Greywalker - Vanished Part 18

"Oh! Yes, you do know! What a relief. I found my life a nightmare when I realized-Oh, but that's not what you want to know."

"Yes. I need to know about the amphorae, who had them, what happened to them, and if you know anything about a man called William Novak. Or John Purcell."

"Purcell!" He raised a silvery hand and pressed it to his chest. "My-my stars. Mr. Purcell. I believe he's a prisoner! I can't say I have much pity for them, but it's cruel to see what they do to one another. They don't die easily, you know. Would that I had been a stronger man in life-but no. I suppose it wouldn't have changed anything."

He noticed me crinkling my brow.

"Oh. I do apologize. Here, let me explain."

"Go right ahead," I invited. I knew he'd dither less if allowed to tell his tale his own way and I sat on my impatience as he did.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

"I really had no idea," Smith began, "when I came to St. James's of what a horror was below the surface of our fine parish. It's a very old parish, you know. The well and the baths I had been there a very long time and it had been quite the pastoral spa once-where the gentry would go to escape the city. There was always some friction between priory and parish. But I didn't know that . . . among our paris.h.i.+oners there were so many . . . of them."

"Them?" I asked.

"The . . . vampires," Smith whispered, and it came out on a cold breath that chilled the warm summer morning. Even Michael s.h.i.+vered, though he plainly hadn't heard a word. "Once I realized what they were, I was shocked! I was outraged. I-I told the vicar, the rector, the prior. . . . They all laughed at me. Well, in our modern age, who wouldn't? But the word got out. They knew that I knew and they took delight in tormenting me with the powerlessness of my position. I was just a lay clerk; not a priest or even an a.s.sistant curate who could go to the bishop. Oh, my . . ."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh. I . . . I find it distressing still. I'm afraid . . . I took to drink. Weakness. Terrible weakness." He shook his head for such a long time I thought he'd given up until he said, "I suppose, in its way, the drink saved me. I lost my position and was asked to leave the parish. I could have stayed in Clerkenwell-even a bishop can't really force you to leave your home-but I ran from it. Oh, not far. This pleasant green here is not too far removed in miles, but a world away to me.

"I made a pleasant life for myself. I married a widow who had a small bit of money and we were not unhappy. But I could not forget what I saw. It haunted me. And . . . I suppose, that is why . . . I still feel drawn there."

I looked expectantly at him, waiting for the rest of the story.

"The . . . uh . . . Red Brothers-that is what they termed themselves-had come from the priory originally. I don't know how they came into being, they were just . . . there, but there was a falling-out among them. A b.l.o.o.d.y thing, played out beneath the streets in secret places carved out by the old rivers and the Romans long before the priory was raised there. The slaughter was immense among the servants of the Brothers. The Brothers themselves were too hard to kill, and most escaped unscathed. When they had done with their battle, they broke into two parties and mockingly named themselves after the houses of G.o.d below which they had rampaged. They still call themselves St. James and St. John-the Red Brotherhood of St. James or St. John, as they please. The others, the white creatures from the docks, they had no part of it-or none I could see."

Marsden leaned close to my ear and murmured, "He means the asetem. The docks and south of the river is their haunt."

"Then what happened recently?" I asked Smith.

"Oh. I . . . I didn't see it all. It began a month ago or so . . . I think. Time . . . is so hard to tell now. The white ones started showing up and the strife between the Jameses and Johns increased-I feared there might be bloodletting again. But they quieted. Until the Greek jars arrived. I hadn't paid them much attention at first-I didn't want to know what they might contain. But I had to investigate when Miss Chast.i.ty asked it of me. I can hardly say no to a charming lady."

He gave me a quick, nervous smile before lowering his head to watch his invisible feet a moment. "So, you went to see what had happened. . . ." I prompted.

