Blood Marriage (40 page)

"Stop talking, Father. Rest."

"No, son. This is important. Before I met your mother...well...I had a strong affection for the ladies. And since Sarah's been gone, I've had a few, er, friends." The duke winked.

"More than a few, maybe," Devlin said. He caught Fielding's eye and pointed at the fireplace.

Fielding lit a taper from Bergen's lamp and hunkered down to coax the kindling to life. Bergen had been rummaging through the single chest of drawers in the room and had produced a bottle of brandy, cloth for bandages and a needle and thread. 

"Maybe," the duke agreed. "But none while I was married to your mother. At least not any I was sober enough to remember. I did wake up in Lady Wooten's bed once, but if you've ever seen Lady Wooten you'd know I couldn't possibly have- Ouch!" 

With his uninjured arm the duke snatched away the brandy-soaked cloth the doctor had placed against his wounded head, giving Bergen a dark look.

Bergen grinned and eyed the length of the duke's arm. Then, to Fielding's astonishment, he picked up the plank they'd used as a stretcher and broke it into pieces with the same ease with which a man might snap a stick. He returned to his patient with two splints and set to work. 

Devlin poured a glass of brandy and offered it to his father. The duke took the bottle from his son instead, lifting the neck to his lips. Devlin took a pitcher from the fireplace mantle and left the room. By the time he returned with water, Fielding had a respectable fire going in the fireplace.

"How is he?" Devlin asked the doctor. 

"Unfortunately, he'll recover. The break is clean; the head wound isn't deep. We can move him back to Heaven's Edge in the morning. Tonight, if you think we need to, but I'd prefer he rest."

"You needn't talk about me as if I'd lost my brains along with that bit of blood. I'm right here and can make my own decisions. I'm not in my dotage!" The duke took a generous gulp from the brandy bottle. "Go. Both of you. Do what needs doing. I'll be perfectly content here."

"Perhaps Detective Fielding could remain with him," Devlin said.

"Not," Fielding said, "if you want to stay off the gallows, your lordship. I've yet to see any proof you aren't a killer."

"You're wasting time. Go." The duke waved the bottle at them. "I don't need a nursemaid. If all it took to kill me was a bit of a whack to the head, some pretty thing's men-folk would have done the job years ago. The doctor's done what he can, staring at me won't do more. Go."

Fielding noted the way Bergen's eyes met Devlin's across the bed. Neither spoke, but Bergen went to the chest of drawers and took out a second bottle of brandy. He set it beside the bed, then added another log to the fire. Devlin closed and latched the window shutters. He put his hand to his father's sleeve, then to Fielding's amazement bent down and kissed the old drunk's forehead.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he said. 

The three men left the duke sprawled on the bed. At the top of the tower stairs, Lord Devlin offered Fielding the tail of his cloak. Pride fought with practicality. Practicality won. Fielding had no desire to be left fumbling through the darkness again. They made their way out of the castle, passing through the ruined kitchens to reach the empty pyre.

"If you've known that Randall and this thing are killers, why have you tolerated them in your home?" Fielding asked, nearly slamming into the back of Lord Devlin as the younger man stopped short and looked back at the castle one final time. 

"We didn't know. Not for sure anyway. Not until Grubner died. And to be fair, Randall probably hasn't killed anyone, yet," Devlin said.

"He nearly killed your father," Fielding said.

"If Randall'd intended to kill my father, he could have finished the job easily enough once he'd knocked him out. Doesn't mean he won't have to pay for it all the same." Devlin left the castle yard through the ruined outer wall. He stayed close to the wall, avoiding the dry moat that paralleled its circular course. He appeared to be following a trail of some type, though Fielding couldn't tell what it was he saw in the darkness. 

"You didn't know it was a killer?" Fielding picked up the thread of their earlier exchange and allowed disbelief to color his tone, hoping it would goad Devlin into providing more information. "It'd already killed seven victims in London and attacked Margaret."

Again Devlin stopped. This time he squatted in a large expanse of dirt, peering at the ground. He looked back at Bergen. "Just one set of footprints, no brush of a gown and only an occasional drop of oil. It was probably carried from the pyre still trussed up. It may not be fully awake yet."

