Descent Into Dust (11 page)

The gypsy’s mouth worked vaguely, and I imagined it was trying one last time to sneer at me, as if it weren’t defeated at all. As if it knew some secret that consoled it as it slipped into death.

I felt numb. Over and over, I told myself that we together had not killed a man.
It was already dead,
I repeated in my mind, hoping to make it real.

Fox went down on one knee beside the body. “Quickly. The servants will be up soon.”

I did not move for a moment. My world had tilted, and I was off balance. Disbelief—despite the evidence of my eyes—held me in its fist. It is the nature of human love for predictability, safety, and the comfort of the known to want to deny that which threatens those things. At this moment, my every instinct wanted to flee from what had just happened. Had there been a retreat, some method to coil myself into a safer reality, I would have fled gladly.

No such blessing came, however, and eventually I recovered slightly, and fell in beside him. Moving mechanically, furtively, I worked together with Fox to perform the laborious task of extricating the stake, then rolling the body on its back.

As we did so, I noticed a small design on the corpse’s arm, what appeared to be a serpent’s tail. “Look at this,” I said, pointing to it.

Mr. Fox frowned and peeled back the sleeve to expose the entire forearm, revealing a tattoo of a dragon rampant, its tail
coiled around its body, its jaw open to show prominent teeth, and its forearms bristling with claws. Something about Fox’s reaction made me look at him, startled.

“Do you recognize it?” I asked.

“It is a dragon,” he said simply.

“I see that. Is it important? You reacted strangely.”

He seemed reluctant to say. “It makes me wonder about something, a legend. I do not know much about it. But perhaps this is something to do with the Dragon Prince.”

Perhaps it was how he said it, but my blood suddenly went cold. “The Dragon Prince? What is that?”

He snapped his gaze to mine, as if he’d been caught in his own thoughts. “I have heard whispers of the Dracula, but most do not dare to speak of him. More than the name, I do not know. I have seen others react to this symbol. The dragon is greatly feared, and the legends around it are shrouded in a great deal of mystery.”

“And you think…this was him? I was attacked by this…Dracula?” I asked. The name was frightening. I could not understand why, but just the sound of it spoken aloud called forth a primal kind of dread inside me.

He gave a dismissive laugh and a shake of his head. “No, surely not the Dracula itself. I am no doubt mistaken. Come, help me put him back onto the planks.”

I did what I could to aid him in placing the body back on the slab and adjusting its clothing to cover the chest puncture. Then we draped the tarpaulin over it once again.

“I will have to return to the corpse once it’s buried, to take its head.” He gathered up his tools, stuffing them into the sack. “The old Kashubian method of laying the severed head be
tween the feet and anointing the whole with millet seeds will be enough for a revenant of his magnitude.”

One would not think I could still be horrified after what I’d just witnessed, but the brutal method of dispatch he’d described and his casual tone shocked me. “My God,” I could not help but utter.

He gave me a curious look. “It’s what I’ve done to every victim of the damnable ‘wasting disease.’ It is no illness, Emma. The damned master vampire I’ve hunted here is feeding, although I do not understand why. He just glutted himself in Amsterdam…” He bowed his head under the burden of his thoughts. “I do not know if his intention is to make others like himself. Perhaps he seeks to raise an army. I’ve heard rumors to that end. He has come to Avebury for a specific purpose. Something about this place is special. It is not one of his usual haunts, and vampires are creatures of habit.”

I was somewhat dazed by this information. “Make others? Other vampires?”

“Of course. It taxes his strength, but he may have need of reinforcements.” He might have been discussing the habits of sheep for all the emotion he put into his words. And yet, each one fell like a brick, pelting the thin veneer of my old world and exposing me to a great and terrible knowledge I was suddenly sure I did not want.

Oblivious to my horror, Fox continued, “That is why I have dispatched all of the dead, just in case.” He peered at me, half-smiling. “You did not think every vampire victim becomes one himself, do you?”

“I…I can’t say I’ve given the matter much thought.”

