“The general idea gets itself across, details of grammar notwithstanding,” said Ruthven, drily. “Presumably they were running around with holy edged weapons of some description back in the thirteenth century. I still can’t really picture this thing. I’ve never seen a wound like that before, and I have seen a great many wounds in my time.”
“It’s—look, it’s easier to just show you,” Cranswell said, and turned a few pages in the other book he had brought. Part of him, behind the pleasant insulation of whiskey, was still more than a little astonished that he’d done this deed at all, brought irreplaceable artifacts out of climate-controlled storage without any kind of authorization—taken them off museum premises, what had he been thinking—but he had been having the kind of day where really, really stupid decisions looked remarkably inviting. His first exhibit, the first one he had ever been assigned to research and put together on his own, the first opportunity he had had as a junior curator to demonstrate that he actually knew what he was doing, wouldn’t go up until the new year, but today had been an unremitting hell of logistical pitfalls regarding tiny details of the exhibit, and all in all Cranswell had needed the break. And the distraction. And now he wasn’t entirely sure he could get the damn things back safely and keep his job. The sour adrenaline from the chase through the dark was still sloshing around in his bloodstream, which didn’t help matters.
He was using a clean butter knife to turn the pages, rather than touching them with his fingertips, and it took a few moments for him to find the section he wanted: a double woodcut. On the left-hand page was depicted what appeared to be a somewhat standard flaming sword, of the sort wielded by angels at the gates of Eden, and on the right …
“It is a spike,” Ruthven said. “No. It’s a stake.”
Cranswell looked sharply at him. Ruthven’s eyes were wide and dark, the pupils swallowing up all but a fine ring of silver. After a moment he blinked hard, and they shrank smoothly back to normal. “Tell me,” he said conversationally, turning to Vasse, “what else does the book have to say about these individuals?”
Rain spattered against the second-floor windows, blurring the streetlamps into splashes of light, turning the expanse of the Thames into a featureless black field. Through the brocade curtains of a massive four-poster bed, the blotchy light fell across Sir Francis Varney’s features, and did them no favors whatsoever.
Varney lay with his silvering hair spread messily over the pillows, white hands twisted in the bedclothes, alternately tossing and lying deathly still as whatever he was dreaming came and went in waves. The gauze taped over his wound had been replaced not long ago, but now a dark stain was once again beginning to spread over the cloth. His fingers twitched, plucking at the covers, and slowly crept back to the dressing as if the wound beneath had begun to burn.
Down in the street a car’s wheels spun and skidded in the wet, and the yelp of rubber was followed by the hollow bang of metal on metal as it plowed into the back of a taxi. The report was sharp and loud enough to jerk Varney out of his dreams, and he sat up with a gasp, staring into the darkness, not at all sure where he was. A bright spike of pain from his shoulder made him swear and clap a hand to the place. Then he remembered everything.
First there had been the sudden shock of the garlic, like tear gas, blinding and choking with its acrid stink; then, reeling from that, he had only just been able to make out the forms of the attackers through streaming eyes, far too late to be able to escape them even if he hadn’t been incapacitated. Indistinct dark figures, robed and hooded, and voices chanting. Unclean, accursed, creature of the Devil, spawn of the pit. And then pain had burst and flowered in his shoulder, bright hot drilling pain, and the shock had cleared his vision enough to glimpse the ugly spike buried in his flesh before everything had gone sick-dark and cold.
Varney could only just remember coming to, and stumbling away from the poison smeared on the walls and door, and finding his way through the night to the only place he could think of that might offer him succour in this dreadful city. Then there had been a pale man with a high forehead and strange eyes—Ruthven, Lord Ruthven, as he’d so desperately hoped, still at this address after so many years—and hot blood, proper blood, wonderfully rich and heartening, and then a strange woman with pale hair, a thin, worried face. A doctor. She had looked hardly old enough to bear the title, and he had—oh, God, he’d snarled at her, hadn’t he, it had been a couple of years now, he’d been doing so well—and then there had been a confusing kind of dizziness that made everything go away for a little while.
He shivered, cold and hot at once, and ran a hand through his tangled hair. He was apparently wearing someone else’s pajamas, which wasn’t a reassuring realization in the slightest, and the silk felt unpleasantly damp where it clung to his shoulders and back. Too warm. He must have been sweating. That in itself was worrisome.
It had been a very long time since Varney had been actively hunted, but one did not forget the heavy fear in one’s belly, nor the acute awareness of tiny sounds and movements. He heard soft footsteps approaching the bedroom door now and froze, knowing his legs would not support him if he did try to run, if there had been anywhere to run to.
The knob turned almost soundlessly, and the door opened a fraction, enough to throw a bar of cheerful yellow electric light across the carpet. Varney’s pupils contracted painfully at the sudden light and he shrank back against the pillows.
“Ah,” said a voice, and the door opened the rest of the way, silhouetting a familiar form. “You are awake. How are you feeling?”
Varney shut his eyes, relief flooding through him, as Ruthven came over to the bed and frowned at the stain of blood on the bandages. “Somewhat improved,” he said after a moment, glad his voice sounded more or less steady. “Again, I cannot possibly thank you enough for your hospitality.”
“Nonsense.” Ruthven sat down beside the bed. “One of the junior curators at the British Museum’s something of a friend of mine and he’s been good enough to borrow some very useful books for us. We’ve found something in one of them that looks to me as if it might be the kind of dagger used in your attack. Do you feel up to looking at a few woodcuts?”
“Of course,” Varney said, and made an effort to sit properly upright, which shot another bolt of pain through his wound and sent glittering sparks drifting across his vision. Sound faded out for a moment or two. How long had it been since he’d died, the last time? He was decaying, that’s what it was. Decay of the system.