Incarnation (17 page)

“No one has been here in a very long time,” I said. Though I spoke softly, my voice echoed up to the domed ceiling high above.

“So it seems,” Marco agreed. He stepped closer. I turned
toward his warmth, saw the golden glimmer of his eyes, and reached out a hand to—

The room shifted around me. One moment I was standing in the buried ruins beneath the foundry and in the next I heard music. The light of gleaming candles filled the chamber that looked as fresh and new as though it had been constructed that very day. Lords and ladies, all gloriously dressed, moved within it.

I moved away from them, toward a twisting stone staircase that coiled within the shell of a tower, climbing higher and higher until I came to . . . a library? The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with leather-bound books. I glimpsed a copy of Dante’s
La Divina Commedia
and another of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
before I was diverted by the view beyond the tall windows.

London lay before me on both sides of the gleaming silver ribbon that was the Thames. But it was a London I had never seen before. The tallest building in view was St. Paul’s. East of it lay the Tower, looming heavy and threatening above the river. To the west, I could just make out the spires of Westminster Abbey. But the city between was . . . tiny? The buildings were low and huddled together. No Watchers moved among them, no turbines thrummed. It was a different age.

A man dressed in black stood near the windows. I walked deeper into the room, drawn to
him
. My own will was suspended; suddenly it was as if I was back on the moor, helpless to do anything other than his bidding. An eager accomplice to my own seduction.

He turned, saw me, and smiled. “Lucy . . . at last . . .”

A shiver of pleasure rippled through me. The drawing in Dee’s book captured his features well enough but it could not do justice to the impact of his presence. The light that shone from within him dazzled my eyes. He was the being in the opera house, the singer who had drawn me from the grave, yet I now knew him to be so much more. Mordred, the son of Arthur and lover of Morgaine, who had sacrificed his humanity in a desperate bid to save his realm. How had the weight of centuries—and of power beyond the understanding of mere mortals—shaped him?

His hands clasped mine. I looked down, startled to see that while his were almost translucent my own appeared solid but wavering, as though caught in a blurred photograph where the subject is moving in and out of focus.

“You’ve left it rather late, dear girl.” Sadness tinged his voice but so did relief. “Not that you are to blame. Damn Gladstone for his interference. If I’d any notion that he would learn of you and mistakenly think that you were a danger to the realm, I would have . . . But never mind, there is no time for that now. You are here and I am thankful for it.”

As much as I would have liked to pursue the matter of the former prime minister’s role in consigning me to the grave from which Mordred had drawn me, I agreed that this was not the moment to do so. My throat was very tight. I struggled to speak. “This place . . . how can you . . . ?”

“Memory and shadow, nothing more but enough for me to reach you. We have little time—”

“I know.” Urgency gripped me. “Where are you really?” Not in a long-vanished tower above a modern foundry, that was for certain. I could believe that such was the power of his being
that he could project the sense of himself into this place he must have known so well, and even draw me partway into it as he had drawn me from the grave. But his physical form had to be somewhere else entirely.

“A basement,” Mordred said, “damp, moldy, and dark. I can hear the river. I think it is the Thames. There are boats along it, their horns hooting. I catch a whiff of sooty air now and again. In what I imagine is day, the ground above me vibrates with traffic. From time to time, I hear music. Occasionally, I hear people screaming.”

What hell was he describing? Where the trapped screamed and music played while life above went on its frantic, turbulent way?

“Do you see anyone?” I asked.

“A man . . . human or a devil, I cannot say. Perhaps he is both. He comes to torment me but I never see his face. He is always masked.”

I shivered at the vision he conjured. Who could have laid so great a king so low? How could I hope to save him? “What else do you see?”

“Nothing . . . only the masked man.”

“There must be other clues to where you are. I beseech you, no detail is too small.”

“I have told you all I can.” His voice was fading; already he seemed to be slipping from me.

“Wait! If we cannot find you, human and vampire will fall on one another to the destruction of both our races. You must help us!”

He hesitated, his gaze sharpening even as darkness swirled around us both. In the distance, I heard the grunts and clangs
of a strange beast, both alive and machine, grinding down all in its path.

“Us?” Mordred repeated. “Who is with you?”

“Marco di Orsini.”

I waited, wondering what his reaction would be, but he did no more than ask, “What do you know of him?”

Belatedly, I realized how little Marco had told me of himself. “He says that he is not a Slayer.”

Was that not the truth? Could he have befriended me only so I would lead him to Mordred? As a girl, I had skipped along the bright surface of life, rarely bothering to consider what lay below. Now I saw layers of motive and suspicion at every turn. If the conflicting sides of my nature had any chance of ever being reconciled, I had to hope that it would be on some surer middle ground.

To my great relief, Mordred said, “Indeed he is not. He is a Protector, scion of an ancient line sworn to safeguard humans from us. He is taking a risk allying himself with you. His kind will not approve.”

The red pendant. The ease with which he had driven off the pair who had threatened me in front of the Bagatelle. His knowledge of all things vampire. He had been protecting me the night we met when I was a naïve, all-too-human girl. Was he still?

“Marco believes that only you can prevent war between humans and vampires,” I said.

Mordred sighed. “Sadly, I suspect that he is right, but my strength is fading. If you would ask more of me, make haste.”

