Ad Eternum (2 page)

“Maybe next time,” the wampyr answered. “Tonight, just take me up the Boston Post Road.”

To his credit, the hack didn’t bring it up again. He drove the wampyr through a city made strange by time—yet in some ways eerily familiar. The Boston Post was the only road on Manhattan that stretched from tip to tip without interruption, and they drove the length of it—from the green meadows and parkland of the Bowery to the wild rising of the thorny hills at the island’s apex. Between, the moon and the stars went invisible behind streetlights and tall buildings.

When the wampyr had dwelt here last, it was rare to find a structure over seven stories—and the tallest had been twenty-two or twenty-three, laden with such modern conveniences as lifts and electricity. It was strange to see them dwarfed, now—the elegant ivory silhouette of the Flatiron Building overshadowed by towers four times its height, floodlights blazing along their sides to paint their silhouettes in stark reverse against the darkness.

Even in the hour of the wolf, the streets were not deserted. Nor were they crowded, in particular, but a few individuals drifted along the sidewalks, and a few automobiles glided through the light-stippled streets. New Amsterdam was like London, like Paris in that regard: she might not sleep, but she dozed as fitfully as the passengers on the airliner had.

The hack turned his collar up but didn’t complain about the open window, for which the wampyr was glad. Because the scents that flooded in on the late-winter air were likewise familiar and strange.

The wampyr was given to understand that mortals could not smell the sea from within Manhattan’s rack of streets and towers. He could, though, and the rank tang of the oil that clotted it. He could smell the garbage, the greasy putrescence of cooking food, the blood that whispered so close beneath the skin of men and women and stray dogs slinking along the city’s sidewalks.

“Gorgeous,” he whispered.

Equally hushed, the hack replied, “I love this shift.”

When the cab dropped the wampyr in front of the house on Jardinstraat, the wampyr paid the hack double and told him to leave the meter running and go watch the sunrise. His block had changed very little: the long row of tidy townhouses with their iron banisters and winter-gray planters still snuggled between much taller, modern buildings on either side.

The sky was still indigo behind the wash of city lights as the cab pulled away, leaving the wampyr standing on a sidewalk at the end of the block, before a dark townhouse with its shades drawn and its steps—which described a graceful curve from sidewalk to a corner door—impeccably swept. The planters on either side had been weeded and trimmed back for winter, and the wampyr was pleased to see the thin green blades of crocus leaves gliding up from the compost that filled them.

At the top of the steps, he turned and looked back out at Jardinstraat Park. From this vantage, he could see over the low wall that bounded it. Water glinted behind a screen of bare trees; the winter’s ice on the reservoir had melted. The scents of cold earth and sap stirring reached him.

The key was in his pocket.

He opened the door of 184 Jardinstraat and let himself inside.

The house where he had lived another lifetime smelled of lemon polish and uninhabitation. He’d hired caretakers and housekeepers, and it seemed they had not taken advantage of their employer’s absence to let the house deteriorate. But neither had fires been laid in its hearths for more than half a century. No sunlight had fallen across its carpets, or the upholstery of its sheet-covered chairs. It was as clean and empty as a museum exhibit of life in the 19
^th
century.

The wampyr locked the door behind himself. Normally he would have come in through the side entrance with its small mudroom, rather than standing here in the echoing foyer. But there were times to stand on ceremony, and a sort of homecoming after almost sixty years away seemed one of them.

The wampyr set the small bag with his knitting and book beside the door. With slow steps, he paced from room to room, reacquainting himself with the house. He trailed a hand over the dustless surfaces of mantel and the long dining room table where DCI Garrett had once performed a magic trick. As gray morning crept in through the shades drawn over tight-closed windows, he climbed the central stair and looked into each room. All was in order. All was as he and Jack had left it when they had fled to Boston, and from there to Paris.

It wasn’t like a museum, he realized. It
was
a museum. A museum of a world that was dead.

