Incarnation (27 page)

“The proponents of this idea,” Marco said, “argue that the first nation to come to grips with it and make it work will achieve an insurmountable advantage over everyone else.”

“Then what happens to all the rest?” I asked. “There will still be hundreds of millions of ordinary humans.”

“I suppose some use will be found for them until they die out in the natural course of events,” Marco replied. He left it at that and went on, “At any rate, werewolves have their own bloodlines dating back thousands of years. Several centuries ago, one of those lines crossed with that of the Protectors. For most of us since, the only effect has been to endow us with greater strength and stamina. But for one in four, the result is far more profound. That is, as my mother said, the price we pay for being what we are.”

The price Nicolas paid when random chance transformed his existence. How had he managed to cope as well as he had done?

“There is no way of knowing who is affected or doing anything about it until it is too late?” I asked.

“None. Efforts have been made over the years to predict the condition, but they have all failed. No one is ever prepared when it happens. Nicolas turned for the first time when he was sixteen. He barely survived the ordeal.”

“But he has survived despite everything.” I thought of him standing rugged and proud at the head of his pack. “He is the alpha wolf, isn’t he?”

Marco nodded with a faint smile. “He was never one to take second place. There have always been werewolves in London, but I don’t believe they have ever had a leader such as Nicolas.”

“After what happened last night, can we still hope for much help from them?” I hated even to ask, but neither could I underestimate the danger we would all face if we failed to find Mordred.

“Werewolves fight to the death, they never surrender. It is not in their nature.”

Something for all of us to remember, I thought, as Marco stepped out into the street and hailed a passing hackney. Several Watchers were nearby but their attention was diverted by the evidence of the battle that had occurred.

“Where are we going?” I asked as he handed me up.

After a quick word with the driver, Marco took the seat next to me. “It is time to beard the lion in his den,” he said. “But first we have a stop to make.”

CHAPTER 21

A
t that early hour, the streets around the Lyceum Theatre were empty but for the harried office workers on their way to the nearby banks and trading houses. Their presence well in advance of what had been normal business hours was made necessary by the new high-capacity transoceanic telegraph cables that had begun operating between New York and London a few months before. The world was becoming smaller, which some termed progress. Others complained that men were being made slaves to machines. And now this business about breeding a super race. Truly, we lived in unfathomable times.

The placards I had seen before in front of the theatre were gone, replaced by advertisements for the stage version of
Dracula,
now apparently to be a play as well as a novel. I bit back a sharp remark as Marco and I walked around the back to the stage door. To my surprise, the entrance stood slightly ajar.

“Wait here,” Marco said. Rather inexplicably given that he had every reason to know me better, he took my obedience for granted. Naturally, I ignored him and followed on his heels. If something was amiss, he would do far better with a vampire, even of the halfling variety, fighting at his side than he would alone, whether he cared to admit that or not.

The passage across the back of the theatre was as I remembered—crowded with trunks and baskets, backdrops, and bits of scenery stacked along the walls. But whereas before I had seen it in near total darkness, now it was faintly illuminated by the pale yellow light filtering in through narrow windows set high under the building’s eaves.

No sound came from the office at the far end but there, too, the door stood open. Marco and I approached cautiously. The large rolltop desk at which the Irishman labored was thrown onto its side, the overstuffed leather chair lying some distance away. A tall bookshelf also lay on the floor. The worn Oriental rug had been torn up and left in a heap in one corner. A lamp was broken, a table shattered. . . . There was no sign of Stoker.

My nostrils flexed. “There is no blood. Nor is there a body. We should visit his home, make sure that everyone there is all right.” As disagreeable as I found Stoker’s “novel,” I wished no ill on his family. If memory served, he had a wife and children. I had to hope that he had gotten them to safety.

“Give me a moment.” To my surprise, Marco began a slow circuit of the room, tapping lightly on the walls. He was halfway between the door and a window when the sound suddenly rang hollow.

With a smile, Marco called, “It just us, Bram. You can come out.” When there was no immediate response, he rapped again. His effort was rewarded by the creaking of wood and metal, followed by the emergence of a mussed and bleary-eyed Irishman from what looked like a comfortable little hidey-hole.

Hoisting himself to his feet, he said, “I must have fallen asleep in there. Hell of a thing here last night—” Seeing me, he flinched but recovered quickly. “Miss Weston, what a surprise.” His tone left no doubt that I did not fall within the
category of surprises commonly termed “delightful,” but instead was considerably more in the direction of “to be avoided at all costs.”

Nonetheless, he plunged on with admirable eloquence. “May I just say that I truly regret being less than forthcoming with you at our previous encounter? Not to mention my unfortunate role in perpetrating certain falsehoods regarding the appalling events to which you fell victim?”

For a speech hastily conceived in a spasm of fear, it went over well enough. I nodded. “May I say, Mr. Stoker, for my part that I regret choking you the last time we met?” I tried to remember if I had done anything else to him, other than leave him thoroughly terrified, but nothing came to mind.

Under other circumstances, his look of relief would have been comical. “Water under the bridge, Miss Weston. Marco, good to see you. I take it you’re aware of what happened last night?”

“We’ve just come from Nicolas’ side. He is rather the worse for wear. But what of your family, are they safe?”

