Incarnation (20 page)

The very air shook with her fury, but incredibly, she still was not obeyed. One of the pair, having gained a momentary advantage, had his opponent on the floor. He looked up, directly at Lady Blanche, his bloodstained lips curled in a chilling smile. While his gaze held hers in defiance, he
twisted the other’s neck until it gave a sickening crack. The other vampires, subdued enough to break off fighting, roared approval.

I turned away as my stomach heaved. When I dared to look again, the sight I beheld sent a bolt of horror through me. The defeated vampire was sitting up. As I watched, his head turned entirely around, glaring in all directions. For a moment, I thought it would tear loose and fall to the floor but he steadied it between his hands and held it until it settled into place again. Having managed to stand, he pushed his way through the mob and limped from the club.

Lady Blanche turned on her heel and strode away. Felix crawled quickly from under the table and hurried after her. I was left alone in the midst of the bloodstained throng intent on celebrating the victor. My every instinct was to flee. Uncaring of the attention I might attract, I shoved my way through the bloodied crowd until I reached the door. Once outside, I stopped for a moment to get my bearings. Nothing stirred in the passage or beyond. The hour was very late, the silence absolute except for the whisper of freshening wind through the narrow streets and the faint lapping of water against the nearby quays.

With no destination in mind, I began to walk. As I increased the distance between myself and the ghastly scene I had just witnessed, my nerves calmed somewhat. The part of the city I was in was deserted at that hour. Nothing stirred save the dirigibles floating overhead. Even so, a few of the new electric lights shone here and there in scattered windows. Passing the offices of a banking firm, I heard a sudden burst of static that made me start. Someone was listening to a Faraday receiver, the means by which it was now possible to receive
communications from all over the world. Or at least that part of it equipped to send them. So great was the excitement engendered by the new communications that my own father had spoken of acquiring a receiver for the house in Whitby. The notion had appalled my mother, who claimed we would all be electrified in our beds, whatever that entailed. I had found no such apparatus during my stay in the house, so presumably my father had been dissuaded. Or perhaps the disappearance of his daughter had driven out consideration of all else.

Lost in thought, I was startled when I turned a corner and found myself on the outskirts of Mayfair. A dog barked as I passed, but when I looked in its direction, the animal whimpered and fell silent. Instinct drove me on. Shortly, I came to a tree-lined street that was all too familiar. Halfway down it, I stood in front of my family’s townhouse. A gracious residence three stories in height with a façade of dark stone ornamented with fluted pilasters, the house had been a gift from my mother’s family upon her marriage to my father. He had been reluctant to accept such munificence, but in time he had come to love the house as much as my mother did. I had mixed feelings. The house reminded me of the far more restricted life I had known in London as both a child and a young woman. Whereas in Whitby I had contrived to run free, in the city I had been watched far more carefully. I had chaffed under the regimen of nannies and other minders, but now I marveled at how ignorant I had been of the dangers lurking just out of sight.

Now that I actually was one of those dangers, my perceptions were altogether different. I told myself that I should go, indeed that I should never have come. Yet I could not take a step away. To the contrary, I drew nearer. No lights shone
on the ground floor where the parlor and dining room were located, and where my father had his office. Similarly, the windows tucked away under the sloping roof were dark. The household staff would not begin to rouse until shortly before dawn, when the race would begin to light the fires and prepare the breakfast trays before the family woke.

My parents’ bedroom was in the front of the house, overlooking the street. It, too, was dark. I was beginning to think that they truly weren’t there, having gone perhaps to the Continent. Nonetheless, I decided to visit the small garden in the back. Generally, the only access to the garden was through the house itself, but I had other means. A quick leap and I took the front wall easily, sped over the roof, and dropped onto a balcony that overlooked the garden. There I paused, looking down on the place where Amanda and I had played so often, where I had bedeviled her with my insistence on making mud pies and building twig forts when she wanted only to care for her dolls and sketch flowers. As sisters, we could scarcely have been more different, yet I could not help but remember how she had smoothed the way for me when I followed her into society, quietly insisting that her friends overlook my missteps and include me in their activities. So, too, she had given me confidence in my appearance, far removed from her own blond beauty, yet, she claimed, more interesting and compelling.

My hands tightened on the railing of the balcony as I admitted for the first time how much I missed her. Such was my yearning that I could have sworn I smelled the lavender perfume she always favored. A faint whiff of it seemed to reach beyond the closed balcony doors, perceptible to my heightened senses. I turned, only then realizing that I was standing directly
outside my sister’s room. A single light glowed within. By its illumination, I could just make out the figure in the bed.

Amanda slept, as she did everything else, gracefully. Not for her the open-mouthed gape with a hint of drool, far less the unladylike snore that even our mother was capable of producing on occasion. Instead, she looked as lovely as a princess needing only the kiss of her prince to awaken her to joyful life.

But that impression, born of memory and without concession to her more recent experiences, was mistaken. Even as I watched, her head tossed in agitation and she cried out. My hand was on the door, already pressing it open, when I stopped abruptly. Amanda sat up suddenly in the bed. Staring into the shadows, she called, “Lucy? Lucy, are you there?”

I froze, uncertain of what to do. She could not possibly have seen me, surrounded as I was by darkness. Yet she knew somehow that I was present. Indeed, she appeared to be so convinced that, to my dismay, she left the bed and stood beside it, a pale, slim figure in her white silk nightgown, her golden hair lying in a chaste braid over her shoulder.

Only then did I realize that Amanda not only still slept under our parents’ roof but she slept alone. When she raised her hand to her brow, I saw that her betrothal ring was gone. I will not claim to feel even a flicker of regret at her continued freedom, but her obvious sorrow gripped me. As I hesitated, still uncertain what to do, she dropped her hand and murmured, “I must be going mad and why not? Night after night . . . these terrible dreams . . .”

