tiny muscles around his left eye spasm once, twice. Men of station came here hat-in-hand for the most part, desperate for anyone who could make the taint of madness disappear from their family tree--or at the very least hide it away behind closed doors and absolute discretion. The doctor was not used to such demands. "Treatment takes time, milord. I must beg your patience."

"I cannot afford to be patient, doctor." Blake turned on his heels and stormed out of the office.

Seward approached Scott and spoke quietly. "Take care of Joanna, doctor, please." Then he too left.

*      *       *

The ride back to Monroe House, Lord Blake’s London residence on Arlington Street, took a good hour. The streets seemed especially crowded and with the parliamentary and social season ending for another year, there was the added bustle of last-minute activity before the peerage made its yearly emigration to the country for hunting and sport. Blake would not be making the journey to his County Durham estate this year.

The two men didn’t speak until they had arrived back at the house proper and had the butler lock the door behind them. "I don’t trust that witch doctor, Seward."

"He seems earnest enough, Colonel, but if you think there is a better place for Joanna, then--"

"No, no." He waved off Seward’s suggestion. "He’ll take good care of your sister, but I don’t think he understands the importance of her recalling the details of her discussions with my daughter. He is too focused on his own methods of care."

"Begging your pardon, Colonel, but who could rightly understand any of this without having experienced some of it?" Seward followed Blake through to the back of the house. "I don’t think I understand it myself."

Neither man spoke for a while after that. They made their way through the kitchen, usually terra incognita for anyone but the servants in such a house. The kitchen maid and cook looked askance at them, but not overly so. Lord Blake had appropriated the cellar for some private matter and the stairs down to it were through the kitchen. Mrs. Miller, the cook, knew not to ask questions of her betters.

Seward, less accustomed to the realities of a grand house with its servants, caught the eyes of the maid Isabel and wondered if she knew anything of the mad world he had entered. Did she suspect that her mistress Lady Regina, daughter of Lord Blake and his own betrothed, was missing and in the clutches of a creature neither living nor dead? Could she understand that devils in human masquerade had visited this family?

"We are dealing with the undead, Lieutenant." Lord Blake spoke once they were below ground and the door at the top of the kitchen stairs was well closed. He held a hooded lantern in one hand, but didn’t look at his young companion despite the light. His voice had little of its usual strength. "Damned things come from the East, who breathe not, who exist outside Almighty God’s divine order."

"I’ll admit to having seen some strange things since Christmastide last, Colonel, but--"

"Believe what you may, but you saw how that devilish harlot recoiled from fire and daylight." Indeed, they had last seen Regina several days ago in Dover, in the company of a woman of unparalleled beauty whom they knew as Miss Victoria Ash. Faced with fire, she had bared animalistic fangs. Faced with the rising sun, she had fled to the safety of her carriage, taking Regina with her.

"And," Blake continued, laying his hand on the iron knob of a small wooden door at the bottom of the stairs, "you saw what has become of my Emma." Worse still than facing Victoria, they had seen Lady Emma Blake board a ferry for Calais with a small party that included some of the same Slavic relatives who had buried her in County Durham the previous winter.

"I admit that I have little explanation--"

"I was young and foolish once too," Blake interrupted. "I refused to believe in the scope of the evil we face, but do not trick yourself into denying the awful truth, Lieutenant. We both saw Emma lying dead last winter. We saw her cold, still form."

"Yes…"

"Her body has risen from the grave, Lieutenant. The woman whom I married, the woman whom I loved, has been damned to Hell by the perversity of her witch-born kin."

The calm soldierly tone Blake had been known for in the regiment was gone now, replaced by a desperate energy more suited to a puritan or a demagogue. Seward felt his confidence failing. "But surely a death can be faked," he said.

"Do you think I would not know of my own wife’s death, Lieutenant?" Blake’s blood rose, turning his face an angry shade of red. "Do you think me a blind fool?"

"No, of course not, Colonel."

"Then you must face the horrid reality that confronts us." And with that he opened the door into the cellar. There was a man hanging there by a large metal hook through his shoulder. He was laughing.

Chapter Two

Gareth Ducheski did not mind the hook any more. It was a nasty iron thing, and he guessed it had once been used to suspend a huge chandelier. Or perhaps it had hung in the coach house and been used to keep the harness up off the stinking hay and dung-like mud. Now, one end hooked into the wooden rafter of the cellar and the other pierced his back just under the right shoulder blade. Its tip emerged under his clavicle.

He had hung there for seven days and nights now, ever since the damnable Blake and sniveling Seward had managed to overpower him. That, now that still bothered him. How could he, a scion of a family that had served the masters for generations, one of the lucky ones who had drunk the dark blood and been made strong by it--how could he be overwhelmed by such as they? It had been the woman, Joanna Claremont, who had surprised him by recovering from the murder of her husband to hit him over the head with something. That wound alone would not have done him in, but then Blake and Seward were on him and even the black blood in his veins hadn’t been enough to hold back unconsciousness. Then they had used fire on him and--to his shame--he had spoken.