Stoker’s face darkened. “I am sorry to hear about your brother. My wife and children are with friends in the country. I was working late when I happened to glance out the window in time to see the most extraordinary creatures approaching the theatre. Thralls, I think they are called? At any rate, I only just had time to slip into my little bolt hole before they burst in.”

“You just happened to have a hiding place here?” I asked.

“Have you ever heard of Samuel Beazley?” he inquired. “He’s the fellow who designed this theatre and several others. When he wasn’t doing that, he was a novelist and playwright. Despised actors, felt anyone who had to deal with them ought to have a means of escape. Must say, I’m very grateful to him.”

On that note, he put a handkerchief to his nose, gave it a prodigious blow, stuffed the results into his pocket, and said, “I have been making inquiries along the lines that you suggested, Marco. Seems as though this all runs a bit deeper than we wanted to think. There was a meeting last year of the Star Committee that I’ve only just found out about. Strictly off the record, the topic of discussion was whether it is still necessary or beneficial for humans to coexist with vampires.”

Marco’s face tightened. Quietly, he asked, “The alternative being what?”

With an apologetic glance at me, Stoker replied, “That a means be found to destroy them. Research to that end was authorized.”

“Authorized by whom?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Stoker admitted. “The members of the Star Committee are never identified, not even by those willing to speculate about their activities. Officially, they do not exist. However, they are generally assumed to be among the most powerful men in the realm.”

“I can name one likely candidate,” Marco said. “Your patron, Gladstone. As it happens, we are on our way to see him. Would you care to come along?”

“Truthfully, I’d rather not, but with the stakes as high as they appear to be, I don’t think that I have a choice. Gladstone has had my loyalty for well on twenty years. It’s time he prove that he deserves it.”

So stolid a declaration of principle almost made me regret my harsh opinion of Stoker. Truly, if he had been as good a novelist as he was a man he might have found something better to write about. At any rate, he was willing to put himself in the path of danger for the sake of a higher good, and for
that I was duly grateful. There are times when the solitude of the night, filled as it is with the music of the spheres that the earthbound can never appreciate, is all that a creature such as myself needs. But in the dank light of a London morning, with ominous clouds hovering on the near horizon, there was much to be said for the simple comfort of companionship and the knowledge that one did not face the gathering storm alone.

Although former Prime Minister William Gladstone no longer resided at Number 10 Downing Street, he had not gone any great distance from it. The Lion of Parliament had taken up unofficial residence only a few doors down in an elegant townhouse a short walk from Buckingham Palace, the residence of the Prince of Wales and heir presumptive whose ear, it was said, Gladstone had. He was far less welcome at the Crystal Palace, his relations with the Queen Empress being as frosty as the glass-enclosed interiors where she dwelled, swaddled forever in her mourning clothes.

All this Stoker explained to me as we made our way to the lion’s den. With the Jubilee celebrations completed save for a final gala event to be held two nights hence, the streets were passable once again. I had only a little time to worry about meeting such an august personage.

“Admittedly, he is not the man he was,” the Irishman concluded. “His health is poor and since he left office, he has been prey to melancholia. However, all that means is that he is only ten times as formidable as other men.”

“Is that why you still do his bidding?” Marco asked. He and I were seated side by side facing Stoker. When the carriage stopped abruptly to give way to a passing police wagon, the sudden lurch sent us swaying toward one another. I straightened with alacrity but, I will admit, also with regret. Since he
had confided in me about Nicolas’ true nature, I felt closer to Marco than ever before. This despite what he had revealed about the fate of vampires’ hearts. Truly, if I had any sense at all, I would have kept a closer guard on my own.

“How could I not?” Stoker countered. “Gladstone’s Irish policy was far from perfect, but it was considerably better than anyone else’s. At least he believes that the Irish are human.”

I recalled the sorry history of the famine that had ravaged the Emerald Isle a few decades past, when food grown in Ireland continued to be exported to England while a million men, women, and children lay dead and dying in the streets and beside the hedgerows. Those who claimed to be philanthropists sent aid in the form of cattle feed, sadly indigestible by the starving masses.

Still, a man who is principled in one regard may not be in another. What had I represented to Gladstone when he sent men to drive a stake into my heart and hide me away in a rude grave? A tragedy, perhaps, involving the destruction of a young girl. But in his ignorance of Mordred’s true intent, he had also seen me as a danger that had to be eliminated at all costs. The instinct to destroy what it did not understand might yet condemn humanity to extinction.

Stoker continued, “In his defense, only a very small group has ever known about the presence of vampires in Britain. Gladstone thought it should stay that way lest there by widespread panic.”

I thought of the Watchers appearing everywhere on their Teslaways and the dirigibles that darkened the skies. Rumor had it that the new telegraph cable was designed so that messages could be intercepted. The same was being said of the new telephones that government subsidies were helping to put in
the better class of homes and business. “He still believes there is such a thing as secrets?”

“He is an old man,” Stoker said bluntly. “The world is moving beyond him. But he asked for my help and I gave it. Now I feel entirely justified in asking for his.”

“It won’t be easy,” Marco said. Yet he did not appear unduly alarmed. To the contrary, he seemed to be relishing what was to come.