Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page B

the Kaiser can offer the master vampire of any city . This man clearly considered the lives that he traded for his own survival his due – and had, just as clearly, been made vampire by his own master, as Ysidro had said, for his money and connections rather than his brains – a criterion he seemed to have used to select his own fledglings in his turn. Three more of them followed Golenischev into the room like hunting dogs.
    ‘Ippo,’ said the Count to the student. ‘You will beg Monsieur Ysidro’s pardon.’ He looked young – no vampire Asher had ever seen appeared more than forty – and as suave and soigné as a Frenchman in his well-cut London suit. ‘You, also, Marya, Olyusha—’
    ‘I spit on Monsieur Ysidro!’ proclaimed the student. ‘And I spit on you.’
    For a moment Golenischev only stood looking at the fledgling, anger blazing in his pale-blue eyes, and his beautiful lips in their gold frame of Prince Albert twisted with fury. Then – with a violent motion, as if dragged by some unseen hand – the student Ippo dropped to his knees, then to all fours. Sobbing curses, he crawled forward and lay on his belly to kiss Ysidro’s boot. The three fledglings who had come in with Golenischev only watched this humiliation, but there was something deadly in their silence, volatile anger shimmering on the edge of open defiance. As silently as humanly possible, Asher edged away from the remaining two rebels. If any of the newcomers joined their rebellion – if the situation snapped suddenly out of control, as situations had a way of doing – the rebels probably wouldn’t strike either the Count or Ysidro . . . but they would certainly turn on him.
    And as his back touched the wainscot of the wall behind him, he felt the panel sink slightly and shift.
    The two women repeated Ippo’s performance, the dancer Olyusha weeping with anger, the student Marya screaming obscenities and thrashing her head back and forth like an unwilling dog on a chain. Ysidro watched them both without even an expression of boredom, as if nothing in the human world touched him any longer. Perhaps, thought Asher, it did not – though he wondered if the Lady Irene Eaton’s master had ever forced her through a performance like this. And whether she had written to Ysidro about it.
    ‘You would like to bite him, wouldn’t you, Marya?’ mocked Golenischev. ‘Ah, look at her! What a face, eh? Go bite Ippo, Marya. Go on.’ Her face demonic, the woman crawled inch by inch to the student – had they been lovers? Asher wondered – seized Ippo by the ears and began to tear and worry at his face and hands with her teeth.
    ‘Bourgeoisie scum!’ Ippo screamed at the Count. ‘Lackey of the ruling classes—’
    ‘Don’t give us that “ruling classes” drivel, Ippoliton Nikolaivitch.’ One of the fledglings who had followed Golenischev into the bedroom spoke up, a stooped man with a face of ground-in sourness. ‘You care no more these days about the workers than I care about the Russian Empire anymore. I think the last time I saw you at a Party meeting you killed a shop girl as she came out and went down an alley on her way home.’
    ‘Now hear me,’ said Count Golenischev, when the last of the three rebels had done their homage and knelt, heads to the floor, in the near darkness of the failing lantern-light. In a single move – the terrifying movement of a vampire, that blanks the mind until the cold grip falls – the Count was beside Asher, catching his arm and pulling him to his feet like a policeman manhandling a beggar child. ‘Your friend Prince Dargomyzhsky cannot protect you, and when I catch that wretched traitor I will show you just how powerless he is. If you touch this man –’ he pushed Asher a little towards them – ‘if any harm comes to him – you will find out just what that traitor’s protection is worth. I have given my word as a nobleman of the Empire that it shall be so.’ He inclined his head