There were concessions, of course. From the repeated arguments Blake and Seward had every time they came down to this cellar where they had placed him, Gareth had gathered that not all was well for his captors. Joanna Claremont was locked in an asylum, it seemed. What’s more, the master had escaped to the continent with darling Cousin Emma. And little Cousin Regina was missing as well. Gareth had taken to laughing whenever the two men entered the cellar in the hopes of interrogating him. He had precious little to tell them anyway, but it was pleasing to make them ill at ease.

Laughter came easily, because unlike them, he understood that his condition was improving. As a proper child of the Ducheski line, his blood was laced with the unholy vitae of the masters and that black ichor was growing within him. Already it had strengthened the muscle and tissue around the offending hook, so that the pain he felt there was little more than a mild stinging. The smells were also returning at long last. His nose had been scorched along with much of the rest of his flesh last winter, and he’d existed since then in a damnable state in which the world was a dull and bland place. But now, at long last, he could smell again--the rotting wood of the door, the rat-dung in the muddy floor three inches from his dangling toes, the fear in the house above his head.

Every hour spent here, he knew, brought him closer to freedom and vengeance. Laughing came naturally.

*      *       *

It was not altogether unusual for the blood to fail to coagulate, but still it worried Dr. Bainbridge. Although a seasoned thaumaturge--or "blood sorcerer" to use the sensationalistic phrase of some of the more squeamish kindred--his arts did not lend themselves to prophecy and scrying. His attempt to read the fates through the medium of drops of his own blood scattered on a broad copper plate was imprecise at best.

"Well?" The voice was cold and hard, devoid of most of the musical quality it had once enjoyed. This was not a man speaking, but a thing. This was Lord Valerius, once prince-regent of London, who had last drawn breath in the same year William the Conqueror arrived from Normandy. "What does it say?"

"Nothing good, I’m afraid." The droplets continued to flow long after they should have dried, or gravity should have brought them to rest. Instead of pooling, they danced a chaotic dance. "Mr. Wellig’s scheme seems to have gone astray."

Valerius closed his eyes and slowly shook his head, as if suddenly feeling the weight of the centuries on his slight shoulders. Neither of the men fit any of the stereotypes of undeath. Going beyond the fact that neither man was especially pale or possessed of semi-decomposed flesh--that was the purview of only the most wretched of their kindred--they still seemed unlikely candidates for undying creatures of the night. Lord Valerius was a handsome man, no doubt, but he dressed in simple eveningwear and his hair was cut short as was proper. Only his economy of movement hinted at the fact that he was more than one of the many gentlemen who made London their home. He could also call upon eldritch powers to overwhelm the mind and the soul, but none of those seemed evident. Bainbridge was an even less likely candidate for the specter of damnation. Positively portly, he had the look of a friendly country gentleman come to town, a man who had discovered a mistress in science and industry, perhaps, but still a jovial and harmless fellow. Certainly not a creature who fed on the blood of the living, much less one who drained that same substance from ritually prepared babes for use in dark incantations like the one he’d undertaken this night.

This, of course, was the whole point of the great masquerade these creatures and their kindred practiced. Who in their right mind would suspect the terrible truth when the comfortable falsehood was so evident?

"You understate, Bainbridge. If your colleague’s attempt to poison our honored prince failed, there is considerable trouble on the horizon. All those who might be accused of being complicit in his scheme face very harsh retribution indeed." The former prince-regent did not have to point out that the two of them, one Anton Wellig’s associate in House Tremere, the other the fallen seneschal of that self-same Prince Mithras, would be at the head of that list.

"Perhaps all is not lost, milord." Bainbridge wiped the copper plate clean with a white kerchief. It sopped up the blood and left the copper with a shine. "The augury is hardly precise and I have heard no news of Prince Mithras since the ball at Sydenham. Perhaps the poisoning is in progress."

"I think it behooves us to find out."

*     *      *

In Seward’s dream, the Essex mortuary where he drove a wooden spike into the heart of his own kinsman merges with the refurbished operating theater he knows exists below the Taurus Club for Gentlemen on Pall Mall Street. The theater is dressed as a ritual chamber, as it was upon his initiation last month into the Taurine Brotherhood, the secret fraternity of soldiers that is the true heart of the club.

John Claremont’s body, that stake already driven through its chest, lies on the ground along with several others. In the dream, Seward walks among them but his point of view often shifts to somewhere above so that he sees the corpses forming a rough star-shape on the ground. On the central altar is the only female, a mythological harlot with the head of a bull but the body of a woman, complete with pert, perfect breasts and an engorged, open sex.

Seward becomes aware, in the way so common in dreams, that he is nude and that his own sex is swollen and aching with desire. A warm, sticky substance covers him--the blood of some unknown creature. Advancing toward the bull-woman, he watches her writhe with both fear and desire, and he feels the eyes of others upon him.

