Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Kendrick’s eyes narrowed to slits, tracking the daylight as it moved across the floor in a faint line from beneath the curtains. Its path was not close enough to come anywhere near the room’s inhabitants, but he traced it warily, anyway. A predator always kept its eyes on an equal threat.
When the small line of light was strongest, and Kendrick felt the pull of sleep the most, the boy stirred. Of course. Small humans were never considerate of elders.
Fletcher mumbled something and plucked at the counterpane over him.
“Are you thirsty?”
The boy froze, his still slightly glassy eyes darting around. “Who’s that?” He fisted his hands in the blankets.
To Kendrick, everything in the room was visible just from the trickle of sunlight, but human frailties required a lamp. He slowly pushed himself out of the chair and moved to the table, striking a match.
The boy recoiled as the vampire lit the lamp and waved the match into nothingness, smoke dissipating up to the ceiling. “Where’s the lady?”
“She’s sleeping.” Kendrick pointed to the cot. “You see?”
“Why’s she sleeping? It’s day, ain’t it?” He glanced towards the windows before a cough overtook him, rattling his small chest. Once he had his breath back, he said, “Can’t you open the curtains, guv?”
Kendrick shook his head. “No, I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you after you drink this water and take your medicine.”
The boy sipped at the water and then choked down what Joseph had left, his eyes on Kendrick the whole time. Keeping his eyes on the threat, Kendrick thought, darkly amused.
“Now, Fletcher—is that your name?”
The boy nodded. “Older boys used to call me ‘Fetch,’ but she changed it.”
Kendrick raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because she said it sounded like calling a dog or one of them fairy things and both weren’t true. Right angry when I told her, she was. So she said I could be Fletcher ’cause I’m sharp as an arrow.”
“That you are,” Kendrick acknowledged. “It’s because you’re so sharp that I’m going to tell you this, Fletcher. I must go below to get you food and a new plaster for your chest.” Kendrick rubbed at his eyes. “I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t open the curtains.”
“Why?” the boy said reluctantly.
“You know what I am. What Genevieve is. You call us ‘reavers.’ A not-inaccurate word. But mostly we call ourselves ‘vampires.’”
Fletcher swallowed.
“I have promised you safety, and I will hold my promise. Now you must promise me this. Most vampires sleep during the day, and that is because sunlight burns us. If you opened the curtains and the sunlight touched Genevieve, she’d burst into flame.”
The boy’s eyes rounded. “Cor!”
“I don’t think you want that to happen,” Kendrick said. “Will you promise me that you’ll watch over her while I am gone? Keep her from harm?”
The boy’s jaw worked, and then he nodded. “Right you are, guv. Want me to put my hand on the blade again?”
“How about we shake on it, like men?” Kendrick held out his hand.
The boy eyed it for a long moment and then put out his own. They shook.
I can see why Genevieve likes the boy, Kendrick thought as he descended to the kitchens. He was as sharp as an arrow, and stubborn too. And clearly had spirit.
Kendrick roused Joseph briefly to get instructions on how to mix the plaster.
The other vampire tried to help, but he couldn’t stay awake.
“Don’t worry,” Kendrick said. “I can do it.” He made the plaster and heated the pot of soup left on the hob, then found a tray and carried it all up, stopping for a moment by the library on his way.
He found Fletcher sitting up and coughing, a frustrated and embarrassed look on his face.
“You shouldn’t be up,” Kendrick said. “You hurt your ribs.”
“But I need—” The boy broke off, flushing, and coughed again.
Ah, the pressing necessities of humanity. “I’ll help you.”
“Lor’ lumme, guv, not with a lady in the room,” the boy said, horrified.
“She won’t wake until dusk,” Kendrick said, hiding his smile.
“I’ll shield you, in any case.” He helped the boy with his business in the extremely dusty chamber pot below the bed—how long had it been since the vessel had been used for its intended purpose?
—and then got him back under the covers.
The endeavor had clearly tired the boy out, so much that he could barely hold the spoon, but Kendrick insisted he eat at least half the bowl of soup.
At the end, it was Kendrick holding the spoon for the boy.
“I’m full, guv,” Fletcher insisted. “You keep pokin’ the spoon in my gullet, I’ll think you’re fattenin’ me up.” He glared balefully over the spoon in front of his mouth.
Kendrick laughed. “All right.” He sat the bowl on the table and sat back in the chair, moving the sword that had slipped since he had first roused himself.
“Is that your pig sticker?” Fletcher’s eyes stared at the sword.
Kendrick lifted it and set it in his lap, unsheathing the blade. “It was given to me by a friend a few weeks ago. Before that, it hung over her fireplace, the broadsword of her ancestor.” He turned the blade so the boy could see it.
“You duel with it, like toffs used to?”
“A light, fast sword is best for dueling. Advance and retreat, very quick. A broadsword like this is used for hacking. You want to take the enemy down in one blow.” Kendrick lifted the sword and demonstrated the swing.