"Or perhaps Randall had sense enough to keep it tied so he wouldn't become its first meal," Bergen said. "Wonder if he thought to stuff something in its mouth?"

"If he didn't, he won't get far. Carrying a body will slow him down. Even with the time we've lost, we might still catch him before he finds it a victim." Devlin stood and strode off along the wall again, picking up the conversation with Fielding as if it'd never been interrupted.

"We didn't know about the killings in London until you showed up after Grubner's body was found," he said. "Margaret could have been an accident. Even
diavol varcolacs
don't usually kill so recklessly. It attracts too much attention. It certainly attracted yours."

"And led me straight to you," Fielding said, then tripped over a stone. The ground rushed up at his face, but stopped short just before it hit. The doctor had snatched the back of his collar. The choking pressure of his own shirt on his neck caused him to sputter. The doctor jerked him upright again. When he could get his breath, Fielding threw a sarcastic "thank you" over his shoulder.

"Can't let anything happen to you." Bergen pulled the white handkerchief from his pocket, and fluttered it at the detective. "Not yet, anyway." Bergen gestured for Fielding to precede him. 

Fielding hurried after Devlin. Perhaps insisting on joining these two hadn't been a good idea. They moved with a speed he couldn't match at his age and size, in truth would've been hard-pressed to match even in his prime. And they seemed to be able to see exactly where they were going. Still, he'd made the choice and he wasn't a man to waste opportunity. Devlin seemed in a mood to answer questions, so he'd keep asking them. If he could spare the breath.

"But if you knew it was, uh, what is it you keep calling it?"

"
Diavol varcolac
," Devlin said as Fielding caught up to him. "Demon vampire."

"Demon vampire?" Fielding repeated, shrugging a creeping sensation off his spine.

They'd nearly reached the front of the castle, but Devlin backtracked several yards and went down on one knee in the high weeds.

"There are two kinds of vampires. True vampires and
diavol varcolacs,
" Devlin said. "True vampires are human. Born with special gifts and a craving for the blood of their fellow man, but human all the same, with human souls. They are bound by the honor of their clans to pay for all blood consumed."

"Pay?" Fielding said.

"Payment is made in different forms depending on the gifts and resources of each clan, and depending on the circumstances. But payment must always be made. A blood debt is a debt of honor, even though the one from whom the blood was taken usually never realizes it's gone. In our clan," Lord Devlin motioned back toward the doctor, "the debt is usually paid by healing."

"And the
diavol varcolacs
?" Fielding asked. 

"They are demons from Hell. They pay for nothing. They are not bound by honor because they have none. They are soulless and merciless. They use their victims viciously, sometimes killing them. But not so many, so close together. One a moon, no more than that. From what you said in the parlor after Amelia's funeral, this one has killed eight in just four months. Include Margaret and it would have made nine."

"And that isn't the worst of the news, is it Nick?" Bergen spoke from behind him. The sudden closeness of the sound caused Fielding to jump.

"There's worse?" Fielding asked.

Devlin nodded. "
Diavol varcolacs
are jealous creatures, jealous of their power and their position. They rarely tolerate other demons in territories they claim as their own. Normally when one manages to inhabit the body of a true vampire, it gathers vampire lackeys. Ordinary men filled with ordinary evil, who are willing to pledge themselves to the
diavol
, accept it as their master. In exchange, the
diavol
will make them vampires and they will serve it for the rest of their greatly extended lives. That's what is happening to Randall."

"But what is strange in this case," the doctor said, "is that the
diavol varcolac
isn't feeding in a normal way: secretly, if viciously. And it isn't simply killing its victims. It's preparing their bodies for the entry of other demons. It is intentionally inviting others of its kind into its territory."

"That's why both Grubner and Amelia's possession caught us off-guard," Devlin said. "It's normal practice to burn the victim of a
diavol varcolac
. But it's only a precaution since normally a
diavol
doesn't wish to share its territory with others of its kind. So it doesn't release the venom of vampirism into its victims as it kills them. But in this case, both Grubner’s body and Amelia Smith’s body were purposely prepared for the entry of demons. That doesn’t happen by accident. The timing is critical, the soul is released at death but the body is transformed. It becomes a vampire body empty of soul, the perfect vessel for demon possession. What we can't understand, is why Lucy is willing to invite other demons into its territory, how many it intends to gather, and why."