He was finished packing the sack, and began to scatter the salt with the toe of his boot, grinding it into the dirt, erasing
all evidence of what we’d done. “If that were the case, vampires would have taken over mankind a long time ago. They’d keep us to feed, as we keep cattle.”

I wrapped the cloak about me more tightly and stared at him. Fox shouldered his bag, and said, “That is it, Emma. The night’s work is done. But the battle is far from over. Marius will not like to have lost this one.”

Chapter Ten

W
e returned to the house under cover of the last vestiges of night. A gray vapor crawled knee-high along the ground, a cloying, choking mist, and I felt stifled, needing air. I stumbled, because my knees went weak, I think. My strength was gone.

Fox’s hand was tight on my arm to steady me, and a strange thrill caught me, caressing its way under my flesh in a way that was not unpleasant. It occurred to me that despite having been a married woman, I had never shared anything as intimate as this night with Simon or any other man.

I gathered my wits. “What happens now?”

He was grim as he explained. “There is a sophisticated vampire hierarchy based on power, age, and how a creature feeds.
Wadim was among the least of them. Marius is a great lord, a master of others and one of the most powerful among his kind. The loss of his servant is only a minor setback, but one that will not please him.”

We waded through the fog, our footsteps muffled. A sense of unreality pursued me like a stubborn shadow. I thought,
Vampires?

I did not know if I wanted to believe it or not. I looked at Fox. His stoic face in profile, seemingly so confident, calmed me. We could not both of us be mad. “How is it you know of these things?” I asked.

He did not answer at first. Then, carefully, he said, “Sometimes we are exposed to things we would never choose to know. If we survive, we gain experience. If we are lucky, we gain expertise. I’ve traveled to the eastern regions of Europe, visited Istanbul, and even gone all the way to far Egypt. I’ve spent a long time learning what I could.”

“Egypt!” I was amazed. “That is a very long way.”

“It was the only means to know the things I sought to know. There is no study of revenants and ghouls to be taken at university.” The smile he wore was a mixture of self-deprecating humor and sadness. “One has to carefully trace the plethora of legends to find the truths in them. It can be tricky, for they are mingled with useless superstition and outright lies. But I have learned that a vampire reliably moves within a cycle of hunting grounds. He will set up in a location, a town or village, and make a few like himself, either
strigoi vii
or minions to aid him. He cannot do this easily, or often, and he must be at his full power.”

He stopped in his tracks, and his voice changed. “It takes three bites of a special nature to make a vampire,” he said, a
leaden rasp to his voice. “And each costs the host dearly, for the victim is transformed farther and farther from his human nature with each bleeding. It costs them their very blood. Some die trying to make another, especially on the first bite, which is the most draining for them. Others can do, and even become adept, so always with great taxing of their power.”

“Then why do they do it?”

“The undead are social creatures. They crave their own society.” His gaze drifted away as dark thoughts clouded his features. “Often they hunt together. It is play to them, you understand. Sport.”

These terrible words hung in the air, suspended in the mist. Fox took my elbow and we resumed walking. “When they have fed their fill from a place,” he explained, “the vampires move on. They are nomadic, visiting the next hunting ground in turn. It will be a generation or more before they return to a particular one. This is how I know Marius has not come here before to hunt. There are no legends, no past plagues or supernatural lore here to hint of his past visits.”

“He is killing. Those deaths, the bloodless corpses, they have to be his work.” My head shot up with a thought. “I thought the vampire bit here,” I said, touching my fingers to the soft, warm spot on my neck, just behind my earlobe. “The artery that supplies the blood to the brain. Would there not be evidence of such a wound?”

He nodded. “None of the victims of this local plague have displayed such signs of an arterial wound. If it had, talk of a vampire would have generated well before this, even here in England.”

“Then how does he…?”

He made a motion with his hand, a gesture of pure frustra
tion, then stalked a distance and stopped. “One such as Marius has special charms to seal the wound with a drop of his own blood, for vampire blood is imbued with magical properties. When he is at the proper strength, and with enough time after the kill, he can cover the evidence of his crime.”