"Oh, yes. I went back to where I'd first seen the amphorae. It was very hard as it was the same place beneath the priory where so much carnage had been wreaked during my time. But the jars had been broken already and it seemed something must have happened of which I could not guess. And then Mr. Purcell appeared in that place. The Red Brothers were very cruel to him and they taunted him horribly. About what I couldn't understand. I never have figured it out. . . . But from what they said, this I believe to be true: The creature that was in the amphorae was taken out and rea.s.sembled into . . . whatever it was, and it is still there, somewhere."

That was startling. Sekhmet hadn't mentioned anything in the jars except blood, magic, and corruption. "A creature?" I questioned. Maybe that had been the corruption. . . . "What sort?"

"I have no idea, nor do I want one! Please, don't ask it of me. It was chopped into pieces and rea.s.sembled from those horrible jars. When I saw what they were doing, their sorcerer making it whole again . . . I-I am not a brave man and I could not bear to look. . . ."

I nodded. "I understand." But I didn't understand it all. A sorcerer? What had it made from the parts? Did the vampires have a spellbinder working with them? Or was it one of the asetem? Of the vampires I knew, only Carlos had any magical powers. Edward had told me most of them didn't, but maybe that wasn't true for the Egyptians. Or maybe there was another player in the mix.

By his quivering and translucence, I knew I couldn't press Smith any further on that. It was frustrating, but it would do me no good to let it show, so I changed tack and hoped I wouldn't regret my n.o.ble ignorance later. "Which of the factions has Purcell?" I asked. "St. James or St. John?" "St. James. I don't know why they chose to store the jars beneath the priory of St. John-perhaps to work some magic against their enemies? I don't know. I feel for Mr. Purcell-I knew him in my time. He . . . was like a . . . go-between. He did business for both parties and they agreed to let him alone. But now the Jameses do him great harm. He is . . . not a good man-he is not a man, indeed-but none deserve the tortures to which they put him, poor soulless thing."

"What about William Novak? Do you know anything about him?"

"Who? I don't know the name. . . ."

"He's the missing man, this young man's brother," I clarified, waving my hand toward Michael, who was holding back with an anxious frown on his face. "He's a young man, too, but he has white hair, like an old man. He's very tall and thin. Have you seen-"

"Oh! That one! Oh . . . no." His voice was freighted with dread.

I restrained an urge to lean forward, to grab for the dithering ghost and shake information out of him, but with Michael looking on, I didn't dare make a move that might upset the boy. I didn't know how much he was picking up but he was observant and smart, and if I acted distressed just after using Will's name, he'd know something bad was in the works.

"Go on."

"I have seen him. I have. But they move him about. And . . . they . . . they torment him most horribly. He cries-Oh, my soul. It's too much to bear," the ghost said, covering his face with his hand. "Please," I asked. "Could you tell me where he is right now?"

"I don't know that. As I said, they move him."

"Could you go look?"

"No! No. I . . . I couldn't. I can't. I-No. No, no, no," Smith whispered, aghast.

Barnaby Smith stepped back from us, staring at each of us in turn as if we would leap on him and rend him to bits in a moment. He gasped, clasping his hands over his heart as he backed away. "I'm sorry. . . . I cannot. I cannot. . . ." And he vanished back through the red crypt doors.

"What appalling manners," Temperance muttered from above.

"I think he's distraught," said Prudence. "Poor fellow. He must have seen something truly nasty down there."

"But don't you think he'll reconsider and come back?" Hope asked. "Really, it would be the right thing to do. . . ."

"Which is why he won't," Tempe said.

"Oh, Tempe . . ."

"Do use what little brain Inwood gave you, my girl."

"Tempe!" Prudence gasped.

"Oh, you're just horrid!" Hope shouted, and vanished with the sound of a lightbulb exploding, leaving her statue blank and cold.

"Whatever is the matter with the chit?" Tempe grumbled. "It's true. Mr. Inwood wasn't overly generous in what he gave us. He even cut us short in the middle!"

