Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page A

around him been less greedy – or less determined to teach Ysidro a lesson – he knew they could have slit his throat with their claws and left him dead on Lady Eaton’s pastel Axminster carpet in less time than it would take for Ysidro to know what had happened . . .
    But they wanted to feed.
    And Asher had walked into vampire nests before.
    He jerked his hand hard, dropping into his palm the silver blade from its arm-sheathe, and struck backward with it into the vampire who held him from behind, even as he felt the cold touch of an icy forehead against his jaw. A woman screamed in pain. The triple and quadruple coils of silver chain around his throat under his collar were enough to burn any vampire’s lips and hands. For a blurred second he fought to keep his mind clear, and he twisted – more by instinct than by thought – against the grip on his elbows as it loosened. Someone struck him across the face with a violence that nearly broke his neck, and he slashed again with the knife, knowing the unhuman speed of his attackers—
    ‘Drop him!’ Ysidro’s voice was a silver whip.
    Asher hit the floor, too stunned for a moment to breathe.
    ‘Get back.’
    They stepped aside, shadows in the crooked reflection of his fallen lantern, eyes like animals shining out of the dark. Asher managed to get onto one knee and set the lantern upright – no sense in bringing the St Petersburg Fire Brigade to complicate matters. He pressed his hand to his throat, then pulled off his glove and did so again. Attack, defense, release had occupied seconds. It was only now that he began to shake.
    ‘And did Count Golenischev neglect to mention my visit this evening?’ asked Ysidro in his deadly-soft voice.
    ‘Golenischev can go fuck himself,’ retorted a young man in a rough jacket. He wore a straggly beard and the rather nautical-looking cap of a student, and he held his hand pressed in agony to a bloody stab-wound in his thigh. Ysidro had spoken in French, but the student had snapped his reply in the proletarian Russian of the factories and the streets.
    There were three of them. One – a woman of the same student type, short and thickset with a mouth like an iron trap – turned towards the dark door at the far side of the room, and Ysidro said, ‘Stay.’ He neither raised his voice nor moved, but she turned back, as if he had laid one of those steel hands on her shoulder. Asher could see where the silver of his neck chains had welted her lips. Her eyes mirrored the lantern light. Asher had never seen such an expression of sour hate.
    Even with his life hanging in the balance, Asher couldn’t imagine either her or the student being invited to a party at the house of the highest aristocrats in Russia.
    The other girl with them might have been though. She was tall and slim and fragile-looking, with fair hair coiled on the top of her head like a dancer and a dancer’s way of holding herself. It was she who said, ‘Golenischev has no command over us,’ and there was shaky defiance rather than confidence in her voice.
    Ysidro said nothing for a time, only regarded them with that cold calm. The male student almost shouted, ‘Golenischev is an aristocratic pig, a bourgeoisie fat-cat who lives from the sweat of the working man.’
    Asher was tempted to inquire when had been the last time the young man had either worked or lifted a hand to assist the Revolution, but didn’t. Nor did he dare move a finger towards the sharpened silver letter-opener, which lay on the blood-daubed carpet a yard away.
    ‘I take it,’ said Ysidro at last, ‘that there are two masters in Petersburg?’
    ‘There are not.’
    Asher had heard nothing in the house below, but in the dark of the doorway he saw gleaming eyes and the blur of faces untouched by sun. He knew which of the four newcomers had to be Count Golenischev, for the man had the calm arrogance of one who has ruled over the lives of peasants on his estates from infancy. There is little