The actual sex act is largely absent from the dream. One moment he is approaching the bull-woman and the next he is within her, feeling her legs clamped about him. A sudden fear that she will somehow swallow him whole grips him. She can be his conquest but also his conqueror, he realizes. Feeling his own essence surging from his loins to feed her hungry need, weakening him as a leech does a tiger, he reaches desperately for any way to defend himself from the beast-whore. His hand settles on the stake embedded in John Claremont’s dead heart, somehow now at hand. He yanks it free and it becomes a knife, sharp and deadly, the weapon of soldiers from the time of Noah and Abraham. He plunges it into the bull-woman’s flesh.

A torrent of blood wells from the gash across the woman’s neck and the bull-head, now and suddenly always a mask, slips off her head to reveal a face. That of Regina, his fiancée.

*       *       *

Seward woke with a start, his body beaded with sweat under the linen covers that his own thrashing had wound around him. He’d had the dream, in one way or another ever since they had buried John Claremont, but tonight it was stronger.

The glow of the gas lamps along Pall Mall street painted the ceiling of his small apartment a dull yellow. These quarters, adjacent to the Taurus Club and reserved for members without their own homes in the city, were a blessing, but he did not sleep well here. The echoes of Regina’s murdered face still in his mind, he tried to shake the horror from himself. His breathing returned to normal and use of the chamber pot and wash basin made him feel more like his own self. Dreams, he told himself, were nothing to be worried about.

With wakefulness, however, came the awareness of which memories were true. John Claremont’s fate was one such truth, but more horrible still was the ceremony that had indeed initiated him into the Taurine Brotherhood. The silver bull-head pendant hanging from his neck marked that membership. He remembered the bull-woman now, a masked prostitute his brothers had offered him as a "soldier’s right." He remembered taking her on that altar. He remembered raising the sword--never a stake in reality, just a ceremonial blade. And he remembered slicing her throat to complete the ceremony.

Nightmare had become reality. He was a murderer.

*      *       *

Joanna Claremont hadn’t spoken a single word since her initial outburst upon her admission to the Highgate Asylum. That night, when Lord Blake and Mrs. Claremont’s bother Malcolm Seward had brought her in, she’d been in hysterics, sobbing about the murder of her husband John. As Dr. Scott understood it, that ghastly crime had occurred right before Mrs. Claremont’s eyes and she had been inconsolable and largely incomprehensible ever since.

The asylum--which, after all, was intended as a shelter from the world at large--had apparently done its primary task and calmed her addled mind. Indeed, hysteria had been replaced by silence, stoic and total. Mrs. Claremont responded to stimuli, be it food spooned into her mouth or her clothes lifted over her head by the nurse, but she would not speak and her eyes had no focus in them. Dr. Scott had seen silence as a step in the right direction at first, but with his patient’s muteness now approaching a week in duration, he wondered if it might not be a permanent condition.

In an effort to better understand this walking catatonia, Dr. Scott undertook a second thorough examination of Mrs. Claremont. He made it a practice to put newly admitted patients through a complete medical inspection, searching for signs of any physical ailment that might contribute to their madness. He could hardly count the number of deranged noblemen he’d examined only to find swelling on the head, indicating a powerful blow, or signs of an infection of the blood. There was much work to be done, Dr. Scott felt, in the field of physiological causes of dementia and other mental disorders. His first examination of Mrs. Claremont, however, had occurred during her manic phase, and had required her to be strapped to an operating table. Even a generous observer would have called Scott’s exam that night hurried.

On this night, things were much easier. The nurse, an Irish girl named Allie, disrobed Joanna Claremont with only mild difficulty and led her to the examining table. There, the madwoman responded to the nurse’s slight touch and lay down.

"Thank you, nurse. Please stand aside, but be ready in case the patient relapses into mania." Dr. Scott approached and before doing anything, observed. His conclusion that Joanna Claremont was in retreat from the harshness of reality, fully alienated as it were, seemed confirmed by her even breathing. Utterly nude, her chest rose in the quiet rhythm of breath, and her legs were just slightly parted in a comfortable pose with concern for neither prudery nor wantonness. The reality of medical practice was that doctors had to put aside some of the moral standards of the quality in order to execute their duties. One learned to look at naked female flesh as a thing disconnected from the woman one was examining. Patients, however, rarely achieved such detachment--the shame of exposing their most intimate organs to a man not their husband was too real to be forgotten. For Joanna Claremont to lie before him without any of that shame, then, meant she was either unaware of what was going on or that her madness had remade her into an Eve before the apple, unaware of shame itself.

Scott proceeded to a careful, methodical examination. He listened to her calm breathing and healthy heart. He drew blood and examined the often-telltale tissues of the gums, palms and labia. He tested reflexes with a small mallet and a needle. She responded automatically to stimuli--withdrawing from pinpricks, for example--but without the conviction of either man or beast. The simplest constriction with an easy hand kept her from withdrawing from a syringe and the characteristic muscular contractions of pain faded quickly. It was, Dr. Scott decided, as if Joanna Claremont had been shut off like some industrial machine.

