The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page A

13
Doksa
out of Athens, Christov Antokolski of Kiev, coffin of his father. Jan. 13,
Sirena
from Venice, Natalia Vatarescu of Sofia, and maid, 3 steamer trunks: 2×2×4 250 lb, 28’×17’×50 220 lb, 28’×22’×3.5’ 250 lbs …
    What could I say, and to whom?
    She knew the look in Miss Armistead’s eyes. The girl was being lured by a vampire.
    Courted in her dreams – as Lydia’s companion Margaret Potton had been courted four years ago – with visions of a soulful Byronic wanderer through the ages, who lay the heart he did not think he still possessed at the feet of a living girl who could save him …
    She wondered if the vampire seducer had grinned to himself all the while at the depth of her eager surrender, tickled at his own power to fool.
    She shivered, and drew the room’s spare blanket closer around her bare shoulders.
    Ludovico Bertolo of Sofia, and valet, Jan 15, from Cherbourg, on the
Reine Margot,
trunk 28’×18’×6’, 300 lbs. Fuad Al-Wahid of Cairo, Jan 17, on the
Great George
out of Bordeaux, with the coffin of his brother …
    By and large, vampires fed on people no one would miss. Crossing-sweepers, mudlarks, paupers in workhouses or old men sleeping on alley pavements in the East End.
    But neither man nor vampire lives on bread alone. The drunkards, the whores, the irredeemably abandoned were no fun to hunt.
    And with all of eternity before them, vampires – she had been told by Jamie, who knew them better – were often and easily bored.
    Her skull felt as if it would split.
    Cece would deny it.
    If Grippen – or one of Grippen’s fledglings – was Cece’s demon lover, Miranda and Nan would probably die if Lydia asked questions, poked into shadows.
    They’ll probably kill me, too
.
    And Cece
.
    Would vampires dare kill the daughter of an American millionaire?
    Grippen wouldn’t
. That was a thousand times worse than two or three paupers a night.
    But none of his fledglings is more than six years a vampire. Who knows who they are, or how much control he has over them.
    By the end of the evening Aunt Lavinnia had been unobtrusively maneuvering to break up Lydia’s conversations with the American girl, lest – Lydia knew without a word being exchanged – her growing friendship with Cece encourage Armistead and his bumptious partner Binney to believe themselves ‘accepted’ into the Halfdene-Peasehall social circle.
    God, forgive me for not pulling Cece aside this evening, demanding to know what’s going on. For not warning her, telling her
…
    Telling her what?
    5–7 Shoe Lane, willed by William Boyle of Newham Street to Francis Houghton of Priest Row, Nov. ’07. 10 Bell Yard, willed June ’08 by Cosimo Graves of Rood Lane to Bartholomew Barrow of Rose Street. By the same testament, 2 Rose Street willed to Daphne Scrooby of Parish Street, and 13–17 Horsleydown Street to Nicholas Barger of Rood Lane. 29 Rosemary Lane by deed of gift Dec ’09 by Viscount Vauxhill to Nicholas Barger of Rood Lane
…
    (Dear Heavens, not Geoffrey Vauxhill! Father wanted me to marry him!)
    Vampires hunt slowly, when they hunt for sport. They’ll court a victim for weeks or months … Cece looked FAR too healthy for this to have been going on long …
    I can’t let her meet him again!
But even as she thought it, she knew she’d have to. Distantly the clang of the Liverpool Street train yards broke the dark of the sleeping city, and the coal-oil stink of the lamp smoke vied with the pungency of the dried garlic she’d hung in garlands around the window.
    I should have hung them in Miranda’s nursery.
    Osric Millward – she had heard from Valentina, accompanied by a tinkling, silvery laugh – had such protections on the windows of the small chambers he rented in Kensington, on the settlement that his wife’s family still paid to him.