He wondered what the neighbors had thought of this house that stayed vacant—but well-maintained—as property values skyrocketed around it, as its sister townhouses were sold off one by one and modern buildings three times taller skyrocketed, too.

He would need to hire servants. Trustworthy ones, probably through the auspices of the club. He’d see to it—and start the process—after sundown. In the meantime, however…well, the dead did not sleep.

He imagined all his books were where he’d left them.

In his ascent, he finally reached the sixth floor and the servant’s quarters. These rooms had not been so well-maintained: they were clean, but not aired. It had probably never occurred to the maintenance workers that anyone would care to check them, except the people who would be living here and cleaning them themselves.

He would have central heating installed. Electricity. Though he did not require such things himself.

Slowly, he descended. As the sun rose behind the towers all around, it was growing too bright in the front room now to be comfortable despite the window shades. The wampyr’s study was dim and comfortable. It had always been his daytime sanctuary. He fetched his knitting and pulled a battered Baroness Orczy from the shelf beside the fireplace. An ornately gilt-framed mirror—an Alexandrian excrescence that had been the height of English fashion when New Amsterdam was still a city in a colony—hung above the black marble mantel.

The wampyr no more reflected in its silvered glass than he would in a crashing waterfall. He reached out and pressed his fingertips to it anyway. Its chill felt neutral against the dry flesh of his fingertips.

“Jack Prior.”

His voice sounded dusty in his own ears.

“Yes,” he said. “I am Mr. Prior. Pleased to meet you.”

The Hotel Aphatos was on the far side of the Jardinstraat Park from the wampyr’s house, and quite a bit south. Still, it wasn’t so far that the wampyr hesitated to walk it, once the direct light of the sun had faded. By then, even he was somewhat restless—and the passage of centuries had left him with a stock of patience that would serve the envy of any hunting cat.

In the chill of evening he shrugged on overcoat and gloves and tugged a hat onto his head. He wouldn’t feel the cold, but scandal attended those who went about in their shirtsleeves in the wintertime. Even as he locked the door behind himself, he mocked his own caution at keeping up appearances: here he was about to intentionally walk through the front door of a wampyr club without so much as a subterfuge.

Either you’re in or you’re out
, he told himself.

The walk required half an hour at a leisurely pace. He paused on the sidewalk before the Hotel Aphatos and
looked up at the discreetly calligraphed sign above its violet awnings. As he’d half-expected, a crowd of three or four young men with short hair and cheap coats stood around, holding placards aloft in one gloved hand while warming the other in the opposite armpit.

The Aphatos was a new building constructed to look old. The pale gray façade rose above the street in ornate tiers and a doorman in scarlet guarded the entry, and the protestors stood well back from him. As the wampyr turned on the sidewalk to approach the entrance, however, the broadest of the young men broke away from the group. Egged on by the catcalls of his friends, he approached.

The wampyr did not turn to look. He did not alter his course. If an attack came, he was ready; if it did not, the young man was beneath his notice.

To his surprise, another young man, this one bearded and wearing a vest that said ESCORT over threadbare clothing, stepped between the wampyr and the protestors.

“You may not block access to private property,” he said, as if he recited it a thousand times a day.

“Prior,” the wampyr said to the doorman. “I’m expected.”

“Of course, sir,” said the doorman, and swept the door aside.

The lobby might not have seemed out of place in any hotel. The windows, though tinted, were not obscured—those windows faced east, and their awnings would keep direct sun from spilling across the brown-and-tawny marble floor for most of the day. In the early mornings, when the sun rose across Jardinstraat Park, the light could be blocked by Japanese screens. In the afternoons and evenings, the hotel’s wampyr denizens could take their ease in overstuffed leather chairs and enjoy the track of the light across the trees—and the leaves and grass, in such seasons as offered some.

For now, what lay beyond the plate glass was the protestors, the escort, a few hurried pedestrians…and the prowling sweep of automobile lights along the street. The wampyr turned away.

He presented himself to the concierge, who was mortal and unruffled, and asked if there was any mail or any messages. “Prior,” he said. “John. Or Jack.”