He only found the scars by chance. He decided to draw more blood and bound her left arm to allow the veins to swell for easy extraction. As the flesh grew slightly flush from the swollen capillaries, he noted a fine pale line in the webbing of flesh between her index and middle finger. Releasing the tourniquet, he watched the scar fade almost completely from view as her natural pallor returned. Using a magnifying glass to painstakingly reexamine her body inch by inch, he found more of the tiny scars. They were all in sensitive, hidden areas of her flesh--behind both knees, in back of her right ear, under her right breast, between all her fingers, and the toes of the left foot. The thinness and precision of the incision indicated the use of a scalpel or a razor in especially deft hands.

Dr. Scott was certain the cuts had caused a great deal of pain. He also knew he had seen such work before.

*      *       *

Returning to London was not what Beckett would call sound strategy. A mere six months ago, he had been in Queen Victoria’s capital in an attempt to procure a rare document and things had gotten somewhat out of hand. One of the other bidders in the little auction held in a warehouse on the Isle of Dogs had ended up truly and fully dead with his blood quite literally on Beckett’s hands. A scholar and a vampire both, Beckett’s research into the origins of vampirism often took him into dangerous situations, but that did not make him foolhardy. Or at least not as foolhardy as some made him out to be. Seeing as he had entered London without proper deference to the resident vampiric authorities, he doubted destroying one of the city’s respectable monsters would win him any friends. Despite their pretense of familial bonds--the vampires of this city and many others referred to one another as "kindred"--the laws of the undead were suitably draconian. Unwarranted destruction, most especially by an uninvited interloper, invariably resulted in a sentence of final death. Beckett had, wisely he thought, sought immediate passage out of London, intending not to return for a healthy interval. Among creatures who could very well live to see the next millennium, six months was not a healthy interval.

Yet, here he was, sailing across the Mediterranean in a cargo ship headed for Marseilles. From there, they would transfer to a train, cut across France, and then complete their journey in yet another ship. Soon enough, he would be back in London, and in company that would do nothing to repair his reputation in the city. Ah well, he thought, danger is what keeps the blood moving.

"Is the city as marvelous as they say, effendi?" cried one of Beckett’s two companions, from his place at the sole porthole in the small cabin they all shared. An Arab named Fahd, he’d never been outside of his native Cairo, and marveled at the prospect of a trip as far away as famed London. "Will we see the Britisher queen?"

"No, Fahd," answered Hesha Ruhadze, "I very much doubt it." Ruhadze was a vampire, although one hailing from Nubian roots. Those of his line, known properly as Followers of Set (and derisively as serpents), were considered a disreputable lot among the vampires of London. Firmly pagan in their beliefs, they claimed to be descended from the ancient Egyptian deity Set, and were said to still worship that storm god. Beckett, who had seen a great deal in his one hundred and fifty years of undeath, could neither entirely confirm nor deny the stories other vampires told about the Setites. He had found, however, that Ruhadze at least knew a great deal about the ancient past and was very skilled at avoiding entanglements with authorities. That made him a good vampire to know.

"Tell me again about this Kemintiri," Beckett said.

*       *       *

Fahd jumped from his post at the porthole and debased himself before  Ruhadze. "Allow me, great one!" The man, already a toad-like creature  with an arm rendered useless by grievous injury, had become a true  sycophant of Hesha’s during the time at sea. The Setite nodded and Fahd  launched into his description.

"In the nights before night, Great Set stood against his brother Osiris  the Tyrant. The Tyrant, conspiring with their father Ra and their  sister Isis, sought to enslave the world. Great Set, however, knew that  freedom was the destiny of man and sought to overthrow those who would  put us all in chains.

"In order to stand against the Tyrant," Fahd continued, relishing the  tale, "Great Set crossed the desert to the shores of the river between  life and death. There, he drank deeply of those waters and freed  himself. The waters became his very blood and he stood free from the  lash of the sun, held by his senile father, and the shackles of death,  held by his mad brother."

Beckett raised an eyebrow in Hesha’s direction. This part of the story  was in fact the most interesting to him as it spoke of the origins of  vampirism in uniquely Egyptian terms. In Europe, the most widely held  belief was that kindred were descended from Caine, the biblical first  murderer, who somehow found he could pass on his accursed state. The  story of Set and Osiris bore more than a passing resemblance to that of  Caine and Abel--rivalry between brothers, the progenitor as  outcast--but it also had some key differences. Most importantly,  vampirism here was no curse, but a liberation.

Beckett had reason to doubt some of the details, however. For one  thing, as far as he knew, Followers of Set were no more free of the  "lash of the sun" than any other vampire. If anything, they were more  vulnerable to its effects, and many of them (Hesha Ruhadze included)  affected tinted glasses to shield themselves from even the wan light of  torches and gas lamps. He’d had no opportunity to see a Setite exposed  to actual sunlight, of course, but he guessed their flesh would burn as  readily as his. If Ruhadze had lied about this to Fahd, how much of the  rest was true?

"The Great One was not satisfied, however," Fahd continued after a  sufficiently dramatic pause, "for the world was still in chains. Thus  he sought out those able to stand against the Tyrant and gifted them  with water from his veins. They became his followers, blessed be their  names.

