There was novampirescent to the note—but there was the faint scent of stone, damp, horses, and the live scent of whoever had sold the paper. If he could track the human, that might provide a clue.
That was what he would do. Just as soon as dusk fell again, he’d take to the streets and see what scents he could follow. After all, it had been some years since he had prowled this city. It was time to make himself known to London again.
ChapterThree
It’s a mean little pub, Kendrick reflected. Small and cramped and smelling of all the things that were a part of human life. But the ale was appreciated by all those who put their pennies on the bar and got a mug in return. Much of the crowd consisted of unfortunates who probably had no place to lay their heads but scrounged enough coin from begging or day work or other means to satisfy their need for drink. The other patrons were the residents of this neighborhood teetering on the edge of desperation.
He normally would not appear in such a place—he preferred a larger locale for more anonymity. But the storyteller by the fire was a good one.
Kendrick had made a survey of all the newspaper stands and news sellers from Mayfair to the East End, it felt like. He had searched every night this week for the scent, sometimes with Etienne in tow. He had seen the fine folk pile into their carriages for their parties and soirees and had seen them return in the wee hours of the morn. He had even gone to Fleet Street, clogged with printers and the smell of ink and glue and pulp filling the nose.
Vampires had habits, patterns. They found themselves on a worn path trod again and again. In an ever-changing world, they liked the routine, the familiar. Even in a city as teeming with life as London and choked with coal dust and sewage and dirt and odor, he should have sensedsomething.
Kendrick could question the Ossuary sentries. No one entered or exited the Ossuary without permission from the door wardens, to keep unsuspecting humans from wandering where they shouldn’t and finding the hidden entrances to the catacombs. But Kendrick felt a strange reluctance to relinquish the paper slips to the scrutiny of someone he did not trust. Besides the need to keep the warnings a secret, to prevent any impression of weakness, and to keep the note-keeper safe, since the members of the conspiracies were unknown, there was no guarantee a door warden would even be able to detect the scent. Etienne had been hard-pressed to detect anything at all on the notes, much less pursue it.
But the true reason was Kendrick wanted to keep it to himself. It was faint, barely detectable. But it compelled him. Vampires liked perfumes—rich florals, heady bergamots, or patchoulis—the women in particular. But the note leaver wore no fragrance. The faint scent he could detect smelled like water over stone, overlayed with the human aroma of life—smoke from cooking fires and body odor and boiled cabbage. It bothered him. It intrigued him. What other vampire smelled likelife?
Yet he couldn’t find her.
It was like he sought a ghost.
This was not unlikely in a city as old as Londinium. He was not quite old enough to remember the red crests’ dominion over the island, but he recalled the ruinous former towns and tumbledown buildings, collapsed stone covered over with brush and earth, relics and remnants from Rome’s collapse that littered the landscape of Britain. He recalled the change in the rivers, the shift to the skyline, the razed portions of the city after fire and flood had done their work. Ghosts, should they exist, gave the city of London its soul, imprinted into the stone and mortar. The world was full of unexplainable things, and he was one of them.
Wasn’t there a book about ghosts at Christmas? Salem, with his hoard of tomes, probably knew it.
Kendrick lifted the tankard to his lips and pretended to drink. Etienne had offered him Salem’s direction the previous night when they had searched Covent Garden.
“Salem doesn’t read letters,” Kendrick had said, as music had spilled out into the street from one of the song and supper rooms.
Etienne had shrugged. “Faelad and Ophelia do. They have settled in Ireland, near where Faelad’s people originated. I thought you might like it.”
“Even if I write, he won’t write back.”
Unbothered, Etienne had handed him the slip of paper. “In case. Or if you desire to write Faelad.”
Kendrick had the paper in his pocket now—Kilkenny, Ireland. But there was no point in writing. Salem wanted no reminders of London; he had been very clear on that.
By the fire, a fiddler with middling skill and a better voice gulped from a tankard, taking a break after leading the pub in a rousing chorus of “Good King Wenceslas,” new words to an old tune Kendrick recognized. A man with a gray head not too far into his cups was telling the tale of Kate Crackernuts. His voice still carried the unique accent of an Orkney man, and the story the details from that region, but the teller put his own flairs and embellishments into his words, giving the story its own life. Kendrick let the words wash over him, feeling the emotions, the echoes of the past melding with the present.
When the story concluded and the fiddler took up his bow again, Kendrick left his untouched mug and slipped out the door.
Stepping onto the street, he could see no moon or stars above for all the fog in the air tonight. He slung the wrapped sword over his shoulder and freed the hilt, should he need it, and continued down the dark street. A stray cur on the street cut a wide berth around him, growling low in its throat. Kendrick ignored it.
London was situated in a basin, a bowl for all the unhealthful odors and low-lying smog, collecting the dregs of the whole of society, with no way to scramble out for so many of the millions of people in London. He had never seen Englishmen so damn small and sickly as he had in these last few years. You could practically taste the coal dust in their blood. They died sooner, their bodies full of drink, their lungs full of smoke. His sojourn to Yorkshire brought the distinction into sharp relief between the hale countrymen and the wasting city dwellers.
And if the city is so unhealthful for the living, what is it doing to the dead?No wonder in such bleak and dreary environs, vampires like Markham went mad.
Kendrick passed one of his kind on the street—like recognized like. The black man, who looked little older than a youth, though that was no indicator of his real age, dipped his head and didn’t meet Kendrick’s eyes until Kendrick motioned him over.
“Yes, Master?” the vampire asked.
Kendrick felt once again the distaste for the appellation, but asked, “Where would a woman feed?”
“Sir?” the vampire blinked at him.
“A female vampire, who isn’t afforded the ability to go everywhere men can. Where does someone like her find her meals? I thought near the theaters, but women don’t wait there anymore.”
“A woman without a family? L-Likely, she finds dossers or those who look for women alone after dark,” the vampire stammered.
