The Burning (16 page)

Polsham looked grim. “I’ll tell her, sir.” He turned to go.

“Polsham!”

The man turned back. “Sir?”

“I want no one let in to this place. No, strangers, do you understand?”

“You said yourself no one would come here, sir.” Polsham’s voice was flat.

Van Helsing grimaced. “Just do it,” he said impatiently. “You may go.”

Polsham stumped out of the room. Van Helsing gulped the rest of his whiskey, turned back to the fire, and pushed at a log with his booted foot. Sparks fled into the chimney in a rush. His face was weak, but his expression was malevolent. He would be like a whipped dog who bit out of fear. Stephan suddenly did not like this Van Helsing having the ordering of the household. The servants were right to be worried.

Van Helsing straightened. Slowly, he turned toward the great windows that looked out on the manicured gardens where Stephan stood. Stephan melted into the shadows at the side of the window. Van Helsing frowned and walked to the window. All he would be able to see was black night and rushing wind through the trees.

Van Helsing’s eyes widened in shock. His gaze darted over the landscape. Then he backed away from the windows. The cut-glass tumbler dropped to the rug, spilling its contents across the Aubusson carpet’s arabesques.

The man knew Stephan was here. There was no question about it. How? And Van Helsing was afraid. “Polsham!” he yelled, then ran to the draperies and unhooked the silken
tassels that held them back. As though that would keep Stephan out if he wanted to get in.

Did Van Helsing sense his vibrations? Why would that make him afraid? He couldn’t know what they meant. Perhaps he got the sensitivity his cousin had at third remove. He didn’t know what he was frightened of, but felt suspicious and uneasy.

Stephan slipped into the garden as a few random drops of rain began to fall. Damn! There were all sorts of things going on in this house. He took refuge under a huge old fir tree and stared up at the fourth floor with the dim light flickering in a single dormer window. The girl was in a coma. He tried to remember what he knew about comas. They could last a day or forever. He thought of her up there, small in her tiny bed, alone, dead to the world because she tried to help him. Somewhere thunder echoed.

None of his business. A distraction to his purpose here. He had enough guilt without adding this to his plate. Weren’t his sins against his kind more important than whatever happened to a single slip of a girl?

If only the uncle weren’t sick. With only servants to care about her . . . They couldn’t protect her. And Van Helsing was right. No one in the village would come here.

Mrs. Simpson’s fear that she would wake alone and frightened echoed in his mind.

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. These people were just wrought up. The uncle would surely recover soon. Then he could take his place as her guardian. He would know how to get someone to attend to her. Or Mrs. Creevy . . . perhaps she was capable.

He clenched his jaw. He had his purpose. It wasn’t to interfere with the domestic trials of people he didn’t even know.

But he had to wait for Kilkenny. His purpose couldn’t be executed at the moment. He paced beneath the heavy roof of
needles under the tree. The scent of pine and damp air was pervasive. As if to echo the chaos of his thoughts, the world was outlined in white light. Thunder followed at the count of two. The clouds took that as their cue and rain spattered the garden in great drops. The wind made it gust against the house in flapping curtains.

Loki and Hel! He stared at the lighted room on the second floor. Van Helsing might know he was in the house. But Stephan wanted to assure himself that someone competent was there to at least supervise the girl’s care. He’d just see about this woman, Creevy.

The room was lit by only two candles, one by the bed, and another by the chair. Stephan now stood in the shadows near the dressing room as the darkness drained away. The woman sitting in the chair hummed to herself as she crocheted some interminable and indeterminate item of mouse-colored wool. Her mouth had the sunken look of those who had lost their teeth. Her mobcap was not overly clean or starched. There was a glass of . . . gin—he could smell it—next to her on a small table. He glanced to the bed. The creature lying there bore little resemblance to the oversized, well-padded man he had seen in the forest. Oh, he was still large, but his flesh seemed loose, as though the tension of life that had held him together was dissipating. The effect was heightened by the grayish color of his skin. Stephan had seen that color before. It was the look of death, not necessarily imminent but inevitable. He seemed to doze.

A knock sounded on the door. Stephan stepped back into the deeper shadows.