"Among them were the Maiden of Plagues, who brought ruin to the  slave-camps and barracks of the enemy; the Dark Serpent, who moved  through the night and struck at the enemy’s heels; the Mother of  Priests, who birthed the thirteen hierophants and founded the path of  serpents; Seterpenre the Sorcerer, who built the city of Tinnis as a  snare for the weak; and last was the Many-Faced Goddess, Kemintiri."

Fahd looked at his master, seeking further permission to continue the  tale. Beckett had the impression that the man was about to reveal a  deep secret of the Setite sect, already known for keeping its truths  hidden. Of course, in all likelihood, that impression was intentional,  the result of this dramatic recitation arranged for his benefit.  Ruhadze nodded assent.

"The goddess was a proud woman. Born into the slavery of Osiris, she  became a high priestess among his people, an overseer in the  slave-camp. But the more men she ruled, the more clearly she understood  her own bondage. One night, when Osiris was sleeping, she traveled into  the desert and sought out the Great One. She had expected a great  battle or a trial of sorts--after all, she was the high priestess of  Great Set’s enemy. Instead, he simply appeared and ordered her to kneel  before him.

"‘No,’ she said, ‘I will respect you as the first of the free, but I am  no slave of man or god.’ The Great One smiled his fanged smile and gave  her the gift of his veins. For a time, the goddess stayed with Set as  his consort, lying with him and sharing great plans. Great Set’s  destiny was a lonely one, and he welcomed her touch and marveled at her  skills. Like a snake shedding its skin, she could become those he  desired most. She became Kemintiri, She of the Thousand Faces.

"‘You must return to my brother’s lands,’ Set said one night and found  that his lover had already prepared herself for the journey. ‘Yes,’ she  said, ‘I will live in his camp and undo his works from within.’ And so  she did, taking on a new countenance and quickly finding her way into  Osiris’s bed. There she was the perfect spy for our cause and she  worked to enslave the slave-master.

"But as ever, danger lurked among the enemy. Isis the Witch, lover to  both her brother Osiris and to their son Horus, grew jealous of this  former priestess who had become her rival. She too knew the ways of  illusion and dressed herself in the raiment of her second brother Set  and slipped into Osiris’s bedchamber when the Tyrant was away.  Kemintiri, thinking the Great One had arrived to complete the overthrow  of his siblings, threw herself into his arms and showered him with  adoration. Isis, pleased to uncover her rival’s secret and aroused by  this secret encounter, allowed Kemintiri to please her. Then, she spoke  in the Great One’s thunderous voice:

"‘I reject you as a temple harlot,’ the false Set said. ‘You have  betrayed me for my brother’s seed and I condemn you.’

"‘But my lord,’ Kemintiri pleaded for she loved the Great One who had  freed her, ‘I have done only what you asked.’

"‘You are unworthy of my gifts and I curse you!’ the false Set  thundered.

"‘Then,’ said Kemintiri, rising defiantly in her nakedness, ‘you are no  god but a seedless fool!’ The Thousand-Faced One was proud after all,  and thinking herself cast out, she spat vitriol at the one who’d loved  and forsaken her. She turned and left.

"Isis smiled at this and took on her own shape again. Then she found  her brother Osiris and revealed Kemintiri’s love for Set to him. Osiris  raged, and called into the heavens: ‘I reject and condemn you,  Thousand-Faced Harlot! Begone from my sight!’

"And in the desert, Kemintiri heard him and went mad. Rejected, or so  she thought, by both Set and Osiris, she determined to love no god but  herself. With her gift of a thousand faces, she would walk the world,  seducing and destroying those who had seduced and destroyed her.

"This is the story of Kemintiri, the Thousand-Faced Daughter of Set."  Fahd had a faraway look in his eyes, as if simply recounting the story  had transported him into an ecstatic state. It probably had, Beckett  realized.

"Very good, Fahd," Hesha Ruhadze said and extended his left hand. There  was a black bead of blood in the palm, welling from a small puncture  wound in the fleshy pad below the thumb. "Well told."

*      *       *

The man leaped to his master’s hand and cupped his lips around the dark  vitae. Although Beckett had abandoned the practice some time ago, many  vampires enslaved mortals by feeding them quantities of their unholy  blood. This had several effects on the drinker, or ghoul: It formed a  bond of unnatural love or even worship for the vampire in the mortal’s  heart; it granted him a portion of the vampire’s preternatural  strength; and it even extended his life. Vampires used ghouls as  retainers and assistants, for they could guard the undead during the  day and help them deal with the daylit world. That the process damned  the mortal’s soul seemed a small price to pay for most.

Beckett returned to the matters at hand. "What do you hope from this  journey then, Ruhadze? To destroy an enemy?"

The Setite smiled. "Nothing so simple, Mr. Beckett. The progenitor of  my line never rejected his daughter, at least not in any way as drastic  as she seems to believe. Were she to understand that… Well, that would  be a great service to us."