"And you are not overly generous in anything," Prudence retorted. "Now I shall have to go after her. Oh, dear." Her statue also went dark.

"I hope you got what you were after, Peter. I doubt they'll any of them come back." "It will do or we'll make do," Marsden replied.

"Yes. Well," Temperance said. "I shall go and look after them. Mr. Smith is an upsetting presence. It's quite a pity his wife, Rosemary, has left him on his own, but I suppose one can't grumble about another's pa.s.sing on. Now I must go. Good luck to you, Peter-and your friends."

Given the inflection she gave to "friends," I was pretty sure she didn't care for me and Michael. I wasn't entirely sure she liked Marsden, either. Temperance's caryatid also went dark, leaving us alone between the crypt and the iron fence.

We waited a few minutes in case Chast.i.ty returned, but didn't get lucky. Marsden and I gave up. I stepped back from the Grey to what pa.s.ses for normal to me and turned toward Michael. He looked everywhere but at me.

"Michael. Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," he replied too quickly.

I hadn't had a chance to prep him for what happened when I submerged into the Grey and got a bit see-through in the normal, and he'd said he saw and heard a little. Anyone would find such things disconcerting; for a kid who'd been through what he had in the past day, it must have been staggering. "Michael-" I started, turning up one hand and reaching for him.

He waved me off. "No. I'm fine. Just. Fine."

It was better than his brother's reaction, but it still left me frustrated. Doing my job had always caused problems for someone, and it had gotten worse after I become a Greywalker. I didn't have the luxury of making other people comfortable about what I did or how I did it most of the time. Usually, I didn't have to worry about people seeing me do something strange; most people ignore the majority of what goes on around them, especially when it's weird or upsetting. But Michael had had this dumped on him with no mitigation or preparation. I felt rotten about it, but what was I supposed to do? If I went at it with kid gloves, what was already bad would have turned worse-if it hadn't already, and I feared it had. "Time for tea and discussion," Marsden stated. "Keep up, you two."

He headed off through the church gates, cane out in front and confident that we were trailing him like ducklings.

I made a rueful face at Michael.

He gave a self-conscious shrug and took off after the blind Greywalker.

THIRTY-EIGHT.

"St. James's," Marsden said over tea. "Very odd, that."

Marsden had led us to a grubby little shop on a side street near the British Museum, which turned out to serve good, cheap tea and sandwiches that had no resemblance to delicate bits of thin bread and water-cress. We'd spent a quarter of an hour bringing Michael up to speed, though he was thinking and watching more than talking while Marsden and I tried to make a plan. Michael seemed to getting his mind around it, though.

"What's so odd? I mean, aside from ghosts and vampires and talking statues . . ." he snarked, swallowing a mouthful of bread and meat.

"What's odd, boy, is that the Red Brothers of St. James is the faction what Harper's employer used to run with. Purcell was his man of business. But he doesn't know what's happened to Purcell, so the conclusion I draw is that either the rift is mended between the Brotherhoods-which I doubt-or someone's suborned the whole lot. That would be a rather good trick. And if it's done, it's the asetem what have done it. That could be worse, but not a whole b.l.o.o.d.y lot."

"What's the asetem?" Michael asked.

"A different type of vampire altogether-"

Before Marsden could get started, my cell phone rang. I'd almost forgotten I had it until it started jiggling around and making my purse rattle on the tile floor. I answered it and let Marsden explain the Egyptian vampires.

It was Quinton. "Hi," he started, breathless and sounding strained. "I'm sorry I couldn't call you back last time. Things are getting scary here. I'm not at my place; I'm at yours-it's safer, if that tells you anything."

"What's happening? Is it . . . a vampire thing?"

"Right in one. It hasn't moved up from the shadows yet, but it's bad. The dark places are not safe. And there's a lot of new creeps around making a whole lot of trouble. I'm not sure if it's better for you to come home right away or stay out of it."