Polsham stepped into the room. He glanced to the bed and then away, resignation clear in his expression. “Mrs. Creevy,” he whispered. “A word?”

“No need to whisper, Mr. Polsham. ’E cain’t ’ear you
when ’e’s sunk so low. Twilight brings it on. Always does.” Her voice was a grating caw.

“You were there when the doctor made his diagnosis of Miss Van Helsing?”

“Coma,” she said, nodding sagely. “She mayn’t never wake up.”

“But she
could
wake . . .” Polsham held to hope. Stephan liked him for that.

Mrs. Creevy made a tsking noise and shook her head. “Doubtful, that.”

“Well,” Polsham said, straightening. “She will require care.”

Mrs. Creevy raised her brows, incredulous. “Don’t think you can foist ’er on me! I got me ’ands full with this un.” She gestured to the bed.

“Surely he can’t take your attention every moment,” Polsham reasoned.

“An’ if I rests my bones between bouts o’ physical labor, that’s only proper, that. He’s big, and when ’e needs ’elp hits all I can do to drag’ im about. What’d you ’ave me do?”

“Well.” Polsham cleared his throat. “Miss Van Helsing would not take much effort. She’s such a tiny thing. Not like her uncle at all. Between the times he might need you . . .”

A sly look came into the woman’s eyes. “I expect I could look in on her a couple times a day for double the pay,” she proposed.

Polsham froze for a moment before he said stiffly, “Mr. Brandywine will oblige you.”

“Well, I sees Brandywine before I sets a finger to ’er. You got to get somebody else for nights.” She sniffed.

Polsham looked grim. “I take it you couldn’t convince one of your friends . . .”

Mrs. Creevy looked at him as though he had gone mad. “To this ’ouse?” Then she chuckled. “Alays one for a jest, you are, Mr. Polsham.”

“I’ll send for Mr. Brandywine first thing in the morning.” Polsham turned on his heel and shut the door behind him.

Stephan frowned in the dark beyond the window. He had thought to make this woman sit with the girl at night using his power of suggestion. But would a greedy alcoholic be of any use to her? He hated to think of her rough hands tending to the girl’s needs even once or twice a day! Polsham would be reduced to convincing an exhausted cook to sit with her at night. Mrs. Simpson would be asleep in minutes. Did not people in comas sometimes have trouble breathing? Who would watch and clear her throat if need be in the wee hours of the night?

Stephan drew the darkness and reappeared under his tree. It was raining steadily now. The wind shook sheets of raindrops to spatter over the lake and the lawns. The dim light of the fourth floor glowed through the haze of water in the air. He shouldn’t get involved. What could he do for her? What business had he in this house? The answer was clearly “none.” Her debauched cousin might sense his presence. He should get back to the Hammer and Anvil.

He paced through the needles that carpeted the ground. He was a match for her cousin. That one, for all his casual cruelty, had a weak mind.

What was he thinking?
Damned girl! How could she be in some cursed coma or other, with no one to watch over her?
Stephan leaned his back against the great trunk of the tree.

Damn.

He drew the darkness, saw the world of rain and the scent of evergreen go red, waited for the moment of pain . . . And he materialized inside the nursery on the fourth floor.

He’d just check on her before he went back to the tavern.

The room was dim, lighted by a single candle at her bedside. She looked like one of those marble figures carved in stone atop their coffins, tiny, as befitted people of bygone
centuries, remote, her skin as white and smooth as marble. Her blonde lashes, three shades darker than her hair, brushed her impossibly pale cheeks. Her lips had once been blushing rose, but now they too were almost colorless.

His fault. It would be hours before Mrs. Simpson would come up from making and serving dinner. Perhaps he could just sit with the girl a while. He’d hear Mrs. Simpson coming up the stairs long before she got here. He could hide . . . where? He glanced around the room. Dressing room off to the side. Why didn’t the girl have even a dresser or a maidservant?

Then there was the problem of Van Helsing. The dissolute cousin might barge in if he sensed Stephan’s presence. Stephan went still and listened to all the sounds in the house. Polsham and Mrs. Simpson in the far kitchen wing wrangled about what to do. Mrs. Creevy was snoring. He heard the clink of a glass from the general direction of the library and footsteps pacing on carpet. Van Helsing’s sensibility apparently had limits. Stephan vowed to keep one ear tuned to the library.