Each time, it came out easier. It always took more time to wear in a new name than to wear out an old.

While the concierge checked the cubbies, the wampyr wondered if he would find anyone he knew from a past life in residence.

“Here you are, sir,” the concierge said, returning with a scant handful of envelopes. “Will you be staying in the hotel?”

“I maintain a residence in the city.” The wampyr restrained himself from flipping through return addresses—for now. “I will require access to the club, however.”

“Of course,” said the concierge. “You’ll find it on the mezzanine. And should you require a room for the day—” he tipped his head eloquently “—those are easily made available.”

“Thank you.” The wampyr tipped the concierge, then took his mail aside and began opening envelopes. Most were simply business matters, as his regular correspondents had known of his imminent change of address since Abby Irene had entered her final illness. But one was on thick, creamy laid paper and had the feel of an invitation. There was no postmark. It must have been hand-delivered.

The wampyr set his hat on the arm of the chair and slit the flap with a fingernail. A cold draft drew his attention; the doorman had admitted two willowy young women dressed in straight-skirted dresses that ended well above the knee. They smelled warm, appetizing—but over even the smell of blood and life lay the gloss of extreme youth. They giggled and leaned together, brown-haired and round-armed and underdressed for the weather.

The wampyr slid the card from the envelope.

It was an invitation to a party at a good address in Groenwijck for that very night after eight. The hostess’s name was Sarah Emrys; the wampyr had not heard of her. The lingering smell of ink and a woman’s hand encouraged him to turn the card over.

On the back, in elegant penmanship, a woman had written in blue:
I apologize for the lateness of this invitation, but I had only just heard from my dear friend Dr. Thomas that you have arrived in New Amsterdam. I do hope you can join us.

The wampyr glanced at the bank of lifts and the curving stair leading to the mezzanine. He heard the giggle of the two young women daring each other further into the hotel. He thought of awkward fumblings in rented rooms, and the necessity of small talk afterwards, and the nearly inevitable discovery that neither party in the transaction was really what the other had fantasized.

He wasn’t that hungry.

He checked his watch: a little before 7. He wondered if there was still time to send an R.S.V.P. The note seemed to indicate no need for one, but the habits of politeness had become much ingrained.

The invitation had a telephone number. It would be easy enough to ask the concierge to call while the wampyr found himself a cab. At least he was already dressed for evening.

The wampyr arranged to be fashionably late. Another building, another doorman, another marble lobby—this one white and veined brown like old ice. Miss Emrys’ flat was on the ground floor. The doorman inspected the wampyr’s invitation and showed him the way.

The space beyond the solid oaken door was filled with heartbeats and voices, the warm smell of living women and living men. He rapped and waited.

Quick heel-clicking footsteps rattled on a hardwood floor. The door opened a crack, revealing a strip of peach party dress with ash-brown hair falling over one shoulder, and rattled to the end of a chain that was far less defense against the wampyr’s entrance than the word of the woman whose pale fingers curled around the frame.

The wampyr held the invitation up. “Prior,” he said. “Miss Emrys, I presume?”

“Of course.” Excitement and anxiety sharpened her scent. “How good of you to come.”

She shut the door long enough to wiggle the chain loose, then opened it wide. She stood aside, obviously expecting him to answer.

The wampyr smiled at her gently, with closed lips. “Weren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Oh,” she said. “Of course! Please come in.” She laughed. “Enter freely, and of your own will.”

He bowed in an intentionally archaic fashion, handed her his hat, and stepped within.

Food smells assaulted him, but he was too experienced to show his distaste. Instead, he waited for his hostess to shut the door and hang his hat—and the coat he also surrendered—then turn back to him. The flat was large enough to boast a kind of foyer or front hall dominated by a blazing fireplace framed in dark wood paneling. A corridor led off to the left, and the wampyr assumed that the kitchen and bedrooms were that way. Glass French doors stood open off the hallway where he stood. In clockwise order, they led to a dining room, parlor, and a library.