My heart seemed to be tap dancing and my stomach twisted. "I've only been gone . . . what? Three days? When did this start?"

"Pretty much as soon as you left. It's like they were waiting for you to be gone."

"Oh, no," I said, feeling that sense of doom hanging over me again like the Sword of Damocles. "I think it's connected to my case here. Or rather, it's all part of the same thing."

"d.a.m.n it. I was afraid of that. Edward's in this, isn't he?"

"Somehow, yeah. But I don't know exactly how. Keep a very low profile, and especially keep away from Wygan."

"The DJ?"

"Yeah, that one. He's not your average bloodsucker. He's something special and very nasty." Just thinking of the feast for the asetem that ma.s.sive destruction and unrest among Seattle's vampires would provide nauseated me, and from what Marsden had said about Wygan's known plans, that was just the icing on the cake.

"Oh?" Quinton prompted.

"Yeah. He's like . . ." And I stopped, not sure I could explain it succinctly and still include the shades of suspicion, implication, and intuition that were holding it all together in my mind. "d.a.m.n it. It's complicated. He's got very big plans that include me and the Grey and something about Edward, too. He's been pulling strings and causing trouble since I was kid. I still need to find one more big piece of the puzzle and I think I'll know what I am and what he has in mind."

"What you are? You're Harper Blaine. You're what you make of you, not what some megalomaniac vampire wants."

I could have reached through the phone and kissed him for that. It reminded me that no matter what Wygan had in mind, the decisions weren't all his.

I grinned for the first time in days. "Yeah. I'll give you the whole messy story when I get back, but I have to finish up a few things here first. I'm not sure if Edward is playing me or if he's really a victim, but whatever else is happening, the local vampires have William Novak and it looks like they've been using him to get to me. For Wygan. Why is still a mystery, though."

The pause grew very long. "Novak. Your ex."

"Yes."

"I guess the ghosts were right."

"Sorry. I'm not sure what you mean."

"They said it wasn't what you thought. All this stuff that's been going on isn't about the vampires; this is about you."

"Not all of it. Some of it's a plan of Wygan's-"

"That needs you to make it work and needs Edward or something of Edward's. Whatever's going on there is all about you. Or they wouldn't have taken your ex."

He went on as I fell silent, thinking about what he'd said. "The stuff that's going on here has the feeling of clearing the decks. It's dangerous, but it's not concentrated yet. It started when you left. And I think it'll s.h.i.+ft into higher gear when you get back. Or whenever they find Edward."

"Every vampire in Seattle knows where to find Edward."

"No, they don't and neither do a lot of other people. That's what I needed to tell you: Edward's missing. It's on the news."

"What?" I hoped that Edward had only pulled back to hide in his bunker if handbaskets were indeed h.e.l.l bound. If Edward was gone, I might be in a lot of trouble when I got back to Seattle-or even before, if the things I was thinking were true.

"They're hinting he's been kidnapped," Quinton said. "The vampires are going nuts. They're all over the place and they're all over each other. The new ones-"

"Creepy white b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that seem a little . . . snakelike?"

"Yeah."

"The asetem-ankh-astet. They're Wygan's people. They might be magic users, so stay away from them." "I'm already staying away. They resist the stunners and they scare the c.r.a.p out of me. They seem to scare the other vamps, too. I don't know if it'll get worse before you get here, but it's not pretty now. It might be better if you don't come home."

"You don't want me to come back?"

"I want you, but I think, given what you've said, that things will get worse when you do. You don't have to play whatever game Wygan is up to."

"I'm afraid I do, but I don't have to play it his way if I know how to avoid it. And I can't leave here without getting Will out first. Even if they didn't try to use him against me again . . ."

"No. You can't leave a friend behind. Not even an ex-boyfriend. I'll hold on here. Let me know if you're coming back to Seattle or if I should bail out with Chaos and meet you elsewhere."

I bit my lip, worried and conflicted. "How-how is the furball?"