“You ought to have stayed away, Lord Byron.” Her white skin flushed red up from her chest to her cheeks. Her breathing was rapid, and I could hear her heart pounding as I pressed her against me.
“I couldn’t stay away. You’re so beautiful.” I moved my face close to her neck and took in the scent of her skin and her hair.
“Why do men always tell girls that they’re pretty?” she said. “Why don’t you ever say a woman is bright or talented or witty?”
“We do say that,” I said. “We say it all the time. To the ugly girls. We tell them they have charming personalities and remarkable senses of humor, and we avoid looking directly at them; we fix our gaze on a point behind them, or off someplace to the side, to see if a prettier one is just beyond the periphery of our vision.”
“You must let go of me.”
“I don’t believe you want me to,” I said.
“I do. I think you should. I know you’re a kind of trouble I don’t need.”
“You say that. But your eyes are pleading me to stay.”
She hesitated. “I cannot deny that I have sometimes admired you, from a safe distance.”
I knew it!
“Desire for me is a common affliction of your sex,” I assured her as I exhaled onto her neck. “I’m afraid I only know of one cure for it.”
“I never thought my distant affection put me in danger, because I didn’t imagine that it might someday be noticed, let alone reciprocated. You are so very dashing, and yet you’re such a very awful person.”
“The two qualities are not unrelated.”
She pressed a pale hand against my chest. “Lord Byron, I really think you ought to leave, before we make some irreversible mistake.”
“You’re probably right.” I pulled her body against mine. “But I rarely do the things I ought.”
She stamped her bare foot on the rug. “Why do you insist upon being so impertinent?”
I touched my lips to hers. She didn’t pull away. “Because I know what’s best,” I said. “And I know your prudent impulses cannot stand for long against the force of unreasoning desire.”
“You’re mad,” she said. But her voice was scarcely a whisper; and her protest was weak.
“Probably. I’m also right.” I pressed my mouth hard against hers and briefly lost track of time, place, and several of my senses as I explored. I carried no watch, but when she finally decided to resist my embrace and pry my roving hand off her ass, the sunlight was streaming in the window from a slightly different angle.
I tried to shove her down onto the bed, but she grabbed my arm and pushed me back, toward the door.
“You must leave at once,” she said. “Even with this killer on the loose, you’re still the worst and most dangerous man in Cambridge.”
I relented, hoping for both our sakes that she was right, and I set out to find Leif Sedgewyck, who was obviously probably the murderer. I would vent my fury and disappointment upon him, and perhaps, if I was really piqued, I’d turn loose the Professor and give the bastard what he really deserved.
Chapter 16
The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant. Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr. Southey, in the notes on Thalaba, quotes about these “Vroucolochas,” as he calls them. The Romaic term is “Vardoulacha.” I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find that “Broucolokas” is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation at least is so applied to Arsenius, who, according to the Greeks, was after his death animated by the Devil. The moderns, however, use the word I mention.
Am I a villain? Am I a madman? The reader will inevitably ask himself this, and it’s a question I’ve given much consideration to. One fact that may prove relevant: some months prior to the death of Felicity Whippleby, I told my mistress Violet Tower a secret, one so closely held that no soul knew it, save my loyal Joe Murray and, of course, the Professor. I was drunk, which was not unusual, and I was speaking a bit too freely about Mad Jack and my desire to hunt him down and hold him to account for his treatment of me and my mother.
“Your father is dead,” she said as we lounged after an athletic lovemaking session in my rooms at Nevile Court. “He pressed a gun to his head while riding the French harlot he’d spent his last shilling upon.”
I’d never spoken to her of this particular myth about my father, though I’d heard it before. Her knowledge of it surprised me. Perhaps it should not have; I was the subject of much gossip, as Mad Jack was before me. Both of us did everything possible to make ourselves objects of popular fascination.
“Lies and misdirection,” I said. “I will reveal to you the truth. But you must promise to share nothing of what you learn here with any soul.”
She teased my hair with her fingers. “Byron, you’re frightening me.”
“And you should be frightened. I’ve discovered things that are truly terrifying; things that will upset your understanding of the nature of life and death.”
She smoothed my tangled hair and wiped sweat from my pale brow. “You know, when people say you’re mad, I defend you. But I am beginning to think you need some kind of help, perhaps a tonic, or treatment in a sanitarium.”
“Swear to keep my secret.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Very well. Forget I ever mentioned it.”
“Oh, come now! You cannot dangle the possibility of such exclusive knowledge and then withhold it.”
“Then swear.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Swear it.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “I swear that I’ll never betray your secret, Lord Byron.”
I rose from the bed, and she followed me down my hallway, where I unlocked the door of the Professor’s study, a windowless interior room that made a nice lounge for a gentleman or a suitable lair for a medium-sized mammalian predator. I cracked the door slowly, to avoid surprising the occupant, and ushered Violet inside. The bear stirred from slumber upon the pile of rugs and skins he used for a bed, and regarded the woman with a rumbling growl.
“That creature makes me uneasy,” she said.
“The Professor is perfectly harmless,” I assured her. “In any case, our concern is over here.” I pointed toward a large, heavy piece of furniture, a thing like a wardrobe. It would have been sleek and black, but the Professor had scored the wood with his claws. It had come from Newstead; part of my inheritance from William, the Wicked Lord. Joe Murray told me my great-uncle had liked to lock his whores inside the cabinet when they displeased him, hence the heavy doors and sturdy lock. The use I’d found for it was arguably more disturbing. I unbolted the doors on the front of the chest with an iron key.
“This contains treasures and truths from across the world, obtained at great effort and expense over a period of years,” I said.
“But you never have any money.” I wondered if I’d spoken too freely of my financial difficulties in front of this woman. Perhaps it was a mistake to reveal my treasures to her. I wondered if she ever betrayed my secrets to her husband, as she betrayed her vows to him with me.
“I find credit whenever it’s available,” I said. “And I employ my borrowed funds toward the pursuit of this.” I opened the cabinet to reveal several rows of ancient heavy tomes.
“Why, it’s a bookshelf,” Violet remarked. “But who locks a bookshelf?”
“There is some knowledge that is valuable and dangerous. Some knowledge must be shielded behind locked doors and guarded by bears,” I said. “You are looking at the most comprehensive library in all of Britain on the subject of immortal creatures, and on vampires in particular.”
“Vampires?”
“The undying dead,” I told her. “They rise from their graves to feed on the blood of the chaste. Stealing life allows them to stave away death. They do not age, they cannot be hurt, and they never die.”