The food smells wafted from the dining room—but in defiance of the customary mechanics of parties, the sounds and laughter were concentrated in the library.

“This way, Mr. Prior,” Miss Emrys said.

“Jack,” he said.

She looked at him, shocked or perhaps merely a little taken aback. “Jack?”

“Call me Jack,” he said, and allowed her to take his elbow and lead him across the hall.

Setting aside Miss Emrys, four people were gathered within. The wampyr was not too surprised to note that one of them was Dr. Thomas. Of the others, one was a man and two women. The man and one of the women were of apparent European lineage; the second woman had glossy black hair grown long, in a single straight fall cut blunt across the bottom, and the ochre skin of the native American peoples. She wore her years with a mature handsomeness.

The white woman was nondescript in a beige suit, leading the wampyr to fear that unless she demonstrated unusual strength of character, she was destined to remain to him
the other one
. The man was fortyish and of average height, with a little paunch insufficiently concealed by a waistcoat that matched his silk suit and his balding brown hair cut close against the sides of a roundish skull. His shirt cuffs were shot to show black coral links. As he appraised the wampyr, the wampyr experienced the brief familiar sensation that he was being sized up as a threat.

“Welcome to my little salon,” said Miss Emrys. “Mr. Jack Prior, you already know Dr. Damian Thomas. This is Dr. Ruthanna Wehrmeister—”

She grinned at the wampyr as he raised her hand, an honestly entertained smirk that took her age from nondescript, but not old, to youthful and full of mischief. “Mr. Prior. So your ancestors were preachers?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Were yours combat sorcerers?” The decades in London had stood him in good stead; his skin, even given a wampyr’s pallor, might be swarthy for an Englishman, but no trace of the foreign or archaic remained in his accent now.

Dr. Wehrmeister laughed out loud, no polite girlish trill but something hearty and spontaneous. “Not mine,” she said, with a nod to the older, probably-Iroquois woman. “But Mrs. Blacksnake here is the granddaughter of the great Seneca general Halftown. It is likely she that should carry the sobriquet ‘war-master,’ since her grandfather’s sorceries held the Iroquois line against the British for thirty years.”

“Please,” said Mrs. Blacksnake. “He had help. And you must call me Estelle.”

“I did not know,” the wampyr said, with what he hoped was politeness, “that the Iroquois had taken to adopting European names.”

“Only when we deal on a regular basis with our thick-tongued friends,” she said tolerantly.

“Of course,” the wampyr said. Then, embarrassed that it had taken so long for him to come to the understanding, he added, “I’ve fallen into a nest of sorcerers.”

It explained why such a diverse group would be gathered together, when the wampyr understood that the United Democratic States of North America were still largely socially segregated in ways mysterious to a European.

“Indeed you have,” said Dr. Thomas. “I hope you don’t mind.”

The wampyr seated himself. “Some of my dearest friends have been sorcerers,” he said wryly. He turned to the last unintroduced man and extended his still-gloved hand. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Mr. Prior,” said Sarah Emrys. “May I present the Prince Ragoczy, late of Kyiv.”

The wampyr did not raise his brows. —A pleasure, he said in Russian. —I am afraid my Ukrainian is rather dusty. I hope this approximation does not offend.—

“Not at all,” said the Prince. “Your consideration is noted.”

By the thinning of his hair and the pores in his cheeks, the wampyr would have placed him as a man in his forties, and fond of his drink. But he moved like someone younger.

“So,” the wampyr said. “You are the Comte de St. Germain. How very odd to meet you after all these years.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Ragoczy.

“I recognize the name you are using.” The wampyr sat back. “But I was in Paris in the seventeen fifties, and I do not think I saw
you
there.”

Dr. Wehrmeister sat back with her hands in the lap of her skirted suit. One of Mrs. Blacksnake’s eyebrows rose.

“How curious,” said the Prince. “Because while I will admit that a powdered wig hides many sins, I daresay I recollect
you
, Monsieur Gosselin.”