Dreadful Company Page 7

  “This is weird,” said Crepusculus. “Very weird. Let’s see if there are more patches of it.”

  Over the next two hours, he and Brightside covered the entire space of the square. They discovered that there were several irregularly shaped areas of sour ground scattered around the space, which Brightside was absolutely sure had not been there a week ago when they’d first arrived to sort out the ghost problem.

  “I bet you anything they correspond to the biggest of the mass grave pits,” Crepusculus said. “Give me one of those Dunhills?”

  Brightside took out his case and handed him a cigarette. Crepusculus lit it with the tip of his forefinger and blew out a pale plume of smoke. “Thin places,” he said. “Between the living world and the next one. Right?”

  “Or thin places in time,” Brightside said, not liking the option one little bit. Temporal attenuation – or worse, temporal overlap – was almost always a sign of something larger and more difficult to repair than a simple haunting. “Old horrors showing through. Echoes of the past.”

  “Why are we getting echoes now, when we didn’t during an actual manifestation episode? I could have sworn none of this was here a week ago.”

  “So could I, and I also can’t think why these disturbances have only just begun; there’s enough of a mess down there to have set up a chronic haunting all the way back to the end of the eighteenth century, and neither you nor I have heard of anything strange in this neighborhood until now.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There’s got to be something else. Some catalyst, maybe. Another variable that wasn’t in play until now.”

  “Something that’s weakening the boundaries between planes,” Crepusculus said. “What could do that?” He wrapped his arms around himself as if the mild spring air had dropped thirty degrees. “I mean, other than – oh, wizards fucking around with mystic artifacts stolen from the dead, or something.”

  “There was that thing last year in London,” Brightside said slowly. “We heard about it afterward, remember? That wasn’t a haunting; that was a remnant.”

  “A nasty one,” Crepusculus agreed. “Which – hell, would have had to bore a hole through the planes to get into this one and muck about with it, right?”

  “That was taken care of, though.” It had been a bad little episode as far as he could remember: a remnant, a shred of unwanted creation with a voracious hunger for fear and hatred, had taken up residence in some abandoned air raid shelter under the city, and made a serious nuisance of itself by taking over the minds of the susceptible and turning them into murderers. In the end, the Devil had had to sort it out in person, and presumably had mended the gap in reality that the thing had burrowed through, but the fact that it had happened at all was slightly worrisome. Interplanar boundaries were the sort of thing you did not want to have weakened; passing between them, between planes of reality – between worlds – was supposed to happen only in specific and controlled ways.

  Brightside shivered, feeling chilly himself. “I think at this point we’d do well to talk to someone who might have more information about recent disturbances in reality. Who’s the demon stationed here? There’s always a demon.”

  “Irazek, I think. Either him or Chordeiles, and I think Chordeiles is in Lisbon these days.”

  “Let’s go and bother Irazek in the morning, then,” said Brightside. “I don’t think we’re likely to find out anything more at the site tonight, and right now I want a drink.” The repeated immersion in sensory perception of decay had been quite unpleasant to experience, even for someone as used to it as they were – and the gathering suspicion that something larger was going wrong had unsettled them both.

  “I want more than one,” said Crepusculus, “and I spy with my little eye a bar not so very far away at all.”

  The vampires were having a party.

  For the first time since seeing Ruthven on the Opera stairs, Corvin felt satisfied: truly and simply content about the state of the universe. He had Ruthven’s human friend bottled up neatly in his dungeons, and perhaps he’d allow himself to sample her – although he couldn’t take too much, a dead hostage was useless – well, perhaps. Perhaps later.

  He sat on his throne and watched his people enjoying themselves. They were very beautiful, in their black and crimson finery, all alight with iridescent sparkle; the humans he’d had brought down to supply the festivities were also beautiful, even if one of them was already dead. An aesthetic object, even past its usefulness. He’d have someone go and dump the bodies before morning, like he always did.

  The newest of them – of his children, he liked that, he was going to use it, children – was still more than a little awkward, but clearly willing to please, clearly loyal. So young: she would be barely nineteen for the rest of forever. And very lovely to look upon, with her hair freshly colored deep red, contrasting well with her alabaster skin. Corvin thought to himself, not for the first time, that if Lilith did simply become too much of a liability, he would not have to look very far to find her replacement. Not very far at all.

  Corvin swirled the red liquid in his goblet, careful not to spill. It was a broad, shallow, almost oval bowl: creamy off-white, with a branching silver base and stem attached to it by tiny jeweled rivets. The individual who had made it had even sealed the faint squiggly lines where the individual pieces of bone fit into one another with clear varnish to prevent leaking. It was in every way a gorgeous object, and he was very proud of it, even if he hadn’t personally been responsible for the death of its original owner; it stood for the skulls of his enemies, a symbolic representation.

  He swirled the wine-and-blood mixture again, and took a sip. Delicious. He could feel the strength it was giving him. Soon Ruthven would come to him, attempting to rescue his little friend, and then Corvin would have satisfaction at long last. He let himself imagine those silver-white eyes widening in fear and understanding, that pale patrician face twisted in a grimace. Imagined him begging. Please, I entreat you, spare me.

