The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly Page B

Temperance Hotel, she had observed that the beat constable had rousted the two sleepers beside the church wall, and moved them on.
    It was Rhys the White who killed you
? she had asked, and Simon had answered,
Yes
, matter-of-factly, without so much as a pause.
    Yet in a dream once she’d felt the paroxysm of light, that was the drinking of the soul of the living by the Undead, and knew there was more to it than
Yes
…
    Was that what I dreamed?
    Somewhere in her mind lingered the echo of moonlight through the iron lattices of a barred window, of a man’s voice whispering desperately: ‘
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine
…’
    Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord
…
    A man clinging to the edge of life as to a precipice.
    The smell of pine trees …
    The creak of a hinge as the door behind the prisoner opened and he flung himself to his feet, threw himself at the bars and clung to them with all his strength in the knowledge that his strength would not be enough.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me
…
?
    Trembling, Lydia sat up. She fumbled her eyeglasses from beneath her pillow – rooms at the Temperance Hotel did not include such luxuries as night stands – and rose with care, recalling that she’d left her notes and pencils strewn on the floor around the bed. As she had in her dream two nights ago, she crossed to the window, the baize curtain rough under her fingers, the wreaths of garlic and wolfsbane like dry tissue paper against her cheek.
    Through fog and darkness the tangle of rooftops and chimney stacks was barely to be seen. Mists caught the electric glow from the train yards, and by it, like a shadow, she thought she saw three figures, standing on the roof across the alleyway.
    Two men and a woman. (
How on EARTH did she get up there wearing a corset and a dress?
) A dozen feet separated them from the window. She had seen vampires leap twice that distance. So great was the darkness, no gleam of light caught in their eyes, but she knew what they were.
    Do they hear me breathe
?
    Detect the pounding of my heart
?
    As silently as she could she moved back into the room, opened the suitcase beneath the bed and took from it the jointed rod she’d had made when she’d come back from China last winter, that screwed together into a sort of spear with a sharpened silver point. Whether it would work or not she didn’t know, but all weapons used against vampires were more or less only to buy you time to flee, provided there was anywhere to flee to.
    There was also a little box of coffee beans, to counteract the vampire’s ability to make a victim drift momentarily into a dreamlike state of inattention. She’d once heard Dr Millward describing (at tedious length) a silver ring he’d had made, with a little spike on it to dig into his palm for the same purpose, though Lydia personally wouldn’t have wanted to risk drawing one’s blood anywhere near a vampire …
    She screwed the spear together and sat on the bed, facing the window that was only just less inkily dark than the blackness of the room.
    Grippen’s fledglings?
    Zahorec’s, made in some fashion that Grippen couldn’t detect?
    Whoever they are
,
they know I’m here.
    For six years she had lived with the knowledge that Grippen and his fledglings knew of her. Knew and kept their distance, out of fear of Simon.
    Fear?
She wondered now.
Or was that part of a bargain? That he would leave London, and they would leave me alone?
    And now he’s returned
…
    After a long time she realized that she could see the pale rectangle of curtained window a little more clearly, and heard the All Hallows clock strike four-thirty.
    At five-thirty she unscrewed the sections of her spear and stowed them in her suitcase, took off her spectacles, and lay down once more. But it was long before she slept, and when she did, she saw them in her dreams. Two men and a woman, standing on the