"I suppose it would." Beckett found it interesting that Hesha never  talked in the religious terms he encouraged in his ghoul. Did that  reflect a lack of faith or hide a depth of it?

"Indeed. Kemintiri is said to have been the most widely traveled of  Set’s children. She has been a thousand people in a thousand lands,  according to the poets. She could mean the recovery of a wealth of lost  lore for us."

And there it was. Like a master angler, Ruhadze was showing him the  hook, confident he would bite anyway. Beckett had traveled the four  corners of the Earth trying to uncover the origin of vampirism--it was  the one, all-consuming passion that kept him going night after night.  He was certain the Setite was using him for some other end, but still,  the chance to uncover an ancient like Kemintiri… He couldn’t pass it up.
Two years ago, Beckett had broken up a ritual in Cairo, dispatching a  Setite priest named Anwar al-Beshi in the process. Al-Beshi had been,  he’d later discovered, a worshipper of Kemintiri. His destruction had  left behind only his two ghouls as people who might know just how this  had begun and what al-Beshi had planned. The first ghoul was Fahd, who  knew precious little and was now "converted" to their cause. The second  had been an Englishwoman named Emma Blake. And her trail led to London.

Chapter Three

There were to be no performances at the Royal Albert Hall this night.  With the season now over and the nobility abandoning London in droves,  the entertainments for the high-born were on a much reduced schedule.  The comic operettas and other low-brow performances would be starting  up soon for the joy of the middle classes, but that would be in other,  less posh sections of London. The Albert was reserved for activities of  an altogether higher caliber. All this made it an attractive meeting  place for the undead court of London.

Five of them were gathered in the royal box, a huge space with a  perfect view of the darkened stage. There were others in the hall, of  course--lesser kindred, as well as ghouls and other thralls acting as  guardians--but these few represented the crown of bones on the city  itself. But that crown was missing its greatest and blackest jewel, the  prince.

"His Royal Highness is in seclusion for the time being." The speaker  was Lady Anne Bowesley, his seneschal. A beautiful creature with hair  of the finest chestnut, she had the natural bearing of one born to  rule. "He asks us all, however, to uncover the conspiracy that led to  the debacle in Sydenham."

"Debacle" was a genuinely restrained way of putting it, the assembled  worthies agreed. Lady Anne had organized a grand ball at the Crystal  Palace in Sydenham, south of London. A great number of the city’s  undead, essentially all those who euphemistically referred to one  another as their kindred, had come to mark the anniversary of His Royal  Highness Prince Mithras’s return from a century of travel abroad. It  had seemed to be great success at first. The palace was decorated for  the occasion and shone like a glass beacon in the night. Lady Anne and  several of the more prominent guests had ensured that pliant mortals  were also invited, fetching young things who would willingly give of  their blood in private rooms curtained off from the main gathering  halls. A few deaths could be expected, but those invited knew to  restrain the hunger enough to sip lightly.

In the middle of receiving guests, however, the prince had suddenly  left for one of these feeding areas. Mithras was a truly ancient  creature and sometimes had less tolerance for the social niceties of  modern life, so this was not entirely out of character, but he had been  about to hear Captain Nathaniel Ellijay, one of his trusted aides,  formally request the right to bring a protégé into undeath, and leaving  at that point was a surprising snub. That soon faded from the assembled  minds when the smell of burning fabric filled the space, with smoke and  flames on its heels. The long silken drapes hiding the feeding areas  burst into bright orange and green fire and chaos ensued.

Kindred do not age in any normal way and their unliving blood allows  them to accomplish a great many eldritch feats, but their condition  comes with a few glaring weaknesses. One is a distinct vulnerability to  fire. Such open flames in a large group of undead thus created a panic  of epic proportions. Indeed, the fear of fire is so overwhelming in  most kindred that they become mad, slavering beasts stampeding to  safety. A mortal fire brigade, readied ahead of time just in case, had  brought the conflagration under control, but not before the assemblage  had fled and a goodly number of the mortal feeding stock had died in  the flames. Lady Anne’s display of the prince’s uncontested rule of  London was ruined.

"I’ve had a devil of a time determining just where the fire started,  Mary Anne." The speaker was General Sir Arthur Halesworth, a broad man  in military uniform who was one of two vampires formally charged with  maintaining order in the prince’s name. A sheriff of the undead, as it  were. His use of Lady Anne’s Christian name was a testament to how  close the two were, although it still raised eyebrows. "The fear it  inspired has muddled memories and only led to baseless accusation after  baseless accusation."

"That hardly inspires confidence, General." Lady Anne’s tone was hard,  and although few at this assembly had ever seen her lose her composure,  the beastly nature that lurked in all kindred raged in her undead heart  too. "I assume you have more to report."

"Yes, yes," he said, his anger significantly closer to the surface than  his mistress’s. "I have several reliable sources who saw Victoria Ash  enter the feeding rooms mere moments before the fire started."

"Miss Ash is under your protection, is she not?"