A tear slipped down her pale cheek, followed swiftly by another. She wiped them away angrily and, to my horror, harshly pinched her arm, twisting the skin so cruelly that I was certain she would be bruised.

“She isn’t here! She’s gone! Wake up!”

Seeing her distress, I could not help myself. I moved just enough to draw her eye. At once, she stopped and stared. Breathlessly, she whispered, “Lucy . . . it is you! I know it! What has happened to you? For the love of God, tell me!”

She started toward the balcony door but I was swifter. Stepping into the room, I forced a smile to my lips. “Dearest sister, don’t be afraid. I only wanted to see you but I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry—”

Amanda stretched out her arms to me. As she did, I could see how thin she had become. Between the two of us, she looked far more the wraith than I.

“Are you a ghost?” she entreated. “Only tell me that you are so that I can put that terrible book from my mind and know that it is not true.”

Stoker, again. Had the Irishman appeared before me just then, I do not know quite what I would have done but surely nothing good. Worse yet, if his patrons, those who had inspired his lies, even Gladstone himself were to fall into my hands—

“Lucy—”

Anxious to soothe her suffering in any way I could, I said, “A ghost, yes, that is what I am. Whatever else you may have heard is tawdry fiction, the product of a weak and febrile mind.”

“But it seemed so real. Everyone knows that we lived in Whitby when you disappeared, no one would tell me what had happened. And now that terrible book—”

“It is nonsense, Amanda, believe me.” Without a flicker of remorse for so misleading her, I said, “Sweet sister, it is your grief that holds me earthbound. You must move beyond it, embrace your life and all that it is meant to be.”

“I cannot!” She stepped closer, almost touching me. The moment she did so, she would realize that I was no spirit but as solid and real as she was, albeit a creature all too like what Stoker had revealed to the world. I could not risk that.

Holding up my arms to fend her off, I said, “You must. Marry, preferably someone more interesting than your previous choice but follow your heart. Have children—”

Abruptly, it occurred to me that among Amanda’s descendants could be the next Slayer. Indeed, it was possible that only from her could one such come again. My mother had no sisters nor had I ever heard of her speak of female cousins. Alone in her family, she was the only female, or she had been until Amanda and I arrived. Perhaps there were others of Morgaine’s bloodline in the world, tripping over daughters, but what if there were not? What if, now that I was no longer entirely human, there was only Amanda? Centuries hence, my sister’s distant descendent would seek to cull my kind as Morgaine herself had done. We would fall before her as before a great scythe that might wipe us from the earth entirely.

How easily that could be changed . . . if Amanda had no children. If she died before she wed . . . from grief, despair, or by design. One frail human life so easily extinguished and the future changed utterly.

Thinking all that I was still only mildly surprised when I heard myself say again, “Have children, Amanda. You will be a wonderful mother. Have a bevy of little girls and boys who will delight you but do not waste your life in grief. Leave that to our queen empress.”

My sister’s smile was sad and fleeting. “Victoria holds séances, trying to summon the spirit of her lost Albert. Yet you appear to me so readily . . . seemingly so real.” Again, she
reached out. I jerked away but not before her fingers brushed my arm.

“You are real! I knew it! She told me that you lived still—”

“Who told you that? Who are you talking about?” In my confusion, I thought for a moment that she was speaking of Victoria, but that was impossible. With the exception of events surrounding her Jubilee celebration, Her Imperial Majesty rarely left the Crystal Palace, where she dwelled among the reminders of her lost youth and love. Even, it was said, to the extent of ordering that the tobacco her dead husband had favored be burned because she believed that it summoned his spirit.

“She did not tell me her name,” Amanda said. “I met her several months ago when friends persuaded me to attend the theatre with them. It was a mistake, I could not tolerate it, so I stepped out of our box. That was when she approached me.”

“She who?” Impatience gave my voice a sharp edge but Amanda did not seem to notice. She went on as though I had not spoken.

“She was all in white and wearing the most remarkable pearls. It was clear that she knew who I was. She said that all of us—Mother, Father, and myself—were in danger. She cautioned that the authorities were watching us and that if they had any hint that we were in contact with you, they would see us as a threat to the security of the realm and would respond accordingly.”

Dread swept through me, swiftly overtaken by rage. I had not considered that Lady Blanche might know of my family, much less dare to approach any of them. Stoker’s so-called novel must have alerted her to what had happened in Whitby. She must have been trying to find me, and trying to use Amanda to do so.

How else might she try to make use of my sister?

“I see. . . . What did she advise you to do if I contacted you?”

“To tell her at once. She said she could be reached at a club called—”

“—the Bagatelle. I know the place. Listen to me, Amanda. The woman in white is not to be trusted. You must promise me that you will have nothing whatsoever to do with her. If she approaches you again—”

What could I tell her to do? How could I protect her from Lady Blanche when I was scarcely able to protect myself?

My own helplessness threatened to choke me. Determined not to succumb to it, I said, “If she approaches you again, do not hesitate. Go to the Serjeant’s Inn off Fleet Street and find Nicolas di Orsini. Tell him that you need his brother’s help—”

“Marco’s help? What does he have to do with this?”

I stared at her in surprise. “You know Marco di Orsini?”

She laughed and shook her head, as though my question was the height of foolishness.

“Of course, I know him, Lucy, how could I not? That last season we spent in London, you could scarcely speak of anyone else.”

At my lack of response, her smile faded. Softly, she said, “Lucy, don’t you remember? You were wildly in love with Marco di Orsini.”

CHAPTER 15