“Wait!” I insisted. Loathe though I was to think it, I might fail in my quest to find Mordred. This could be my only chance to understand what had happened to me. “Why me? Why didn’t you choose someone else?”

He hesitated. “How much do you know of your family history?”

“Enough, I suppose. My father—”

“The male line is inconsequential. I am speaking of your mother’s people.”

“My mother?” My kind, patient mother, who dreamed of seeing her daughters presented at court and was fiercely proud of her prize-winning camellias.

“Your mother is a descendant of the same bloodline as Morgaine. Do you know who she was?”

“If Dee is to be believed, you loved her—”

He winced. A look passed across his face that spoke such sorrow as mere words can never convey. “It is true, I loved her with all my heart when I possessed as much.”

“But she was a Slayer.”

“Indeed, and from that blood comes many things. Other Slayers, of course, but the next of those lies centuries in the future. Between comes the potential for something altogether different—neither vampire nor human but part of both.”

“A halfling.” I hardly dared to let my lips shape the word, but scarcely had I spoken than I saw the truth in his gaze.

“Ah, Lucy, you are far better informed than I imagined you would be, but perhaps that is for the best. Time is fleeting.
Find me. . . .”

His last words were little more than a whisper. Mordred, the room, and the city beyond were dissolving. With his going so, too, did my own strength evaporate. My knees gave way. I touched a cold, hard floor only to be lifted from it by strong arms.

A deep, resonant voice spoke close against my ear. Breath—alive, vibrant—brushed my cheek. “It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

I clung to hard muscle and sinew, to warmth and life, to the thought of Marco and the reality, his face floating before me as I climbed up and up, out of time and memory until I came at last back to the place where I had begun.

“What happened?” my protector asked.

CHAPTER 13

M
arco and I were standing on a narrow platform high above the foundry floor. Across the width of it, I saw blank-faced men moving behind a glass wall, men of the new technocrat class who kept such marvels as the foundry running without thought of the cost to others.

“I found him.” Was that my voice, so thin and faint, like mist tangling in spectral branches?

“Mordred?”

I nodded. “The stories are true; he is here, as is the manor. But I only reached him for few moments. I couldn’t hold on.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Marco said. “At least we know now.”

“It does matter,” I insisted. “He couldn’t tell me where he is.”

“We’ll find out, but come, we need to leave here.”

He was right, of course, but that did not make the task easy. We staggered down the rickety metal steps until we came to the passage through which we had entered. Scarcely had we started along it than a rending shriek tore the air, drowning out even the cacophony of the machines. The walls shuddered all around us. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the bolts holding the metal staircase in place snap as though they
were made of tin rather than steel. The entire structure swayed loose from the wall and began to crumble.

“Run!” I yelled, and we did, thudding down through the passage out toward the gate, hurtling ourselves against the barrier.

Only to be reminded that it was locked. Beyond, I could see daylight, but it could have been a hundred miles away for all the chance we had of reaching it. Behind us, terrified workers had thrown down their tools and were racing for safety. In another moment, the least fortunate would be trampled underfoot and the rest trapped.

“You!” Marco shouted. “Unlock the gate!”

Startled, I saw the guard who had been bribed to let us in. The man looked pale and terrified, frozen in place. Marco grabbed hold of him and shoved him against the barrier. “Open it!”

In the grip of shock, the hapless fellow fumbled the key. It dropped clattering onto the floor. Marco swept it up and—as the panic-stricken workers closed in—shoved the key into the lock. With a twist, it opened. The gate swung, squeaking on its hinges. Around us, the walls of the foundry were giving way. I stretched out my arms, trying to keep my balance as the floor tilted. The screams of machines and men joined in an endless outcry of pain and horror. I looked back in the direction we had come just as an immense explosion rent the air. A ball of fire hurtled toward us down the passage.

“Go!” Marco shouted and shoved me out through the door. The ground rippled and quaked. We clung to each other as we ran. Men were pouring out behind us, many with their clothes on fire. They formed a vast wave that pushed us along. Debris was falling everywhere, striking down those trying to escape.
I saw an older man collapse, his skull split open by a brick. A younger man, lamed by a blow from a hurtling piece of steel, crumbled to the ground and was quickly lost beneath the rampaging mob.

A scream bubbled up in my throat. Before it could escape, Marco thrust us both into the doorway of a small shop. Sheltered there we turned in time to see the entire massive foundry give one last shudder before it surrendered to the inexorable pull of gravity. The hideous shriek of a dying beast filled the air. As it did, Marco pressed me against the wall, his body protecting mine.

Given who and what I was, our positions should have been reversed. My strength and stamina were greater, yet apparently I was still human enough to rouse his protective instincts. And to be glad of them.

Clinging to him, I stared over his shoulder, convinced that no one, not even a vampire, could survive the maelstrom of destruction about to consume us. Everything that had comprised the foundry—its massive walls and towering smokestacks, its huge furnaces and molds, casting vessels, rollers and cutters, all of it was cascading down upon the surrounding streets. A lucky few managed to evade the debris, but they were quickly covered in choking dust. Only those who, like Marco and me, were sheltered beneath deep overhangs, avoided the worst.