He was moving even as he sensed the pressure slack from his spine, not even thinking that Ysidro could kill him, but only aware of Lydia's danger. But by the time he was on his feet again, his knife in his hand, Ysidro was back behind the desk, unruffled and immobile, as if he had never moved. Asher blinked and shook his head, aware there'd been another of those moments of induced trance, but not sure where it had been.
The fine strands of Ysidro's hair snagged at his velvet collar as he tipped his head a little to one side.
There was no mockery in his topaz eyes. "I could have had you both in the time it takes to prove to you that I choose otherwise," he said in his soft voice. "I-we-need your help, and it is best that I explain it to you on the way to London and away from this girl for whom you would undertake another fit of point-less chivalry. Believe me, James, I am the least dangerous thing with which you-or she-may have to contend. The train departs at eight, and it is many years since public transportation has awaited the conve-nience of persons of breeding. Will you come?"
Two
It was perhaps ten minutes' walk along Holywell Street to the train station. Alone in the clinging veils of the September fog, Asher was conscious of a wish that the distance were three or four times as great. He felt in need of time to think.
On his very doorstep, Ysidro had vanished, fading effortlessly away into the mists. Asher had fought to keep his concentration on the vam-pire during what he was virtually certain was a momentary blanking of his consciousness, but hadn't succeeded. Little wonder legend attrib-uted to vampires the ability to dissolve into fog and moonbeams, to slither through keyholes or under doors. In a way, that would have been easier to understand.
It was the ultimate tool of the hunter-or the spy.
The night was cold, the fog wet and heavy in his lungs-not the black, killer fog of London, but the peculiarly moist, dripping, Oxford variety, which made the whole town seem slightly shaggy with moss and greenness and age. To his left as he emerged into Broad Street, the sculpted busts around the Sheldonian Theater seemed to watch him pass, a dim assemblage of ghosts; the dome of the theater itself was lost in the fog beyond. Was Ysidro moving among those ghosts somewhere, he wondered, leaving no footprint on the wet granite of the pavernent?
Or was he somewhere behind Asher in the fog, trailing silently, watching to see whether his unwilling agent would double back and return home?
Asher knew it would do him no good if he did. His conscious mind might still revolt at the notion that he had spent the last half hour conversing with a live vampire- an oxymoron if ever I heard one, he reflected wryly-but the difference, if one existed, was at this point academic.
He had been in deadly danger tonight. That he did not doubt.
As for Lydia...
He had absolutely no reason to believe Don Simon's claim to be alone. Asher had considered demanding to search the house before he left, but realized it would be a useless gesture. Even a mortal accomplice could have stood hidden in the fog in the garden, let alone one capable of willing mortal eyes to pass him by. He had contented himself with lighting the fires laid in the study fireplace and the kitchen stove, so that the servants would not wake in cold-as wake they would, Ysidro had assured him, within an hour of their departure.
And at all events, Ysidro knew where Asher lived. If the vampire were watching him, there was no chance of returning to the house and getting Lydia to safety before they were intercepted.
And- another academic point-what precisely constituted safety?
Asher shoved his gloved hands deeper into the pockets of the baggy brown ulster he had donned and mentally reviewed everything he had ever learned about vampires.
That they were the dead who infinitely prolonged their lives by drink-ing the blood of the living seemed to be the one point never in dispute, bitten-off noses in Rome notwithstanding. From Odysseus' first inter-view with the shades, there was so little divergence from that central theme that Asher was-intellectually, at least-mildly astounded at his own disbelief before he had pressed the stethoscope to that thin, hard ribcage under the dark silk of the vest, and had heard... nothing. His researches in folklore had taken him from China to Mexico to the Australian bush, and there was virtually no tongue which had not yielded some equivalent of that word,vampire.
Around that central truth, however, lay such a morass of legend about how to deal with vampires that he felt a momentary spasm of irritation at the scholars who had never troubled to codify such knowl-edge. He made a mental note to do so, provided Ysidro hadn't simply invited him to London for dinner with a few friends. Naturally, he reflected wryly, there wasn't a greengrocer open at this hour, and he would look fairly foolish investigating back-garden vegetable patches for garlic en route to the station... totally aside from missing his train. And given the general standard of British cookery, searching for garlic would be a futile task at best.
His ironic smile faded as he paused on the Hythe Bridge, looking down at the water, like slate the color of glass and smudged with the lights of Fisher Row, whose wet gray walls seemed to rise straight out of the stream. Garlic was said to be a protection against the Undead, as were ash, whitethorn, wolfsbane, and a startling salad of other herbs, few of which Asher would have recognized had he found them by the road. But the Undead were also said to be unable to cross running water, which Ysidro had obviously done on his way from the station- orhad he come up from London to Oxford by train?
A crucifix allegedly protected its wearer from the vampire's bite- some tales specified a silver crucifix, and Asher's practical mind inquired at once:How high a silver content? But like tales of the Catholic Limbo, that theory left vast numbers of ancient and modern Chinese, Aztecs, ancient Greeks, Australian bushmen, and Hawaiian Islanders, to name only a few, at an unfair disadvantage. Or did ancient Greek vampires fear other sacred things? And how, in that case, had unconverted pagan vampires in the first century a.d. reacted to Christians frantically waving the symbols of their faith at them to protect themselves from having their blood drunk or their noses bitten off?Not much vincere in hoc signo, he mused ironically, turning his steps past the Crystal Palace absurdity of the old London and Northwestern station and along the Botley Road to the more prosaic soot-stained brick of the Great Western station a hundred yards beyond.
He was now not alone in the fog-shrouded roadbed between the nameless brick pits and sheds that railway stations seemed to litter spontaneously about themselves. Other dark forms were hastening from the lights of the one station to the lights of the other, struggling with heavy valises or striding blithely along in front of brass-buttoned porters whose breath swirled away to mingle with the dark vapors around hem. From the direction of the London and Northwestern station, a train whistle groaned dismally, followed by the lugubrious hissing of steam; Asher glanced back toward the vast, arched greenhouse of the station and saw Don Simon walking, with oddly weightless stride, at his elbow.
The vampire held out a train ticket in his black-gloved hand. "It is only right that I provide your expenses," he said in his soft voice, "if you are to be in my service."
Asher pushed aside the ends of his scarf-a woolly gray thing knitted for him by the mother of one of his
wilder pupils-and tucked the little slip of pasteboard into his waistcoat pocket. "Is that what it is?" They climbed the shallow ramp to the platform. In the harsh glare of the gaslights, Ysidro's face looked white and queer, the delicate swoop of the eyebrows standing out against pale hair and paler skin, the eyes like sulfur and honey. A woman sitting on a bench with two sleepy little girls glanced up curiously, as if she sensed something amiss. Don Simon smiled into her eyes, and she quickly looked away.