He glanced at me. I had the feeling he was trying to gauge how I was taking all of this. When he saw I remained calm, he appeared to relax. “There is another subject that has been on my mind,” he ventured. “The time, or rather the season, is important, I am convinced. Certain seasons, I have heard said, affect the power of these creatures. This is spring, and there are important feasts coming that have long been recognized as times when evil is strong.” His steps slowed as we neared the house. “In fact, Beltane is nearly upon us.”

“Is that not May Day?” I asked. The tradition of going Maying was very much in fashion among villagers in the countryside where I grew up, if nothing more than for an excuse to drink and act bawdy. It was a night in which girls like Alyssa and I were tucked into bed early. “The traditions of May Day have to do with fertility.”

He paused. We’d reached the back gate but did not go further. “Did you know it is the custom at Eton for the boys to collect hawthorn switches on Beltane? They use the boughs to ward off evil, for hawthorn is considered holy.”

I froze momentarily, then recollected myself. Had he meant to catch me off guard with the mention of the hawthorn? He knew about the tree, I was certain. “May is a mere five weeks away,” I observed.

“I believe that is all the time we have to understand Marius’s purpose here.”

My heart leapt to my throat, beating so forcefully it nearly
choked me. “My God. Henrietta. She thinks he is her friend.” Several beats of silence passed, after which I asked in a small, frightened voice, “What do you think he wants with her?”

Fox spread his hands in an open gesture. “I cannot assure you of much, but I feel safe to assume he does not mean to feed from the child, for the simple fact that if he did, he would already have done so. He must intend to fool her, trick her into doing something he wants or needs.”

“But what could he want, or need, from a child?”

He appeared genuinely regretful. “I wish I could tell you. To have a child in the sights of such a creature, it is unspeakably horrible. And I know you love her a great deal.”

I nodded numbly. I was not reassured that we had discovered anything in our discussion to help Henrietta.

“I will attempt to help you safeguard her,” he said, and his voice had a new quality. It was softer, gentler, as if he were sensitive to my fear. “I know you have sensed, or seen, things, haven’t you? Can you tell me what these are? It might help.”

I had resisted trusting Mr. Fox previous to this, but no more. I believed him when he said he, too, was concerned for Henrietta. Thus, I surrendered my reservations and told him everything, from my first twinge of headache upon arrival to a detailed account of the serpents’ attack in the stable.

“It seems it all centers around Henrietta,” I said in conclusion. “Do you not agree?”

“It appears to be the case. Perhaps he is merely using her to gain entrance to the house,” he said contemplatively. “Children are easily beguiled because of their innocence, and they trust so easily.”

“So it is true a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited?” I asked.

“It is one of those superstitions that turns out to be true.”

“I cannot say I know much of vampires.”

He cut me a look. “You will need to learn quickly.”

I clutched my cloak about my shoulders. The chill of the morning finally penetrated my numbness, and my teeth began to chatter. “I think she is resisting him for now. That explains the nightmares. Do you think he will give up and leave her alone?”

“He shall try some other means,” Fox said darkly. “If he wants something in this house, he will not relent. With a house that size, it will not be difficult to find someone else to aid him if he wants entrance. I wish I could tell you a better hypothesis, but it seems he wants that child, Emma.”

So Henrietta was not safe at all, nor were any of us.

“I think you should go inside now,” Fox said. “You are getting cold.”

The household was already awake, we found as we passed through the garden gate. Cook was bustling in her kitchens. A yawning lad of eight tottered off with his bucket to the chicken house to gather the freshly laid eggs.

We used the French doors in the library, and I was able to slip upstairs unnoticed. I crawled into bed, my exhaustion sudden and complete, closing my eyes tightly. I tried to remember what it was like when Simon was alive, the sanest time of my life. In an effort to find some comfort for myself, I imagined he was here with me, sleeping silently beside me. I had but to turn on my back, and upon the pillow would be his silver hair, his bold features in repose.

What would he think of what I had done tonight? As indulgent, as doting as he had been, I doubted even my dead husband would find any understanding for the driving of a stake into the heart of a revenant.