The seneschal’s question targeted another woman in attendance. Blonde  hair in ringlets framed an ashen white face drawn in thin, alluring  lines. Her full bosom was raised and wrapped by a wasp-waisted corset  that lived up to its name. Lady Ophelia Merritt’s hips and torso seemed  to be linked by an articulation no thicker than her swan-like neck. She  flitted a fan of emerald green embroidered with black roses in a quick  motion that seemed to dismiss the question, or rather its subject.

"She follows no counsel but her own, that one." Another flick. "But she  is no insurgent. This attack smacks of the barbarian enemy, I would  think."

"The Sabbat, you mean." General Halesworth had very little tolerance  for couched language when it came to matters he considered his  bailiwick. "We’ve kept those curs out of the city since the prince’s  return. It was the regent who let them run loose."

"That, my dear sheriff,"--flick--"sounds a great deal like motive for  just such an attack."

"Perhaps, but jumping to conclusions isn’t the way we do things,  milady," put in Juliet Parr, the third woman in the assemblage. The  contrast between Miss Parr and Lady Merritt could not have been  greater. Where the grande dame of London’s kindred scene wore fashions  that spoke of legions of tailors and not a single concession to comfort  over style, Miss Parr’s attire was pragmatic and simple. Her gown was a  simple country dress and coat, made of tweed in a pale brown that  almost matched her hazel hair. She had the body of a slight girl but  the bearing of a man who’d faced the charge of cavalry and lived to  tell the tale. In fact, in less formal occasions, Miss Parr was often  seen in distinctly masculine clothing, an eccentricity most tolerated  because of her reputation. Like General Halesworth, Juliet Parr served  as a sheriff for the undead of London, specifically responsible for the  better-lived neighborhoods north of the Thames. Her specialty, however,  was information--it was said there was nowhere in the City or West End  where Juliet Parr did not have her ear. Among a hidden society of  creatures feeding on the blood of an unknowing mortal mass, information  translated very readily into power.

"My own investigations," she continued, "have revealed a few  interesting facts. It seems that Miss Ash has already departed the  capital in the company of her coachman and guardian Cedric and her  protégée, Lady Regina."

"Lord Blake’s daughter, yes. She was presented to me on the Embankment  last month." Lady Anne was known for her didactic memory for the  kindred of the huge city. It was an important asset as seneschal. "Her  departure is not necessarily indicative, however. Many of our kindred  have left for the country with their chosen prey."

"Indeed," Miss Parr continued, "but there are other elements that point  at a connection. It seems that Lady Regina’s entry into our world was  motivated by a desire to find her mother, the supposedly late Lady  Blake."

Lady Anne cocked her head ever so slightly in question.

"I’m as yet unsure who claimed Lady Blake, or even if she has been  Embraced or not. The Blake lands are in County Durham and my  connections there are limited." Juliet ignored the reproachful  fan-flick from Lady Merritt. "But it has come to my attention that  Emma, Lady Blake was born one Emiliana Ducheski and was known to our  night society."

Juliet had the satisfaction of seeing Lady Merritt’s latest fan  movement falter mid-flick. "Emma?"

"Yes, milady," Juliet answered. "I believe she was a protégée of yours  for a few months in 1869."

"Might I suggest that you enquire more precisely as to Miss Ash’s  whereabouts, then?" Lady Anne’s tone still had steel in it. "It would  be most unfortunate if an oversight of yours drew further unwanted  attention."

Lady Merritt left without another word, or another flick.

"Might I suggest that you enquire more precisely as to Miss Ash’s  whereabouts, then?" Lady Anne’s tone still had steel in it. "It would  be most unfortunate if an oversight of yours drew further unwanted  attention."

Lady Merritt left without another word, or another flick.

*       *       *

"Have you seen His Royal Highness since the fire, General?" Captain  Nathaniel Ellijay, who'd been the silent fifth in the royal box, had  left his position at Lady Anne's side as the evening wore on. The  seneschal's business was never quite finished and with the shock of the  events at the Crystal Palace still fresh, she would be receiving  visitors until close to dawn. Ellijay, as was proper, had awaited her  leave and then sought those who shared his love for her and for their  prince. General Halesworth was at the head of that list. The two  military men had retreated to one of the boxes stage left at Royal  Albert Hall.

"Yes. The prince is not himself." Halesworth's hard features, barely  hidden by his well-trimmed mustache and beard, were a study in  restraint. There was boiling anger there, held carefully in check. "I  like this not one bit, Ellijay."

The younger officer, both in appearance and years of unlife, leaned in  a touch closer than was entirely proper. Albert Hall was sacrosanct,  especially with the city's worthies assembled, but a ban on violence  did not prevent eavesdropping. The ball at the Crystal Palace had also  supposedly been safe. "He left me mid-sentence, General. Without a  word. I've never seen him do such."

"Don't turn into a prattling child, Captain. Do you understand that the  prince was here before Hadrian built his wall? Our entire existence is  an eyeblink to him. Don't presume to understand his ways, much less  express concern."

