Page 9 (1/2)
I don&039;t see how that could be" As she walked, Lydia folded her arainst the chill that daht of the autumn forenoon Beside the dull purple-brown of her coat, her red hair, pinned under the only unobtrusive hat in her vast collection, seeraph when she turned her head In spite of the, with a delicate prettiness which would have seely vulnerable to anyone who had never seen her in the dissec-tion rooms
Asher, at her side, kept a weather eye out across the sepia vistas of lawn and copse to both sides of the walk, but sa other strollers It had rained late in the night, and Hyde Park bore a slightly dispirited air; scudding clouds were collecting again overhead A few black-clothed nannies hustled then- charges at double tih a rapid constitutional before the rain should coain; that was all
"Neither does Ysidro," Asher said "But he suspected all along that the killer wasn&039;t human It&039;s why he had to hire a human and, more-over, find one who could or would believe in varee independently-why he had to tell me what he was, in spite of the opposition froht have suspected they were dealing with a vampire, too No human could stalk a vampire unseen-a human would be lucky to see one in the first place, let alone either recognize it for what it is or keep it in sight"
"You did," she pointed out
Asher shook his head "A fledgling, and an untrained one, at that," His glance skileam of the Serpentine, off to their left Like Bully Joe Davies, he found hi all the tirass
"Did Bully Joe Davies ever turn up?"
"No Ysidro and I waited until alht have seen Ysidro and sheered off, but I doubt it However, I think we&039;ll be able to locate Calvaire&039;s rooms in Lambeth-if he has the property purchases since February, which hen Calvaire ca to establish a power base in London-which he see-he&039;d have bought property Since Grippen didn&039;t know about it, either, wethere"
They walked in silence for a ti now and then at the ends of Asher&039;s scarf and at Lydia&039;s skirts and coat
Lydia nodded "I&039; whether all vampires fall asleep at the same time-into the deep sleep For, of course, just because the win-doere opened to let in the sunlight doesn&039;t mean that it was done while the sun was in the sky"
"I suppose, if the killer were a vaet to safety," Asher said, "More than enough, in Lon-don And it would certainly solve the question of why he believed in vampires in the first place, let alone knehere to look"
"In all the books, the vah the vahtfully "If this one did, every-thing&039;s been too charred to tell, but Lotta&039;s head was certainly severed If the sun weren&039;t yet in the sky, I wonder if that would wake a sleeping va of the coffin would do so? Are you sure I can&039;t puthis own inclination to walk closer to her, to hold out his arm to hers, or to have some kind of physical contact with this woman "In spite of the evidence that the killer is a va you, even by daylight"
She widened her brown eyes at hiuise myself as a pickpocket? Or if I tripped and stuloved hand dramati-cally to her brow "I feel an attack of the vapors coining on now"
"No," Asher said fir,
She frowned and tucked her hands primly into her oes on about Plato and Platonic friendship, I&039;ll have a feords to say to him No wonder Don Si yourself with the killer, as you&039;d originally thought you ht Do you still plan to do that, by the way?"
"I don&039;t know," Asher said "It isn&039;t out of court entirely, but I&039;d have to know a good dealthem for reasons of his-or her-own doesn&039;t mean he wouldn&039;t destroy me with just asat that sli beside the hero, separated by a draord
Lydia nodded, accepting the change in a situation upon which her life depended with her usual cal for a tiht; Asher was content-alravel of the daray lawns, a dog barked, the sound carrying fantastically in the cold air
"Have you any idea how ht it takes to destroy their flesh?"
Asher shook his head "I asked Ysidro last night I&039;ve been trying to work that out, too-that half-hour or so of leeway That&039;s what&039;s puz-zlingof the Great Fire of 1666 He says the thinnest gray light before sunrise burned his face and hands as if he&039;d stuck them into a furnace-s and back beneath his clothes were scarred and blistered as well According to Lady Ernchester, it was nearly fifty years before the scars went away"
"But they did go away," Lydia enerate" Her dark brows pulled even deeper, an edge of thought hardening her brown eyes, as if she looked past the piled whites and grays of the late- sky to some arcane laboratory of the mind beyond
"Pseudoflesh, he called it," Asher said
"Interesting" She reached up to unsnag a long strand of hair from the braided trim of her collar-Asher
had to keep his hands firot that lover&039;s knot fro I&039;ve had a look at it and those vertebrae under my microscope, and they look-I&039;reater ed, but the hair I&039;d like to be able to examine it at a subcellular level-and their flesh and blood, for that ht He hiuistically and historically, when he wasn&039;t si his throat cut by them; Lydia would see vampirism as a medical puzzle
"Do you kno petrified wood comes about?" she asked, as they neared Marble Arch with its scattered trees and loafers and turned back the way they caures in the wide, cleared spaces of the Park&039;s brons "Or how fish and ferns and dinosaur bones are fossilized in the Cambrian sandstones? It&039;s a process of replaceanic There&039;s been a lot of research done lately on viruses, germs that are smaller than bacteria, so sh to operate at a subcellular level I&039;ve been reading Horace Blaydon&039;s articles on viruses in the blood; he did a lot of work on it while I was studying with hi whether a vampire&039;s immortality comes from some kind of cellular replacement or mutation -whether va syndrome of viruses that alter the very fabric of the cells That would account for the extres like sil-ver and garlic and certain woods-why you&039;d have to fill the arlic to deaden the brain and stake the heart with one of those allergic woods to paralyze the cardiovascular system-why you&039;d have to separate the central nervous systeain he wondered tangentially why, in the face of such an overwhel evi-dence, there was such paucity of belief "All the legends speak of va va&039; fledglings, but that&039;s apparently a matter of choice Ernchester said that Grippen would not have stood for anyone but hi a new va Bully Joe Davies"
"Initiating, but not training," Lydia said thoughtfully "Or- wasit just a lack of training that h for you to spot him? Do the psychic abilities that seem to be part of this viral syndrome only develop with time? How old were the va point," Asher said "Lotta had been a vaer, almost exactly one hundred years Ysidro saw all of them s," he added dryly, "that we don&039;t know about Calvaire"
"Valentin Calvaire," Ysidro ainst the worn leather squabs of the hansoers like a stack of ivory spindles, re Asher soone nearly white "Curious, how many trails seem to lead back to Valentin Calvaire"
"He was the first victim-presumably," Asher said "At least the first victim killed in London; the only victim notfrom London; the only victim whose body we have never found What do you know about him?"
"Less than I should like," the va cla crowds in Drury Lane all about them "He was, as I said, one of the Paris vao"
"Why?"
"That was a topic which he never permitted to arise"
The vampire&039;s tone was absolutely neutral, but Asher&039;s mustache twitched as he detected the distaste in that chilly staterin, had probably had very little use for M Calvaire,
"I take it he was not of the nobility"
"What passes for nobility in France these days," Ysidro stated, with soft viciousness, "would not have been permitted to clear away the tables of those whose birth and style of breeding they so pitifully at-te decent blood in that country was flushed down the gutters of the Place Louis-Quinze-excuse o What is left is the seed of those who fled or those who made themselves useful to thatcondotfiere Napoleon Scarcely what one would call honorable antecedents"
After a moment&039;s silence, he went on, "Yes, Calvaire clai he would do"