“I want Greta to dress that properly again,” Ruthven was saying, his big silver eyes narrowed. He reached over to rest the back of his hand against Varney’s forehead. The touch was unexpected, and Varney blinked up at him, astonished by the chill of the hand, gentle as it was. “And you still feel awfully warm to me,” Ruthven went on. “I’ll bring the books up for you, but you mustn’t get worked up about it, all right?”
Varney let his eyes half-close and listened to the slow beating of his own blood in his ears. It was warm in here. “Of course. I promise to behave.”
Ruthven quirked a long eyebrow at him, but said nothing further, and after another moment the door shut behind him. Varney was left in the dimness.
Ever since the attack he’d been fighting off a dull awareness that the words used by his assailants were accurate. He was a monster, accursed of God, unclean, a dead thing walking the earth to feed on the living; each time he had been hunted before, his hunters had a reason. In all his long existence Varney had never done anyone more good than harm, nor even wanted to.
A vast wave of melancholy, bland and grey as tears, broke over him; it was a very familiar feeling.
Downstairs Ruthven found Fastitocalon carefully copying out the description of the Order of the Holy Sword, or possibly Sword of Holiness, into a pocket notebook.
According to the text, the Gladius Sancti had been considered a bit weird even by the standards of the day, and had gone around setting fire to bits of the countryside and generally making a nuisance of themselves. It had been somewhat of a relief when they apparently gave up and disbanded; they had, however, merely gone underground into full-on secret-society mode. The book mentioned in particular that they had resurfaced in the seventeenth century, at the height of witch hunting, and they had not been simply after witches: Their quarry was demons, by which they apparently meant all sorts of supernatural creatures, or in practice anybody they didn’t much like.
Which seemed to be almost everybody. The really interesting part, to Ruthven’s mind, had been the details about their rumored possession of an actual blessed sword of some kind, like the Spear of Destiny, brought out of the Holy Land—and with it a recipe for a sacred chrism to anoint ordinary blades and render them capable of slaying demons. Ruthven didn’t know about demons, but whatever had been on the blade used to stab Varney had done him absolutely no good whatsoever.
He was, nonetheless, finally on the mend, Ruthven reminded himself, and said as much to Fastitocalon. “Wants to see what we’ve got, apparently lucid and compos mentis, if feverish. I do hope Greta gets back soon, though. I’d be happier with a medical expert on hand.”
Fastitocalon smiled a little. “I shouldn’t worry. She’s got every intention of attaching herself limpetlike to the household as long as you’ve got Varney tucked up in your spare room. She was fretting all afternoon about not being here to keep an eye on him, in between delivering lectures for my benefit.” He coughed. “You could ring her up and tell her he’s awake; she’d probably be glad to hear it.”
“I think I ought, yes. Look, can you take that book with the woodcuts up to Sir Francis and see whether it’s anything like the weapon he remembers?”
“Certainly, if you’re sure he won’t be put off by having total strangers visit while he’s indisposed.” Fastitocalon looked up at Ruthven with a wry smile. “I wouldn’t blame him.”
“I shouldn’t think he’ll mind in the least. You’ll probably do him a power of good.”
Ruthven supposed Greta was stuck in traffic; it was not a nice night to be driving. He went through to the kitchen for his mobile, hearing Fastitocalon coughing as he climbed the stairs, and felt a twinge of worry. Probably he should have bullied Fass into bed, rather than getting him to help out with the research project du jour.
He put on a kettle, listening to the phone ring on the other end. Most likely she was stuck in traffic and too busy driving to pick up; he’d just text her instead. He was about to end the call when her voice came on the line, uneven and thickened with tears, and he could feel his pupils contracting with surprise.
“R-Ruthven,” she was saying, unsteadily. “I’ve seen one of them. I’ve seen one of them up close, he was in my car, he was in my goddamned car, and I don’t know how many others there might be—”
“What happened?” he demanded. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
“On the bus, all the way in the back. I wanted to be around people. With lights.”
“I’m coming to get you,” he said, turning off the stove.
“No,” she said, and there was real urgency in her voice. “No, don’t, stay right there. Don’t leave the house, Ruthven. They’re probably watching you right now; they know where you live.”
“Who, for God’s sake? What happened, Greta? What the hell’s going on?”
“He said they were the Holy something.” She sounded a little more focused now. “Dressed like a monk. Talked in—what sounded like Bible quotes, all about evil and wickedness, just like Varney’s attackers—”
Ruthven went cold all over, the little hairs on the backs of his arms prickling as they stood erect. “The Sword of Holiness?” he interrupted her.
“Yes,” said Greta, sounding terribly young. “Yes, that was it. He was—burned. And his eyes were—it’s not possible, but they were glowing blue, I don’t know what he was, and there’s more of them, I don’t know how many, Ruthven. It’s them. The ones who are killing people.”
“In the name of purification,” he said, not really asking a question.
“Yes,” she said again. “That’s right. I’m—I’m two stops away from Blackfriars. I’ll be there soon.”
The line went dead, and Ruthven took the phone away from his ear, staring down at it, his pupils slowly expanding again. It was rare for Greta Helsing to let anyone see, or even hear, her cry. That in itself was enough to send a creeping finger of dread down his backbone, a cold, sick feeling that vast things were spinning out of control.
He shook himself and hurried through to the hall for his coat and keys and an umbrella. Never mind her instructions not to leave the house. If he started behaving like that at his age it was only a short step to hiding in the cellar and hissing at people, and he’d spent enough time complaining about that sort of thing already.
It was, in fact, a dark and stormy night, with a little thunder muttering in the east over the Isle of Dogs, and the people he passed on the street were hurrying to get out of it, heads burrowed down into hunched shoulders. Nobody paid him any attention as he made his way toward the Blackfriars bus stop: just another man in a dark coat, perhaps paler than most, his black hair combed straight back from a high forehead. The overall effect was slightly spoiled by the fact that dampness made his hair frizz.