Ellijay took a step back as if slapped, the blood beginning to boil  within him. His eyes--pale gray things placed just a touch too close  together--locked onto the general's and he saw the beast there. A fine  sheen of sweat, tinted pink with the blood that kept him from his  grave, rose to the back of his neck and the line of his brow. The  general seemed like the coil wound tight in a mantrap, and Ellijay felt  he had just tripped the wire.

"No, of course not," he said, the urges to run and to strike first  competing for his unbeating heart. Like a living man might turn to the  Our Father, he spoke in the musical voice of prayer and reached for the  silver bull-head medal pinned to his uniform. "Like our brothers in  Persia and Rome, we bear arms for Mithras the Golden. We sacrifice to  him and he brings us victory over death itself."

"Praise be," Halesworth answered in the same reverential tone, touching  the gold bull-head on his own chest. "See that you don't forget that,  Captain."

*                      *                      *

Malcolm Seward was not sure just what form the pursuit of so-called  undead devils would take, but given his experiences in the last several  months, he had not expected a nunnery. The roundabout path of the  makeshift investigation that led them to the convent had started a few  days previous, when Lord Blake had finally given up on interrogating  the laughing degenerate in the basement of Monroe House. Without any  firm lead as to where Regina might be--other than perhaps France, and  from there who knew--and with Dr. Scott still reporting utter silence  from Joanna, Seward had suggested that they gather their thoughts anew.  He had always been fond of puzzles and deductions, and if Dr. Conan  Doyle's Study in Scarlet, which he'd enjoyed earlier in the spring in  the most recent Beeton's Christmas Annual, was to be believed, then  criminal detection was just an especially complex puzzle.

"How did Miss Ash come to be at Bernan House for Lady Blake's funeral?"  he'd asked. Indeed, Victoria Ash had appeared suddenly a few days--no,  a few nights--after Emma Blake had breathed her last. Seward was not  about to share that she had discovered him with Regina in a most  scandalous position, but still her appearance was strange. "Had you  seen her before that night?"

"No--" Colonel Blake had answered quickly as if by instinct, but then  stopped to consider. "Although she did seem familiar to me, as if it  were natural for her to be there."

"She was, that is, she had that effect on me as well, Colonel." In  fact, she'd had quite a more arduous effect on Seward, but he kept that  to himself as well. "It is perhaps one of her dark gifts?"

"So you accept her nature, then, Lieutenant?"

"For the time being. But that still leaves the question of how she  knew. Did anyone ask her?"

"No. She said she knew my wife through a friend in London." There,  Blake had paused. Both men were aware that the next step might depend  on that name, but it seemed a struggle to resuscitate it from its grave  in memory. After all, it had been months and…

"Oh, it was that insufferable woman, what was her name… Winthrope!" The  colonel stood bolt upright, lifted by the light in his memory.  "Baroness Winthrope!"

That had led to a search through various listings of the peerage as  well as calls to friends of Lord Blake's. They'd quickly discovered  that Baron Winthrope had died of a fever three years before. A distinct  amount of social pressure applied to Sir Gordon Sterling, younger  brother of Lady Winthrope, added to a promise to introduce the man to  the Duke of Avon, revealed that messages for the baroness should be  sent to the Convent of St. Cecilia near Amberley, Sussex. They'd taken  the first train and had now ridden by hackney carriage out to the  discreet stone and timber cloister hiding between pastoral fields.

"I suppose," Seward said after they'd been sitting in the carriage at  the top of the small drive for nearly ten minutes, "there's nothing to  do but to go knock."

Colonel Blake didn't give much more response than a grunt, but clearly  an affirmative one, because he was soon walking along the gravel path  and up the broad steps to the heavy oak door. He grasped the iron  knocker and gave it two heavy raps.

Long moments of pregnant silence crept along. It was past noon and the  heavy August sunshine beat down on their heads. The door was on a  southern facing and so the convent gave them no shelter. Blake had  reached for the knocker to give it another rap when a small peeping  hatch opened in the door facing Seward.

The wizened lines of an old woman's face floated in the gloom behind  the lattice of thin iron bars in the peephole. "Yes?"

"Um, yes," Seward said, "forgive us, Sister. We are here to inquire  about Lady Winthrope."

"There are no baronesses here, sir."

"But this address was given to us by her brother and--"

Blake forced his way between the door and Seward, coming face to face  with the anonymous nun within. "My wife knew Lady Winthrope in Egypt,  madam. It's imperative that I talk to her."

"Be that as it may--"

"Tell her Lord Blake wishes to discuss Miss Victoria Ash," Blake said.

"But," the nun began, "there is no Lady Winthrope--"

"Tell her," Blake barked. "It's imperative. Imperative."

The nun's face backed away from the small opening in the door as if  bitten, then she closed the shutter with a sharp snap of wood on wood.

"She is in hiding, do you think?" Seward asked. "That nun knew she was  a baroness, so she must be."

"Most likely." Blake turned from the door and looked back at the  hackney. "Now we wait."

Aqui estão as 10 partes do preview do livro Victorian Vampire 2: The Madness of Priests, que foram distribuidas pela White Wolf.

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