Free Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly Page B

the lure of the hunt as surely as had the Lady Irene’s love for the harp – were not the only thing Asher recalled of last night. His knowledge of human nature told him – if Marya’s animal glare had not – that it was he, who had only been fighting for his life, against whom their hatred would turn. They had been brought down before a human.
    If they thought they could kill him without Golenischev finding out, he was a dead man.
    His blood sample collected, he turned to the corner where he had been thrown. Pressed his hand to the lower panel of the wall, and felt it give.
    The moveable panel was a simple one. It didn’t take much probing along the ornate scrollwork on its edges to find the catch. The compartment behind, barely five inches deep, contained stacks of banknotes, a thick glass bottle containing an aqueous solution of silver nitrate – evidently the Lady Irene had no more trust in her vampire colleagues than Asher did – a revolver loaded with silver bullets, three different sets of identity papers, and, in an envelope at the back, another envelope, yellow with age, addressed in Ysidro’s spidery hand.
    Asher collected everything, tucked it into his satchel, closed up the panel, and got out of the house as quickly as he could. At no point had he seen, or heard, or sensed in any fashion that anyone else was in the house or that the house was being observed . . .
    Yet he got into the cab that he hailed, and left the Smolny District behind him in the cold spring twilight, with a sense of having escaped just in time.
    In his chambers at the Imperatrice Catherine, he sat in the bow window overlooking the river and read Ysidro’s letter to the Lady Irene Eaton.
London
May 10, 1820
My Lady ,
I received your letter .
And I read in it that which fills me with horror .
DO NOT DO THIS THING. I beg of you, in the name of the love that I bear you. In the name of the love that you bear for me, do not do it .
When we parted, you asked of me that which I would not do – and despite my pleadings, despite my most desperate efforts to explain my refusal, though you said that you understood, I think that you did not and do not .
You said that I would live forever, while you as a living woman were doomed to die. Yet I do not live forever. I do not live now (as I told you then, you shaking your head, eyes shut), and death changes things. Death changes all things. And Un-Death the more so than Death, for in Death memory survives untainted by future change .
You do not think that you will change, but you will. I have seen hundreds pass this gate of blood into the world I now inhabit, and I have not seen more than four or five who did not turn into the Grippens of the world, who did not turn into the Lottas and the Francescas at whom you stared with such fearful interest when at my side you heard the chimes at midnight: who did not become, in truth, demons who live only for the kill. I have seen scholars turn from their books and artists from their easels; I have seen mothers who sought this state the better to aid their children turn from those children in boredom, once they had passed the gate that you knocked upon, with such desperation, the night of our parting .
I love you because you are who you are, Lady. To see you lose the self – the Lady – that I love, to see you turn from your music and your love of learning and the joy you take in your pets, and become as I am, would be infinitely worse than to lose you, whole and yourself, to death, even to death of withered age .
I write this as I read how you have met the vampires of St Petersburg – how you followed on from what I had told you of the London vampires, and those of Paris . . . and I am filled with horror and with dread .
I know you, Lady. And I very much fear – knowing your courage, and your determination, and your love – that you write to me not waiting for my reply .
The world does not need another vampire, Irene. The world – and I – needs