  Ruthven, of course, had been the cause of the platinum fang. It still hurt sometimes when the weather changed – his entire face hurt, old fracture lines in the bone aching dully. He could remember with excruciating clarity the last time they’d come face-to-face, back in London, years and years ago now, and the look of resigned, condescending irritation on the face of the older vampire would probably never quite leave Corvin’s mind. He’d ruined everything. Back then, Corvin and his coven had really been enjoying themselves, taking whatever they wanted, drinking from the city’s cup with gleeful abandon, stalking the night streets in a short but glorious reign of terror and intrigue and really stylish haircuts, and fucking Ruthven had popped up to spoil all Corvin’s fun and instruct him not to kill people.

  But you’re one of the Kindred, Corvin had said, staring at him. You’re above the humans.

  Ruthven had said a lot of extremely offensive and ignorant things, and then he had hit Corvin so hard in the face that he’d broken not only his cheekbone but three of his teeth – one of which had had to be replaced completely, and hadn’t that just been a lovely little experience, six hours of work in a French underworld dentist’s surgery for which he’d had to be largely conscious – and thrown them out of London. To say that Corvin resented this treatment with profound vigor would be somewhat of an understatement.

  He thought again of Ruthven begging for his life, and half closed his eyes in pleasure. “Not a chance in hell,” he said under his breath. Beside him Grisaille, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching the celebrations, straightened up.

  “What was that?” he asked. Corvin scowled.

  “Nothing. I was talking to myself. Why don’t you go join the party; you’re kind of bringing me down just standing there – what, isn’t this scene hot enough for your taste?”

  The sneer in his voice was almost as good as the one on his face, and he was pleased to see Grisaille flinch. That was better. His lieutenant had been insufficiently subordinate of
late.

  “Sorry,” Grisaille said, and detached himself from the wall. “Fantabulosa party, Corvin. Like yours always are.”

  Was he imagining things, or had there been just the faintest hint of sarcasm in that last statement? Corvin scowled. “Go away,” he said, “and tell Lilith to stop doing body shots off that body, I desire her presence right here and now.”

  Grisaille simply nodded, and slipped away into the crowd; and Corvin sat back on his throne, with his goblet in his hand, and thought again, Soon, Ruthven. Soon.

  It took Grisaille two attempts to get Lilith’s attention over the music – Corvin was into techno these days, turned up far enough to get the occasional shower of bits of stone to fall from the ceiling – but eventually, pouting and unsteady on her feet, she was persuaded to rejoin Corvin. Grisaille watched as she climbed into his lap, straddling him on the throne, and covered his face with somewhat inexact kisses.

  What a good thing somebody invented indelible lipstick, Grisaille thought, turning away from this edifying sight, and went to get himself a drink. Three of the humans were still alive, he was relieved to see; dead blood had a particular aftertaste that some vampires enjoyed, but he found it unpleasantly metallic.

  They’d draped the naked victims over dining tables, groggy both with thrall and with a sizable hit of something euphoric to prevent them from struggling, and Corvin’s people were enjoying the buffet. Black and red and violet silk rustled, leather creaked, lace whispered as they wandered from table to table, biting indiscriminately in between dancing to the pounding beat and feeling one another up in alcoves.

  At the last table Grisaille found a young man with pale wavy hair and very long eyelashes, curves of gold catching the light where they rested against his cheeks. He was lying curled on his side, face slack and peaceful, as if he’d simply fallen asleep. This one had been given a good going-over, judging by the number of bite marks, but Grisaille felt for the pulse and thought there was probably enough left in there for one more.

  Without a lot of delicacy, he lifted the young man’s wrist and bit it, sharp and quick, and rested it over a goblet to catch the blood. If he’d been out hunting alone, he would have enjoyed the process of drinking directly from the vein – there was something profoundly satisfying in the feeling of warm skin against your lips, life, brief and brilliant and fragile, a pleasant little memory – but he didn’t much go for being watched while he fed, and so Grisaille waited for the young man’s slowing heart to fill his glass.

  When he’d finished, he lifted the wrist again and held it to his mouth, pressing the tip of his tongue against the wound he’d made until he could taste the change as the clotting agent he was secreting went to work. Most of the others hadn’t bothered to put the stopper back in after they’d had their fill, but Grisaille disliked wasting resources, even if the human was already nearly dead.

  He added a splash of vodka from the forest of bottles on a side table and went to lean against the wall and watch the party. The newest vampire was faring a little better this time than she had at the last of Corvin’s celebrations, when she’d made a right mess out of one of the victim’s necks – embarrassing not only herself but the vampire who’d actually made her. Now she’d clearly gotten the hang of biting cleanly, even if she still looked awkward as hell and not even slightly confident.

  Someone must have actually bothered to teach her something, he thought, and about damn time.