"Why would a demon be willing to wait to possess a vampire body? Why not simply possess the body of anyone who'd died?" Fielding couldn't keep the sarcasm from his voice. These men were truly mad, both of them. Or perhaps clever. Was this all some elaborate farce meant to direct suspicion away from Devlin? Had even the scarlet fiend on the castle roof been simply an ingenious distraction to allow Amelia Smith’s body, and whatever clues it harbored to be whisked out from under his nose? 

Devlin left the outer wall of the castle, climbing down through the dry moat and up again into the field beyond with light sure steps. Fielding eyed the deep, overgrown ravine with trepidation. He was as likely to break his neck as make it safely across.

"Why would a demon prefer a vampire body?" Fielding repeated, raising his voice so that it carried across the moat to Devlin.

"Here's one reason why," Bergen said. Fielding's legs were seized from behind and he was lifted off the ground. Instinctively his body went stiff, like one of the stuffed leather mannequins Maria kept in her sewing room. A startled cry caught in his throat as the doctor took a single step back and then soared over the moat in one smooth leap. Fielding raised his hands to protect himself, expecting to be sent sprawling on his face by the jarring impact of landing. But it never came. The doctor set him back on his feet as abruptly as he'd picked him up. 

"What the hell?" Fielding sputtered, but both the doctor and Devlin had set off across the open field heading for the forest. Fielding had to jog to keep up. "Why didn't you tell me as soon as Grubner's body was found?"

"Would you have believed us?" Devlin ducked beneath the branch of a tree, entering the cover of the forest.

"Of course not...but...I would have investigated the possibility...all the same." As he tried to maintain pace with the other men, Fielding was finding speaking more and more difficult. A branch slapped him in the face and something that felt suspiciously like a spider tickled across his cheek. He slapped at it.

"Had I given you reason to think I'd some knowledge of the crime, even if only enough to point the finger in another direction, I'd be sitting in a London prison right now," Devlin said.

"Probably," Fielding conceded.

They emerged from the forest undergrowth onto a narrow path. Lord Devlin signaled him to wait. Fielding, panting heavily, was grateful for the break. His arms and head were covered in scratches. He couldn't see them in the dark, but felt the sting of the damaged flesh well enough to know they were there. Maybe it had been a mistake to insist on coming along, but that mistake had yielded more information in a few minutes than he'd been able to get in the last three days. So as mistakes went, so far, this wasn't such a bad one.

Either Lord Devlin was a complete bedlamite and had managed to convince Dr. Bergen, Lady Devlin and Father Vlad to join him in his madness, or he was a very sly man, bent on drawing all those around him into his web of fantastic and confusing lies with the purpose of somehow escaping being charged with murder.

Or he was telling the truth.

Lennie's rough mug flashed in Fielding's memory. It was the look on the runner's face, his belief in Devlin and all this vampire faradiddle, that had convinced Fielding to play along, to see where this strange romp took him. That and the momentary glimpse of Dr. Bergen's fangs. But surely that had been a mere trick of the light, or perhaps the power of suggestion. Nothing more.

And yet, while carrying Fielding's not inconsiderable weight, the doctor had made an impossible leap across a moat -- a distance even the best horse couldn't have matched -- and he'd landed as lightly as a sparrow on a branch. Fielding looked at the doctor out of the corner of his eyes. Bergen grinned at him. Fielding shuffled away a bit and the doctor's grin widened.

Lord Devlin had disappeared down the path in one direction, returned and gone down the path in another. By the time he returned again Fielding's breathing had almost returned to normal.

"Randall and Amelia's body appear to have parted company." Devlin held up a piece of rope. One end was frayed as if it'd been gnawed through. "There were signs of a scuffle, but no blood. It appears the
diavol
woke and Randall didn't wait for it to break free of its bonds. He probably dropped it and ran."