Fletcher followed the movement, eyes wide. “You killed a body with that?”
Kendrick judged this simple youthful interest. “A few. But they were vampires.”
The boy made a face. “You killed any people?”
“Not in a few centuries.”
The boy’s jaw dropped. “You’re that bleedin’ old?”
“Older,” Kendrick said wryly. “I have a book here that is set close to when I lived. Would you like to hear it?” Kendrick lifted Sigestan of Emberlost. “It is an adventure about a wanderer, what you might call a knight-errant before the arrival of the Normans.”
“Here in England?”
“Yes.”
“It’s got fights? With swords?”
“Many.”
“All right,” the boy allowed. His eyes were growing heavy.
Kendrick thumbed the pages to the opening chapter.
“‘In the far north of England, many years before King Harold forfeited his crown to William of Normandy on the field of Hastings, along the sea cliffs of the North York moors, where tiny becks wear their way to the sea, and storms rage, and the roaring waves beat upon the rocks and pull sailors down to drown among the selkie maidens and the mer-lasses of the deep, a small stone house-place had been reinforced against the elements, and that was where Sigestan was born one winter eve…’”
After breaking half the furniture in his sitting room and nearly ripping off the arm of the toady who had brought the news that the attempt against Kendrick had failed, again, Laurent stormed out into the streets still full of humans going about their business, oblivious that death walked among them.
Foiled! Again! Was the man a cat, that he had nine lives? Were the vampires he sent so incompetent? How hard was it to kill one vampire?
“I do hate to say I told you so,” Gisela had said, when she’d arrived on his doorstep minutes after the little birdy who’d broken the news, “but I would be remiss if I let you continue in this crackbrained manner. Stop your ill-conceived attacks against Kendrick. They are doing us no good.”
“Disloyal wench,” Laurent had growled. “You would just give up? Roll over beneath this new master? A very easy posture for you.”
“It is not disloyalty to recognize when one is outmatched,” she had snarled.
“And trying the same thing over and over isn’t wisdom.
It’s stupidity. I worry for you, Laurent,” she’d gone on in a venomously sweet tone.
“You spent too many years letting Bacchus do your thinking for you, and now I believe you find it hard to take up again.”
She had turned on her heel and stalked out, smoothly dodging the marble bust he had sent flying at her head.
Laurent made his way to the East End, where humans did not care about the poor disappearing.
After slaking his thirst and relieving some of his fury on a dosser, he left the body behind in a dark alley and straightened his clothing, ensuring no blood speckled his waistcoat.
As he dabbed his handkerchief against his lips, he caught a thread of scent on the air, and he froze.
Genevieve.
Hunting the scent, he stepped out into the street and scanned the crowds. No Genevieve to be seen. So why did he smell her? It was there, mixed in with the smell of the unwashed and coal and food cooking poorly and sewage in the streets.
His gaze settled on the pinched face of a woman, eyes down, walking past him.
Her.
He trailed her for two blocks until a convenient patch of darkness and alley mouth coincided. Then Laurent seized her.
“Shhh,” he said, hand over her mouth as she tried to scream.
He held her in place as she tried to fight him with her paltry strength, and he searched her. She smelled like Genevieve—why? Had she supped from this woman recently? Given her something? What?
He found the culprit in her pocket, a worn handkerchief spotted with dried human blood not yet laundered, but with the faded initials GD.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, perfectly pleasant.
He dangled the handkerchief in front of her.
“Where did a human like you run into Genevieve? You can speak,” he added, belatedly moving his hand from her mouth to her throat.
It was pathetically easy to abort her struggling escape attempt. Humans were no match for a vampire.
The woman’s eyes were so wide, he could see the whites all around the lovely, green irises. Fear rolled off her, but she didn’t open her mouth.
Laurent’s mouth pursed. “I will pay you for the information.” He jingled the coin in his purse.
He wouldn’t; he never paid humans if he could help it, but she wouldn’t know that.
“Simply tell me where you acquired this handkerchief and why. Perhaps you do not know her name; she is a woman with cropped, dark hair and a mouth full of upstart opinions. Pointed little nose and chin, pale. Only comes out at night.”
She could not hide the spark of recognition. She swallowed but still said nothing.
Laurent’s lips thinned. “Cat got your tongue?”
Genevieve was a do-gooder and a bleeding heart. She was trying to twist her way into Kendrick’s confidence, to get her fingers into the Ossuary. She had run into this woman at some point, and she had given her a handkerchief to staunch blood.
There was a connection here, and every connection was a leverage point of weakness.
He leaned closer to the woman and smiled. “You and I are going to become acquainted. And you’ll tell me what I want to know…eventually.”
That loosened her tongue. “No, please,” she begged, futilely fighting as he dragged her away.
“Too late.” He would find out what he wanted to know, and he would hurt Genevieve at the same time. Revenge did taste sweet.
Sweet like blood.