  He didn’t much like the way the entire business with the kid had been handled. Nineteen was just too young to turn someone; they hadn’t finished learning how to be a person the first time around, and making them into something else just got you an unstable and unhappy vampire who needed a great deal of supervision, which this one had not been getting. He could clearly remember the week right after she’d been brought down here, when she’d done a lot of screaming; one of them would have to thrall her practically every hour to get her to calm down. Not smart, ducky, he’d told her maker, a tiresome creature called Yves, at the time. Not smart at all. And nobody, to Grisaille’s knowledge, had volunteered to take the responsibility of actually teaching the girl how to vampire.

  You could have, said a nasty little voice in the back of Grisaille’s head. It was technically correct: if he hadn’t minded breaking every single unwritten rule in Corvin’s rarefied version of society, if he hadn’t minded the consequences of establishing a highly inappropriate teacher-pupil relationship between the leader’s second-in-command and the lowest-ranking of the entire coven, he could have done it. He could have done it quite well, if briefly; that kind of thing would have served as a highly efficient method of getting himself killed. But he could have done it.

  And I didn’t, so how about that? he told the little voice.

  You’re good at not doing things, aren’t you? Got a lot of practice.

  Grisaille took a swig of his drink, trying to ignore the voice, and closed his eyes for a moment as the heady richness of spiked blood warmed him from the inside out. It wasn’t as good as hunting, but it was pretty damn pleasant all the same. There was a kind of cold shaking weakness that came on after you hadn’t had anyone to eat for much too long, and that first sip of blood breaking the fast always felt like swallowing sweet fire, racing through your veins, driving back the chill – which was, of course, nothing more than the natural chill of a dead body. The first taste of blood tonight felt a little like that reawakening, and Grisaille concentrated on it, trying not to think about the past.

  What a lot of things there were that you could have done, over the years, said the voice, matter-of-fact, implacable, and chose not to. Victor, for example. You could have stopped Victor from doing unspeakable things; he might have listened to you when he wouldn’t hear anybody else, and guess what, you did nothing, and look what happened, how well that turned out for all parties involved! How very responsible of you.

  Sod off, he thought wearily. I’m not supposed to be the one responsible. I’m not the one in charge. I’m Number Two.

  That you are, said the voice, and of course it was his own voice; of course it was, he knew that, even as he reached for the vodka bottle to top up his glass. It had always been his own voice, even back when he’d been alive, and it had chased him across countries, across continents, oceans, carried along with him wherever he went.

  In the abandoned hotel suite, something very hairy clambered in through the window, as it had done once before. It liked people who smelled right, and the woman who had first screamed at it and then stopped screaming and petted it properly had smelled right. Most people didn’t.

  It stopped, sniffing the air, and then the faceless head bent to snuffle at the carpet, following a trail to the bed – it hopped up on the bed, yes, this was where it had slept, all right, but there was now no warm body in the bed for it to curl up against. There didn’t seem to be anyone there at all, not even the cold man who had been there last night with the woman.

  The night breeze sent the curtains flaring and rippling. It was cold in here now, with the window open, and the hairy thing whined softly: something wasn’t right. When it had first climbed into the room, nobody had been there, either, but there were lots of things that suggested they’d be coming back. There had been a big, complicated, stuffed-full-of-things handbag, which it had quite enjoyed investigating: all kinds of smells were in there, some of which it had never encountered before.

  Now, when it jumped down to the floor and set about sniffing intently, all it could find was a closed suitcase, and in the other room where the cold man had been, there wasn’t even that.

  It whined again, pushing its non-face against the suitcase. That belonged to the woman, it could tell, it had her scent on it – the things inside smelled of her, too. But nothing else was there.

  Eventually it curled up on top of the suitcase, in an almost round knot of limbs, and went to sleep; and when a knock on the door in the morning roused it, all the maid found when she came into the room was a scatter of lon
g, inexplicable, silky auburn hairs.

  CHAPTER 4

  T

  he first thing Greta was aware of, out of the darkness, was a clutching weight around one ankle, and a faint but present smell of mold.

  She came awake suddenly and entirely, sure that whatever had been rattling behind that wall had come out to say hello – and her terror stuttered, sliding sideways, when she opened her eyes to find nothing horrible bending over her.

  Nothing at all. Only…

  … there was that weight around her ankle, and several smaller weights pressed against her feet. She looked down, and as the mindless terror retreated, she thought, Oh God, someone really has been summoning them, these can’t be more than a few weeks old —

  Clinging to her ankle was a wellmonster about the size of a turnip: a grey lump, with narrow little arms and legs that gripped her pant leg with surprising strength. As she watched, it began very slowly but determinedly to climb up her leg – she was reminded of the deliberate slowness of chameleons, of sloths.

  She looked down. There were – God, five of them, ranging in size from the biggest one watching her a few feet away to the one climbing her ankle, small grey hand over small grey hand, to the tiniest damp creature sitting on her foot. She couldn’t help reaching down to scoop that one into her hands, even as the largest crawled over and pressed its clammy face against her, radiating its characteristic mildewy smell.