He sat on the bed, half expecting the girl to waken. She did not. His fault. He had the urge to take her hand and chafe it lightly in his own. Wasn’t that what one did with sick people one wanted to rouse? But there was a real chance that touching him had landed her in this predicament in the first place.

So he sat, willing her to waken, waiting for . . . what? Mrs. Simpson? A miracle? Confirmation of his guilt?

Mrs. Simpson snored over her book in a wing chair in the corner by the nursery wardrobe. She would not wake until morning unless Stephan lifted the gentle compulsion urging her to sleep. Van Helsing slumbered in an alcoholic stupor in his room. He had been hard to subdue, distraught as he was.
He was definitely upset about something. Dawn was still far away. Stephan sat on the bed watching the girl’s chest rise and fall. He felt trapped like an insect in amber with time standing still around him.

The mess at the hunting lodge would be discovered sooner or later and the hunt would begin for the perpetrator. As a stranger in town he could expect questioning. Nothing he couldn’t handle of course, but his life was complicated by the fact that he had to stay in the village if he wanted to be certain of meeting Kilkenny.

Kilkenny. Stephan’s thoughts drifted from the innocent face of the girl. Asharti herself was dead by horrible means, but she had left her seeds behind. Kilkenny. What did he look like? Would Stephan know him instantly for the powerful force that threatened the world? Irish. The name was Irish. Red hair? A dusting of freckles and blue eyes? Would his expression be sly and debauched like Van Helsing’s or hard and confident, announcing his plan to rule the world?

He ran his hands through his hair. Soon the guilt would end. Kilkenny would come with his army. Stephan would successfully summon his power and kill them, including Kilkenny, or he would fail and die at their hands. Death would not be unwelcome.

But if he failed, the world would be forfeit. Kilkenny’s army would grow. The balance of human and vampire would be destroyed. Humans would be cattle, used for their blood, at least until there were too many vampires and both races ceased to exist. Armageddon. The Book of Revelations made real. If he failed there would be no atonement. A vision of Hell as an endless training by the Daughters in the bowels of Mirso flashed into his brain.

He had to get them all. He’d have to find blood soon, and make time to practice his focus. He must be able to draw his power up more quickly, and make the leap to that more potent level where accomplishing the task set him would be
possible. He had to do better than he had at the hunting lodge. Emotions must be banished.

His body felt heavy, weighted down with the immensity of the task ahead. Yet, was it really the grand sorrows that ate at your soul or the small disappointments nibbling away at your expectations and your idealism that finally broke you?

Stephan rolled his head. Idealism . . . He had left that behind when his experiment with Beatrix and Asharti went awry. How naïve could one be? He had thought it was only the traumatic experience of being made that sometimes seduced made vampires to violence and madness. He had thought he could convince Rubius and the Elders to change the Rules.

He picked Asharti to prove his point. More fool he.

He had begun to pay for his crime two years ago, if any penance could ever atone.

MIRSO MONASTERY, SEPTEMBER 1819

Stephan sat naked on the bench staring at the walls, nearly numb. The room was hewn out of solid rock. The builders of this secret prison in the bowels of Mirso had not bothered to smooth them. The tapestries could not camouflage the rough surface. It poked through between them, around them. It was evident even under them. What hands had stitched those myriad threads? The tapestries showed stately men on horses, frozen in an eternal prancing gait, following packs of slavering hounds. The hounds tore at a deer who thrashed under their fangs
.

In the corner of the room the rock was stained as though blackened by smoke. The stone appeared shiny. What had happened there? He rose, drawn by curiosity, and touched the sooty surface. It felt almost greasy. Pulling up the edge of the tapestry, he saw that it was rather a large stain. He followed it up and saw a spray of darkness he had not noticed on the dim ceiling through the shadows. On the floor, the stone seemed almost to be melted into a pool of black translucence. Could a simple fire have caused such intense heat? And what made the stone feel greasy? He turned to the hearth. The fire had gone out long ago. Somewhere it was daylight, but not here. The room was chilly now. A stack of split oak logs sat next to the andirons. He could build a fire, but the last thing he wanted was heat
.